CH68 Friends doing their own thing.
For what seemed like an eternity, Merumeru was held captive by Cosmos's endless narratives and elucidations. Displaying exemplary manners and patience, she ultimately managed her escape from the cabin. It required enduring seven full teacups, but at last, Cosmos decided to give her a tour of the property.
“This is some kind of advanced workshop I believe.” Cosmos slid the large metal shed door open.
The interior was dim when Merumeru peered inside, yet she could discern multiple workstations alongside various tools and devices fixed to the tables. The sheer quantity of metal captivated her most. Metal beams supported the structure, complemented by sheet metal forming the walls and roof. Suspended from strange cords were glass tubes secured in metal fixtures. Yellow metal cabinets held numerous metal containers within. She sensed a vast opportunity for learning and class advancement lay in understanding the nature of these metalworkings, possibly related to plumbing.
“"These wires, they’re not just metal. Think of them as rivers, rivers of energy. This ‘lightning,’ as scholars call it, is raw magic. It flows through these pathways. And those panels? Imagine them as tiny suns, storing that light, converting it into its energetic form. Without the main river, though, these little streams are not enough. They need the force, the current, to truly function. We could reconnect the river, but where it leads, who knows? Best not to tamper without understanding. But the key is to see beyond the physical. These contraptions are conduits, yes, but they also hold echoes of the truths from the universe.” Cosmos gestured to a spinning blade on a weird fixture.
While Cosmos droned on about gibberish, Merumeru saw a bin with pipes in it and excitedly grabbed the tubes and bends. She pulled them out and inspected them.
“You like those pipes? Some of them are made of a strange material. They are all soft, light but hard, let me check.” She put her hand in front of an eye in a peace symbol, closed one eye and said “Magical Spectrometer vision!” She closed the other eye and the open one between the fingers flashed a rainbow of colors. “It looks like that smooth pipe you are holding is mostly made up of carbon and hydrogen. Fascinating.”
She led the slime girl back outside and showed her a horseless carriage like the one that Alex would wind up and ride around. “This is some kind of caravan. It must have taken a whole team of really high leveled smiths and wainwrights to create it.”
Merumeru ran a hand along the front of the unfamiliar horseless carriage. The shell was a mix of that strange thing that Cosmos might have just made up a word for. She poked the big black wheels on it. They looked like they would be much better at going through the mud than the wood and metal wheels on the carriage.
“Wonder how it works? I wasn’t so sure at first but I found this document called the owners manual that explains how it works.” She pulled out a key and unlocked the door. With a pull it opened up and revealed the interior.
Merumeru stood up straight and peered into the strange contraption. She saw two seats in the front part and an open space in the back.
“A bench can be set in the back. It is in that metal building.” Cosmos pulled out the manual and flipped through the pages to show the instruction on placing the seats in the back. “I haven’t messed with it much. Some of the things that are supposed to be added I don’t think we can get here so it is best to not try to operate it I think.”
Merumeru gazed at the manual page the magical girl indicated, but the writing confused her. Fufi and Alex hadn't taught her much about reading. She did think Cosmos' ability to identify materials was fun though. Even if she was playing make-believe. When she was making bricks for pipes in the mountains, some rocks she found were strange, and trying to dissolve them made her queasy. She suspected they might be special and considered bringing some back for Cosmos to examine.
“Miss Cosmos if I get some rocks can you tell me if they are special and can be used for exciting things?” Merumeru asked.
Cosmos smiled, not understanding. “Of course. Won’t that be nice.”
Some of the rocks had what looked like metal in them but it wasn’t the same kind of metal that the dungeon dropped in pipe form when Alex was doing the doll dungeon. What did he call it? Iron pipes? Yeah that was it…probably.
Merumeru waved goodbye and skipped back towards where she discovered the strange ore in the mountain.
“Where are you going?” Cosmos looked a bit sad like she was about to be abandoned.
“To the mountains I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour or two I’ll be right back. Don’t worry,” Merumeru said. “It is a quick jump and a walk from the portal pipe.”
“Well if you want to go I won’t stop you. But please don’t tell anyone from the office.” She paused and shuddered. “I really don’t ever want to talk to another bill collector again.”
Merumeru made her way back to the portal pipe and Cosmos followed, chattering along the way.
Despite her insistence that she wanted to avoid her coworkers and hide away, the magical girl seemed quite lonely. She also expressed her frustration that her beloved planet has the majority of it under the foot of demons who were slowly turning it into a wasteland.
Merumeru approached the pipe, waved, then hopped inside.
