Is This What They Call Crafting?
...This is crafting?
“The floating ships?”
“Yes.”
A small desert near Black Moon Territory. Under the relentless blaze of the sun, Vlack swung his greatsword in wide arcs, then drew the blade back to his side.
I had visited Black Moon to hear the opinions of other guilds before seeking out the Magic Engineering Guild. But Vlack, the guildmaster, had summoned me out to the desert for a brief moment of recharge between duties, and since he was a busy man, he'd promised to stop by the guild directly later.
He seemed to be putting Pharaoh's Greatsword—the one I'd given him—to good use.
“Floating ships built by the Magic Engineering Guild, you say. Black Moon watches those acquisitions closely. If we had them, the difficulty of our raids would drop considerably.”
However.
“The problem, as always, is the price. We could afford a few small-class ships, but anything beyond that... I wonder if it wouldn't be reckless spending.”
“Are the ships really that good?”
“They are.”
Shiing.
Vlack raised his greatsword once more. Solar energy seeped into the golden blade, and the aura radiating from it grew even thicker.
“If I may speak frankly, the mere fact that they can 'craft' ships of that caliber strikes me as over-balanced. Even a mid-class vessel is practically Mythic-grade.”
If it had simply been classified as a hidden piece—a one-of-a-kind drop—it wouldn't have caused much of a stir. But they could manufacture them. Dozens of small-class ships, several mid-class, and a single large-class one.
And all of it had come into existence within just two months...
“I can't say exactly how much resource they're consuming, but I suspect they'll be able to produce more on top of what they have.”
“So it's not just the quality—it's the sheer quantity.”
“Exactly. And yet they're selling them at near one-of-a-kind prices, which puts us in a difficult position.”
“What will Black Moon do?”
“For now, we intend to purchase around two small-class ships for our elite members. They're too expensive to ferry ordinary guild members around in, and some of our elites have outstanding attack power but suffer heavy environmental restrictions.”
So in the end, whatever anyone said, there were people who needed saving. A streamer with Vlack's standing among guildmasters probably wouldn't find the purchase too painful. And yet even he wore a faintly dissatisfied expression.
“You'll likely get the same reaction wherever else you go. The prices are high, but not buying feels wrong—and they're not exactly generous with discounts, either.”
“Hmm... I see. Thank you.”
I really did need to pay the Magic Engineering Guild a visit.
“By the way, about the Black Destroyer, I was wondering if I could—”
“That one's mine.”
“.......”
A massive city in the east.
“Over there! Move it, faster!”
“It's enormous.”
“I said hustle! Move, move!”
Along the city's outskirts, colossal black-brown gears the size of buildings turned in slow rotation, meshing together to drive the mana stones. The blue stones blazed with light as they channeled that power into a host of magitech machinery.
Countless workers streamed beneath the gears, hauling something with all their might. Everything they carried was ferried to the shipyard, where it fed into the construction of a truly massive vessel.
Whoooong...!
Whiiiiine~
The shipyard's entrance. Small-class ships drifted through the sky overhead while the ground below was buried under mountains of fabrication components. A ship large enough to swallow a castle whole loomed in full grandeur.
Its outer hull was built of ironwood, a special material that soaked up mana, and even a cursory sweep of the surface revealed an immense circuit structure woven through it. This was no mere machine circuitry—magical circuits were interlaced throughout. A true product of magic engineering.
“The mana stone...”
And there it was. A crystalline mana stone several times larger than a small-class ship was embedded in the vessel's center, with thousands upon tens of thousands of circuit lines radiating out from it.
In its current state, I doubted anyone could parse the design without direct contact. Even I couldn't.
It really is big, though.
From my earlier glance around: the small-class ships were little more than ferry-sized dinghies, the mid-class were ordinary small vessels by naval standards—and this large-class ship was absolutely enormous, roughly the size of two castles.
“Hey! What do you think you're doing!”
Kiiiiiing!
Thud! Thud!
A man with a mechanical arm came stomping over, visibly furious. A gear set with a mana stone at its hub was spinning rapidly at his shoulder, and from his attire he looked like one of the supervisors overseeing part of this vessel.
For the record, I was disguised as an ordinary user with my power suppressed. My displayed level was in the 50s and 60s—a touch high for a laborer here, but not so much that it raised eyebrows.
“Am I not allowed to look around?”
“No. Hands off right now and get back to your station.”
“And where would my station be?”
“You didn't check with the crew chief? Slacking off already—tsk! Stay right there!”
