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Chapter 1049: Stay Grounded

I gave a small nod, and Chelsea pulled out her token. Under the surprised gazes of many onlookers, she tore open a gap in space for the two of us to leave through. When we emerged, we were deep in the vastness of space, and I looked around in confusion, wondering if Chelsea had perhaps used the wrong coordinates when teleporting us.

We’re almost there. She transmitted, returning to her original body. I followed suit, figuring that there was little reason to disguise myself when we weren’t even on an occupied planet.

Chelsea led the way, flying faster and faster ahead through space, making sure that I was behind her. After a few minutes, our rate of acceleration began to climb higher and higher, and I could see a distant star coming closer before she began to slow down.

Where exactly are you taking me? I couldn’t help but question. At first, I thought it might have been Sanctum, but there would have been no need to go through all of this trouble when there was the simple phrase to teleport there.

Instead, the planet that she led me to was one that was being rapidly developed. The two of us flew down towards the largest landmass, where I saw a rather peculiar sight.

A large object, similar in style and shape to a crane, seemed to be printing buildings. Red and blue crystals were fed in through the base of the machine, and its arm went down to the top of the building, where blue lights emerged to print a large structure.

“With the new advancements in DC technology, planets are being rapidly terraformed and set up for habitation.” Chelsea announced proudly. “Some of this technology is even being used in Fyor, though it is harder to do so there. For one, the size of the gate makes the transportation of large machinery difficult, while the increasing gravity causes problems for the structural integrity.”

“However, when we are using it for planets with normal gravity, it can easily print an entire city within only a week. The only thing more efficient would be the drones being used by Dana’s familiars. Sadly, we can’t market those, because they would be too easy to exploit for nefarious purposes.”

I gave a small nod when I heard that. Given the fact that those drones were able to self-replicate, just a small amount of tampering, either intentional or not, could turn them into a plague upon the universe. “Is there something special about this planet in particular?” I asked, curious.

Chelsea nodded her head, leading me away from the city and towards a large mountain range. Here, we found an already completed city with an assembly line pulling ores from a nearby mountain. “This world has an incredibly high volume of valuable metals like mithral. These materials are not cost-effective to produce with the DC system, so it is more efficient to mine them manually.”

“Also, there is something strange about the plants that grow here, likely due to this mineral excess and other local factors. A few months back, we were sent samples to analyze. The plants native to this planet are able to actually grow metal. We passed the samples off to another lab to continue research, but they are working on crossbreeding to try to get more powerful minerals.”

“What do you mean by growing the metal?” I asked in confusion. Chelsea simply grinned, flying off into the distance. I followed her to a large forest, where she landed and walked over to a fruit-bearing tree.

The fruit from the tree looked similar to a calabash with a metallic luster. She hopped up to pluck the calabash, slashing the top of it off with her hand. Turning it to me, I saw that the insides were not the typical soft interior of a fruit. Instead, it was hollow, filled with a sweet-smelling juice.

“The body of this gourd is roughly sixty percent iron. The seeds are in the part I just chopped off, while the juice is an increasingly popular beverage for the locals.” She said with a grin, taking a drink from the gourd. “According to the preliminary research, these plants will only normally grow in mineral-rich soil. However, if it is normal soil, they will extract all of the minerals before even producing the first fruit.”

“Normally, you mean…” I blinked. “They’re being exported to Lorek and Spica?”

“That’s right.” She nodded firmly. “The farming system that was set up for those two worlds offers a way to bypass the normal limitations, as the system handles the needs for the soil when cultivating difficult crops.”

“Furthermore, this type of gourd in particular is extremely fast growing, similar to a vine variant that Terra told me about in your own world. Within three months of planting, the small tree will begin to grow gourds. After a year, it will be able to produce a harvest of gourds every month, as long as the nutrients are available.”

“Note… this is when they are grown in the wild. With the farming system’s accelerated growth rate, as well as nourishment via natural energy from farmers, it is possible for the tree to grow in a week, and the gourds to be ready to harvest every day.”

“Each gourd is equivalent to a little more than three pounds of iron, and there is an average of thirty gourds per harvest. In other words, a single tree produces around one hundred pounds of iron per day, after a small refinement process.”

