Chapter 352: Another Awakened One
Anvil Star.
True to its name, it was a planet renowned throughout human territory for heavy industry, colossal machinery manufacturing, and cutting-edge materials research.
Massive orbital shipyards sprawled like a forest of steel, outlining the planet's silhouette.
The surface was covered with automated factories and smelting facilities stretching for thousands of kilometers, and the air seemed infused with the distinctive mingled scent of metal and energy fluid.
Benjamin had come here to inspect and study its core industrial technologies.
Using his status as an outstanding graduate of the academy, he had joined a public technical seminar at the headquarters of the Titan Forging conglomerate, focused on optimizing the efficiency of next-generation high-energy plasma transmission pipelines.
The venue was a vast tiered conference hall steeped in hard-core industrial style, where engineers and researchers from every star sector were engaged in fierce debate.
Amid the clash of technical jargon, a familiar voice caught Benjamin's attention—slightly hurried in tone, yet possessing exceptionally clear logic.
Following the voice, he saw a figure utterly different from his memories, yet faintly overlapping with them at its core.
That person—was Rex?!
Benjamin could hardly believe his eyes.
The man before him was no longer the level-ten super genius from the Noren Workshop graduation trial, covered from head to toe in savage mechanical constructs and radiating the scent of Alchemy and metal.
There were no flashing rune eyes, no humming powered joints.
In their place stood a young engineer in a slightly oversized standard work uniform, thin-bodied, with a pair of plain glasses perched on his nose.
He stood before the podium, arguing until his face was red with an elderly engineer whose hair had gone gray over the energy vortex losses at a certain transmission node.
"Your model ignores the second-order topological