It’s already been 87 days since I came to this world.
Saito was seated at a desk, the electric lamp overhead giving off a warm, pale-yellow glow that lit up the words flowing from beneath his pen.
[As of today, the move is officially, completely finished.
Compared to that cramped, condemned-looking building from before, the dormitory block at the No.
7 Frozen Earth Mining Site is honestly ridiculously spacious.]
[With the help of the Integrated Industries System, the Endministrator has even managed to restore power to several of the surrounding buildings.
Sometimes, in a moment of dazed distraction, I almost think I’ve gone back to my original world.
If a day like that really did come, the first thing I’d want to do…]
[…would probably be to go pick a fight with that semi-truck driver.]
Having jotted down this self-styled witticism in his diary, Saito broke into a goofy, lopsided grin.
Even though a certain well-known piece of film and TV had once put forth the theory that no respectable person actually keeps a diary, somewhere along the way, without quite realizing it, Saito had ended up forming the habit of writing down what had been happening lately.
Even if, at the very beginning, it had only been a way to do something — anything — to chase off the loneliness in his heart.
“Going home, huh…”
Saito murmured those words under his breath.
In all sorts of stories that touched on crossing over into another world, those two words ran like a thread from start to finish — but for him, that world he’d been in before crossing over really didn’t hold much that was worth feeling sentimental about.
Raised in an orphanage, he had no family, and hadn’t left behind any particularly deep ties.
If the opening hand he’d been dealt when crossing over hadn’t been ‘alone on the icy plains, struggling to survive,’ Saito might honestly have been quite happy to embrace a brand-new life.
But now, he had already gotten past the hardest stage.
The Endministrator’s arrival had filled in that missing piece in his heart, and with her help, his life in this world was about to enter a new chapter of change.
“Maybe I should start thinking about what to do from here on out…”
Saito flipped open to a fresh page.
The slightly stiff paper had a faint yellow tint to it.
He stared at the blank sheet for a moment, then quietly wrote a few characters across the top.
…
…
[Frozen Plains Base Development Plan]or[Originium Arts Development Plan]
Early the next morning, Saito — who had just barely roused himself from his warm bedding — was promptly dragged by the Endministrator into the temporary meeting room they’d marked out for themselves.
She then took a perfectly straight wooden stick she’d picked up from outside and gave the ‘blackboard’ in front of her a couple of sharp taps.
“Haaah—”
The girl had only just opened her mouth to speak when she couldn’t quite hold back a yawn first. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Saito, looking at the thick stack of paper in her hands, could roughly guess that this young lady hadn’t slept a wink the night before.
The Endministrator gave her head a slightly hazy little shake, then forcefully slapped herself on both cheeks, forcing herself to wake up a touch more.
“How about you go grab a bit of sleep first, and we talk again once you’re up?”
Saito watched her with a hint of concern.
This didn’t look like just one night without sleep at all — she hadn’t been spending all these past nights busy with this, had she?
“It’s fine, I don’t have all that much to say — I can still hold out.”
The Endministrator shook her head, but seeing the way she was swaying on her feet, Saito quietly scooted his chair a little further forward without making a show of it, just in case the Endministrator suddenly had some kind of mishap.
After these past few days of busy work, they had already finished tidying up the surrounding ring of area, ready to be used as their future base.
Of the two of them, Saito had been in charge of the moving as well as gathering and organizing usable materials from nearby, while the Endministrator had been in charge of work on the Integrated Industries System side of things.
Over the course of these few days, she had already completed planning for the most basic handful of production lines.
These few production lines were respectively tasked with producing Refined Originium and manufacturing the crystal casings required for fabricating equipment.
At the moment, all of these production lines required vast quantities of Originium ore, and trying to slowly mine and slowly transport it all by way of the Portable Originium Mining Machines was honestly far too much of a time sink.
“So as far as base construction is concerned, the most important thing right now is to unlock Intermediate Mineral Extraction.”
Intermediate Mineral Extraction would grant the blueprints for fabricating Electric-Drive Mining Machines.
Not only were these machines more efficient, they could also use the Protocol Core to send mined minerals directly back to storage, which would save them a tremendous amount of time.
And in order to unlock new Industry Plan items, Saito would need to acquire more Industry Points.
There were two avenues for obtaining Industry Points.
The first was raising the Regional Development Level — every time it went up by one level, the system would award a certain quantity of Industry Points.
And the other method was to head out and start uncovering the map!
Unlocking entirely new regions through the Map System, or unlocking brand-new technology blueprints, could each yield a certain amount of Industry Points.
And for Saito, whose map was still pitch-black at this point, the latter was clearly the more efficient option.
Leveraging the face-mask covering her features, the Endministrator was watching the minute details of Saito’s expression with shameless thoroughness.
In point of fact, she remembered the vast majority of these basic equipment blueprints — but setting reasonable goals and rewards in order to rally an operative’s motivation was a point of great importance.
It wasn’t just that she wanted to accomplish her own objectives.
More importantly, the land of Terra was no peaceful place either, especially not on Ursus soil.
If they really took their sweet time growing their forces and danger somehow came knocking at their door, then by the time they tried to make preparations, it would already be too late. You are reading on novelping(.)com, the official source.
“I came across a few snowmobiles over in the mining area yesterday.
I gave them a check — the damage isn’t all that bad.
With just a bit of parts replacement, we’d be able to get them running again.”
Saito silently gave her a thumbs-up.
He could no longer find the words to express his admiration for the Endministrator’s depth of knowledge.
Truth be told, in this moment he had an inexplicable feeling: compared to that incomprehensibly complex[Integrated Industries System], the mysterious black-haired girl standing right in front of him was the real biggest cheat advantage he had.
“Got it.
So what’s that one behind it?”
Saito stretched out a finger and pointed at the[Originium Arts Development Plan], his face plainly written all over with curiosity.
And the Endministrator, who by this point was already thoroughly familiar with the likes of Saito, had long since prepared a pitch he absolutely would not be able to refuse.
The Endministrator slowly walked over until she was right in front of Saito, looked him straight in the eyes, and said with great gravity:
“Saito — you are special.”
“Even though we don’t have any usable examination equipment available right now, what can be predicted is this: your adaptability to Originium is, beyond any doubt, the strongest I have ever seen in my entire life.”
“And your personal sensitivity to Originium energy is, in equal measure, well beyond that of an ordinary person.”
His superhuman constitution, capable of eating raw Originium, went without saying — and the ‘healing’-type Originium Arts skill he had displayed not long ago had only further showcased his extraordinary malleability.
And as it happened — quite inconveniently — when it came to Originium Arts, the Endministrator herself could likewise be counted as something of an expert.
Her own Originium Arts amounted to the absurdly direct manipulation of Originium itself.
Given time, so long as Saito could learn even ten or twenty percent of what she was capable of, his odds of surviving on this land would gain yet another layer of insurance.
“You’re a genius, Saito.”
“And I can make sure you bring that talent to its fullest expression.”
The girl extended her right hand toward Saito, the corners of her mouth curving up into a confident arc.
Saito couldn’t keep the corners of his own mouth from lifting.
What college-aged kid could possibly withstand a pitch like this — but just as he was about to agree, he saw the girl in front of him suddenly go weak at the knees and start tipping over backwards.
With a quick eye and an even quicker hand, he caught the Endministrator and pulled her into his arms.
Looking down at the girl in his embrace, whose breathing was gradually evening out, the smile on Saito’s face also took on a few extra notes of helpless resignation.
____
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