Legacy of the Ancient Civilization
The nano-machines that had been spilling out like powdered X only stopped once the Warp Gate’s seal was fully restored.
Of course, the ones that had already escaped wasted no time. They began ravenously devouring every scrap of matter around them, multiplying without restraint…
“Magnetic fields, you rookies!”
If mere contact meant instant infection, then the solution was simple: never let them touch anything.
Using the magnetic-field generators our graduate students had cobbled together after nights of sleepless work, we floated the swarm in midair and scooped it up. Or, when that looked a little too sketchy, the Purge Squad’s psychics simply gathered the stuff with telekinesis.
“Wait, are we actually allowed to do it like this?”
“Yeah. For a psyker, nothing’s impossible.”
Then came the part that made everyone question their life choices.
Rustle.
“Is this for real?”
“Just do it!”
…and stuffed the nano-machines into ordinary plastic bags.
Through a glorious collaboration of criminal safety negligence and overconfident safety theater, the collected nano-machines were shipped straight to the research labs. There, countless graduate students, professors, and Minister Vermouth herself subjected them to every experiment imaginable.
A full month had passed since we sent the samples.
I was in the middle of my usual routine—bullying Riel while grinding through paperwork—when Minister Vermouth’s 3D model suddenly burst out of my terminal.
“Helloooooooo!!!”
“…What is it, Minister Vermouth?”
“Aww, come on. That reaction’s so boring.”
When I answered with complete deadpan, she pouted and muttered about how unfun I was being.
…Scared the hell out of me.
From her perspective it might have looked like a casual pop-in, but on my end I had hit pause and needed a solid three subjective hours just to calm down again.
Anyway, I shoved the minor heart attack aside and asked what she actually wanted.
“Nyeheheh~ Of course it’s about that magic powder you requested last time, Minister Arto!”
The moment those words left her mouth, every half-baked request I’d dumped on the Ministry of Technology and Science over the past month flashed through my mind.
“Ah. Minister Vermouth.”
“Yes?”
“If this is a voluntary confession that you’ve been snorting some new powdered narcotic, I’m afraid you’ll need to take that to the Public Security Bureau at the Interior Ministry instead of us.”
Her holographic arms flailed wildly as she squawked in outrage.
“What kind of nonsense is that?! You think I’d call a fellow minister over something as petty as snorting drug powder?!”
Watching her bounce around like a pinball, I simply nodded.
“I’m joking.”
“Uuuugh… okay, you got me.”
Since she’d started the teasing, she had no choice but to shake her head and get to the point.
“Well, pure narcotic concentrate is something I inject for fun whenever I’m bored, so it’s not exactly important news.”
“Wait, what did you just s—”
“Anyway! What I actually came to talk about is the countermeasures for those nano-machines you asked for.”
Something deeply concerning had just slipped out, but the follow-up was far more critical, so I let it slide and focused.
“How did it go?”
“Hmm… to be completely honest? If you try entering a space packed with those things… even the latest battleships won’t last long. They’ll literally melt.”
I couldn’t hide my shock.
“Is that true, Minister Vermouth?”
“Of course it is. Conventional armor plating, the newest neo-plastil alloys, even crystal-coated composite armor—none of it can stop the nano-machines from eating through.”
“But we have shields, don’t we?”
“Shields aren’t invincible. According to the data, if you try navigating an area denser with nanobots than the average gas-molecule concentration in a planetary atmosphere, the shield generators burn out in a few hours at best.”
“…Interesting.”
So shields had that kind of limitation. Nowhere in the setting books…
While I sat in silence processing that, Riel tilted her head beside me.
“Does that even make sense? Ships fly around inside atmospheres with shields up for dozens of days just fine, don’t they?”
I shot Vermouth’s model the same skeptical look. She shook her head as if we were both idiots.
“Of course it makes sense. Nano-machines are basically metal clumps. Their mass is nowhere near comparable to pure nitrogen or oxygen molecules.”
“So you’re saying…”
“Exactly what you’re thinking, Minister Arto. Flying through that space is the same as trying to punch through solid metal.”
Extremely interesting.
[PAUSE]
Even when I ran the Grey Nightmare event, I never got hit with a debuff like that when crossing into that sector of space.
In game terms it would probably be something like hull integrity ticking down in real time the moment you entered the zone, or a flat −50% to armor and hull durability.
I was starting to wonder why, after getting isekai’d into the game, I couldn’t just get the events I actually remembered… but fretting about it now was pointless. I snapped myself back to focus.
[PAUSE RELEASED]
I smoothed my expression and pressed for more.
“So there’s no solution at all?”
“Well… we haven’t tested materials made from the really rare resources yet, but building a ship out of those would cost an absolute fortune.”
“Please finish the remaining tests first. Officially we’re claiming this is for manufacturing nano-machine bombs, after all…”
“Fine, fine. Time and money keep rolling in anyway.”
> Communication terminated.
Once the call ended, I leaned back against the sofa and let out a long sigh.
“Minister, I’ve got a question.”
“Hm?”
“Even if Miss Ash is a powerful asset, do we really need to go this far hunting for her?”
Riel’s words pretty much nailed my current situation. Inside the Foreign Executive Ministry, more than a few people were quietly wondering why I was so obsessed with this particular issue.
Because if we leave it alone, the Grey Nightmare is coming!
From my perspective that was the only sane answer. In the game, the only time a gate connecting to the Grey Nightmare’s space ever opened and then closed again was as the harbinger of the event itself—the same late-game crisis that, like the Warlord, was designed to inject tension into a game that had grown too comfortable.
The real problem was that I had no idea why it was triggering now, or why this new debuff even existed.
Originally, once you obtained Ash, the Grey Nightmare sectors just turned into ordinary star systems that occasionally spat out nano-machines…
But right now it felt like the apocalyptic nano-machine fleets from the game were trying to resurrect themselves. The gate had sealed, chaos was everywhere, and worst of all, every single one of these disasters had started the moment Ash vanished through that gate without warning.
For both me and the Holy Sevelian Empire, losing Ash—a final weapon strong enough to use against the Warlord—was a massive blow to our publicly visible fleet strength. Whether I liked it or not, I had to focus on understanding the situation and recovering her.
Riel, of course, only added a few more words.
“You just like big, huge warships, don’t you?”
“…!”
“I know everything. It’s a man’s romance, right?”
She hit me with the cold, hard truth again. And since she wasn’t entirely wrong, I couldn’t even deny it. I simply buried myself back in my work.
Not long after, the Ministry of Technology and Science finally delivered the answer I had been waiting for.
“Fufufuhn! How do you like our solution?!”
“….”
It just wasn’t anything like what I had expected.
“After every analysis and every test, the only thing capable of navigating a space saturated with those nano-machines… is that!”
Vermouth’s hologram pointed. At the end of her finger stood the still half-repaired, majestic silhouette of the Leviathan-class Super Dreadnought.
“…I see.”