It was no ordinary obscure sound akin to a half-broken radio, but more like a voice… Someone or something was musing… singing along to that soft tone, instinctively luring me forward.

“~~~.”

So soothing.

Although I couldn’t understand what it was saying, the one that made such a voice mustn’t be a human… Or a Foglander, I suppose.

“Hello?” I uttered.

But before I was able to proceed further to find the source, I was blocked by the hooded people — five of them to be exact. The one leading them had red markings on the cheeks of his mask with the mouth only slightly covered.

I took a step back; he was a powerful source user — an evoker. While his Tier was undeterminable, he was stronger than me. It was a good thing that I always kept my gun strapped around my shoulder, so I could immediately pull it out to shoot at any possible enemy.

He opened his mouth and…

…didn’t make a sound.

He instead handed me a mask like the one that the cult members wore. What? Does he want me to join their cult?!

“No, thank you. I seem to have lost my way.” I backed away, making a rejecting gesture.

While looking confused by my sudden rejection, he glared at me through the two holes in the mask. Whatever he was planning, it didn’t seem to be good.

Incredibly wary, I decided to back away one step at a time while checking his status through [Identification]

???

[…]

Source Level: Tier-1 enhancer | Tier-2 evoker

Source Element(s): Hydro

Vocation(s): [Sensory Deprivation]

Stats:

* STR: E (26)

* AGI: E (31)

* VIT: E- (23)

* SRC: D- (42)

* SPR: E (34)

Accumulation Points: 62 [D]

Shoot! I should get away from here ASAP!

“Now then, please excuse me.” I turned on my heels and immediately ran away at the fastest speed possible.

However, a few seconds into the running, my vision turned dark, and subsequently, an intense sense of lostness and silence enveloped all my senses. Not even the beat of my heart could be heard, not even a ray of light could be seen, and not even the touch of my fingers made me feel anything.

“Wh-What’s happening…?!” was what I shouted, but nothing…

My five senses were stripped away — it felt like I had fallen into nothingness.

But I persisted and kept running forward. I had somewhat memorized the way back since it was but a straight line—

“Ouch!”

For some reason, my sense of touch turned back as I bumped into a hard object. Tracing the object, I found that it was some kind of wooden pole.

Heart throbbing intensely.

In what felt like forever, my senses started returning bit by bit. It was until my vision fully came back that I was finally able to calm my racing heart.

I looked back and didn’t find them chasing after me. Maybe it was a warning…

Exasperated by the unpleasant incident just now, I hung my shoulders low and walked back to the workshop. That was one frightening experience. Now only looking at my walking feet, I easily bumped into someone on my way back.

“Hey, watch where you’re going! It’s dangerous, you know!” a fat guy, who looked like a Muppet character but fatter and larger, snapped at me.

I looked at the guy and spaced out a bit, still feeling surreal over the whole thing.

“Are you deaf or something? Hmm?”

“Oh, sorry.” It was my fault for bumping into him.

“Hmph! It’s good that you know a tad of etiquette for a hairless brat.” He walked away with his legs spread wide.

Scary… This place was terrifying.

Next time, I’d make sure to bring Lunaria when exploring places like that one. At least someone would be on my back when and helped me. Perhaps taking the mask would have averted me from the whole thing altogether. Truly. Getting a little stronger must have gotten into my head to the point that I acted a bit complacent.

Lethargically opening the workshop door, I was greeted by both Tuilë and Luna-1 (Lunaria).

“Maxim, you’re back? Huh, what’s with that blank look on your face?”

“Did something happen? You should have taken me with you.”

“N-Nothing. It’s nothing… I’m good.” I shook my head internally and gathered my thoughts together.

“If there’s nothing wrong, then…” Tuilë grabbed a long piece of paper from the workbench and gave it to me. “Here’s the list for the needed materials for the upgrade. It’s startled me that there are things that I didn’t know until Lunaria told me.”

“Hm, naturally,” Lunaria said as if it was a matter of course. Well, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that she was a walking encyclopedia.

