For the first time since arriving in the inverted world of Arxtruria, Dave experienced the bliss of a truly restful slumber. Gone were the incessant wails of the monstrous shadow that circled the town slapping beasts away. Not a single three-eyed kitten launched a stealthy attack upon him in the darkest hour. Ensconced in the cozy space above the forge, he found himself cocooned in a comforting warmth that lulled him into a deep, rejuvenating sleep—a luxury he hadn't even known during his time on Earth.

As he slumbered, Dave's dreams transported him to a strange and futuristic G-bux cafe serviced by perpetually cheerful androids. He found himself engaged in a lively conversation with Sherlock who nursed a coffee cup with a red heart on it. The detective from a distant future and Dave dissected the intricacies of the Shandrian language. Together, they analyzed the various items they had encountered in the bustling marketplace, speculating on the myriad potential new uses and purposes each object might serve.

Such was the depth and vividness of Dave's dream that when he awoke, he felt a renewed sense of vigor coursing through his veins, ready to face whatever deadly thing Arxtruria was going to throw at him next.

Instead of being greeted by the sight of shadow monsters, cold mountains, or broken rubble, Dave's sleepy eyes met a curvaceous figure enveloped in a shimmering cascade of glittering sparks. He blinked, and soon recognized the figure as Remicra. She was perched gracefully on a fur-covered, wooden bench adjacent to his makeshift bed, attentively combing her crystalline-organic hair with a large metal comb. The hand-made comb bore the likeness of a dragon clutching a hundred swords within its fearsome maw and claws.

Unaware that Dave had awakened, Remicra continued her morning ritual, as colored rays of sunlight filtered through the circular rose window behind her, casting a kaleidoscope of vibrant hues upon her scales and ruby strands of her hair.

As the dragoness tended to her mane, she hummed a soft, wordless melody—perhaps a hymn of sorts hailing from her own culture. Dave lay there, still as a statue within his sleeping bag, unwilling to disturb the moment.

He held his breath and felt a wave of tranquility wash over him as he listened to Remicra's voice, each mellifluous note weaving a tapestry of sound that seemed to resonate within the deepest recesses of his soul. The dragoness's voice, as rich and warm as a velvety summer night, seemed to embrace him, providing a sense of comfort that he hadn't realized he was missing.

As Remicra's gold-violet swirls caught sight of Dave's wide-open blue eyes, she stumbled on a note, breaking the enchanting spell of her song.

"Ah, you're awake," she remarked, her scales rapidly shifting through a spectrum of red-orange-pink hues.

Dave struggled to suppress a giggle at the sight of her full-body blush.

"So," Remicra continued as she readjusted her simple undershirt, her scales settling into a slightly more composed violet pattern, "What's the plan for today? Are you going to hunt metal bugs, head to the far less decrepit smithy, bask in the glow of their far more impressive forges, realize how pathetic mine is, and finally understand how foolish your insistence on fixing this place is?"

"You aren't getting rid of me that easily," Dave smirked as both of them went downstairs. "First, let's go make breakfast on the forge. Second, I'd like to go over everything in your possession, so we can devise the best course of action for renovating this lighthouse and making me a set of armor that’ll prevent a swarm of metal bugs from eating my face off."

"Nothing is in my possession," Remicra declared.

"Hrm?" Dave inquired.

"I'm an innate metal-materia forgemancer. Overseer Princess possesses an unnervingly keen eye for keeping track of what metals are in the storeroom," the dragoness explained. "She would have my head if she were to spot even the slightest discrepancy."

"But everything upstairs is made from wood," Dave pointed out.

"I cannot reinforce wood with my innate metallurgy skill, you dolt," Remicra retorted. "I'm a metal enhancer. Even if I were to carve you a pretty set of armor out of wood, the metal bugs would slice right through it with their razor-sharp pincers, rendering it utterly useless as protection. You were lucky to face only thirty of them. Imagine what a swarm of a thousand would do to you."

Dave opened his mouth, then closed it, pondering her words for a moment before asking, "Are there mages that reinforce wood?"

"There are mages that reinforce all sorts of materia through their skills," Remicra replied. "Wood armor would require the aid of a dryad to reinforce it, and it would not come cheap. Materia reinforcers charge a pretty penny; they know how much they're worth to Adventurers. It would be far more expensive than buying scrap metal at the market.”

“I see,” Dave frowned.

“The problem is that if a wood mage reinforces your wooden armor, the reinforcement runes will not last long and drain your magic and stamina away,” Remicra said as her sharp claws deftly peeled potatoes with remarkable speed, preparing them to be fried on a flat pan.

The pair ate their breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, and potato slices in relative silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

"Show me everything here that is not metal," Dave requested, his determination unwavering.

Remicra rolled her eyes. She clearly didn't believe that Dave could create armor that wasn't metal-based, but she humored him nonetheless, curious to see where his unconventional ideas might lead.

"Do you think I could buy enough metal at the market for you to reinforce?" Dave inquired.

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"Reinforcing metal makes it heavier," Remicra explained, her tone patient yet tinged with bemusement. "Cheap scrap is heavy to begin with. How much weight can you hold up? Do you perhaps have innate magic that allows you to lift several times your body weight?"

"Uhh," Dave hesitated.

Sensing an opportunity for a bit of mischief, Remicra picked up a bar of metal and handed it to him. Caught off guard, Dave nearly dropped the surprisingly hefty object, his face turning a shade of beetroot as he struggled to hoist it into the air.

"Wow," Remicra remarked, her eyes twinkling with amusement at his unexpected predicament. "You're even weaker than I thought."

