Chapter 14
“Heguuuuuuhuuut..!!”
For the first time in my life, the morning came with warm sunlight. The blackout curtains that had been hiding the window had somehow been pulled aside, warming the mattress nice and toasty.
The headache I always felt on waking was gone, and my body, fully rested, had already woken up early without even an alarm.
“No way... I woke up in the morning...?”
Dangdang, Suri, and Minyumi, sprawled out on the floor, lifted their heads to stare at me as I sprang up on the mattress, then lowered them again and flopped back down.
“I have to write this down...!”
The wall clock that had stopped at some point was showing 7:18 p.m. Of course, it definitely wasn't that stupid hour right now.
“Daengdaeng! What time is it right now?!”
ㅡBeep!
The numbers on the small screen.
[AM. 8 : 04]
“E-early bird..!!”
Early-bird wake-up. A term for people who rise early, the sort of humans who can catch bugs.
I dashed to the computer, pressed the tower's power button, and climbed onto the tall chair—where even my toes couldn't touch the floor.
“The desk...”
The hideous remains of the massacred Cookies & Cream Seolleim I'd stacked like a mountain beside it, and the giant wrappers from thirteen bags of Doritos Battle Mix, had vanished too. Even the dust that had sometimes bothered me was gone; in a word....
“It got clean...?!“
Because sitting in the tall gaming chair meant my toes still couldn't touch the floor, I grabbed the edge of the desk and spun the chair around to look behind me.
The lifelessness of the golems sprawled on the floor like a battlefield after a war had been the result of last night's big cleanup.
“Guys... you cleaned up..!!”
ㅡClack....
Minyumi's mechanical joints sounded a little weaker than usual. Since Minyumi was probably the only one with actual hands, it must have moved around the most while cleaning.
“Good job, guys! What do you want to eat?!”
I hopped down from the chair and hugged Dangdang, Minyumi, and Suri, giving them all a big squeeze. Honestly, it hadn't been that dirty, but now that they'd cleaned it, I felt grateful and moved.
The floor of a single-person apartment is supposed to have trash strewn around, right? It wasn't really that dirty.
ㅡClack..!
Minyumi, still in my arms, stretched out an arm and pointed toward the front door.
“Huh? What? What is it?”
A square delivery box perched on the lip of the shoe cabinet in front of the front door. Had these guys ordered something again..?
“Ugh..! What is this!”
It was also very heavy. I had the eerie feeling I'd sensed something like this before, and if such a small box had something that heavy inside....
“Hamazon..? What on earth did you order..?”
There was something written in English on the bottom, but I couldn't read it at all. I used to know how, but after ending up in this body I don't anymore—I'm not stupid. Besides, I genuinely have no idea what it means.
ㅡRiiip
After tearing off the tape sealing the box and checking the contents, sure enough, there it was.
“It's metal, isn't it..? What is this? Rare metal?”
Minyumi, who had been watching from the side, shook its head. It didn't seem to be rare metal, and Dangdang came over and showed me the detailed order slip, but the resolution was too low to read.
In the end, after poking Dangdang's face with my finger to check the total, it came to about 210,000 won.
“Ti-6Al-4V, 5 kilograms... Is that... a product name or something...?”
Looking closer, it seemed to be the name of a titanium alloy. Titanium was famous as a light yet strong metal, right?
Seeing Minyumi bouncing up and down beside me, I figured the package had been ordered for Minyumi. But only I could fuse things together, so they'd all been waiting until I woke up.
“Mm..! Okay! Minyumi did well in fights and worked hard cleaning too! I'll fuse this titanium onto you!”
ㅡClack!!
Minyumi's moonwalk looked twice as happy as usual. In an instant, it circled around me once and returned to its spot.
“Heehee, you're happy, right?! Come here!”
I grabbed the box lid, flipped it over, and set it down with a thud. Beside it was Minyumi, already poised to take a step forward.
Mana stones, titanium, a hair dryer, and eleven beer cans! What an incredible ingredient lineup. With materials like these, it would be a problem if it didn't become national power-level.
“Minyumi! Fuse with this metal lump!”
ㅡFlash!!
In an instant, the 5-kilogram titanium ingot, now suffused with blue magical light, floated up into the air and turned soft before shooting rapidly toward the motionless Minyumi.
The squishy titanium wrapped around Minyumi's whole body, and three seconds later the transformation ended with a flash...
“Hngh!! So cool!!!”
It was Minyumi, now wearing gleaming silver armor. No, wait—if aluminum is under 1% now, and titanium is the main component, isn't this basically Tita-nyumi...?
But somehow that name doesn't fit. Minyumi suits it better...
ㅡClack!!
“The best!! So awesome!!!”
Now even standing up, it came up to just below my shoulders. No, how can it be this cool? At this point, it's basically national power-level for real.
“Wow..! Minyumi, do that thing! The flying thing!!”
Minyumi had a hair dryer, and maybe because it had been affected by the mana stone, its wind power had become incredibly strong. It used to be powerful enough to float about one meter off the ground and fly around, but now that there were 5 extra kilos of metal, I wasn't sure it could still do that.
ㅡWhoooooosh....
Booster wings sprouted from Minyumi's back and blasted wind down to the floor, but sadly it didn't lift off. With 5 kilograms of extra metal added, that made sense.