“What a cute portal skill.” Was the last thing the slime girl heard before appearing at the chicken fort.
From the sky fort's pipe emerged a small slime girl. She swiftly curled into a ball and leaped into the pipe leading to the frozen mountains, where she gathered an armful of oddly colored ore: black, silver, and dull brass. Returning to the chicken fort, she startled the chickens with another hop before diving into the sky island pipe.
The chickens squawked at the disturbance, their protests fading when Merumeru disappeared. Upon exiting the sky island pipe, Merumeru crashed into Cosmos, scattering the collected ore. The magical girl had apparently been peeking into the pipe at the moment of Merumeru's arrival.
“Oof,” Cosmos said, rubbing her nose. “I didn’t expect you to just shoot out of there like an arrow.”
Merumeru didn’t hurt Cosmos. She was a slime girl. Her body was squishy. Unless she hit something with her super boots or her super gloves any impact would be bouncy.
“Sorry, I didn’t think that you would still be here.” Merumeru apologized.
Cosmos didn’t understand her.
The magical girl blinked a few times and looked around. “Oh dear. You seem to have dropped your rocks. Let me help pick them up.” She grabbed a rock and picked it up. “Hmm, what is this you have here? Let me check.” Cosmos made another V symbol with her finger and held it to her eye. She said, “Magical spectrometer vision!” And her eye glowed a rainbow again. “Such a nice find, it looks to be mostly nickel, with some copper and oh, what is this dark stuff?” Cosmos paused and squinted her eye. “It is Palladium. That is a rare find. Did you find a meteor or something?”
Merumeru shook her head and pointed down in the direction where the temple would be. It looked like she was pointing at the floating island though.
“Hmm, it can’t be here. This island is mostly altered granite and dirt. Believe me I enchanted it with strange gravity myself.” Cosmos looked a bit confused.
Merumeru shook her head, looking a bit frustrated. She hopped up and down and pointed out towards the edge of the floating island then down. “I got them from the mountains by the temple of purity.”
Cosmos sighed. “I still can’t understand but I’m guessing that it is some other place. I would say I’d like to go look for myself but if it is on the surface I’m not allowed to set foot on Terre. I miss bringing the harbinger of love and justice like the old days sometime.”
Merumeru nodded.
“So what do you need rocks for? I don’t see a blacksmith’s shop on this island. Alex was a lumberjack not a smith.” She paused, correcting her statement. “Though now she’s a magical girl.”
Merumeru, wanting to assist Alex with metal procurement, began experimenting with dissolving stones, drawing inspiration from how he had constructed the bloomery. Despite Cosmos's nostalgic ramblings, she persisted throughout the day and eventually assembled her own bloomery using gathered firewood, coal, and rocks. Her primary goal was to extract metal, and while her current method involved direct dissolution, she was prepared to adopt Alex's technique of burning the materials to separate slag from metals if needed.
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Meanwhile, back in the town at the warehouse…
Alex and Fufi finished their day of textile work and left for the adventurer's guild.
“What an interesting creation. You are some kind of spinning tree?” Ki inspected the spider doll.
She placed a hand on the wooden doll and communed with the plantlife there. “Hmm, you are made of mostly fresh wood and are still alive. It simply won’t do to leave you here in this dark place. We’ve got to get you planted. What is your name?”
Ki drew the name Charlotte from the different trees that made up the construct. “Let's get you some water and dirt. With a little bit of magic you’ll be fine.” The nymph infused the wooden bits with her plant magic and Charlotte followed her out of the warehouse.
The pair left in the night and walked a couple blocks to find an empty lot with moist soil. After finding a good spot, the wooden spider placed her legs deep into the dirt and Ki used some magic to sprout roots into the ground for the doll.
Ki did a little bit of altering of Charlotte to allow the places where the wood didn’t have a good path to keep all of it alive because of breaks that allowed gears to turn. The tree didn’t have to follow the rules for plants. A little bit of magic could fix that. She replaced some of the leather pulleys with living vines that served the same purpose, pulling them off a surrounding building and grafting them on.
“Now for the final touches.” Leaves and flowers grew out of the wood. By the end of Ki’s decorating, Charlotte’s wheels in her thorax were covered by lovely flowers and green leaves.
“See, isn't that better? Alex really dropped the ball on keeping cuteness as the most important thing with you. I’ll have to scold her later.” Ki chuckled.
“Most importantly, you won’t need to have a skill to keep you going. You can spin and weave all you like.” Ki patted the plant-spider on the head and seemed pleased with herself.