Chương 475: B7—Chapter 51: Expecting a Ship: Three Parents and One Moody Project

If this world was Rue's play date, Al's personal nightmare, and my chance to sing and drink, it was Mahya's heaven. Once we finished sightseeing and got used to the place, she started disappearing for entire days, only to come back looking like the cat that got the canary, cream, and any other cat treat. She bubbled with excitement about every single thing she bought, waving weird metal things around like a kid after a trip to a candy store. Her list got longer by the day.

Some items had names that actually made sense to me, like sheets made from different metal alloys, high-temperature ceramic blocks, gear assemblies, shock-absorption something packs, crystal lenses, and reinforced pressure tubes. Those were the normal ones. She mentioned plenty of other things too, but I had no clue what half of them meant or what she planned to use them for. She also bought an ungodly amount of metal.

Some of it came in cast forms she didn't need, and she planned to melt those down and start fresh, but plenty of other pieces she intended to use as they were. Then there were the more down-to-earth things like metal tubes, different wires, and random supplies that filled her Storage day by day. Nuts and bolts were the one exception. We already had boxes of them from our shopping sprees in DIY stores on Earth, so those were probably the only items she didn't care about here.

Her enthusiasm reached a level where she'd roam the streets, spot something attached to a building or a vehicle, decide she needed it, and then start negotiating with the owner to buy it. One building was almost entirely covered in cogwheels of different sizes. She stripped it bare and even recruited me to help. The owner looked like he'd won the lottery and bragged to anyone willing to listen that his home decoration was the best in the city.

At some point, she handed me a bag of gems and asked me to buy them from her.

"What happened to all your money? Did you spend everything?" I asked, mildly shocked.

"No, but I don't want to find myself without cash. These idiots don't want payment in stones, only gold." I bought the gems from her, along with some of her mithril coins. They did have mithril in this world and valued it, but not as currency. For them, it was only useful as raw material. The only currency above gold was platinum, at an exchange rate of 5 to 1. But since we didn't have any, it didn't matter. She also stumbled onto some serious welding contraptions.

Up to this point, she had been using the industrial welding machine she and Lis had started converting back on Earth, and she had finished while we spent the winter on the lake in Lumis. The machine had many issues. The plastic casing warped while she worked on it, so she replaced it with a metal one. Unfortunately, the metal casing overheated after half an hour and had to be cooled before the whole thing softened and lost shape. It also ate mana crystals like crazy.

If she didn't catch the crystal in time and asked me to refill it, the machine would eat the crystal and die. When we worked on the island in the world with the blue-horned ones, she finally replaced the crystals with a core, but that somehow made the heating worse. Here, she found all sorts of welding devices. One was the size of a shoebox and looked like a six-legged spider. One of its legs was the welder itself, and the other five were attached to the body for no apparent reason.

The thing skittered when it was turned on, making soft clicking sounds that set my nerves on edge. The other device was a much larger contraption that resembled a water heater with a nest of attachments. It was powered by wood or coal, heated the extensions, and made them rotate until the tip glowed bright enough to weld almost anything. I was honestly scared of that one. Its appearance didn't inspire confidence, and the way several parts turned red-hot when she used it made me very aware of the fire hazard.

It took her about four months to finish stripping the city, and I mean this literally. Once she was done with a street, the houses had bald spots, and half the metal tubes running above the road were missing. On the positive side, every gnome connected to her stripping project strutted around like a puffed-up rooster, boasting to anyone who would listen about the quality of their parts and gadgets.

Mahya mentioned a couple of times that she planned to melt the pieces, but the gnomes got so offended that some of them actually cried. After that, she kept that particular detail to herself. Once she had all the materials, Mahya rented the largest workshop she could find and dove straight into building her spaceship. At first, she worked alone, but it didn't take long before she recruited Al and me to the task. Al got a list of potions she wanted from him. Calling it a list didn't do it justice.

It was practically a scroll. Some of the items made perfect sense. She wanted something she could mix into the metal to make it lighter, reducing the overall weight; something that would make the metal tougher without turning it so rigid that it would snap under stress; and something that would help insulate the ship from the cold of space and the heat of reentry. She explained it to me with hand gestures, sketches, and a level of enthusiasm that made her sound like her old self from Earth.

