chapter 132
The cargo drones were extremely simple. They were mainly just a box that could fly. They were fragile enough that if they dropped even from five metres, their frame would warp, especially if they were fully loaded up.
There were weight limits, quite severe ones, as everything was quite basic, but it was good enough for now, and that was what was important. We already had close to 200 of these filled up with different types of materials.
The entire drone storage floor was now made of steel, and we had already started building out some storage racks for our already built drones. Lola pointed out that we could still store droids here as well if they could fly on their own.
That was easy enough to test out. It seems that the limit was about half an hour of flight. Drones under that couldn't enter as well. So, most likely, the next generation of droids are all going to have jet packs of some sort so we could store them here as well.
FH was also able to confirm that there were drones out there, or at least machinery, that used regular materials like iron and things like that for fuel, so if we can get these designs into our forces, we should be able to store a lot more things in this space.
The rules were weird because we could build a floor and storage racks out of metal materials, but if we brought in ingots to store, it just wouldn't work.
FH once again gave the reason for it. I already knew that skills were intent-based, but I didn’t know to what extent before this. It indicated that each skill can be pushed further than I originally thought possible. That was a lot to think about.
We also figured out why we could enter this space, and that was to do with our bond and the fact that all of us had a soul that were so similar. It would have been really annoying if we couldn't enter at all, so that was convenient.
Currently, I am putting the finishing touches on Bob’s new old body. His got destroyed in the battle, but we still needed someone to do the negotiation and direct the loading and unloading of cargo.
One by one I was sent alerts that different departments were ready for departure. We had gotten a lot from this place, but it was now time to leave. The wall that had secluded us in this place had been disassembled, and the materials recovered. It was time to take off once again.
Honestly, I would have liked to stay here for a couple of months like this, as there were still plenty of metals underneath our feet that we could have used, especially because these metals were better than just regular materials from non-mana worlds.
The side engines happily turned on, slowly starting to hover the ship, taking us out of this cave and back to open space. We didn't climb to cruising altitude immediately, but we did get away from land just in case.
Bob and FH were now busy trying to figure out how much weight reduction we had. In the meantime, I saw that Lola was a bit disheartened. She had stopped poking me about 3 days ago, which was a bit weird.
“Lola, is something wrong?” I asked her after I’d climbed the ladder to get to the station she was currently sitting behind.
“No, everything is green, every system seems to be working as intended.”
“No, I meant you. You haven’t helped me with my resistances for a few days; you seemed to enjoy that quite a lot.”
“At first, I was quite excited. The data that I was getting was beyond helpful. With it, I can make a lot better bio-cybernetics in the future. But the resistance skills you have… some will be a lot more difficult and painful to advance.”
She seemed quite troubled about this. I looked toward Dean, who just shrugged his shoulders.
“You didn't seem so reluctant at first. What changed?”
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“Some pain is needed to make gains. That's just a part of life, it's natural and needed, but the things that I will need to do to you to raise some of your resistance skills, I believe would be too much even for you. Some of the resistance skills you have, I don’t even know how to help you advance.”
That last part I agreed with. How was I supposed to train entropy resistance? I had no idea.
“Why do you think I test you all so hard? The different exercises, these are meant to test your limits. It’s necessary not just for my data but for you all to understand your bodies. I do that to myself as well, but once again, captain you are a more extreme case.”
“We fixed the permanent damage part with your healing skill; perhaps we could mitigate the other problems as well with skills.”
She perked up at that. “Reducing pain would be obvious, but there should be other things that I could do. Some skills could also help me with fighting and making better materials.”
Immediately, she opened the search bar for our database. She started researching the different types of skills that could go with her healing affinity. It didn't take her long to find that some pain-reducing skills could be absorbed with the healing affinity.
“Thank you, captain,” she distractedly said.
That was more productive than I expected. That's why it's always important to ask people what is wrong, perhaps not immediately, but if they have been stuck on the same thing for a couple of days, it's always important to just ask.
Of course, FH and Bob took a couple of hours to figure out how much weight reduction those rooms had. We had a rough calculation in about five minutes, but they needed to be exact.
“Captain, it's 98.97 percent weight reduction,” Bob happily announced, and I could feel the satisfaction from FH.
