While wondering whether my request was absurd or not…

“Ouch!”

There was a sharp pinch on my nape, and it came from none other than Luna-1. Yeah, it was absurd indeed.

Tuilë didn’t seem to notice my cry of pain and said, “Well, sure…”

“Hahaha... I know you won’t… Huh, are you serious?!”

My eyes were locked on her two small brilliant red horns. Anyone would be attracted to the red horns that stood out like a sore thumb. I mean, it looked similar to the candy cone that you often saw when Christmas. I wondered whether it would be sweet just like one. Ah! I just want to eat some candy…

“Don’t mind if I do.” I took a deep breath and let my hands slowly approach the two horns.

Since I was a bit taller than her, despite her being taller than average… or maybe it was just the normal height of her race, she didn’t have to sit down. But for some reason, she closed her eyes.

As soon as my hands touched her horns, she flinched a little. Still, the texture was akin to a candy cone. Hard and smooth. I stroked and felt her horns for ten seconds before reluctantly pulling back my hands — anything more would be crossing the line.

“Ahem.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry… That’s rather inappropriate of me to do that.” Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but there was no use crying over spilled milk. I think that it was well worth it…!

“N-No… it’s fine. I understand the curiosity you hold for other races.” She showed me a toothy grin as if what I did didn’t bother her at all.

“Say, can we move to our main business here,” Lunaria interjected as Luna-1 flew out from my backpack.

“Mm-hmm! Now that I’m back to my tiptop condition, I can get back to work again.” Tuilë flexed her muscles.

“That’s great. While we are here, I’m going to show you the airship. It’s not far down the creek.” I pointed outside with my thumb.

“Sure! I’m also curious about what exactly you want me to repair.”

Subsequently, we headed for the location of the airship by following the creek. If the clearing where Spitzek was at was located up the stream, then we were going in the opposite direction.

“Maxxy, you know the person that lives here?”

“You mean Spitzek?”

“Spit-zek… So that’s his name. Where is he?”

“Dunno.” I raised my shoulders. “He said that he was going to gather some herbs, so he wouldn’t be back until sundown.”

“I see.”

While the three of us were conversing about nothing in particular, we made our way to the pond. The airship was still in the same condition as before. Slightly worse, truthfully.

“Wooow! So this is the thing you want me to repair?! Such large and complex machinery…!” Tuilë launched herself at the wrecked airship like the maniac she was while murmuring something.

“Please be gentle with the ship. You can’t worsen its state further…”

She turned her head at Luna-1. “Lunaria! Is this your main body?”

“Yes… Wait, no. Of course not, but the ship’s name is also Lunaria,” explained Lunaria.

“Mm! I get it, I get it.” Tuilë made an “I get what you want to be treated as if being alive” smile.

“Wait, you don’t get a single thing.”

“…”

While they were making their usual banter, I slipped inside the slanted airship through the entrance which was tilted 40 degrees upward. With greater physical prowess, the once hard-to-get-in entrance became a walk in the park.

Through the corridor that looked like a diamond shape instead of a square, I got into the armory and gathered more bullets as well as filled the empty magazines. Because the ship was tilted, it was awkward to do all of this, as I had to partially lean against the wall.

Not good.

My remaining bullets were less than five hundred (including what was in my backpack). Conversely, there were only six grenades remaining. I hoped Tuilë could make more if I gave her the know-how that was Lunaria — she possessed extensive modern knowledge inside of her database.

With what little that remained, I filled ten magazines full of bullets and pocketed three grenades in the side pocket of my backpack. Having assurance like grenades when adventuring outside was the most important thing to keep in mind. Whether mentally or physically.

Before I left, I took some change of clothes with me that I previously couldn’t fetch. I mean, I couldn’t possibly be wearing the same clothes for weeks to come, right?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Getting out, Lunaria and Tuilë were in the midst of debating about the repair of the airship, but they soon reached a consensus. Now that I saw it, two heads were always better than one, even if they might not agree with everything that each other had to say.

“The main problem of repairing this thing would be that it’s inside a pond, I say. It may be shallow, but getting it out is almost impossible,” Tuilë frankly expressed.

“Agreed. However, I can’t allow you to dismantle any core parts of the ship.”

I didn’t quite understand why Lunaria was so attached to the ship, but dismantling it would take a lot of time, and since my life was on the line, I needed to prioritize efficiency.

Speaking of the time limit…

Mission: One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

Your airship has become a hunk of junk. You better find someone capable to repair it soon, or else… No one can say what other inhabitants around this area will do once they find this.

Difficulty: C-

Time Limit: 30 days

Remaining Time: 27 days 22 hours 34 minutes

Reward: Repaired airship, a new companion

Failure: Losing the airship, possibly an information leak that will lead to death

“Are there no other ways to get the ship to the open?”

