Chương 376: B6—Chapter 26: The Hardship of Engineering a Pond-Side Paradise

I found Mahya and Rue in the home appliance section, crouched in front of something that looked like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. Mahya had one hand on her hip and the other poking at the weirdest contraption I'd seen so far. A metallic orb about fifty centimeters in diameter sat at the center, with ten legs extending in every direction like a robotic spider having an identity crisis. Rue sniffed it once, then sat back on his haunches, clearly unimpressed.

"What the hell is that supposed to be?" I asked, squinting at it. Mahya didn't even glance at me.

"You can call it a cleaning robot."

"Like a vacuum cleaner?" I stepped closer, still trying to figure out which part did the actual cleaning. She straightened up and gave a little shrug.

"Not exactly. It uses a derivative of mana sense to detect dirt. It vacuums dry debris, wipes up wet messes, and even removes stains from upholstery. Smart little thing." I blinked.

"We don't need it. Al and I both have the Clean spell."

"I'm not inspecting it for the cleaning." She tapped the top of the robot.

"I'm interested in the Magitech aspect, not the functionality."

"Then buy it." She sighed and crossed her arms.

"Too expensive."

"How much?"

"Ten mithril." I let out a low whistle.

"The prices here are ridiculous." Mahya gestured vaguely at the shelves.

"Well, if you think of it as ten gold, it's not that bad. The problem is, all our funds are from low to medium mana economies, so the exchange rate sucks."

"You've got a ton of gold," I said, waving a hand toward the thing.

"Just use some. We can always earn more." She turned and raised an eyebrow at me, a slow smirk forming.

"Oh? Then why didn't you buy the music player?"

"I already have music I like," I muttered, looking away.

"Don't need alien noise polluting my collection." Mahya gave me a patronizing pat on the back.

"Of course, of course. Whatever helps you sleep at night." Rue sneezed and trotted toward the next aisle. I followed Mahya while she wandered from gadget to gadget, occasionally poking at buttons or mumbling under her breath about something or other. She kept grumbling about the prices, but told the salesperson to set aside a growing pile of items near the payment counter. She stopped in front of a cube-shaped contraption. As she bent to inspect it, I sensed ice and water mana woven into it.

Some kind of fancy magical freezer, or maybe an ice cube maker? While examining the device, she said casually, "You should give your friend one of the thundrayag horns. For experimentation." I blinked.

"Huh?"

"I mean, she's a shaper, right? We couldn't figure out how to use them, but maybe she can?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I frowned, trying to catch up. Mahya shot me a flat look.

"You called them smooshicorns."

"I know what thundrayag horns are," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

"I meant the shaper thing." She tilted her head, genuinely puzzled.

"She shapes metal with her mana, doesn't she? I'm pretty sure she works with more than just metal, at least judging by the weapons in her shop. Maybe she can shape the horns or something." Mahya finally finished browsing and headed to the payment counter. I used the time to swing by Payan's place again. This time, she was out front with a customer. He was a big guy—Al's kind of big—with a thick braided beard, which seemed to be pretty common around here.

What stood out was that, despite wearing the usual flowing clothes typical of this region in a light sandy yellow, I caught glimpses of leather and metal armor peeking out from under them. I could see it through his collar and sleeves. He was holding an axe and talking to Payan about it. I couldn't hear what they were saying, which was odd. I wasn't that far, and with my heightened Perception, I should've caught every word. But all I got was a vague, indistinct murmur.

He kept pointing at his axe, jabbing a thick finger toward the blade with an obvious increasing frustration, while Payan stood her ground, arms crossed, shaking her head. The guy didn't look happy, but not hostile. After another ten minutes of back-and-forth, mostly her refusing whatever he wanted, he finally gave an exasperated grunt and stormed out of the shop. Payan watched him go, then gave a slow shake of her head.

"Adventurers," she muttered with a sigh, like it was a curse.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Every adventurer I've crossed paths with thinks their dungeon-drop is the treasure of the Spirits. Like it's the never-before-happened happening. Then they want prices so high the sky would blush." She looked up, looking tired.

"Meanwhile, the item? You can find ten of them catching dust in a basket outside a village smithy." She made a quick, dismissive flick of her hand, like swatting away an annoying fly.

"Let us not dwell on stupid people. Did you forget something?" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I took out a smooshicorn horn and held it out.

"Mahya thinks you might be able to do something with this." Payan leaned in, her fingers brushing the surface before she took it with both hands. She turned it slowly, inspecting it from every angle.

"Where did you get this from?" she asked without looking up.

"From a monster." Her head snapped up.

"And it didn't dissipate?"

"That's the weird part. If we killed the monster first, the horn disappeared with the rest of it. But if we removed it before killing, it stayed solid." Her eyes lit up at that, and a wide grin spread across her face.

"That is a good drop." She glanced toward the door, then muttered, "Not like that useless axe." Turning back to me, she cradled the horn.

"How much do you want for it?" I shook my head and waved her off.

"We've got plenty. Try working with it first. If you figure something out, we'll talk then." She beamed at me.

"Usually, I have no fondness for adventurers, but you... you're a good plant in my opinion." She gave a playful smile and added, "Perhaps because you're the team's healer?"

"How do you know I'm an adventurer?" That got me the look again.

"The weapons you brought me, and that wizard battle master class." She shook her head, clearly amused.

"The wizard part is a natural talent. But the battle master? I do not wish to imagine how many dungeons and mana portals you cleared to claim that." I shrugged, not knowing what to say. When I got back to Mahya, I took her to see the habitat with the lake. In the park, Rue made friends with a group of kids in under three minutes and decided to stay with them. I stuck around too, primarily to examine the ground and try to figure out how the place worked.

