1.
[Seren de Lumiere]: Yes... then please do it....
[Seren de Lumiere]: I-I'll be in your care.
Yuna's negotiation had worked well.
In the end, we got permission.
Since I had received permission to make it, I thought it was only right to be transparent and provide it openly.
There was one sticking point, though: I couldn't design the equipment's effects from start to finish.
Sometimes its performance turned out even better than expected, and while the intended direction would be reflected, I wouldn't know the precise specs until I actually unveiled it.
I'd have to explain that part once it was finished.
"...Then."
Time to begin.
I rose from my seat and stretched hard.
Then I went outside the workshop and rewrote the sign hanging on the door.
[I'm starting work!]
[I think it'll take about a month and a half.]
[ ]
This was a promise I'd made with Dolores.
When I shut myself away in the workshop, no one knew when I would come back out, and it apparently felt like they were waiting indefinitely.
She also said she wanted the blank space below to be somewhere she could leave me messages.
Basically, it was a mama comment section.
Yeomhwa, Isabella, and Ruby would probably use it too.
The moment I hung the sign back up...
Tap.
"Huh."
Dolores came flying over from somewhere.
I knew she had returned from the Tower... Had she been watching this place?
"Lionel."
As soon as Dolores reached me, she scooped me up and hugged me to her chest.
"Ah."
She gently brushed my bangs aside, then squished both my cheeks.
I was receiving plenty of encouragement.
Kiss.
Dolores lightly kissed my cheek and gazed deeply into my eyes.
I thought that was the end of it, but...
"Lionel, do your best this time too, all right?"
She set me down, then stood in front of the workshop, gently waving as she waited for me to go inside.
"...I'll be back."
"All right. Don't push yourself too hard."
Fidgeting with my ears, which had grown warm for no reason, I entered the workshop.
To be honest, there was something I had been a little worried about before starting the Company.
'Do you really have to make equipment for outsiders?' I had wondered if Dolores might say that.
After all, from Dolores's perspective, equipping other climbers meant aiding her competition, didn't it?
And if Dolores had asked that of me...
I probably wouldn't have made it.
Even so, I could only be grateful that she had encouraged me and pushed me to try what I wanted to do.
In a way, I was the beneficiary of Dolores's patronage.
Which meant...
Seren coming to me was one hell of a coincidence.
'I'll make your teammate some great equipment.'
Let's do this.
First, I had the bundles of Elastic Thread I had already made.
And I had driven wedges into the Pulse Iron, split it all apart, and shaped the pieces into hexagons.
Preparations were complete.
Now I had to weave every single one of these fingernail-sized hexagonal fragments together with thread.
Click.
I turned the workbench light all the way up.
"First."
This would be a completely different method from anything I had done before.
Ordinary equipment would have been finished right here on this workbench.
Whether it was a bracelet, an emblem, or even a rose, I could complete them all on this bench.
But what I was making this time was armor.
Garment-like equipment that covered the wearer's entire body.
The First Form—the base form that would serve as the foundation of every form—had to fit the wearer's body perfectly.
Armor that fit perfectly only while you stood still but became uncomfortable whenever you moved... I considered that a prison.
"Yuna, hologram."
[Okay.]
Something blue spread out before my eyes, and soon a hologram silhouette in the shape of a woman's body appeared.
Large breasts, a narrow waist, wide hips, long limbs—everything.
In other words, a holographic mannequin modeled after Seren's body based on the measurements she had sent me appeared before me.
Who would have strange thoughts looking at a mannequin?
This wasn't harassment. It was setup for a perfect fit.
Seriously.
"Can you use the combat footage to reproduce her most frequent movements as holograms?"
And a static mannequin was useless.
Seren's most common stances, the motions she used most when swinging her sword, her evasive movements.
The hologram before me followed Seren's movements.
The armor had to remain comfortable through every possible motion.
[Joint settings are complete.]
[But there's one part you messed up. The breast morphing isn't based on Seren's unique measurements. I referenced Dolores's, so it could be a little differen—]
"That much is fine."
Mama and Seren... seemed almost the same size.
Okay.
Up to here, this was just a hologram.
I would make a mannequin based on that hologram, one with real joints and the same range of motion as Seren.
Then, if I placed and attached the hexagonal pieces one by one over the mannequin...
