“It was just a harmless little test. No big deal.”

“No big deal? You put a hole in my ship and damaged its magical arrays! Not to mention you’ve drained an abnormal amount of mana over the last couple of weeks.”

“We had to test out the new prototype. We needed to know how powerful it was.”

“I DON’T CARE!”

The Armorer, his assistants and Kohn were currently in the middle of getting yelled at.

Leete had been furious to find out that their little test had caused some serious damage to his ship. Not just the hole in the wall, but apparently when the Buster Arm was fired by Kohn it had actually overpowered and destroyed the magic formation for internal shields.

“The simple fact of the matter is that you built a dangerous weapon and endangered the entire ship! What you fools were even thinking is beyond me.” He was fuming. “If it was up to me you’d be in prison!”

“Leete.”

Before Leete’s mind could even register that the Prince had spoken to him he angrily opened his mouth.

“WHAT?”

Everyone was surprised that the normally respectful Leete had yelled at his liege. Leete understood that he could get in serious trouble. He knelt immediately.

“My humblest apologies Prince StoneTooth.”

Prince StoneTooth played with Leete a little by leaving a few moments of awkward silence to fill the air. Making Leete sweat heavily and thinking that this was the incident that would ruin him.

“I can see that you are under duress due to the situation and damage to your ship by one of our own. So for your sake I will leave this incident forgotten.”

“Thank you, your Highness.”

“For these eight though.” Kohn and his group tensed when the Prince turned to them. “You’ve used a considerable amount of our mana reserves without permission. You’ve damaged the Kingdom’s property. And worse yet you designed equipment of such magnitude without permission of a member of the King’s Council!”

Their backs tensed and their heads lowered further with every listing of their crimes.

“There is only one verdict that I can pass.”

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Here it came. The Prince would have the Armorer and his assistants stripped of their ranks. Then all of them would be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. Or maybe they’d be forced to do back braking work until their bodies fell apart. He even had sufficient power and excuse to have them all executed.

“Approved.”

“Huh?” Nine voices rang out at the same time. The look on Leete’s face was comical, but considering how he was just as confused as Kohn, they probably shared a similar expression.

The Prince just laughed at them.

“What did you expect me to say? No? Don’t design weapons that powerful? Stop trying to create new equipment that would be helpful in our fight against the Jzanna? A fight that threatens every lifeforms very existence?”

When he put it like that it was stupid to accept punishment.

“Still, you did damage the ship…”

Spoke too soon.

“… so you’ll have to fix the damages.” He turned to walk away before remembering something. “Oh! And I expect Leete and I to see every single test on new equipment from here on out. If you test something without us present I’ll let Leete do whatever he wants to you.”

Having realized that he’d gotten the Prince’s promise to enact any kind of punishment upon the criminals that damaged his ship his facial expressions went from shock to sadistic joy at the thought of what he’d do to them.

“Y-yes, your Highness.” Kohn and the Armorer replied. The assistants still pretended to be emotionally scarred and mute from the Armorer’s training so they just nodded firmly.

“What all are you working on? Anything as dangerous as this… ‘Buster Arm’ that made a hole in the ship?”

“NO! No, no your Highness.” Kohn rushed to assuage the Prince, but then realized that they really didn’t have another project after the suit. “Actually. Other than the suit, the weapon and boots we really haven’t thought of anything else to work on as of yet.”

“Oh?”

“Not to say that we won’t work on something else, just that we haven’t thought of any ideas of what to work on next.”

The Prince pondered for a moment. “Then might I suggest something?”

“Please! Any time your Highness.”

“Don’t rush me Earthling!”

“Uh, no your Highness. When I say ‘any time’ I mean that you should feel free to express any idea to me whenever you have one.”

“Oh.” *cough, cough* He started to pace while in deep thought.

“Then might I suggest looking at the enemy that we have to face. There are many smaller Jzanna that are a threat, but they’re not the real threat. They’re difficult to face, but they’re not too serious of a threat.”

When he stopped pacing to see if they understood what he was getting at the Prince was disappointed to see confused faces looking back at him. Maybe he was being too subtle?

“The true threat isn’t the large, unending, destructive forces of the Jzanna.” That seemed like a pretty serious threat already though. “It’s the World Eaters!”

“OH!” It was so obvious they felt stupid for not coming up with the answer on their own.

“The World Eaters are what allow the Jzanna to transport a significant portion of their forces across the galaxy. And when they latch on to a planet they don’t leave until everything has been consumed. You’ve made a powerful weapon to help us fight the smaller ones. Now develop something to destroy the big Jzanna.”

“Yes your Highness!”

Maybe it was because of their excited faces and the Armorer’s insane eyes, but the Prince had to clarify one more point. “Just don’t test it on this ship!”

“Ah, right.”

“Darn.”

“What do you mean by ‘darn’?! You were going to test it inside the ship weren’t you?”

The Armorer became a little bashful.

“No I wasn’t.”

Kohn and the assistants looked at each other and they could tell that they all had the same thought.

“He so totally was.”