The man punched a few commands into his mechanical arm, and a magical hologram bloomed in the air before him. It displayed the faces and records of countless workers. He was searching for me.
I had registered under this exact appearance at the labor office outside the city before coming here.
“Let's see... There you are—the parts storage room. Get moving!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Honestly, how did you even get in here...”
He's surprisingly unsuspicious.
No matter how you looked at it, the overseers were residents, not users—yet here I was, having pushed all the way into the heart of the facility, and he'd sent me back to my station without a shred of doubt. Did they have some reason to feel secure?
With that thought, I headed for the parts storage room.
“So it's real.”
Vmmmmm...! Clang!
At the fork where the corridor split toward the parts storage room and the power control room, a steam golem a good twenty meters tall stood towering, staring down at everything below it. The golem glared at every passerby with its single blue eye, and an immense power pulsed from the blue mana stone embedded in its chest.
Its sheer presence far surpassed a Low-grade World Boss. Well, of course it did—they were building ships worth tens of billions. It would be stranger if they didn't have security robots like this.
I'd love to test it out.
I'd fought golems before, but I'd never seen a steam golem bristling with mechanical gears like this one. Granted, with magic blended halfway into its workings, it could hardly be called a pure machine—but still, it was a first for me.
I stared at the golem for a long moment, then turned away with a twinge of regret. I'd snuck in precisely because I figured a proper, official visit wouldn't get me the full tour. My purpose here, after all, was simply verification.
What is it built from, that it costs this much?
Whatever the price tag said, these were creations of the Magic Engineering Guild—I had no intention of copying or stealing their technology. But I did need to see it for myself. Only then could I decide how to deal with them.
Inside the parts storage room, dozens of workers were already gripping various components, inspecting them for defects, and hauling them off. Most were residents; users were a rare few. Judging by their gear, they looked less like users active elsewhere and more like players operating out of the kingdom this territory belonged to.
I casually slipped in among them and hoisted one of the machine components. To the eye, it was just a part with a few magic formulas worked into it.
Is there really any need for humans to carry these?
Frankly, judging by this floating ship I was standing in and that steam golem from earlier, they could easily build an automated factory. No need for elaborate facilities—blend in a suitable amount of magic and transportation becomes trivially easy. A single mage of level 70 or 80 could replace the labor of a thousand workers here.
Moreover, for a ship this expensive, the parts had to be costly too. Yet there was no special surveillance whatsoever—they just let people haul them around like this. Something about it felt off.
“Huh.”
When I pried the component open a little, I found a peculiar seal inscribed on the inside. A golden gear encircled by a blue magic circle. And the form of that circle was—
The Adsorption Formula. That's not a formula meant for machines.
It wasn't some liquid or plant-based enchantment. Why on earth would such magic be embedded in precision machinery?
A little dumbfounded, I examined the other components as well—every single one bore the same inscription.
I activated Stealth and slipped out of the parts storage room, tailing the workers as they carried armfuls of components out. The parts were handed off to a pair of five-meter steam golems guarding the entrance, and the golems carried them into a restricted zone where entry was impossible.
Whoosh.
A sensation of passing through some other space. I scanned my surroundings briefly, then continued after the golems.
And so I discovered this ship's utterly absurd method of “construction.”
CRASH!!
At the unfinished stern of the ship. In a place empty of people and packed with nothing but golems, the machines simply flung the component crates inside.
Clunk! Clang! Clunk!
The parts shimmered with blue light, seeped into the hull, and began rapidly filling in the missing sections. Fresh gears, machinery, and magic wove together in exquisite harmony, and piece by piece, the ship built itself.
“...This is crafting?”
It was a fabrication method beyond anything I had imagined. That they called this crafting and sold it—and that they kept all those laborers on payroll—was honestly impressive. In a dark sort of way.
It was surely all sleight of hand. To sell this ship at such an exorbitant price, they'd needed to put on a surface show of genuine construction.
This is closer to summoning magic than crafting.
It was a kind of summoning—pouring in a resource called magic components to manifest portions of the ship's form. I couldn't say running things this way was inherently bad, but... hmm. I honestly couldn't tell whether this was worth tens or hundreds of billions.
This was part of a hidden piece, sure—but it wasn't as though they'd achieved some breakthrough of their own genius to produce it, and it wasn't an invincible war machine that justified the cost either.
I picked apart the magic formulas flowing along the walls a little longer, then rose from my spot. I'd learned everything I came to learn. Now I'd pay them an official visit and make my propos—
“The Veil of Blockade? A Bandit, are you?”
“?!”
BOOM!!
The steam golem's fist came smashing down on me.