Five days after the incident in Lumomo Fourth, we’ve finally been freed by the investigators. After a lot of discussion over what to do, we’ve decided to improve my hand to hand combat capabilities in Brefilmora Prime.
It’s just in case, but Kori convinced me to improve them to the bare minimum because we might be forced into hand to hand combat again in a hyperlane accident or something. She talked me down with tears.
And so, after five hours in hyperspace, we’ve arrived at Lumomo Fourth, which is a little far from the fourth colony and deals in a lot of the specialties of Brefilmora Prime.
Lumomo Fourth is like a wheel. It’s empty in the middle like a donut, but there’s a structure inside supporting the whole thing. There’s a space port in there, so it doesn’t rotate.
“Auto pilot docking complete. Go on then. We’ll stay here.”
“I’m going~!!!”
“And me. I learned gravity magic quickly, so I can do something about zero G.”
“I don’t get the idea of magic books being sold electronically…”
“That kind of magic item is all over the place, Genma.”
“See you later.”
Lumomo Second is a ship building colony. There are residential and commercial districts in the wheel, and the tire around it has shipyards and factories. This place imports the minimum food possible from the fourth colony, and keeps hammering out mining ships.
That’s how the second colony is, but it’s not like it’s an unsafe place, and it’s a pretty beautiful place. There are moving walkways too, so it’s easy to move around. We’re walking out of one of the many identical buildings built at regular intervals.
“I can’t get used to this feeling of suddenly having an implant in me…”
“It’s nice, you understand it immediately.”
“Yes~!”
In the end, Kori and I got mech relay interfaces. This is connected to my artificial eyes, and I can move drones with my brain waves or wireless controls. Currently, I can control the six-legged drone in my jacket pocket, that’s the size of a foldable wallet, so I probably won’t use it for the time being.
“What are we doing today? I want to avoid going to the Mercenary Guild…”
“Boss would get a royal welcome there.”
“Let’s go then, that’d be fun to see~.”
Absolutely not. But I’m curious about stuff surrounding the octopuses, so let’s check the mercenaries’ web page on my smartphone later… Ah, I need a new smartphone.
“That’s right, I wanted a better small information device.”
“An electronics shop? The Mercenary Guild~…”
“The Mercenary Guild is good with that sort of thing. They mostly have what you need.”
So we’re going there after all.
The mercenary guild’s store has a tall ceiling like a big hardware store. It’s because they deal in tall things like power armor.
Some places look like and have the scale of a convenience store, but this one seems to sell a lot of large machines produced in this colony.
This is pretty wide too, because Lumomo Second sells a lot of armor. But since there are many fish or half fish people in Brefilmora Prime, I see a lot that are supposed to have water inside of them instead of air, and air-tight full body suits.
I see half fish people that to me just look like bipedal fish, ones called people fish with bottom half fish bodies, and fish people with top half fish bodies and two legs.
“So they either have human heads or two legs…”
“What?”
“It really did feel like that octopus was intelligent.”
“The news said they were semi-intelligent beings~.”
According to the Galactic Credit Union Alliance, semi-intelligent life forms are ones that can’t picture the future. This concept has many criteria, but there’s one way to easily understand. They don’t understand the concept that hitting something will cause them to be hit back.
“I wonder. It felt like the big octopuses were acting on instinct, but the smaller ones felt different. Iris reported to Brefilmora Prime, so they should be investigating it.”
“Hm, I can’t see them accepting non-humanoid beings as intelligent. My bottom half is octopus, but my top half is walker.”
“And we laffloty are pretty special~.”
I can see the Alliance grumbling a lot if they’re intelligent. I haven’t really looked into it, but there are a whole lot of civilizations the Alliance doesn’t know about, with just as many rules. It’s impossible to manage it all without mechanical intelligence, and even they blunder sometimes.
“Well, nevermind that. Am I even allowed to walk around a town with something bigger and stronger than a laser pistol?”
“You’d be questioned if you walked around with a laser cannon. It’s typically not allowed.”
“You could get a gauss or rail pistol, but solid ammo has a recoil~.”
Suffice to say, I’d be scolded if I walked around with hand grenades. It makes me wonder why laser pistols are allowed.
“I guess all you can do is carry a fanny pack with lots of puny~.”
“Yes, small military use wireless machines are kind of big…”
“Boss, it’s a bit expensive, but how about a magic item?”
Magic item? Vasilisa then shows me a bracelet, a replica. It says storage magic item, with a capacity of… six liters, and it can hold two two liter bottles. Isn’t the math off? Maybe it’s actually correct, because apparently this bracelet has the storage magic that’s common in isekai fantasy.
“Two hundred thousand puni for two bottles worth? Are you crazy? You could buy used property for that.”
“The charging model has five hundred puny and can be used for a month without being recharged. It’s embedded with the ability to ignore weight too~. If you add a time stop feature, it’s two million two hundred thousand puni~!”
“By the way, a thirty liter one is a million and a half. It’s not five times!”
It’s easy to use, you just have to think about something going in and it does.
I touch it in a testing area with a robot employee, and things really do go in if you think about it. And by touching it, I can tell what’s inside.
But wouldn’t this make stealing easy? Apparently it does. That’s why you can’t put anything in the storage magic item without linking it. I still think it makes it easy to steal, but according to the robot employee…
“Once linked, it shines for ten seconds like this.”
“Bright!? It’s shining with the seven colors of the rainbow one at a time! Can you turn it off!? It’s worse than sparklers!”
“Also, Galactic Credit Union Alliance standards for point-of-sale systems mean that everything has a technique implemented that will not allow it to be stored until a code is read. Please give it a try.”
I try linking, and confirm that it won’t go in. I try some other things too. Somehow, a smartphone still has a signal in there, and the storage magic item reacts when there is some sort of transmission. It also sends the contents of messages straight to my brain, so it’s super convenient.
Would I be able to make calls like that if I got a bluetooth earbud embedded? I’m sure I would.
“Would I be able to walk around town with a laser cannon in this?”
“Storage magic items start from Highway three rank, so you could purchase it, Mister Genma. You could also walk around with a laser cannon.”
“So you need to be trusted to a certain extent… Hm, should I…”
The two hundred thousand one seems pretty useful, but the bigger one is nice too.
“Won’t Suzuri get mad if you buy something for two hundred thousand~?”
“She sure will. It’s to improve boss, but she’ll be furious for sure.”
“We need to consult our Ministry of Finance…”
For now, I’ll get a five centimeters thick light suited for disaster prevention, and a two way wireless device designed for military use. And it’s water and dust proof.
I also buy four six-legged spider drones, as previously discussed. Kori and I are taking two each, which can attack electrically like a taser.
We each got one of these when I got the implant, so we have six. It’s a lot to carry, so it makes me wish for a storage magic item.
Kori and Vasilisa want it, and are thinking about how to convince Suzuri.
An eerie alert rings from my smartphone. I unconsciously crouch, grab my laser pistol, confirm the other two’s position, and activate my shield belt. An earthquake warning? No, there wouldn’t be an earthquake in a colony.
“Boss, it’s just an emergency alarm. It says… a battle is starting.”
“Apparently there was a declaration of war between Brefilmora Prime and the Space Octopus Federation… The Space Octopus Federation???”
“What’s a Space Octopus Federation?”
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