The day after drinking with Dwight, I receive reports from Iris in the living room.
There’s a low table between the L-shaped couches, and on it a moss slime and a wood carving of a cat fight for its control, but today there is also a plate with white squares. They’re about as big as short bread.
“This is meat from master’s portion of the octopus, marinated overnight in a flavoring called amas. As for the taste… It is not poisonous.”
“You’re being evasive. Well, it wasn’t chilled right after it was killed, so I guess it’s not great.”
I cut a piece with a knife and take a bite. A sour smell fills my nostrils and stimulates my respiratory tract, and I have to try not to choke.
It doesn’t taste good. I was expecting octopus to be chewy, but it falls apart in pieces and feels like gum I’ve chewed on for a long time.
“It’s bad, to put it mildly. I don’t think it’s the seasoning.”
“Yes, that is the common opinion in the colony. Should I have a food cartridge plant take it as discarded scraps?”
“No problem.”
None of the girls have anything good to say about it either.
“I heard other space octopuses were tasty…”
“It could be that too much time passed, Suzuri, but wasn’t the meat worthless to begin with?”
Asks Vasilisa, and Iris brings us the next topic.
“Next, this space octopus had a core in its large body. It is classified as a magic stone, and it is big enough for me to hold with both arms.”
Iris is holding life tree fruit as a comparison.
“Analysis shows it is capable of faster than light communication.”
“Light?”
“Light. A research team from Brefilmora Prime theorized that these space octopuses use FTL communications to contact their kind. Furthermore, the ones inside the colony had half fist sized magic stones. The communications from the large ones…”
Iris stops.
“Analysis shows they can be ten times more efficient than FTL communications used by people.”
“Owah~!?”
“That’s great for video sites.”
“And perhaps for video calls.”
“I don’t have any complaints about one-to-one calls or massages, but it would be nice to have.”
There might be a breakthrough.
“Brefilmora Prime asked to buy your share, master, one magic stone.”
“Maybe I’ll sell it. How much would they pay…”
“Eh~~! What a waste~!”
“Ah, yes. Maybe that’d be better currently…”
“What do you mean, boss? Can’t we use it? Think of it as an employee benefit.”
“Vasilisa, there is a problem. If machines powered by a magic stone are transmitting…”
Says Suzuri. Even if we have one, others don’t yet. Our download speed would be higher, but their upload speed wouldn’t keep up.
“I think it’s better to sell it, and if there is a breakthrough, machines with higher speeds will become commonly available and cheaper.”
“I see~. I get it~.”
“Yeah, there’s no point in just us being fast… We might as well get the puni.”
“It’s currently listed as two million per magic stone, so let’s take it.”
The living room monitor shows returns of two and a half million. The half million is the reward from the Mercenary Guild.
“By the way Iris, does the skin have any effects? I’m curious about those stealth capabilities.”
“With an octopus that size, Brefilmora Prime sent three corvette sized research ships to investigate it, but no. The living specimen used advanced light magic to hide itself, they reported.”
“That was magic!? Well, boss could see it with his magic energy vision.”
“By the way Genma, I managed to sell the metals and salvage before the accident, and got a nice price. Our total funds are now over ten million puni, making our assets eleven million when we add the Huang debt.”
That’s a major mark. This could be enough to buy a large transport ship. But its armor would be thin, and its shield would be on par with a corvette. It wouldn’t have a hyperdrive either, so it would only move within a star system. Transport ships come in various sizes, but if we’re adding a hyperdrive, that would add millions to the price.
Also, a medium sized servant model nº12 loaded with options would be twenty-eight million. Being geared for combat or not changes the price a lot.
“Are you going to buy a mothership as a large transport ship~~?”
“Wait, if I bought a corvette capable of combat that can enter Tortilla Double, how much would that cost?”
“That is no good. A corvette would both be too small and take too much space in the dock. It would have to at least be a frigate, which is a minimum of a billion puni. An old model or scrapped one could go for a hundred million.”
“Restoring a whole frigate would be tough. Even if it was a used one, you’d have to rent a large zero G dock and hire personnel, and it would take at least a month. If it’s a scrapped one, you’re looking at a year.”
“We would have to split into two groups and have boss make money, Saratha.”
“I recommend putting it on hold, master.”
Yes, I’ll pass that along…
“Iris, you said FTL transmissions would become ten times more efficient, so can you tell Shiitake, Mishyltia, and Huang?”
“Very well. It is not yet in the mechanical intelligence network, so it might buy you some favor. I imagine they would be happy to have faster FTL transmissions. As for Miss Yue in Huang… I will send the information and see how she reacts.”
Don’t otaku care about internet connections these days? I’ve gone to sleep annoyed because games were taking too long to download.
Huang, which is a large colony orbiting a star, Shiitake the giant shield ship, and Mishyltia Prime. All of them would probably set money aside if they could get faster FTL transmission.
“Still, the ten million mark… Should we remodel the ship… Increase the defensive laser turrets?”
“Because of missiles from above? Hm, all I can think of is jamming more to the sides. Flares, chaff, that sort of defensive weapon is probably okay.”
Says Saratha.
“What if we add them directly to the large turret? They’re not that big, right?”
“It would be difficult unless they were made to not get in the way of the large turret. And I believe the front is full.”
“Ah~… You move the large turret all around, darling, so you shouldn’t put anything there. It’s always a pain to maintain~.”
Thank you for doing it, I say as I bow. These two almost always work outside when we dock. And then Suzuri makes a sound and claps.
“What if we embedded mech relay interfaces in Kori and Saratha? That would make it easier for them to move the servicing robots.”
“Ah, implants… We only thought about strengthening boss, but you’re right. We could do that too.”
“We ask Iris for help when we feel we’re not enough though…”
“Ah! You get one, darling! You can keep a small spy drone with you like a spy movie!”
Making me stronger is one thing, but I feel like if we start stuffing my cranium like that I won’t have room for my brain…
“Oh, we have just received a transfer. It says payment for octopus meat, and the amount is two million puni.”
“That’s sudden.”
Wasn’t it being treated as discarded food?
“Yes, it seems they decided to pay an extra two million for the defense of the colony. It includes payment for the magic stones of the octopuses destroyed in the colony, but since no proof was found, the payment was made in bulk. And since it takes time to pass it through the guild, the prime is delivering directly in the form of payment for the octopus meat.”
“Thirteen million puni!!”
“Oh~! Darling made ten million puni from his initial investment~!”
“It’s more if we count everything…”
“You should get some more implants, boss. Arms and equipment.”
The girls start getting rowdy. Yes, two hundred million yen for saving the colony. I wonder how they came up with that figure.
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