chapter 130
“It is done, captain. I am starting to experiment with the skill now,” FH informed me.
A moment later, Bob basically materialised to the left of me. He seemed strangely excited.
“Captain, I’ve been thinking. This should allow her to store a large quantity of drones. If they don't have to be the same size and the same type, we should be able to make drones that have large storage bays so we could fill them up with all the different coins we got?”
“A good idea. She is experimenting right now, trying to figure things out. By the way, what's the count?”
“In regular materials like copper, iron, and so on, about 10 million credits’ worth. Semi-precious about 40 million, and in precious materials another 40. It's a good haul. There are some more unique materials with a rather hard-to-estimate value, but I’m guessing about 100 million?”
Bob then tossed me two crystals. I inspected them immediately.
“These are good enough to be used for hard light weapons. These crystals aren’t easy to come by, so that’s good.”
Our conversation was interrupted as FH spoke up. She seemed quite excited.
“Captain, Bob, I think you should see this. I will need your help to confirm this. Please move to the right wing bay.”
Both of us were a bit confused, but we followed her direction. We climbed to the second floor and used the entrance there to get into the wing. It was a bit of a tight fit for Bob, but we managed to get in. This is where we store our larger drones and those drones that could operate in space.
At first, we didn’t notice anything, but then a large door opened up that somehow covered the entrance we used to get in and basically the entire rest of the wall. Beyond it was darkness, but the lights inside this room illuminated it, casting weird shadows.
Walking close to it, I put my hand on this strange opening, feeling some resistance, but when I tried to push harder, my hand went through it. Bob did the same as me, and then I tried to take a step inside.
“Wait, captain!” FH said, but a bit too late.
My leg didn’t find the floor and I almost lost my balance. At about 30 centimetres down my leg hit something. There was no visible floor, the only indication that there was something here was that my leg hit something, and the light seemed to fracture just a bit differently at that point.
Both of us walked in. It was like we were walking in outer space with nothing else surrounding us. Then the doors behind us disappeared, and for the first time in my life I knew absolute darkness. Bob did have a light source, so soon everything was illuminated again, and a moment later the door reappeared.
“Sorry, captain. It seems it's in this skill’s instincts to close the door whenever something enters or leaves, and it takes just a bit of mana each time something leaves or enters.”
“What is this place?” Bob asked, and I was quite curious as well. This wasn't something an inventory-type skill should be able to do.
“My best guess is that my spaceship affinity changes inventory-type skills a bit more than usual. It seems that for me they make more internal space. Although I can’t just store anything here; you two cost a lot more mana and it was a lot harder to allow you to get inside than any of the other drones I’ve tested this with.”
“Are these places permanent, and how big exactly are they?” Bob asked.
“It’s actually just one space, but I can have multiple entrances.” At that moment, another light, quite far away, appeared. “As for the size, currently it’s 220 by 220 by 12 metres.”
For a moment, my brain halted. That was like over 7 times bigger than the entire volume of the ship, even excluding all the inner structures. It was like the volume of over 200 Olympic-size swimming pools.
“There’s no way,” I heard Bob say as he started to rush parallel to the door.
It was hard to see the ceiling of this place, but I think I managed to catch the fracturing of the light as it hit the edge of this space.
“What about weight reduction?” I asked because that would be the thing that actually mattered.
“Extreme as far as I can tell,” was the answer FH gave me.
“We can test it out when we hover. This way we can see the strain and calculate the exact weight reduction,” Bob yelled as he was pressing on the wall, now being basically 150 metres away.
“Why was the floor not flush with the room inside the wing?” I asked FH, a bit confused about that.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I think we should build out a metal floor and storage facilities for different drones here, that’s why.”
“Makes sense. That way, we can store a lot more here. Captain, can you help me modify a few drones so we can test if we can use drones as storage—wait, FH, can you store materials here?”
“Wait a moment,” she said, and from the other door we saw drones entering and leaving.
“Yes and no. It seems like anything to do with drones, like materials for resupplying, but not for fixing them.”
“That’s unfortunate, but can you still store different types of drones?”
“That’s indeed the case, Bob. Which opens up a lot of opportunities, I believe.”
“It does indeed, Captain. Let’s do this; it shouldn’t take long.” Bob said as he walked back.
It indeed didn’t take long to fit one of the drones with a small storage compartment. FH also continued her experiments and found out that drones couldn't carry stuff inside if they just grabbed hold of them.
We watched as the drone with the cargo compartment moved in without any trouble, nothing happening to what was stored inside.
Bob yelled in excitement, and so did everyone else as all of them had gathered here after hearing the exciting news.
“Captain, we need to increase our drone capacity and start making different types. I will, of course, leave the combat ones to you, but I will help you with the storage drones designs.”
“Of course. Sam, Dean, I need you guys to start properly surveying our surroundings, especially what types of metals we might have available to us. If there's anything valuable, we should mine it all up.”
“Couldn't we just buy it?” Sam asked, with Dean answering him almost immediately.
“It's an easy calculation. If we buy too many materials, it would be obvious that we couldn’t fit everything inside. That base would have been a good cover right now, but none of us expected something like this.”
Dean was right, and the timing was a bit unfortunate, but there was nothing we could do about it now.
“Captain, I have my healing skill figured out, and it does work with bio-cybernetics, which is good news. But it is just a beginner skill; it will take time for me to get a handle on it so I can actually use the better healing skills.”
She looked at me, and I already knew what she wanted. It was also time for me to properly start grinding my resistance skills.
“Yeah, fine, I can design and be poked at the same time.” She was way too happy about that, but multitasking would be important.