Unfortunately, I had the same level of success as the day before—absolutely zilch. After a few hours, the bottomless pit showed up to grab some food, then trotted right back to the kids. Somehow, he convinced the trampoline supervisor to let him join in, and he was having the time of his life. I, on the other hand, was experiencing a minor breakdown every time he jumped.

Not because he launched over thirty meters into the air—though that was impressive—but because every single landing gave me vivid visions of the trampoline ripping apart under his weight. It hadn't happened yet, but each jump felt like a fresh opportunity for disaster. Mahya returned in the late afternoon and flopped onto the grass beside me with a tired groan, arms stretched out like she wanted to make a snow angel.

"Find anything?" I asked, glancing over at her. She rolled onto her side and propped herself up on an elbow.

"No. And I don't think I will. It's too far from my field." I squinted at her.

"Why? You're a Magicaneer. Isn't this exactly your field?" She made a vague gesture at the open space around us.

"Not really. This place isn't an engineered structure, like a space station or a ship. It doesn't have the bones of tech. If anything, it's more like a dungeon." She paused, then nodded to herself.

"Actually, it's exactly like a dungeon. What we need is someone like a Dungeon Architect. Or Lis. Someone with the Inventor class." I raised an eyebrow.

"I get the Architect part, but why Lis?" She sat up, brushing grass off her pants.

"Your house isn't really a Magitech construction. It's more like an artificial dungeon with Magitech elements mixed in. Sure, there are systems and devices all over the place, but the structure itself behaves like a dungeon. That's why it's so flexible. Without that dungeon aspect, you wouldn't be able to add those custom rooms the way you do. Well, technically, you could add rooms—that's standard for dungeon masters—but they'd be basic. Nothing like your darkroom or Al's greenhouse.

Lis managed to build in that kind of flexibility because of the Inventor part of his class. It let him bridge the gap between Magitech and dungeon architecture." I frowned, running my fingers over the grass.

"Didn't you help him with the house? I figured you'd picked up the method." She snorted.

"I helped with the woodwork. I wasn't exactly tweaking dungeon parameters." There was a short pause, broken only by the breeze rustling through the leaves. Mahya picked a blade of grass and started twisting it between her fingers.

"Besides," she added, a little quieter, "even if I had worked on the whole thing, I don't think I could've done it. It's too class-specific. Or more precisely… skill-specific." I gave a small nod, then let out a breath.

"I miss him." She didn't say anything at first. Just kept fiddling with the grass. Finally, she said, "He never bragged about it. He talked about his class as if it were another tool he had finally gotten his hands on. But you could see how much it meant to him. He worked so hard for it and waited longer than some people live. Sometimes I wonder if I should have waited, too. Maybe I rushed into picking mine."

"You didn't. You want to build a spaceship, not a dungeon." Her lips twitched.

"Jealousy's not rational." We sat silently a bit longer, both of us watching Rue rolling on the grass with kids all over him. Then Mahya flicked the blade of grass aside.

"Anyway, I'm not cracking this place. Not without a Dungeon Architect, or someone who thinks like one."

"Can't we just buy a blueprint or something?" She froze mid-stretch, one arm halfway to the sky. Slowly, she turned toward me with a wide grin.

"I think I have a solution."

"What?"

"We need to buy a big parchment."

"…What?"

"It needs to be really big. I hope they carry this size here." I blinked at her.

"What?" Spirits. I sounded like a broken record. She sprang to her feet like a woman on a mission.

"Rue, we're leaving!" she shouted, already taking a few steps away. I lunged forward and grabbed her shoulder.

"Stop. What the hell are you talking about?" She looked back at me, still smiling like this was all completely normal.

"You'll see." I groaned.

"Can't you just explain like a normal person?" Mahya tapped her chin in an exaggerated, thoughtful pose.

"Fine. We've got that blueprint from the crazy puzzle dungeon, right? First, we need to copy it for our own use. Then I'm heading to the guild to set up an exchange. That blueprint is valuable enough to trade for one of something like this place." She sped up, practically dragging me along with her pace.

"Wait—what?" I asked, jogging to keep up. Her brows furrowed slightly as she continued marching ahead.

"The Magitech Guild and the Dungeon Architecture Guild are technically separate entities, but there's enough crossover between them that I think it's possible. If I word it right." By the time Rue caught up to us, we were already near the exit. I reached out and grabbed her arm again.

"Slow down. There's no rush. The parchment isn't going anywhere, and neither are the guilds. Breathe." She blinked and let out a long breath, her shoulders relaxing.

"Right. Sorry. Got a little too excited. I love challenging projects, and your idea of the three houses around a lake is super great." I gave her a look.

"That's all it takes to get you sprinting through the park like a lunatic?" She grinned.

"Absolutely." Well, I had an interesting evening. After dinner, we bought the parchment, and I was promptly voluntold to copy the blueprint—something about my higher mana levels making me the best candidate. The blueprint was massive, way too big to copy with a single cast of Copy Magical Text, so I had to do it in sections. Tiny sections. Unfortunately, it took me a while to figure out how to precisely define each segment so there wouldn't be any overlaps or missing pieces.

Let's just say the learning curve was steep. After burning through over forty parchment sheets and draining thousands of mana points, we finally had a complete copy of the communication array for our own use. Just to be safe, Mahya planned to trade the original blueprint we pulled from the dungeon. I crossed my fingers, hoping this would be the key to getting my charming little neighborhood around a pond. While I was copying the last sections of the blueprint, Al finally came back, all smiles.

Mahya and I exchanged a knowing smile. We both knew what that meant.