The final stop on the tour of the Azur Lane world was their research area.
At Adam’s request, Belfast and Richelieu brought him to see a Wisdom Cube.
Passing through the main building, they arrived at a small shop tucked into one corner of the Port.
A green-haired, animal-eared shipgirl greeted Adam with enthusiasm.
“Commander, would you like to buy some boxes, meow?” She wore a slightly ill-fitting naval uniform.
Her rigging resembled an enormous tower crane, and her oversized sleeves hid pliers, wrenches, tweezers, and all sorts of other tools.
One of the Port’s few repair ships…
Akashi.
She had almost no combat ability.
Her main duties were repairing other shipgirls and handling the Port’s research work.
In her spare time she also sold painted equipment boxes.
Turning blue gear into purple, purple into gold.
If a ten-pull gives you nothing, that’s just your bad luck.
The rates are fine.jpg “He is a guest of the Port, not the Commander yet.” Belfast reminded her.
“As long as you buy something, Akashi can call you Commander, meow.” This repair ship seemed to have a strange verbal tic… and a bit of a shady merchant vibe.
“Yo.
What are you selling?
Paint boxes?” Adam peered into the counter.
“Fuel for warships, coolant, and all kinds of equipment…
naval guns, aircraft, torpedoes, meow.” Akashi pulled out a pile of miscellaneous items, most of them meant for shipgirls.
Even if he bought a fighter plane and took it back, to anyone who wasn’t a shipgirl it would just be World War II equipment.
Not particularly useful.
“Do you have any Wisdom Cubes?” Adam got straight to the point.
“Wisdom Cubes?
Those are for research.
We don’t sell them to outsiders, meow.” Akashi glanced at the accompanying Richelieu and Belfast, scratched her ear, and thought for a moment.
“If the Commander wants to see one, I can show you.
But no touching!
Wisdom Cubes are very precious, meow.” She opened a hidden door behind the shop and led the group through a winding series of passages until they reached a laboratory-like room.
The roughly three-hundred-square-meter space was filled with all sorts of strange equipment…
some looking like laser cutters, others like X-ray machines.
Stacks of documents sat on the tables.
Adam flipped through a few at random.
Most were experimental data on military equipment.
The Azur Lane world’s tech tree was skewed to an absurd degree…
almost everything had been poured into military technology.
With only a little over five hundred shipgirls and no real need for agriculture or light industry, it made a certain kind of sense.
Akashi crouched in front of a safe, performed a series of operations, and with a click the door swung open to reveal a black case inside.
She took out a key, unlocked the case, and carefully lifted a translucent blue cube with both hands, placing it gently on the table.
“This is a Wisdom Cube, meow.” “Manufacturing Wisdom Cubes is very troublesome.
It takes a lot of resources and time.
The Port has already stopped making new ones.
This is the last one, meow.” “What did you use the previous Cubes for?” Adam asked, curious.
“Making Bulins.” Richelieu answered in Akashi’s place.
“Ordinary shipgirls cannot be summoned directly with a Wisdom Cube.
There has to be a corresponding warship that existed in reality.” “But Bulins only require a small amount of resources and a Cube to produce.
We made a large number of them to help construct the Port.” “Now that we have enough Bulins, and with resources running low, we stopped producing Cubes.” “I see.” Adam understood.
“According to my research, the Wisdom Cube is essentially a perpetual motion machine of infinite energy.
It can power a shipgirl’s rigging and materialize the collective human cognition of a particular object.” “It also greatly strengthens a shipgirl’s physical capabilities.
Pretty amazing, right?” Akashi planted her hands on her hips and praised her own research.
“If the Commander wants to buy it, I can give you a friendship price…
thirty million yen, or an equivalent amount of crude oil in exchange!” “…” Belfast and Richelieu’s expressions looked as if they had just seen a ghost.
“Is this thing really that expensive?” “…” Adam didn’t reply.
He stared at the Wisdom Cube, sensing the enormous energy contained within it.
The final Wisdom Cube…
the crystallization of the Azur Lane world’s technology.
Just from how carefully Akashi treated it, it was clear the thing was extremely valuable.
Almost without thinking, he reached out, picked it up, and turned it over in his hands.
The Cube felt cool to the touch and emitted a faint glow.
“Don’t drop it, meow!!” Akashi hurriedly warned.
Suddenly…
Shhh…
The Wisdom Cube flared with intense light in his hand.
Like liquid, it dissolved into Adam’s palm.
A surging power instantly spread through his entire body.
Under the impact of that enormous energy, his vision went black.
“???” In the final moment before losing consciousness, Adam suddenly remembered the compensation the system had given him when a bug dumped him into the Stone Age.
A significant boost to mental strength and physical compatibility?
In other words, he could now adapt to and master most of the special powers found across different worlds…
whether Wisdom Cubes, Honkai energy, Command Seals, Originium Arts, magnetic fields, Spiral Power, or any other bizarre force?!
He had unconsciously overlooked that compensation until now.
Was it finally taking effect?
Was he about to turn into a shipgirl… no, a ship-dad?!
When Akashi saw the Cube suddenly vanish, she let out a sharp “Meow!” and threw herself onto the unconscious Adam.
“Wah!
I never should have shown it to you!
Give me back the Cube right now!!!”