Led by Jin, construction began on the second prototype of the magic-frame style golem.
The concept: achieve high performance using ordinary materials.
It was Jin’s way of honoring the ancient engineers who had pioneered and refined this particular style.
During the process, a report arrived from Laojun.
"My Lord, it appears the investigation of the fortress laboratory ruins has concluded."
"Oh, is that so?"
"Duke Blue and most of her retinue have departed. Only Reiko and the Body Double remain on-site."
"That’s good news."
They had originally traveled to the Fort Phutokes ruins aboard the airship-type Blow Floater Hurricane and a smaller airship owned by Duke Blue. Now, everyone except Jin’s double and Reiko had withdrawn.
"Is anyone else there? Any locals?"
"No, there are none."
"Perfect."
Jin decided to head to the site himself using the Warp Gate installed on the Hurricane. Naturally, he would be taking Rubina, Greena, and Marikka with him.
"Now would be a most opportune time," Laojun added.
"Right."
When Jin turned to the three girls, he saw that they—especially Rubina—practically had the words "I want to go!" written across their faces.
Since they were traveling via Warp Gate, they didn't need much in the way of supplies. However, to maintain their cover as a team of visiting engineers, they donned lab coats and slung shoulder bags over their shoulders.
＊ ＊ ＊
Around 4:00 PM local time, the four of them emerged from the Warp Gate inside the Hurricane.
"Welcome, Father."
Reiko was there to greet them, as expected. In exchange, the Body Double temporarily returned to Hourai Island.
"Well then, shall we go see the fortress... the laboratory?"
"Yes!" Rubina chirped, her voice far louder than the others. Marikka and Greena had answered as well, but their replies were completely drowned out by her enthusiasm.
"This way, please."
Led by Reiko, who had been part of the initial investigation team, the group stepped into the ruins of the fortress.
Jin had already seen Laojun’s reports and the visual data sent by the Body Double, but seeing the site with his own eyes left a different impression.
"It certainly feels its age."
As he looked at the weathering of the stones that formed the corridors—and the fortress itself—Jin felt the heavy weight of the passing years.
"This is the main laboratory."
"Oh...!"
In promotional photos for shops, photographers often use wide-angle lenses to capture as much of a room as possible. While effective at showing the whole space, it has the side effect of making distant objects look smaller, often creating a sense of scale that differs from the naked eye.
Jin’s current impression was much the same.
"I see. It’s spacious, yet somehow intimate. I doubt there were even ten people working here at their peak."
Based on the overall size of the lab, Jin made his assessment.
"I agree, Jin-sama. I'd estimate its capacity at around seven or eight people at most, though five would probably be the most comfortable number," Marikka added, likewise estimating the size of the original team.
"Yeah. Whether they were a small, elite group or they just couldn't find more people, I couldn't say."
Jin looked around the room.
"...I'd like to believe they were well-equipped, at least," he murmured. "If they’d had just a little more... a little more time and a few more hands, they might have been able to perfect this system. It must have been a bitter end for them."
Marikka, Rubina, and Greena couldn't find the words to respond. All three shared the same sentiment.
"Now then, let's see if there’s anything noteworthy left."
Since Duke Blue’s investigation team had already finished their sweep, there shouldn't have been anything obvious left behind. However, Jin and his companions saw the world through different eyes.
They could extract valuable information even from things that looked like mere refuse.
"Not this, not that either..."
"Jin-sama, do you really think we'll find anything?" Greena asked.
"Stop grumbling and keep looking, Greena," Rubina chided.
They were searching for magi-resin.
Specifically, they were looking for residue, scraps, or unrefined raw materials.
It was part of Jin's plan to identify the origin of the ultra-high-performance magi-resin that had so impressed him. While refined magi-resin offered few clues, raw material in its unrefined state could reveal a wealth of information.
For instance, they could identify which species of tree the resin had been harvested from. If that tree only grew in a specific region, it would drastically narrow down their search. Even without that, analyzing the impurities within the resin could help pinpoint a geographic location—simply knowing whether it came from a cold or warm climate would be a significant lead.
Under normal circumstances, such details would be found in research logs, but it seemed those records had been taken or destroyed when the lab was abandoned. Even the Body Double’s thorough search had failed to locate them.
"Hmm, I suppose we'll have to take a shortcut."
An hour into their search, Jin realized they were getting nowhere. He decided it was time to use a magi-device.
Until now, he had insisted on searching by hand as a sign of respect for the anonymous craftsman who had developed this new system. However, he had to admit that they were unlikely to find anything at this rate.
"Jin-sama, what are you going to do?" Rubina asked.
"I'm going to use a magi-device that helps locate specific items."
"What?! If you had something like that, why didn't you use it from the start?!"
Jin offered an explanation for her natural reaction.
"One reason was to show respect to our predecessors. The other is that when you're looking for something by hand, you often stumble across unexpected things other than your primary goal."
In the modern world, one can simply search the internet for an unknown word. But in the past, before computers and the internet, people used dictionaries to look up unfamiliar terms. In the process of searching for a specific word, their eyes would often catch the definitions of other words, expanding their knowledge along the way.
Indeed, while searching for magi-resin, Jin had already found scraps of other materials and fragments of ore. He had even pulled several items resembling handwritten memos from a waste container.
However, he hadn't found even a trace of the "something" related to magi-resin that he needed most.
"Therefore, I’m going to construct a magi-device designed to search for specific objects."
Jin gathered Marikka, Rubina, and Greena to explain his plan.
"What we're looking for is magi-resin—specifically, unrefined resin. We've spent an hour searching and haven't found a single scrap. We're all in agreement on that, right?"
The three girls nodded silently.
"Since we know exactly what we’re looking for, we can build a magi-device that reacts specifically to that substance."
It was similar to the engineering magic Analyze. While it was difficult to make a device react to something completely unknown, it was much easier if one had a sample or a clear understanding of the target.
"In this case, the sample can be the refined version. It’s not as if this place is overflowing with resin, after all."
The logic was similar to the 'Search' function in a text editor. Searching for a single letter like 'a' isn't very helpful, but searching for the word 'apple' narrows the results considerably. From there, it's easy to find what you're looking for.
The effort required is hundreds or thousands of times less than reading through the entire text manually.
This was no different. They would pick out all the magi-resin in the vicinity and then filter for any that contained unrefined components. If they couldn't find it that way, they could safely assume it wasn't here at all.
"The principle makes sense, but how exactly are we going to perform the search?"
Rubina asked the obvious question, but Jin just smiled.
"Don't just ask me for the answer; try thinking it through yourselves. I'll give you ten minutes. While you brainstorm, I'll have the necessary materials sent over from Hourai Island."
With that, Rubina, Greena, and Marikka fell into a deep silence, racking their brains for a solution.