The lighter alloy would improve fuel efficiency, the toughness would protect the frame during rough maneuvers, and the insulation would keep the whole thing from cooking her or freezing her alive. She talked about stress points, load distribution, and thermal shock. I nodded along, mostly enjoying her enthusiasm. The rest of the list drifted far away from anything I would call normal. Since I didn't know the first thing about spaceships, I rolled with it. One example was a potion that made metal rubbery.

I could understand the need for rubber, but why not use natural rubber that mana doesn't destroy? When I asked her about it, she waved me off and said, "It's not the same. But don't worry, I need rubber too." And that was the end of that discussion. Other items on the list were things like potions that made metal transparent. When I pointed out that she could simply use glass, she gave me the kind of look a parent gives a child who asks why they can't eat soup with a fork.

After that, I decided I didn't need to understand the rest of Al's assignment. He was the alchemist; she was the engineer; I was just the guy doing the engravings. One good thing came out of the entire situation. Al ended up completely absorbed in his laboratory, buried under experiments, measurements, and muttered complaints about catalyst purity. It kept him away from the workshop and, more importantly, stopped him from voicing his thoughts about this place every ten minutes.

According to him, this was "A world that is an insult to rationality, nothing functions as it should, there is a lack of coherence with elementary precepts of logic, and the atmosphere is indicative of a state of chaos I can only label as anarchic madness." With him tucked safely in his lab, the rest of us enjoyed a bit of peace. My job was more straightforward, at least in the beginning. The first thing we worked on was the water system.

We built a large basin, and I engraved it following Lis's blueprint for the water reservoir. We insulated it with rubber, and Mahya threw a smug, "You see? I told you I'll use rubber too," in my direction. After that, we built the inner section of the basin, and I engraved it again using the same blueprint, this time with many more runes packed into a much smaller space. The next step wasn't nearly as simple. Mahya wasn't sure she would always land on a world with drinkable water.

Some worlds didn't even have atmospheres, let alone lakes. So she planned for the worst-case scenario: harvesting ice from asteroids. But that part needed some work. Asteroids, especially the icy ones, contain a mix of frozen water and all kinds of debris: dust, rocks, metal particles, frozen gases, and whatever space threw at them for the last few billion years. Clean water doesn't exist out there. Everything comes as a dirty snowball.

Her idea was to shave layers of ice off an ice asteroid and funnel them into the reservoir. My job was to figure out how to remove whatever was mixed inside. Dust, rock fragments, metal specks, maybe the occasional mystery particle that didn't belong to any periodic table I was familiar with. She wanted me to find a way to sort it all out, separate the useful materials from the junk, and provide her with clean water ready for purification.

All of it, of course, had to be done with runes and magic script, since she had no idea how to do it using the technological approach. I recycled the runes and script I used for my pool to filter the debris, but the sorting was more complicated and needed more work. She, on the other hand, spent her days creating enormous metal sheets for the walls and inner partitions, hammering, polishing, and muttering under her breath as she wrestled with a stack of blueprints that stood half a meter tall.

Every time she pulled a page free, the entire pile wobbled as if it were moments away from collapsing. One afternoon, curiosity got the better of me. I leaned over her shoulder as she flipped through papers, smudged with grease and soot. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"What are all of those?" I asked. Mahya let out a breath that said, "Finally, someone asked," and gave me a radiant smile. She pulled out one particular blueprint, actually three pages taped together. The diagram showed a chain of spheres, each linked by rings arranged in layered circles. She tapped the page with a little too much enthusiasm.

"This is an energy converter. The same type I handled on my exploration mission."

"How does it work?" I asked. She pointed at the first sphere, circling it with her finger.

"This sphere is the intake. It needs to be the largest. Inside it, rotating laser cutters grind whatever material I feed it. Ice, dust, rock, metal, anything. The lasers break everything into fine particles." Her finger slid to the first group of rings.

"These rings rotate inside one another in different directions in alternating frequency. That creates a resonance field that weakens molecular bonds." She drew a small circle in the air, mimicking the rotation.