“Captain, this means that roughly we increased our cargo capacity from 500 tonnes to nearly 50 thousand,” FH added.
Although I couldn’t imagine us storing all of that constantly. That would mean that our cargo bay would always be empty. I looked towards Bob and he immediately understood.
“To keep up pretence, I believe 400 tons should be kept in the cargo hold when we are delivering cargo, especially from a planet. That would still give us 10,000 tons to work with, which is more than plenty, I believe.”
“That should indeed be more than enough. We also have the second inventory skill, does that have the same reduction?”
“The differences are so small it’s not worth mentioning, captain,” Bob answered, but then continued. “What about you, captain? You didn't weigh a single kg more with your entire inventory filled, so can you expand our factory?”
I had, of course, explained to everyone what my inventory could do. Bob immediately wanted to know if I could make a factory inside my inventory. The answer was no, but not entirely.
Placing a 3D printer inside would still continue its work, although it needed to have a power supply already installed. The thing was the machines couldn't interact with each other inside my inventory, so no conveyors to bring stuff from one machine to another, and no drones could do that either.
I could manually bring out all the things and then place them inside the next machine, which would somewhat make it possible to make a factory, but in practise it didn't work that well.
“No, Bob, it just doesn’t work like that. They can't interact with each other.”
“Unfortunate, but still, the fact that machines can work opens up a lot of opportunities to make you stronger. Currently, our factory is making extra ammunition, but the nano machine printers are already making your armour nano machines.”
“Excellent initiative, Bob. FH, I believe we already have selected our next destination?” Before I could finish, Sam interrupted me.
“Captain, before we go, I wanted to know what type of gravity and if inertia is transferred into the inventory skill rooms FH has.”
What followed was another two hours of tests. It would seem like FH could somewhat control those factors, but the best of all is that they seemed to have constant gravity and that G-forces barely affected these rooms. That was something none of us expected.
“Captain, we could turn the other rooms into growing areas. We would just need to supply them with water and artificial light that mimics sunlight. Then we could start growing plants,” Lola excitedly said, and I could already see her planning what types of plants to grow.
“Make sure some of them are the tobacco plants.”
She looked at me a bit disapprovingly but nodded a few moments later. FH was going to make 7 rooms that were going to be 12 by 12 by 2. All of them would be made into rooms that were capable of growing plants.
The last room was going to be used to store valuables, especially things that weighed a lot. With all of that cleared up, we started to climb higher and headed towards an outpost that was more than happy to hear from us and that we were willing to take a lot of cargo to Paradise City.
We were happily cruising when all of a sudden I felt a pull from myself, and then basically every indicator we had went red.
Panic gripped me as I didn’t understand what was happening, but then I noticed that all the indicators were red because every part of the ship was working above standard.
A moment later, the pull disappeared, and everything flipped back to normal.
“Sorry, captain,” FH said, a bit ashamed.
“Explain, please?”
“I tried to use my innate ability, and then all of that happened.”
“We really need all of you to stop using your skills and innate abilities out of nowhere. But please do it again.”
Once again, I felt a pull from the station itself as I was sitting in the captain's chair. Everything went red, but because everything worked better than it should.
“So, care to explain what’s happening? Because I’m lost,” I asked FH, and everyone else was also waiting for the answer.
“Please bear with me. And everyone else, please sit down behind your stations as well.”
A moment later, we started to move faster than we should, with instruments unable to understand what was happening, so all they could do was continue to ring out alarms.
“Wow, that’s a weird feeling,” Sam said out loud.
“I believe my innate ability allows me to draw upon your affinities to improve aspects of myself. Captain, I believe the combination of your affinities basically boosted everything. When I was pulling from Sam, our speed was affected the most.”
“That’s so useful,” Dean said, and I couldn’t agree more.
“That’s a really useful innate ability,” I said, and completely meant it. This means that during a fight, we would be a lot stronger than believed.
“Would this interfere with you hiding your nature?” I quickly asked, as that was a big worry.
“It would make it more difficult, but I have managed to rank up my hiding skills. But I believe we might want to get a few more.”
“Bob, I hope you can handle that?”
“Of course, captain, leave it to me.”