“Here you go.”
“Nn……”
I handed a piece of the raw firewood to Elma, who was sitting on standby beside me, and she quickly chucked it toward the burning signal fires. They should be pretty heavy, but she was strong enough to throw them with one hand. Just where was she getting all that power from those slender arms of hers?
Eh? Why was Elma who was supposed to be building our temporary shelter, in charge of throwing firewood into the signal fires now? Uh, it seems the rest of the girls booted her out eventually, so she ended up sulking here.
Oh, and by the way, Mimi and the others have already completed building the first iteration of our temporary shelter. Well, it looked like a giant tofu block, but it was functional, so yay!
“This thing’s interestin’.”
“I’m next, Big Sis.”
“Un, after trying out all sorts of things like this, the first shelter does look a bit too plain.”
Tina, Whisker, and Mimi were now busy making shelter model No. 2. Apparently, they wanted to do away with the tofu design and produce a dome-shaped one. They broke down the chopped trees I set aside for materials, reconstructed them, and repeatedly made use of trial and error.
I tried to touch a wall that was made through the molecular composition device earlier and found it somewhat strange.
Its appearance was akin to a pitch-black and slightly glossy plastic-like material. Apparently, the wall was hollow inside, or at least, a part of it was. I tried knocking on it with my fist and found that it felt quite light. But it didn’t seem like I would be able to punch a hole through it even if I swung at it with all my strength. There might be parts inside the hollow structure that serve to absorb strong impacts, and the black material seemed pretty tough as well. Are these actually some kind of those so-called carbon materials? I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to encounter carbon materials back on Earth, so I couldn’t tell the difference. Well, they were made out of wood, after all, so they probably weren’t the same as those.
“Learning to kindle a fire like this is sort of a rare and valuable experience too huh.”
“Really? Uh, it’s my first time doing something like this too y’know.”
“Is that so? You seem pretty used to it so I thought you’ve done this sort of thing on the regular.”
“And what sort of era did you imagine I was living in that makes it necessary for me to raise smoke signals regularly? The warring states period or something?”
“Isn’t that the case where you’re from?”
“Of course not. We had electricity, gas, and water available to most households, there was the internet, online games where tens of thousands of people could log in and play simultaneously, and orbital space stations where astronauts performed scientific research and experiments. At the very least, our society was more advanced than the Grado clan…… I think. Anyway, we had a fair bit of technology available to us.”
“Hee, it’s a lot more advanced than I thought. Well, I guess it’s no wonder you could adapt to life here so quickly.”
“Yep. I mean, people living in an age where you’d have to regularly make use of smoke signals won’t be able to make heads or tails of a portable data terminal for starters.”
“It’s ironic that the data terminal you just mentioned is practically useless here.”
After saying so, Elma shrugged and threw another piece of firewood at the bonfires. There were three of them, so we were pretty busy.
“Will help really come for us?”
“I’m sure they will. Even if the elves of this planet don’t, there’s still Mei.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
She’s our trustworthy Mei after all. Even if the elves of this planet were in the middle of an internal spat and may put our rescue as second on their priority list, Mei will surely rush to rescue us instead. Krishna’s loaded with various advanced sensors, and with Mei’s computing power, it should be easy for her to triangulate our crash site. It might be necessary to perform recalibrations in order to allow Krishna to fly smoothly within the atmosphere, but Mei will surely do well in that area too, and if push comes to shove, she’ll probably sortie forcibly if the authorities here take too long to arrive at a decision. I’m sure Mei will ignore any sort of opposition in order to rescue us. There’s no doubt about that.
“All things considered, we were still pretty lucky even if we got wrapped up in a crash since we’re all mostly okay. Well, we did panic when we found you bleeding from the top of your head though.”
“Yeah. Fortunately, we didn’t fall from too high an altitude, and the cars hit quite a few tree branches on the way down which cushioned much of the impact.”
“You make sure to take a medical check once we’re back on the ship, okay? An injury to the head is pretty dangerous you know.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Thanks to the emergency medical nanomachine unit, I felt no problems so far, but it can’t hurt to be too careful when it comes to head injuries. It seems medical nanomachines are also capable of healing cerebral hemorrhage and contusions to a certain extent though. So far, I haven’t experienced things such as fuzzy memory and physical difficulties, so I was probably fine.
“Well, right now, all we can do is wait. Wanna grab something to eat?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, this is surprisingly tasty.”
“Yeah. It’s a darn shame we don’t have alcohol to go with it though.”
“Maybe I should have packed some. This has a subtle scent of liquor coming from it, so it kinda makes me want to have a drink more.”
“Wow. Dwarves sure are amazing for thinking of drinking even in this situation.”
We entered one of the shelters Mimi and the others made and started eating the rations I brought with me. This time, the food rations I brought with me were the same as the ones I had during my stint on Comatt IV. Yep, it’s the one resembling a pound cake that was fairly filling. If I remember correctly, these were the main military rations of a galactic power called the Penitence Kingdom.
Some of the rations I brought had their packaging torn open during the crash, but some were still okay to eat. So, for now, we divided them among ourselves and ate them. Of course, those weren’t enough for all of us, so we also ate the ones that didn’t have their packaging torn open but were squished flat as well.
“These’re rations from another country, right? Why’d you get these anyway, Boss?”
“Uh, they were kinda cheap, so I just went and bought them. It seems they have a surplus of food in the Penitence Kingdom, so they sometimes sell them off to other countries to earn foreign currency. At least that’s what the store clerk who pushed these to me told me.”
“These are actually pretty nice as snacks.”
“Don’t even think about it. Military rations have a monster-load of calories y’know? If you ate these on the regular, you’d get fat in a flash.”
“Uu, that’s a bit…… I always work out, but it feels like I’m not able to get any thinner after all.”
After saying so, Mimi put her hands over her tummy and sighed.
That’s actually because I was meddling with her workout menu without her knowledge, but I’ll just keep quiet about that. I personally think Mimi’s current build was the best. Mimi has the ideal glamorous Coca-Cola body after all.
“Us too. We can’t seem to get any thinner no matter what we do.”
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