Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones

Numerous liquid metal lakes, large and small, dotted the surface of this planet.

Only elements or alloys with higher melting points could remain solid. The The rest, with lower melting points, had all melted.

Furthermore, these "lakes" even had ripples and sometimes "waves."

This planet had no atmosphere. Those ripples and waves were not formed by the blowing of wind.

They were formed by frequent asteroid impacts.

Even at such a close distance to the host star, asteroid activity remained frequent. In fact, this large planet itself was located within an asteroid belt.

The definition of a large planet is, firstly, that it orbits a star, and secondly, that it possesses enough mass to clear its orbit.

From these two definitions, this planet seemingly could not be called** a large planet, because it had not cleared its own orbit.

How many asteroids, numbering more than a hundred billion, shared the same orbital path around Pegasus V342?

In fact, Tom's rough estimation calculated that the total mass of the entire asteroid belt was as high as 75 % of this large planet's mass! This was roughly equivalent to the mass of an entire Earth.

In contrast, the total mass of countless asteroids in the solar system's asteroid belt was only about five ten-thousandths of Earth's mass.

This illustrates the immense size of this asteroid belt.

Despite this, Tom still considered this rocky planet, **designated 'A', to be a large planet.

The reason was simple: it wasn't that it lacked the ability to clear other celestial bodies from its orbit; it merely needed time.

In a few hundred million years, there would likely be no asteroids left in its orbit; they would probably all have collided with it.

Those that didn't collide would be ejected from their current orbits, either impacting the star or being expelled to the outer regions of the system.

By then, its total mass was projected to grow to about 1.3 times its current mass.

The current stage was still its rapid growth phase.

However, Tom's arrival was destined to temporarily halt this process.

Developing industry requires a stable environment; constant asteroid impacts would not do.

"Planet 'A' is rich in various mineral resources, very good. I will make you my industrial center," Tom decided, looking at the "sparkling" planetary surface.

Immediately, numerous small spacecraft from the massive fleet began to descend, braving the scorching heat of the Pegasus V342 star, which was as large as a house. They landed on the surface of planet 'A' amidst the dazzling light, and immediately began the corresponding industrial construction.

At the same time, another part of the fleet, anchored near the gas giant approximately 700 million kilometers away, also began related construction under the control of Hestia AI and Tom's delayed decisions.

After breaking through quantum-electric supercomputing technology, the performance of Hestia AI had been greatly enhanced. Now, a mere few tens of minutes of delay was completely acceptable.

Tom first began constructing some foundational industries, including only mines, energy factories, and metallurgical and casting factories.

Higher-level industrial systems, such as precision casting and chip factories, were not numerous, and there were only a few types.

The reason for this was that Tom needed to build an indispensable system in the shortest possible time.

A SkyNet System, just like the one in the Altair System back then, specifically designed to defend against asteroid impacts!

All current factories served this goal.

In just one year, the initial hundreds of thousands of factories were completed. With the abundant, almost infinite, material support from the stellar system's large planets, metallic box-shaped thrusters, capable of automatic networking, target searching, and automatic propulsion, were released into space, quickly accumulating hundreds of millions of units.

Simultaneously, on the surfaces of various planets, one land-based anti-aircraft base after another was completed.

Thus, on the total of over 50 large moons, dwarf planets, and large planets chosen by Tom, "SkyNets" were erected, blocking all asteroids attempting to collide.

With the asteroid impact problem resolved, larger-scale factory construction immediately began.

Factories rose from the desolate, silent, and scorching ground, and heavy-duty railway lines crisscrossed in all directions. In space, countless heavy-duty spacecraft shuttled back and forth along various routes.

Large quantities of minerals and industrial products flowed between different planets: iron ore, titanium ore, and carbon oxides from rocky planets; deuterium, argon, nitrogen, methane, and other gases from from gas giants. The entire system seemed to be connected at this moment.

It took only 30 years for a sufficiently scaled industrial system to be completely built.

Based on the more advanced Hestia AI system, it originally wouldn't have taken this long. However, due to the unprecedented scale of the industrial system Tom was building this time, it still consumed this much time.

At this moment, the number of various factories under Tom's command had exceeded ten million, and the number of quantum-electric supercomputing bases solely for the operation of various AIs had reached over one hundred thousand.

Within the migration fleet, Tom had only built twenty thousand quantum-electric supercomputers for the almost infinite scientific calculations.

Scientific calculation is the most supercomputing power-intensive type of calculation.

And now, with almost no scientific calculations, Tom had built as many as one hundred thousand supercomputers!

It was also fortunate that Tom's maximum consciousness connection count had increased to 1.5 billion. Otherwise, in such a short time, even with significant performance improvements in all AIs, this construction task could not have been completed.

Now that the industrial foundation has been laid, it's time for the next construction plan.

In this next construction plan, Tom did not plan for any large scientific devices.

Although breaking through to become a Strong Nuclear Civilization was Tom's most urgent and important need, and even Tom himself was extremely eager for it, he still forcefully suppressed the urge to develop technology.

It was not yet time. If he were to start technological research now, then before he could make a breakthrough, the Mechanical Disaster would arrive, and he would ultimately gain nothing.

At this moment, there were more urgent matters than developing technology.

In his plan, Tom divided the construction tasks of this phase into four categories.

First, the production of Mercury-class spacecraft.

Only the smallest Mercury-class manned battleships would be produced. Beyond that, not a single Venus-class or Earth-class battleship would be built!

Anyway, in the face of a Mechanical Disaster that had already reached the Strong Nuclear level, there would probably be no difference between Mercury-class and Earth-class battleships.