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Taking a quick glance at the long list revealed numerous required materials, including things that I’d never heard of.

“Holy moly! This is so much!” I felt my eyes bulge upon seeing the absurdity.

Ton after tons of aluminum alloy, steel, glass panels, fabric panels, a large amount of helium, and all other sorts of metal, wood, and plastic battens, and films. And many, many, many more… This wasn’t even counting the furniture needed to decorate the inside. Heck, I wasn’t even sure whether Aquarine could provide all these materials.

“Are you going to make me go bankrupt, lady?!” I could make a large pile of things as large as a five-story building if I gathered all of this.

“Oh, don’t exaggerate trifles. This is but after calculating the materials we could salvage from the old airship since the new airship’s design has pretty much been figured out.”

“I concur.”

Both Tuilë and Lunaria thoroughly downplayed the whole thing, making me speechless. I had yet to agree to this…

“Where’s the blueprint?” I had to check what they were designing with my own eyes.

Tuilë clapped her hands, and then Alfredo came toward us from the back of the workshop with a blueprint and its board. Unlike before, there was already an improvement in its mechanical movement.

Placed before me, the blueprint was beyond my expectations. Awed me even. An advanced airship with a mixture of magic — that would be the simplest sentence to describe it. Rather than a separate zeppelin balloon that was connected with cords, it was now attached straight to the ship itself and becoming one (with the cords as additional support). In addition, there was now a pair of wings connected to its left and right.

In detail, it had four floors and two engines resembling jet engines on each side of the wing along with a spherical reactor near the rear of the base and a long, sharp, and wide bow at the back; this would be the first time I saw this.

To be honest, I couldn’t wait to see its finished product. That would be one hell of an airship.

Just that… How could such a thing even float?

It was too heavy for buoyancy created by the helium zeppelin balloon to lift the airship. Even the current broken airship was already magical for me… After all, it wasn’t a normal kind of plane that had wheels that could make momentum for it to fly by accelerating on a track, not that there was a facility like that here.

As if knowing my thoughts, Tuilë proceeded to make a wide grin and stated, “Don’t you already know the answer? In fact, your airship uses this technique through its propellers even if it’s a bit ineffective and obsolete.”

So far, I knew that runic inscriptions could be used to give objects all sorts of magical properties. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to use it on the hull to generate a force — for instance, by displacing the air directly, or even by pushing the ground away through the power of Anemo or Pyro.

“You do get my point, hmm? Well, there are also stones with such natural properties, but such things are scarce in this place. If it was in my homeland, then it would be an entirely different matter.

Conversely, there could be other kinds of ways to imbue objects with magic, like enchanting and all, but that was beside the point… The most important thing of all…

“Tuilë, you’re one hell of a genius!!”

“Hehe. Thanks for the compliment, I’ll take the credit. But that’s not all.” She took a deep breath and continued, “Other than the fact that it could lift itself with almost no buoyancy needed, this thing’s internal payload is easily ten times that of before while having a cruising speed not inferior to what you call an airplane.”

“Ooh, ooh! Then how about its combat capability?” What would be the use of an airship that couldn’t even defend itself?

“Hmm-hmm! I’ve been waiting for you to ask that. Lunaria, I’ll give you the honor to explain it to this ignoramus.” Hey! I’m right here!

“I don’t mind.” Lunaria explained with an emotionless tone, “This new airplane is equipped with one main artillery cannon at the bow, just below the bridge. In addition, there are six gun turrets around its hull and one under it. As for its defense, we use a dozen or so small-caliber point defenses that are spread evenly on almost every part of the ship.”

In this world shrouded in red fog, our main enemies would be large eldritch-like monsters like the tentacled abominations… Thus, a powerful, long-range weapon would’ve been ideal.

“It’d be perfect if we could utilize missiles.”

“Missiles are too complex to make with what’s available — things like chips are hard to manufacture, and I don’t have much to spare. Even if we can build a rudimentary missile, it won't be better and less expensive than an easier-to-make artillery cannon,” stated Lunaria.

“Shoot, I forgot about that.” I puckered my lips in deep consideration.