"Think of it like shaking a tower of blocks until it loosens." She moved to the second sphere.

"This chamber takes the broken particles and reduces them even further. The internal lasers and magnetic fields break the matter into sub-molecular fragments, and the second set of rings weakens the remaining bonds." Her finger continued along the blueprint, tracing the path from one sphere to the next.

"The material moves forward layer by layer. First dust, then molecules, then atoms. The rings strip electron bonds, separating everything into pure atomic components." Finally, she held up the last sheet.

"This is the conversion chamber. Here, the stripped atoms are fed into an energy matrix. When the system recombines or collapses the atomic structure, the released energy gets stored. It's efficient and clean, assuming nothing explodes."

"Right," I said.

"So… why are you working on it now? We're in a magical world. Why not focus on the magical part of the ship first?" She shot me a look.

"I am working on the magical part. But I need to know how much space the technological components will take up. They're bulky, and I need accurate dimensions." She tapped the blueprint again.

"Once I know that, I can calculate how many dead zones you'll need to create with runes to insulate the core from the machinery."

"So you're basically building the ship around the converter?"

"Not exactly. Yes, the converter, but also the engines and the navigation parts," she said, already reaching for another blueprint and spreading it across the table.

"Technology first, magic second. If I don't plan it in that order, the whole thing collapses when I take off, and I'd die spectacularly." I decided not to ask any more questions after that. It took me about a month to figure out the sorting system for the asteroid ice using magic script and to actually build it. Well… build is a bit of an exaggeration. I gave Mahya a list of the parts I needed, with exact dimensions and descriptions. She smithed them, and then I engraved everything once it cooled.

After that, we assembled the system and ran a few tests using the river. The system was so successful that it even detected and launched seven fish into a separate chamber. We had a small crowd watching us during the test, and when I reached into the chamber and pulled out the first fish, the entire group burst into applause. They hollered, whistled, and jumped up and down like they'd just witnessed the birth of a miracle machine. Mahya sighed.

"Sadly, future asteroid ice probably wouldn't come with fish." A gnome broke from the cheering crowd and hurried toward me, his little boots slapping on the wooden planks. He stopped in front of me and gave a deep, dramatic bow, arms spread wide.

"Great inventors," he announced, eyes shining, "your creation is extraordinary. It functions with no explosions at all. I do not understand how such a flaw still allows it to work, but somehow it does." Mahya choked on a laugh. Behind me, Al pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something about an insult to logic itself. The gnome straightened and beckoned us eagerly.

"Please, please, come. You must see my invention. I insist." Before any of us could answer, he grabbed my sleeve and marched toward the edge of the port, weaving between crates, barrels, and a collection of half-built machines. Mahya stored our toy and followed us. Al disappeared. He stopped in front of a massive contraption squatting near the water. It looked like a boiler, a mill, and a torture device that were built by someone who didn't believe in blueprints.

"This," he said proudly, patting a metal plate, "is the Scale Separator Six. My finest work." He pointed to a wide intake chute, shaped like a mouth with sharp monster teeth.

"Place the fish you caught here. I shall demonstrate its prowess." I glanced at Mahya. She shrugged. So I stepped forward and placed the fish into the chute. The machine came to life. A bell rang. Gears started spinning. Something inside coughed. A puff of steam shot out the side. A tiny explosion popped near the top like someone lit a firecracker. The gnome clapped.

"Perfect," he said.

"That is how a real machine should work." The fish slid along a twisting path of pipes, platforms, funnels, and one section that looked like a wooden roller coaster. A paddle smacked it. Then another. A brush whirled past, missing entirely. Something else exploded in the back.

"Excellent," the gnome said, nodding with scholarly pride.

"Precision." We watched in stunned silence as the fish rattled through the device like a marble in a carnival game. At the end of the run, a final clang echoed, and a small hatch swung open. Out slid the fish, now completely stripped of its scales but otherwise perfectly intact.

"There," the gnome announced, beaming.

"Flawless. Efficient. A masterpiece." Mahya cleared her throat.

"It… works?"

"Of course it works," he said.

"And if you would like, I can help you improve your own machine so it becomes a real one. With explosions and everything." We shook our heads in unison so fast it probably looked rehearsed.