Originally, Minyumi had been a hair dryer with a little aluminum can body and a plastic shell, so the mana stone-boosted airflow had been enough to keep it hovering.
“Hmm... what's something that can blow really strong wind.”
Let's see—what things produce wind? There was the fan I didn't use anymore now that it was getting cold. But honestly, compared to its weight, its airflow wasn't as good as a hair dryer, right?
And then....
“An air conditioner..?”
Air conditioners are cool and all, but they don't really blow wind that strongly. But if I made a golem out of an air conditioner, wouldn't that be awesome? If I turned it into a golem, it wouldn't use any electricity, and its power would be even stronger too, right??
Of course, there was the downside that I'd have to add a mana stone, but that was something I could figure out somehow.
“Umm..! Daengdaeng, is there anything that's easy to get and blows really strong wind??”
Dangdang looked the dumbest, but actually had an advanced AI search function, so asking stuff like this was convenient. After hearing my question, Dangdang was probably searching the internet, since circles were spinning around its face.
[Air Compressor]
“Air compressor? What's that?”
Dangdang did bring up a wiki page, but the resolution was too low to read clearly. In the end, I sat back down in front of the computer I'd left on and looked up air compressors in detail.
“It compresses air... ooh, I see..!”
It seemed to be some huge machine that compresses air like crazy and blasts it out through a tiny nozzle with tremendous force. But there's no way I could afford something like that, right??
Dangdang, sitting on the desk beside me, heard me and started searching for things I could actually afford.
[Small/Home Use: 120,000~240,000 won]
“Home-use ones are cheaper than I thought??”
But, well, as I looked into it online, it turned out these things were incredibly heavy. And there were way too many random parts, too. I was trying to buy one for battle support, so if it's like this, that's a bit of a problem.
I was wondering if there was a better idea when Suri nudged the chair from beside me.
“Huh? What is it, Suri??”
ㅡKiiit
Suri was poking the mana stone set in the center of its chest. A mana stone, huh...
“I get it! You just get stronger by fusing more mana stones, right?!”
Suri nodded in affirmation. Come to think of it, Minyumi's airflow had been the result of the mana stone's enhancement. If I swapped in a better mana stone with more mana, the wind would get stronger too.
“Okay! Good! Then let's look for some mana stones!”
As I browsed cheap mana stones online, all I found were prices that would make our household collapse if I bought one right now.
The goblin mana stone I'd added to Suri last time had only been about the price of a single chicken. But the ones sold by specialty dealers started at 500,000 won and could go into the millions.
But the scarier part was that these multi-million-won ones counted as low-end mana stones.
The mana stone set in Suri's chest had been the one in the sword Handohee gave me. If even the mana stone in a rare-metal body was that quality, wasn't that an insanely expensive weapon?
When I asked about it last time we met, Handohee said it was the sword used before her current weapon, and that since she wasn't using it anymore, she gave it to me... It seemed way more expensive than I thought.
“Ugh... sorry, Minyumi. We're broke.”
Minyumi shook its head as if it was fine, but I still couldn't help feeling disappointed. At this rate, we had no choice but to get one ourselves.
“Now that I think about it, Suri, how did you get the mana stone Minyumi gave you?”
Suri spread its wings into a triangle. Judging from the situation, it seemed to have hunted a monster that had gone feral in the mountains. As expected, Suri must have gotten the mana stone by taking down a monster that came out of a gate in some remote mountain corner.
Normally, hunters belonging to the Hunter Management Association are supposed to clean the mountains regularly to protect the hiking trails, but 'regularly' just means they keep putting it off until a civilian hiker has an accident, and only then do they rush out to deal with it.
Even if hunters are superhumans and the mountain is small, it's too much to search the whole thing with just a few people. And not every hunter is good at running or climbing.
If you don't have a detection skill, it's hard to identify monsters... and so on. That's what they said at the hearing last time, right?
If you think about it another way, Suri, who can roam the mountains freely, could use it as the best mana-stone farming spot..!
“Suri! We... Ah.”
Then that means I'd have to climb the mountain, wouldn't I?
“Sorry, let's wait until Daengdaeng earns some money.”
Sorry, I'm such a princess.
* * * * *
[Chaerin-mom: Just now, found a giant albino eagle on the mountain behind some board goblin's house
Wasn't sure if it was a monster from an open gate or a real albino eagle, so I took a picture first]
-Pyeon Gigeon: Isn't that the summoned beast that got posted on Silbe last time?
ㄴ Chaerin-mom: Holy crap, is that it?
ㄴ Pyeon Gigeon: Looking at the photo, it looks like there's blood on its wings, for real
-Amchongsu: That's a white-tailed eagle
ㄴ ㅇㅇ: I told you it was a summoned beast, idiot
ㄴ Amchongsu: I'm saying the shape is a white-tailed eagle, damn it
ㄴ Amchongsu: (Bippi, are you there?)
ㄴ ㅇㅇ: (Dyu..)
-Insaeng Manghaesseum: This is insanely cool, what the hell? The person raising that thing must be a total pro;;
ㄴ emino: Camila Torres vs. the person raising that thing
ㄴ Insaeng Manghaesseum: Still can't beat Maxㅠ