Chips or microcontrollers required extremely specialized equipment to be made. This design already exceeded my initial expectations, so I couldn’t ask for more.

Having all these capabilities was great and all, but how much time would be needed to make this? If it exceeded a month, then… it’d be better to switch to a simple repair. I don’t want to pull the rug, but time is of the essence here.

“Tuilë,” I turned at her and asked, “can you make finish this all in less than a month?”

“A month? Of course! Who do you think I am?” She showed me a “If I can’t do it, then no one else can,” face. “But that means that I can’t help you with procuring source crystals—”

“That’s fine! Leave that job to me and Lunaria.”

“Hey, don’t you decide things on your own without consulting me, even if I will help you anyway.”

“Okay! You can count on me! I promise you a brand-new, never-seen-before airship within a month; I have Alfredo with me, so hard labor is no biggie.” Despite her answer, she held her stomach. “All this talk about airships has made my stomach growl. Say, how ‘bout we have lunch? Though it’s already past that by a few hours.”

Now that she mentioned it, Aquarine wasn’t situated right below the sky, but under a ceiling that was the cavern. Consequently, it was hard to tell the time when anything that could be used as a measure was limited.

“Mm. Let’s go.”

“Alrighty! Anchors aweigh!” She beckoned and waltzed out of the workshop.

***

She guided me to the avenue where I first came to this town. Among the lined-up dome houses was an eatery with a signboard containing strange words I couldn’t read, and we were standing right before the entrance. The scent of aromatic spices filled the air, hinting at the culinary delights offered by this local eatery.

“So, this is a place you have in mind?” I asked her since I wasn’t well-versed about the dining places in this town yet.

“Yup. I like to frequent this place whenever I don’t have the time to make my own food.”

“Is that so? It must be a good place then.” Personally, I was fine with anything, anywhere, as long as the food was palatable. This could be a change of pace, as I hadn’t eaten anything except for compressed energy bars for the past few days.

“C’mon.” Tuilë grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside with her.

Currently, there were only a few other customers other than us, so it was pretty quiet. We sat at one empty table by the window, and soon an old frog person that seemed to be an old lady came forward and passed us the menu.

The old lady let out a heavy sigh. “Welcome to Morana’s Eatery, home to all sorts of culinary. What’ll it be?”

Although I was well-versed in Fogland language thanks to my Vocation, the written language was a different matter… There was no time for me to learn it.

Due to that, I’d to ask for a recommendation. “Your recommendation, please. Although, I will have what she’s having.”

“Well, we have our recommended dishes like this one…” She pointed at a certain spot on the only menu that Tuilë was holding.

“We’ll have two specials!” Tuilë decided without my consent.

“So that’s two specials… Ordering! I need two ‘meaty shells.’” The old lady walked toward the kitchen while shouting the order.

“Comin’ right up!” the cook replied, full of energy.

There was one thing that I didn’t quite understand: How did we pay?

For one thing, bartering seemed to be not an option here, and source crystals would be too valuable for two dishes of food. Hence, I questioned Tuilë for an answer.

“I never told you before, but there’s another new currency below source crystals: the good ol’ gold and silver. They’re measured by weight — only a few places accept this new currency, however.”

“Huh? Aren’t they still too valuable for simple trading?” It’d make sense if there was bronze or copper mixed in, though.

“Well, I think it’s normal. But if you’re being pedantic, you can say that it’s because gold and silver are abundant around here.”

“I see…”

I had to toss in the surrounding environment when considering things like this. After all, a culture was formed by its people and the situation that shaped it.

“By the way, what kind of food is served here?”

“It’s… Look, the dishes are about to be served.” Tuilë pointed at the old lady bringing a tray toward us.

“Hot and crispy woodlouse, smeared with gravy. Enjoy your meal.” She put the dishes on the table and backed away after smearing the brown sauce.

Fu—

The food was actually a fat bug the size of a basketball rolled into a ball. I felt like seeing a lot of these bugs out in the wild… Its shape was so appalling that I couldn’t imagine anyone eating this shit. Bleh…