Chapter XLIX: Warship V

Shizukana Gake, Heian Kingdom

Month of the Tortoise 4, 172 ,328 DE

In the kitchen, we find the First Mate, who Old Man Jones took with him waiting. The atmosphere between her and Mika-chan seems chilly to say the least. Standing on opposite ends of the room, the two females glare hostilely at one another.

Seeing us enter the kitchen, Mika-chan smiles brilliantly. "Jones-san! Dinner will be ready in a few minutes!"

The First Mate tries to look indifferent and superior to Mika-chan, but her scent tells a different story. Contrary to Mika-chan, whose scent carries aggression more than anything, worry bordering on outright fear fills the First Mate's scent.

I almost feel like laughing, but it is just another spat between two of the shitty old man's conquests. I have seen it all before, but I almost never see it happen with Mika-chan. Mika-chan's position as our housekeeper and her proximity to the shitty old man mean that the shitty old man's other conquests around Shizukana Gake seldom have the guts to confront her. The few times I have found some other female hassling her, my presence was enough to scare them away. My bad reputation has its uses.

Usually, I could not care less about the scraps between Old Man Jones' bitches, but the First Mate has brought it into my home. Not bothering to hide my irritation, I level a cold stare on her, and her face pales.

Looking around the room, Old Man Jones frowns. "Brigette, you're just a fling. Don't fuck with my the arrangement of my home."

Brigitte. That is the First Mate's name. I already heard it. I should think of her as Brigitte, instead of First Mate. She is no longer the first mate of an airship.

The First Mate's face manages to turn paler. The mix of shuck and surprise in her expression matches the changes in her scent, but her scent carries an additional odor of fear. "Jones, what do you mean? What's a fling?"

Like a "Chinese restaurant", a fling is another of the shitty old man's strange terms that no one but him understands without him explaining them. Even if he speaks the same language as the people around him, he thinks in another language.

Old Man Jones frowns. "You were just a piece of ass that was handy when I wanted to fuck. Get over yourself and don't cause trouble for Mika-chan. You don't want to know what happens to someone that hurts the woman that cooks that shitty, obnoxious brat's meals. His stomach is more important to him than anyone's life or well-being."

The gobsmacked expression on Brigitte's face almost makes me laugh, and Mika-chan turns away to hide her smile.

With an irritated expression, Old Man Jones glares at me. "How are you planning to arm that yacht, brat?"

Returning the shitty old man's glares, I put on a well-practiced, annoying smirk. "The twelve centimeter rapid-fire prototype."

"That canon weighs too much and has too much recoil. If you mount it in the bow or stern, the weight of the cannon plus the structural reinforcements to absorb the recoil will unbalance the airship."

I shrug. "I was planning to add a turret to the bottom of the gondola section, at the center."

Old Man Jones frowns. "I'll build the turret. You make some more shells and magazines for the cannon."

Shizukana Gake, Heian Kingdom

Month of the Tortoise 6, 172 ,328 DE

With Old Man Jones' help, the turret and extra magazines for the cannon were finished in just one day. I had expected it to take close to two weeks to fabricate a turret and set up the canon.

Shells are loaded into the cannon from a gravity feed magazine. The magazine holds ten shells, allowing the cannon to fire ten shots in twenty-five seconds before needing to be reloaded. Each magazine weights almost eight hundred kilograms, a lot for a common human to manage. But I designed the cannon with the assumption that the gun would be manned by Cultivators.

We only have the materials on hand for two hundred shells. Vorn give me hand hauling the loaded magazines into Silver Princess . While I was manufacturing the shells and magazines, he was busy turning one of the cabins into an armory. Besides the racks for storing the cannon's magazines, it contains racks for fire-powder or Yuan Qi rifles and pistols, as well as melee weapons and muscle-powered ranged weapons.

Looking at the racks, I frown. "I don't like guns, and I don't need so many weapons."

Vorn laughs. "This is in case you pick up retainers. Unlikely as that may be."

Old Man Jones' loud snort echoes from the door. "This brat picking up followers is about likely as the Dragon Gods giving up trying to conquer the metaverse."

"Minions are overrated."

Old Man Jones makes a noise that could charitably be called a laugh. "You have to inscribe the sigils on the armor yourself, brat. I'll do something about the strength of the internal structure."

Shizukana Gake, Heian Kingdom

Month of the Tortoise 7-24, 172 ,328 DE

Ehrbaum was an Artificer, who served the ancient War Masters. While not a War Master himself, he was still a Triune. Old Man Jones has a number of tomes written by him, and even though I was not born a Triune, the shitty old man still had me study Artificing methods that required Trinity. He included Ehrbaum's tomes among the material.

Everything in Ehrbaum's tomes requires the use of Trinity to be properly Made. If he used physical tools, they were empowered with Trinity. This especially applies to the sigils include in his work. So he could Make them with Mana, Old Man Jones modified a number of Ehrbaum's sigils and Artifacts, but that weakened them. I plan to use the Fifth Transformation sigils as Ehrbaum designed them.

Inscribing the Fifth Transform of the Ehrbaum Series proves far more time-consuming than I expected. I need to use Trinity to Make the actual inscriptions, and my reserves of Trinity are severely limited. It takes less than five minutes to inscribe each sigil, but since my capability to store Trinity is so small, my Trinity reserves are completely drained. After each sigil, I need to rest. With the Trinity being released by the swords in my Core Realm, it only takes about fifteen minutes to restore my Trinity, but that quadruples. Since it will take almost fifteen hundred sigils to complete the reinforcement of the Silver Princes' superstructure armor, I will need weeks to complete it.