She snatched the metal bar from his hands with disconcerting ease, as though it weighed no more than a feather, and placed it back onto the pile of supplies.

"How the hell are you doing that?" Dave demanded, his hands still trembling from the strain.

"Metal weighs less for me," the dragoness said, sticking her tongue out at him with an expression of smug superiority.

"You'd make a good tank," Dave mused.

"A what?" Remicra's brow furrowed in confusion, her scales taking on a hue of intrigued violet.

Dave couldn't help but smirk at the prospect of explaining a tabletop role-playing game concept from his world to a dragoness from another.

"Well, you see," he began, "a 'tank' is a sort of, uh, role that a very specific person takes up within a group of adventurers. They're usually very heavily armored and have the ability to withstand a lot of damage, drawing the attention of enemies away from their more fragile companions."

He gestured with his hands, trying to illustrate his point, but quickly realized that the more complex framework of a role-playing game wasn’t needed. "It's like... imagine you're part of a team, and you're the one who steps into the fray, taking the brunt of the enemy's assault while your allies use their magic or arrows from a safe distance."

Remicra stared at him for a moment, her expression a mixture of curiosity and bemusement. "A dangerous job to partake," she mulled, "but I must admit, the idea of me playing such a role is rather... intriguing."

Dave grinned.

"Intriguing but incredibly unrealistic," she added briskly. "My owner would never permit a valuable blacksmith such as myself to endanger my life in such a frivolous manner. If a beast were to break my hand, I would be quite useless."

Dave considered her words, his gaze drifting around the smithy.

"There's a mermaid healer in the public bathhouse," Dave said, attempting to inject some optimism into the conversation. "She's pretty good at mending broken bones."

"You think that the Shandrian Lord who owns me would spend his coin on a healer?" Remicra raised an incredulous eyebrow. "I haven't seen a healer in... well, let's say never. I've gotten pretty injured in a few of my escape attempts, and nobody offered to heal me. Now that I think of it, I would probably be dead a thousand times over if I wasn't confined within these walls for most of my adult life."

Dave found himself pondering the ruthless cruelty that was, paradoxically, both the cause of Remicra's suffering and the force that kept her alive. It seemed that even in a world teeming with magic, financial self-interest still held sway.

"How much did that healer cost you?" Remicra asked.

"A silver for a week's worth of healing and bathing," Dave replied.

"Exactly," Remicra said, shaking her head. "You could buy a lot of supplies for a silver."

As Dave's gaze wandered the room, searching for inspiration, it fell upon a few tubes of wood on a shelf.

"Is that... bamboo?" he asked.

"There's a bamboo forest right under the cliffside. I used to walk there often before the Overseer confined me to the smithy," Remicra nodded. "You can't see it because clouds cover the chasm most of the time."

"What is the chasm exactly? Was it a lake or some body of water that dried out?" the ex-programmer asked, eager to understand a piece of the greater puzzle.

"Some overpowered idiot's attempt at taking Shandria out ages ago," Remicra said.

"What?" Dave's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"The shadow wrapping the town in its eternal embrace can manifest during the day if threatened," the dragoness explained. "It can swat spells out of the air, as if batting away the most insignificant of annoyances."

"How often does Shandria get attacked?" Dave asked.

"Pretty much after every reshuffle.”

"Huh?" Dave's brow furrowed, puzzled by this new term.

"The continental reshuffle happens at random," Remicra explained. "I don't know the exact reason for how it all works, but the Shadow Empress's domain is basically shaped like nine gargantuan hexagons connected to each other. Whenever the reshuffle occurs, the domains owned by various power-hungry magi get rearranged, causing significant strife and destruction as wielders of nearly limitless magic try to seize new territory or flaunt their powers. The gods seem to enjoy keeping us on our toes, as it were."

Dave's mind reeled at the implications of such a world. He could practically see the magic etched in the very fabric of Arxtruria: a place where the gods, having grown bored with their omnipotence, amused themselves by playing with the countless lives of their subjects, shuffling continents around for fun.

As Dave rummaged through the numerous items stored in the backroom and various nooks and crannies of the repurposed lighthouse, a plan began to coalesce in his mind. Sherlock's advice, manifested as violin music that perpetually resonated within his soul like his own background soundtrack, connected the thousands of tiny soul shards that Dave had harvested in the Dragon Emperor's domain, adding minute bits of half-torn information to his mental repository.

"How steady can you keep the temperature in your forge?" he asked Remicra.

"Very steady," she replied. "It's the most basic requirement for reinforcing and fusing metal to metal."

"You and I are going to make me a set of lightweight armor without the use of metal or reinforcement magic," Dave declared, picking up a piece of bamboo.

"Explain," the dragoness urged.

"First, we'll need bamboo," he began, his voice betraying a hint of excitement. "It's strong, lightweight, and, as luck would have it, readily available in the forest just beneath the cliff side. Then, we'll need some sort of adhesive to bind everything together. Something strong, cheap and flexible."

Remicra raised an eyebrow. "And how do you propose we achieve that without any reinforcement magic?" she asked.

“Can you make glass bottles in your forge out of sand?” Dave asked.

The dragoness nodded pointing to a variety of irregularly shaped bottles on a wooden shelf that she had clearly made herself.

“Well then,” Dave merely grinned "With a little bit of luck, a dash of perseverance, and a whole lot of trial and error we should be able to craft a material that was invented a century ago on Earth," he replied, the words rolling off his tongue like some ancient mantra, a testament to the indomitable will of mankind in the face of the unknown.

"What is this miracle materia that is lightweight and tough at the same time?" Remicra asked.

"Plastic," Dave said. "Or more specifically, Bakelite, which was invented a century ago on my homeworld."