To be blunt, I wasn’t expecting it. I guess I should’ve thought it would be like this, but no one expected it.
“<Hey hey hey! Look! A cute short and stout transport ship!>”
“<Hehehe, we’re the merciless Patchwork squad! Leave your cargo!>”
“<Lemme see… Scan scan… Oh? Mercenaries?>”
Three small ships enter the scene, and I reduce the output of the large laser cannon turret and fire in spread mode. Their shields are broken, they’re pierced, and explode.
“Hum… That sucks, boss! And it’s five hundred puni per ship!”
“That puts us at twenty thousand and five hundred.”
“I’ll salvage~.”
Tortilla Double is a big ship made to accompany medium size combat ships. These medium combat ships are all bigger and wider than thirty-five meters and smaller than forty-five.
Smaller than that, and they’d be called small combat ships, and if they were bigger, they’d be called large combat ships or corvettes.
Normal combat ships don’t fill their frames to the brim like Tortilla Double. Most are cigar shaped, and sometimes have wings to fly through atmosphere.
They get slower the bigger they are, so they need more engines and sub thrusters.
As for the transport ships, people try to fill them as much as possible. The bigger they are the more cargo they hold, and a transporter told me the bigger the better.
That’s how space pirates see Tortilla Double. Something that looks like a medium transport ship wandering around with no escort.
Even if the cargo bay is empty, medium transport ships carry power armors, missiles in their launchers… among all sorts of other things.
As a result, small scale pirates keep attacking. I want something bigger, but we’ve taken down forty of them.
Chuzoku metal isn’t too bad. These space pirates don’t have facilities that use nice rare metals, but Kori still manages to tear apart laser weaponry and collect the parts.
Saratha is using stuff like service drones to put together pulse lasers. She’s put together five today.
We collect all the scrap we can, including iron, the cheapest one, that we turn into ingots.
“Should we go back for now…?”
“Perhaps we should, judging by our loot. It seems Saratha cobbled together a small ship shield generator.”
“Uwah, she did! I gotta work harder too!”
“How much is a used small ship shield generator…?”
“Depends. It won’t go over ten thousand puni, but I think it should be worth as much as a used laser cannon.”
I still have the hyperdrive I took from the frigate of the Mishun Prime army, and I think it should sell nicely here.
“Let’s go back for now. And let’s stay for three days.”
We arrive near the colony again after half a day in hyperspace, and we dock in the Pokapoka Flower Field.
First, I ask for my reward from the Mercenary Guild through the internet, and then move to the second hand market. Although it’s a little different in our case. Selling things to second hand dealers lowers their price even more.
“I’ll put out a request to sell a hyperdrive, laser cannon, shield generator, and regular generator. How does that sound?”
“We should present them to the port authority first, and have the secondhand dealer guild under the Alliance appraise them. Depending on the appraisal, they could buy them, although the ingots and machine parts would be different.”
I see, Iris. Let’s present everything to open some space in the cargo bay…
As a result, they offer eight hundred thousand for the hyperdrive, and three hundred thousand for the rest, so I sell them.
We also sell the ingots for thirty thousand. That means our funds should be going over five million puni soon. I’m using it to cover server and implant costs.
I could get more if I dealt with clients directly, but that would take time and effort, so it’s better to sell them to dealers even if I get less money. I’d have to carry the goods too.
“The hyper drive did not get us as much money as I anticipated. Those secondhand dealers!”
“I wanted seven digits~.”
“I’m just surprised because it’s so much more than I made when I worked with power armor. It’s kinda crazy.”
“Vasilisa’s magic isn’t doing much.”
“Should you focus more on studying chemistry?”
“Ah, I’ve been wondering if I could make mid rank potions, but I actually did it! Let me get it!”
Vasilisa rushes to the mixing room. Her tentacles make cute sounds. She’s back.
“Here… A mid rank potion. It can instantly heal broken bones and internal injuries. It is the second most expensive potion we keep on this ship.”
“Oh, and you said you could make beginner potions…”
“Well, that’s because the learning assistance implant is great. I can make things exactly according to recipes, and if I study beforehand, I can pick up on even the smallest changes… But I didn’t think this would actually work.”
“Then can you make high grade potions~?”
“I have recipes, but not the materials. I don’t have Yggdrasil fruit or something equivalent. Extract of life free or Yggdrasil goes for thousands of puni per test tube, so it’s not easy to come by…”
I have a really bad feeling about this. Me, Saratha, and Suzuri all frown.
“We have life tree fruit~.”
“What? I think my translation implant is malfunctioning.”
“Miss Vasilisa, the smoothie you had this morning contained some life tree fruit.”
“Eh?”
“It’s good for your health.”
“Ah… Obviously!!!!!!”
She blew a fuse. Iris casually walks over to the mini bar, and takes life tree fruit cut into the size of a ping pong ball from the refrigerator.
I can see magic energy swirling around it with my magic energy vision. But it’s not that intense, so I didn’t notice when I drank it.
“Can you make it?”
“W-wait? I need more equipment, and more importantly, to get myself ready.”
“It’s all right, you can do it if you try.”
“Iris, put that away for now.”
“Can you even make high grade potions from this, I wonder.”
That’s it. Stuff like iron barely shares the same characteristics depending on what star system it’s from, so something organic like this is probably a lot different.
Apparently iron is different in star systems without magic energy.
“Well, ah, I think I can do it. The materials are similar, so I won’t know until I try… So you had this… I did feel that my body was doing well and there was something strange about my magic energy…”
“Did no one tell you~?”
“I don’t think so.”
By the way, high grade potions are healing items that heal losses like it’s nothing. It can do something about a lack of brain, but the line is drawn at death.
We have it here, but it would be really reassuring if we could produce it. I look at Vasilisa, and see her trembling a little, but I don’t think it’s that scary!
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