“FH, you absorb the second skill. Bob, you too. Yes, we got two more inventory skills,” I said to the others when they looked a bit confused.
A moment later, I felt FH successfully absorb the skill, which was good news. Bob seemed a bit conflicted, but he took his skill out, sat down where he was, and absorbed it.
“Come, Captain, I think we’ll start with lasers.”
I let out a sigh and followed. In Lola's workshop, she started to use a laser on my shoulder. It was pretty low-powered, but there was still a bit of pain. It wasn't bad enough that I couldn’t concentrate on my design work.
This was going to be a long-term project, especially for the combat drones. Size no longer was that big of a factor, but they still needed to be small enough to usually fit through the skills door, although those could be made bigger, but the bay doors couldn't be.
So there were constraints I needed to follow, but overall, this situation was something I didn’t actually expect. The amount of space available seemed unrealistic, but thinking back on the monster that had this skill, it did have a ridiculous number of drones that it could dispense.
There would be two main categories of combat drones: ones for portal clearing—those would also go under general combat. The second category would be for space battles. Then there would be harvesting drones, maintenance drones, and storage drones. Perhaps in the future, even more categories.
Would the space actually be enough for all of that? Yeah, most likely not, but the more she used it, the skill would eventually rank up, expanding the space even more.
Then an idea came to me. If we can store stuff that the drones needed to operate, could I make some designs that would consume metals to function so we could store those things as well?
Now that truly was an interesting idea. I continued to sketch down ideas and preliminary designs, but I will be honest. While I had done quite a lot of drone design over the years, I was feeling a bit unsure as drones of this size—nearly 4 metres long, 3 metres wide, and a metre in height—were a bit bigger than I was used to.
I think it would be best to research some of the combat drones available to be purchased. No need to come up with everything myself if the work had already been done before me. Still, I continued focusing more on the utility drones.
FH didn’t have much time to test things, but she was able to confirm that droids couldn't be stored here. Everything needed to be capable of flight; otherwise, they couldn't be easily stored. I think the reason why we could be is because we are a lot more alive than those droids.
Skills could be quite complex. I continued my work until I felt something weird. One of my pockets was now heavier than before. As I reached into it, I pulled out a handful of bullets for my revolver that was currently on my hip.
There were no bullets in that pocket, so why were they there now? A moment later, Bob rushed in.
“Captain, is there anything in your left pocket?” But his words trailed off as he saw me holding a handful of bullets in my hand.
“It worked. There’s no way that worked.” And then he started quite literally evil laughing. Both Lola and me were a bit taken aback.
“Explain, Bob?”
“It’s my inventory skill. At first I was incredibly disappointed because it was just a small box, two by two by two metres. Should be able to get it to be bigger as I rank it up, but that’s not the main thing. It’s my supply affinity. It changed quite a lot.”
There was a moment of pause when he took out more bullets meant for my revolver. He made them disappear, and a moment later, once again, my pocket was filled with bullets.
“See, Captain, I can supply someone with their needed supplies. Wait, put your revolver away.”
The implications for this were something hard to wrap my mind around, but I did what Bob said, placing the revolver on the table as far away from myself as I could as I sat back down. Bob once again made the bullets disappear, but this time none appeared in my pocket.
“I was right. You need to have something I could supply for me to be able to send you stuff. I’m pretty sure you also need to be close enough.”
What followed were tests, a lot of tests. Bob needed either to be in line of sight to supply stuff to drones and droids or be close enough to the rest of the crew members, whom he could supply without even being in line of sight.
Combat strategy started to run through my head with way too many strategies. Of course, this doesn’t come without a cost.
Bob right now could only supply about 200 kilogrammes of stuff before he was completely out of mana. Distance also counted; line of sight wasn't entirely correct because anything past 200 metres started to take chunks out of his mana pool, even a single bullet.
Then FH spoke up. “Captain, I waited for you all to be done, but once again, my affinity has changed how the inventory skill works. We have another room, or multiples.”
She could make a door appear anywhere, and we walked in to see a similar space as before. This time it was only 24 by 24 by 4 metres, but unlike the other space, she could shrink it down however much she wanted and use the leftover space to make more rooms.
Only a moment later, we had two different doors that led to eight different rooms that were 12 by 12 by 2. This would require some thinking, but into these rooms we could store absolutely anything. We were also pretty sure that it would weigh almost nothing if it was inside these rooms.
“We could be pretty good smugglers,” Dean said as we had once again gathered everyone.
All of us thought about that for a moment and agreed. Although I do not know if we needed that to make credits. No wonder those inventory skills were so sought after; it made sense if they changed so much depending on the affinity of a person.
“Somehow, inventory-type skills moved up in priority even more, even though we already have them. FH should probably consume each one she can, because each one would give us even more space, even if it's limited in what we could store inside.”
Everyone agreed to my words easily enough because more space that wouldn't weigh down the ship was something that would be invaluable.
“Captain, shouldn't you also absorb your inventory skill?” Bob reminded me.
“After we're done designing the first versions of the cargo drones. Sam, Dean, how is the surveying going?”
“There is not much metal near the surface, but plenty if we go a bit deeper, and with our workforce, it would be easy enough to get to that depth. There's all types of base metals here, but we would need to process them as they are in ore form.”
“Bob, I assume you can handle that part? We need a lot of base metals just to properly build out the drone storage.”
“Yes, Captain, I can handle it.”
“Good.” It seemed that we would be staying here a bit longer than originally planned, but I wouldn’t want to stay here for more than 10 days. We still needed to do some deliveries. I guess it’s time to absorb that skill.