"Thank you," I said quickly, "but ours is fine the way it is." His face fell, ears drooping. The disappointment was so sincere that my chest tightened a little. Before he could shuffle away, I reached into my Storage and held out the rest of the fish we caught.

"Here. For more demonstrations." He froze. His eyes sparkled, and with both hands he accepted the fish, bowed again, and practically skipped away with a triumphant grin. We went back to work. My focus shifted entirely to the dead zones. The entire idea of combining magic and technology in one vessel was based on a blueprint that Lis left us. His design showed how to strip an enclosed space of all its mana, creating a stable mana-free pocket. Inside such a pocket, technology behaved normally.

Without it, every activated device would die the moment mana touched it. That blueprint was the heart of the project. Without dead zones, there was no ship. But the method had a limitation Lis hadn't solved. His design could only create small, isolated pockets. The structure he left us couldn't be scaled up. It worked perfectly in a room-sized chamber, but the field collapsed when we tried to expand the dimensions.

After three weeks of tests, I had to admit defeat: a single large dead zone required for the tech side was impossible with the blueprint we had. We returned to the table and redesigned the ship from the beginning. Mahya ran the numbers again and concluded that sixty percent of the internal volume needed to be mana-free. Since a single dead zone wouldn't work, we decided we had to create many small ones, each isolated, and then find a way to link them so their boundaries aligned.

They would not merge into one field, but they would form a continuous chain of mana-free chambers. Each chamber was supposed to hold one of the balls that made up the energy machine, with the connections between them running through the gaps between the chambers. I didn't say anything, but silently crossed my fingers that the continuous fields would be good enough to prevent mana from seeping between the chambers and disrupting the connections.

With a sigh, I realized that if that happened, we had a lot more work and experimentation ahead of us. Based on the newly discovered needs, Mahya decided on an elongated egg shape with a flat bottom. Two-thirds of the ship on the right would contain the technological systems. The remaining third on the left would be dedicated entirely to magic, including the core, the runic network, and the mana-driven components. We sketched every part of the internal layout.

The technological side would contain multiple insulated chambers arranged in vertical and horizontal layers. Each chamber would have its own dead zone plates. Between them, we planned narrow service corridors free of any mana activity. The tech components would later be installed inside these chambers, each protected individually.

The outer walls of the chambers would be reinforced with mana-resistant alloys, provided Al could develop a potion that imbued metal with that property, as well as layered ceramic composites. The magical side required its own structure. Mahya planned to raise her core to the level of mine before the final assembly, so we designed a dedicated housing that would allow us to install the core only after completing the main hull.

Once inside, the core would stabilize the frame of the entire ship and the first layer of insulation, but the mana would stop at the first layer of dead zones. Beyond that, it would strengthen the magical half of the ship and reinforce the runic channels. Only after that process finished, and the outer frame was reinforced as much as possible, would we install the technological components on the opposite side.

To physically separate the magical and technological zones, we included fixed mechanical barriers between the halves. I would have to engrave all these barriers with the dead zone lattice with mana crystals as the receptacles to avoid mana leakage toward the tech side. Mahya put down clear markers indicating where each dead-zone plate would be mounted. There was also a protocol for operation. Before activating any technical device, Mahya would remove the core from its housing and store it.

Only after the core was out and the dead zones were activated would she power the tech systems. Even a small amount of residual mana leaking into a chamber could destroy something in there. We also planned a fallback system. If the technological components failed during travel, Mahya intended to install a secondary engine and navigation system powered entirely by mana.

It would be less precise than the technological system, and wouldn't have FTL, but it would still allow the ship to move, stabilize, and safely exit a dangerous world. We marked both engine systems on the blueprints, including connection points, cable routes, and the runic arrays dedicated to the mana engine.

By the time we finished updating the plans, we had a complete structural design: a vessel divided into two functional halves, with dozens of isolated dead zones linked through alignment, protected by insulated chambers, and fully separated from the mana core. It was the only configuration that allowed magic and technology to coexist without destroying each other.

Once we had everything figured out, I took a deep breath, firmly refused to acknowledge how many zeroes were in the number of runes and magic scripts I had to engrave, and got to work.