That would be both the beginning and the end of this equipment.
"Starting with White Iron."
I took a White Iron ingot from the storage room, melted it down, and set it on the workbench.
First, I needed to make the mannequin's skeleton, but there was no need to reproduce human bones exactly.
I only had to pay attention to the joints.
Clang! Clang!
A long silver rod lay on the table.
Now I needed to make the shoulders and the other joints...
Back in the world where I had lived, artificial joint technology had been highly advanced.
So, using designs Yuna knew...
Clack.
All I had to do was connect the joints one by one to make the mannequin's frame.
Clack.
I raised its arm.
"Not bad."
This was enough. The armor mattered more than the mannequin.
A silver frame stood upright in the middle of the workshop.
Now I needed to add flesh... and clay seemed like the right material for the mannequin, since it came closest to the feel of skin and flesh.
Though it was brown, of course.
Press...
Yuna projected the hologram beside the frame.
I pressed and layered clay onto it to match.
"...Ah, fuck."
I had made it sound easy, but I was recreating a human body from the start.
And it wasn't as though Seren had an ordinary figure, either.
Objectively speaking, she had every feature that would make you believe God had played favorites. Just shaping it by hand took me several full days.
Squish...
And at last, the mannequin was complete.
"...I made it well."
I stepped back several paces and looked at the mannequin.
While making it, I understood Pygmalion's feelings a little... Not that I was saying I had fallen for a mannequin.
Tap.
When I lifted its arm, applying force to it, the joints followed along perfectly.
Seeing Seren's movements, which Yuna had shown me, reproduced exactly...
Now I would be able to check where the armor caught, no matter what movement it made.
It was pretty decent. I hadn't worked out the finer details, but it was quite well-made.
In the dark, it might even look like a real person.
"What do you think, Yuna? Are you interested too?"
I figured things might be different if it was Kim Yuna rather than Galatea.
I asked with a playful grin.
[....................]
"...Huh?"
What was that?
Unlike usual, Yuna gave no response at all.
What was with this sudden awkward silence?
It was the first time Yuna had failed to answer me, so cold sweat trickled down my back as I...
"A-Ahem. Next."
Moved on.
Now.
All I had to do was weave the pieces spread out across the workbench together one by one with Elastic Thread... then adjust and place them over the mannequin.
Crack.
As I turned my head and stretched, a strange sound came from my neck.
"?!"
[Huh...?]
"That scared the shit out of me too."
That wasn't a sound that should come from a kid's neck...?
I immediately did Kim Yuna's special full-body stretching routine to loosen up my stiff body.
"Give me an alert every thirty minutes."
[Okay.]
Plop.
I sat down and picked up one of the pieces.
I began threading the Elastic Thread, one strand at a time, into the grooves on the back of the hexagon.
I would be keeping my head lowered for a while.
Regular stretching was essential.
Then, at around four in the morning the next day.
Five hours after I began, after doing Yuna's stretching routine around ten times, I came to a realization.
"...This is bad."
Out of the seven thousand hexagonal pieces I had prepared, I had only connected two hundred with Elastic Thread.
Calling this the highest difficulty level ever wasn't an exaggeration at all.
Then ten days passed.
I sat in front of the workbench for seventeen hours a day.
Surprisingly, I never lost focus.
Why?
Because the moment I lost focus, the damn thread wouldn't go into the groove.
Slip...
"Ah, fuck."
I got distracted again and couldn't get it through.
Who the hell made these grooves so small?
[......]
"......"
Realizing I was only hurting myself, I decided I should just keep my mouth shut and sew.
One, then another.
[6,999....]
And the last one.
[Congratulations!!!!!!!!!]
[7,000 achieved ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
"Ah."
I'm fucking exhausted.
And right on cue.
Ding-dong.
[Your auction purchase has arrived.]
"It's here."
I had asked Yuna to bid on some Resonance Stones while I was working.
Apparently, they sold them at the auction house too.
I caught the Resonance Stone as it fell out of thin air, finely crushed and ground it into powder...
Then sprinkled it over the Elastic Threads and rubbed it in with my fingertips.
After confirming that the powder clung to the threads twisted together to link the pieces, I said,
"Okay."
Preparation for activation was complete.
Next... I had to assemble the armor.
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