In the underground workshop beneath the wasteland, Cairo felt somewhat irritable because his conversion progress severely lagged behind initial perfect planning.
The obstacles didn't stem from insufficient technical understanding or design flaws, but from a cold reality: this cyberpunk world wasn't the resource-abundant, industrially complete Warhammer Forge Worlds, and where he currently resided was definitely not those exclusive workshops equipped with top-tier facilities and automated servitors.
The widespread scarcity of critical materials severely limited his ability to transform blueprints into physical reality, becoming insurmountable obstacles in the advancement process.
For this, he had to invest far more time and energy than estimated.
Those implant-use bionic components that should've been produced by standardized assembly lines with extreme precision now required his personal fabrication.
He could only utilize limited equipment on hand, plus the uneven-quality basic materials Maine's crew had collected, performing tedious manual crafting.
From basic structural shaping, internal micro-circuit etching, to biocompatible coating application and curing—every step required personal involvement and meticulous monitoring.
This massively consumed time originally usable for core research or more complex system integration.
Even more serious impacts came from missing basic strategic resources.
Auramite, ceramite—these core materials comprising advanced armor and weapon substrates in the Warhammer universe were almost completely absent from this world's known material libraries.
Without these ideal materials possessing special atomic structures, capable of efficiently conducting energy or resisting extreme impacts, many design performance specifications became meaningless, forcing him to compromise performance at every stage, further intensifying work complexity and time consumption.
Auramite and ceramite—though also scarce resources in the Warhammer world—for a Tech-Priest with certain status, simply requesting could obtain them from Forge World resource allocations.
Even rarer auramantium—Cairo, with past merits and connections, wasn't completely unable to access.
But on this strange planet with a skewed tech tree, these materials commonplace across many galactic locations became extremely rare, possibly not even existing within native known tech trees.
Cairo's memory databases stored ceramite synthesis formulas plus auramite's preliminary smelting processes.
Ceramite required specific iron ore substrates plus a series of complex catalysts reacting under high temperature and pressure. Auramite extraction was even more troublesome—needing extraction from certain special asteroid minerals, its atomic structure abnormally stable, processing difficulty extremely high.
However, knowing methods didn't equal achieving realization.
Lacking most basic raw materials plus large-scale industrial production's essential high-temperature furnaces and gravity field controllers made him a skilled cook without rice.
He'd attempted substituting with local high-strength alloys, but test results were uniformly disappointing—either excessive density affecting mobility, or protective performance far below expectations.
Ultimately, he had no choice but to comprehensively adjust design plans, shifting toward slightly inferior-performing but locally obtainable or synthesizable composite materials as replacements for ideal materials like auramite and ceramite.
For main structural aspects, he selected high-density titanium-tantalum polymers as core frameworks.
Though this material's energy conduction efficiency fell short of auramite, its strength-to-weight ratio under local tech levels was already excellent, providing solid yet relatively lightweight support for frames.
To enhance key positions' toughness and anti-fatigue characteristics, Cairo attempted incorporating certain special biological materials intercepted by Maine's crew from Biotechnica transport convoys—mixing them into polymer matrices at specific ratios and weaving patterns.
These genetically-edited, cultivated high-strength biological fibers displayed extraordinary energy damping properties and structural stability, to some extent compensating for main materials' deficiencies under extreme loads.
Armor systems adopted even more complex multi-layered composite nested configurations.
The outermost layer was specially-processed hardened ceramic plating, primarily handling high-velocity impacts and energy weapon direct hits.
Middle layers used depleted uranium armor plates Maine's crew found at some abandoned military base. Though Cairo remelted them to improve structural consistency and reduce toxicity, inherent radiation characteristics still required additional processes for effective shielding.
The innermost layer combined bio-active gel with self-healing capabilities plus shape-memory metal mesh, aiming to absorb residual impact forces, cushion vibrations, and automatically seal cracks or restore deformations to some degree after damage.
This series of local-condition-based alternative plans—though barely achieving basic defensive specifications in laboratory simulations—their costs were also obvious.
Overall component weights exceeded original design budgets, affecting theoretical maximum mobility.
Heat dissipation efficiency took major hits from insufficient material thermal conductivity, posing potential constraints on sustained high-intensity combat.
More importantly, energy losses significantly increased when transmitting through these non-ideal materials, causing weapon systems like sonic blades relying on efficient power supply—their potency and sustained combat durations all suffered non-negligible impacts.
This comprehensive technical compromise stirred nearly sharp irritation within Cairo's precisely-operating logic core.
For a Tech-Priest, pure research bottlenecks or experimental failures weren't particularly worrying—those were inevitable stepping stones on truth-seeking paths.
However, current circumstances were completely different.
Clear technical blueprints burned in his mind. Every component's ideal parameters, every energy circuit's perfect form—all thoroughly understood—yet constrained by external resource scarcity, such nearly primitive obstacles.
This powerlessness stemmed not from knowledge's fog but material poverty, like a master craftsman stripped of accustomed tools and materials, forced using crude substitutes carving perfect creations.
A feeling of invisible chains binding, mixed with deep disgust toward extremely inefficient states, surged through thought depths usually dominated only by cold data and absolute rationality—like abnormal ripples suddenly rising across stable data lake surfaces, especially glaring and uncomfortable.
Even so, irritable emotions didn't shake his determination executing plans.
Cairo suppressed this discordant fluctuation with powerful willpower, forcing himself back into absolute rational frameworks.
He followed that adjustment plan filled with compromise clauses, mobilizing every usable processing unit within the workshop, with nearly harsh precision carefully operating those unsatisfactory materials, methodically advancing Lieutenant Morell's conversion procedures.
Every miniature servo motor drive, every laser welding point calibration, every neural interface and bionic fiber connection—he focused completely, striving to reach theoretical optimal solutions under limited conditions.
When the last piece of synthetic bionic skin—texture indistinguishable from human flesh—was precisely fitted onto Morell's chest cavity region, perfectly concealing beneath it the stably-running, surging-power-providing miniaturized plasma reactor, this constraint-filled conversion project was finally declared complete.
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