“Of course, there’s a way.” Tuilë went silent for a second before continuing, “We already have an answer to this problem, remember?”

“Huh?” What she said didn’t click in my mind. Am I missing something?

“Let me give you a hint: the Third-Order source crystal.”

“Ah! So that’s it.”

The answer was none other than the robot she was trying to make. It should be powerful enough to be used as a substitute for a crane machine given that it was no ordinary robot. Who knew what the limit of its carrying capacity was after being given the source crystal.

She added, “There’s one apparent issue we need to address, nonetheless.”

“What now?”

“We need tons and tons of materials to repair this airship. Lunaria has agreed with me to step things up, you see. Thus, I feel like going all out with the upgrading.” I saw the enthusiasm in Tuilë’s eyes; she was by no means joking. “This will be my first time working with a machine this big, after all.”

“I-I see…” It meant more work for me…

I sighed upon thinking about the workload that would be handed down to me. Oh well…

Thinking for a moment gave me multiple ways to overcome this whole issue. Among these, the easiest way would be to gather a large amount of source crystals. By pulling together all the resources available in the town would I then be able to make this work on a large scale and thoroughly accomplish my goal.

First of all, however, I had to gather the source crystals. I imagined that a figure of a thousand source crystals would be a huge enough goal for this.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll be going back to town; would you be accompanying me or not?”

“Sure. I have a few things I wanna check there. Besides, I want to see the completion of the robot.” There was no way I would miss this one.

“Sounds good.”

***

As soon as we reached Aquarine, we headed for Tuilë’s workshop. Inside, I was greeted by the four-meter-tall robot with a peculiar shape: stacked rings-like hands and legs, a large star-shaped face, and even two protruding pipes at its back. Also, there was an opening in the middle of its chest to store the source crystal.

“Now then, gimme the source crystal.” She opened her right hand to me.

“Here.” I handed her the basketball-sized Third-Order source crystal that had become unnecessary baggage for me. “So, I know that you use that as the battery for the robot, but how does it work, exactly?”

Without making an intricate program with multiple layers of functions, something complicated like a robot wouldn’t work.

“Well, through ‘runic inscription,’ of course!”

“Runic inscription, you say? So that’s what you people call it…” Lunaria interjected through Luna-1 peeking from my backpack.

“What’s that?” I asked back.

“Oho, you don’t know it? Keep your eyes open, then. I’ll show you.”

She placed a grinder-like device on the worktable and toss in a random catalyst stone through the funnel. Next, she turned the hand crank and grind the stone into dust — a speck of catalyst dust in this case.

“Ah… Such a waste.” A single catalyst stone could be turned into a powerful catalyst weapon, but I wasn’t yet aware of their rarity as of right now.

“What do you mean by waste?” Tuilë quickly countered my comment. “Look, catalyst stones come in different grades too. What I just used is actually an elementless one, so it's not a waste of material. Likewise, elemental catalyst stones are only applicable when inscribing offensive spells of their respective elements and would become volatile if utilized in the same manner as this one, yes.”

“My bad. Continue, please.”

“Mhm.” She then took out a pinch of dust that looked like a finely ground source crystal and mixed it with the catalyst dust inside a glass apparatus by shaking it well together. Further, she mixed it with a liquid reagent that seemed to be made out of oil and several other elements she took from the side rack.

The final product became a muddle substance that looked no different than a suspicious potion given by a witch.

“Voila! Catalyst marrow!” She held the so-called “catalyst marrow” high in the air.

“That’s a strange name and pronunciation of the thing itself.”

“Seconded.”

Both Lunaria and I agreed on this matter.

“You two, don’t nitpick on petty things, will ya?”

After she was done with that, Tuilë grabbed an inkless mechanical pen and dipped it into the catalyst marrow. She proceeded to write strange engravings on the Third-Order source crystal, line after line, into a long, justified paragraph.

Similar to how I was able to understand the source language, the inscription was no exception. It turned out that this runic writing was the written language of the source language itself.

“Wha—! Isn’t this whole runic inscription thingy being just a programming language in disguise?!” I couldn’t help but blurt that out loud.

Like seriously, while the syntax was completely different, the logic behind it was similar if not the same. The only difference, it seemed to have built-in functions in the form of written magic spells that act to shorten the whole inscription itself.

“Pro-gram-ing? What?” Tuilë stopped what she was doing and sent me a confused gaze, a bit annoyed by the sudden interruption.

“Oh yeah, I remember that you told me that you’re a programmer student or something.”

I mean, three months of constant battle between life and death had made me forget my identity as an IT gradua… student. And my skill was rather rusty after not touching a computer for such a long time.

Still, wouldn’t this be the place where my skills as a programmer shined the most?