I gave a slow nod at that, listening to her explanation. It was true, this could make things incredibly convenient. However… “How is this better than the resource seeds?” I asked, recalling that it was already possible to simply turn a nugget of iron into a seed and plant it. In fact, not only normal iron, but the highly condensed iron from the upper levels of Fyor.

Chelsea grinned slightly at that. “The resource seeds you’re talking about are essentially root plants, like a potato. They’ll grow in the ground, and need to be harvested, broken apart to get more ‘seeds’, and then replanted. They can pay for the auto-harvest add-on, but it’s still only growing one chunk of iron at a time. One tree is equivalent to about twenty of those flowers.”

I blinked at that. “Right… so they want to try to engineer the tree to grow other materials. Is there anything else that’s special?”

Without explaining first, Chelsea used one hand to chop off a large section from the side of the tree to show me the silvery veins running through it. “The wood in these trees similarly has a heavy metal content, rivaling the Ironwood trees of Earth.”

“Right.” I nodded again. “Long story short, they’re just an all-around improvement on what currently exists, is that right?”

“Pretty much.” Chelsea agreed. “There are also plants on this planet that produce copper or gold, so it’s a good thing that you’re not using those outdated currencies anymore.”

I couldn’t help but agreeing at that. Honestly, at this point, there is simply too much that wouldn’t be able to be purchased without a mountain of coins if we were still using the original methods for currency.

“Honestly, when I saw you bringing me to a planet, I thought you were going to show me a new monster or some crazy experiment. Or that the planet itself was alive.”

Chelsea let out a light laugh at that. “No, the living planet we found had been killed thanks to V-Day. Now, it’s justt a normal husk floating in space. It’s’ a real shame, though. As for monsters… for similar reasons, we haven’t had as much luck finding any with new, interesting abilities.”

I thought about that for a moment, remembering the bio-engineered monsters that Dana was having her familiars produce. If they weren’t residents of her shadow, I would suggest letting them out to mix things up a bit. However, I had no idea if shadow monsters were capable of reproducing normally, or if they had to return to the shadow after a certain amount of time passed.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, ready to head back to one of the other worlds. While the plants of this planet were interesting, I would definitely prefer a more social event, even if I did have to hide my identity. 

Chelsea seemed to catch my look, a small grin forming on her face. “Right. Not so much one for scientific research. In that case…” She started, before blinking in surprise. I felt energy gathering, and turned around to find Tsubaki standing there, a small pout on her face.

“There you are.” She said, quickly controlling her expression. “You weren’t around when I logged out of my training for lunch, so I was wondering where you went, my Keeper.”

I blinked, having not even realized that it was time to eat. Thinking about it, I couldn’t help but smile. “Why don’t we eat out today?” I asked, causing the other two to look confused. “Well, I wanted to just get out of Olympus for a bit. Now that I’m out, I’d like to just try a bit of normalcy. No fancy restaurants or anything like that, just fast food you can get anywhere.”

Chelsea paused for a moment, before shaking her head. “Now that Tsubaki’s here, I should get back to my work. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough, so I can’t stick around for too long.” She said, smiling towards Tsubaki as she pulled her token out and left.

Tsubaki hesitated, crossing her arms in front of herself. “Street food wouldn’t be bad. Admittedly, I don’t know any good places to get it in the current world… Why don’t we just head to a city and walk around?” She suggested, to which I nodded my head readily.

Of course, this time we did have to change our appearances to disguise our identities. As for where we would go to, I planned to visit Ashtanu. While we were there, I would be able to check up on my new priestess and she how she was doing.

Tsubaki pulled out her own golden token, teleporting the two of us to the Deckan capital, where we changed to a non-descript human male and his kitsune maid. Maids were… not incredibly common in the current day, from what I could tell, but Tsubaki’s existence seemed to have kept them from falling out of style entirely.

The two of us simply walked the streets, taking in the sights and letting our noses guide us. Eventually, we found our way towards a road with a wide sidewalk, where nearly a dozen stalls were set up. Each one had chefs making food such as fried cheese-covered sausages, dumplings, burgers, or even…

Right… Aurivy introduced sloppy joes to this world. I reminded myself, seeing one of the stalls where someone had made an elongated version of a sloppy joe, lathered in cheese sauce with what looked like small fries cooked in. At least I knew what I wanted to try, now.