While only taking breaks to eat and get just enough sleep, I continually inscribe sigils into the Sky Iron plates. With the inscription of each sigil, the volume of Trinity I can hold in my Core Realm grows slightly. By the time I finish a fifth the sigils, I can hold enough Trinity to draw two sigils in succession, while restoring my reserves in twenty minutes. By the time, I reach the halfway point, I can inscribe three sigils in succession and need a little over twenty-five minutes to restore my Trinity reserves.

When I finish the last of sigils, my Trinity reserves have reached the point I can inscribe four sigils in succession. The continuous depletion and restoration of Trinity reserves has quadrupled the volume of Trinity that Core Realm can contain. The growth in my strength surprises me.

While I have been continually circulating Trinity through my Body, Mind, and Soul, I still do not feel like I am even close to being ready to break into the First Circle of Coalescence. I do not feel any surprise. Unlike Cultivation, Coalescence is not just a process increasing the level of Power that you can hold and channel.

As I examine the completed work, dissatisfaction fills me. Where the connecting traces run across the welds, Trinity will not flow as smoothly. I knew it would be the case before I started. If the connections between the plates were meant for anything other than jump-starting the reinforcement sigils, the defenses would be flawed and significantly weakened. But the sigils on each plate serve as a self-contained reinforcement system. One the reinforcement is active, none of the cannons I designed can fire a large enough projectile to penetrate the plates. There should not be any canons designed by anyone else that have enough kinetic energy or large enough explosives to do it, either. Even so, I cannot suppress my dissatisfaction.

Cultivators in the Martial Lord realm or stronger will still be able to cut through the Silver Princess' armor. Martial Warriors will have a chance to do it, as well. Everything will depend on their Cultivation and Martial techniques.

"You look pissed, brat." Despite my lack of expression, that annoying old man still reads my moods and emotions like a book most times.

I stop repressing my frown. "The airship is just like me. Too weak."

"You're right. I did what I could for the frame and interior structure, but if you run into a hostile Martial Lord, you'll lose."

While I was inscribing the sigils, Old Man Jones worked on the interior of the ship. I did not have the time or focus to follow what he was doing, but Vorn and Brigitte trailed after him like a pair of puppies looking for attention. By the general standards of the Great Plateau, Vorn can already be considered somewhere between a Journeyman and Master Engineer, and Brigitte has at least a basic understanding of Engineering, especially when it comes to airships. Being able to learn from someone like Old Man Jones must have been like money falling from the sky for them.

"Until I'm stronger, it's the best I can do. I'm going to spend the night with the Great Tree and go looking for the smug cat's insane aunt tomorrow."

"You're crazy girlfriend and her psycho sister are in the kitchen with Mika-chan. She probably wants you to take her back to the Great Tree."

I snap my head around to stare at Old Man Jones. I had not said anything what happened between Aoi and the Great Tree. "How do you know about her relationship with the Great Tree?"

"The Great Tree has access to the Mind Net. You didn't know she was active in it?"

I shrug. "I knew the old tree took Aoi into the Mind Net, but I never knew that she had any contact with you."

Old Man Jones chuckles. "Brat, you shouldn't call a female old. No matter what species they are, they get all bent out of shape if you point out their age. They're always conscious of their expiration date. As long as you don't point out their age, you can treat them like shit, and they'll follow you around like dogs looking for attention."

Brigitte looks at the shitty old man with a sour expression.

For some reason, Brigitte's discontent strikes me as funny, but I turn my laugh into a snort. "To an ancient artifact like you the Great Tree may not seem old, but she's still a couple hundred millennia old."

With his one human eye narrowed, Old Man Jones shift his gaze between Brigitte and me. "Brat, you have a lot to learn about women. When Life planted the sapling that grew into the Great Tree, she said that sapling was sprouted from Yggdrasil. It could possibly live for hundreds of trillions of years. It's not much more than an infant. But no matter how long she can live, she will still get pissed at you for calling her old."

Brigitte glares at Old Man Jones, but guilt and shame seem to lurk beneath the glare.

On the other hand, Vorn chuckles. "They all know that if they get too old, no one will want to marry them anymore. But does that apply to a tree?"

Old Man Jones shrugs. "Who knows? It's female. Just assume it'll act as crazy as any human female."

"Whatever. I can deal with her later. It's still light. I want to take this airship up and see how it performs."

Brigitte's head snaps around. With her face scrunched up into a frown, she glares at me. "You don't know how to pilot an airship. Who'll fly it for you?"

I put on one of my best annoying smirks. "I watched you on the flight here. I can fly it now."

"There's no way you could lean how to fly an airship in just a few hours."

Old Man Jones laughs so hard, he bends over at the waist. Brigitte stares at him in confusion, but Vorn turns a speculative gaze on me.

"What's so funny?"

"The shitty old man has the strangest sense of humor you'll ever find. Normal human's will never understand it" As Old Man Jones stops laughing and glares at me, I out on a bigger smirk.

Old Man Jones snorts. "You can't judge this shitty, little brat by human standards. Ignore his looks, he has a Mind that makes your average genius look like the village idiot."

"If anyone wants to go for a ride on my new warship, get on board." With an anticipatory grin, I head for the main hatch.

"Go get your crazy girlfriend. If we're taking this airship out for a spin, we can drop her off at the Great Tree." As always, Old Man Jones uses his strange expressions, but at least, this one makes a little sense.

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