I was able to reach a dramatic agreement with the girls after proving my worth.
For whatever reason, they had realized I possessed considerable value, but I argued that I could be used far more efficiently than if they simply sold me off.
Clink, clank
"Good grief."
One week into this one-sided cohabitation, and the fact that I was now busier than I could handle was ultimately a disaster of my own making.
Cooking every mealtime, building up the settlement whenever I had a spare moment, crafting tools for gathering resources, and even tending the nearby wild plants on top of it all.
Strange... I definitely came here on vacation, so why am I even busier now...?
"Pola."
"Yes."
Thud
Green Shark, who had been gathering resources outside, came back and tossed something at me.
"Broken."
"...Again?"
The recycled pickaxe I had made for her half a day ago out of the last of the pod wreckage and some branches had returned in a horrifying state.
There was nothing left of that pod now. I had even stripped off its exterior panels, and the scrap metal was completely gone.
I could only hope Green Shark had mined enough iron ore before even that ran out.
"More importantly, my name is Polaris..."
"Too long. Pola."
"Yes, ma’am."
Being called by a nickname as a grown man rather than a teenager generally carried a powerful sense of embarrassment.
But Green Shark did not care about such things at all. She called me Pola as though she were giving a beloved pet an affectionate name.
Is that all right?
Being called by a pet name meant we were that close, did it not? Though it strongly felt like she was marking me as hers.
I had heard Marmotte made a huge fuss because Green Shark kept calling her a rat.
Ah. Was that why she had been sulking at first?
"Come to think of it, where’s Marmotte?"
"Errand."
Then I noticed a small bundle that had followed in behind Green Shark.
"Huff... huff...."
"Rat. Weakling."
"You’re... huff... just too strong...."
Marmotte was carrying less than a quarter of Green Shark’s load on her back, yet she looked like she was struggling four times as much.
For someone with the body size of a ten-year-old at most, it was admirable that she had carried that much. But Green Shark seemed thoroughly dissatisfied.
"Phew. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for you to carry it yourself?"
"I’m busy enough already."
Honestly, cooking alone left me without enough time. I ate breakfast, then prepared lunch; ate lunch, then prepared dinner.
Green Shark ate an absurd amount. Just preparing meals consumed the whole day.
So despite calling it a settlement, we had not even built private rooms. We had merely added a few beds in a hurry to the shelter we built at the start.
And we were not even properly using those.
"Then at least let me do some research and development...!"
"After we build the generator."
We had only just put in a table and chairs, furnishing the place, but I boldly skipped ahead to lay the groundwork for generating electricity.
Fortunately, the implant installed in my brain let me pull up existing blueprints from the Middle Realm, so I had been making plans for various things. But as I had just said, there simply was not enough time.
I did build a wooden research bench after Marmotte kept pestering me, but I already possessed basic knowledge of electrical engineering. More importantly, knowledge was useless when we had no electricity.
That was why Marmotte had insisted on helping with hauling and gone out with Green Shark.
[Comfort: 0%]
[Discomfort: -3]
And as one could see, the result was this. Marmotte’s small body made outdoor work quite difficult.
To begin with, this sort of simple labor was nearly the same as having no aptitude at all for Marmotte, a specialist in research and medicine.
I wondered how such a species had survived at all, but Ratkin were a social species that formed groups, and Marmotte was especially frail because she came from a laboratory.
At least, when it had only been the two of them, she had served as Green Shark’s external brain....
Stroke, stroke
"Urgh."
I endured Green Shark’s rough hand as she petted me.
Surviving in the wild did not require such advanced knowledge to begin with, and Green Shark apparently liked me. Marmotte’s position had become precarious.
Frankly, Marmotte really had tried to sell me, so it was hard not to hold that against her.
Still...
"Uuugh...."
Her ears and tail drooped visibly.
Seeing her like that weakened a man’s resolve.
She was just the right size to hold close and pet, like I was currently being held and petted in Green Shark’s arms.
.
.
.
"It’s nice that the rat is quiet today."
"Um... Green Shark’s bed is over there."
"So?"
"Never mind."
Marmotte pressed a pillow firmly over her ears, trying to ignore the rustling from the bed beside her—a single bed.
Enough was enough. Green Shark had now invaded the bed itself and was lying there hugging him tightly.
She was not actually doing anything because they were all in the same barracks, but even that alone was enough to sour Marmotte’s mood.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go....
Marmotte acted smart, but even she, having spent almost her entire life in a laboratory, was unfamiliar with men.
And a capable man, at that. That was cheating.
To Green Shark, who covered her ears as if she did not want to listen whenever anyone explained more than three lines, Polaris—who handled things himself, was reasonably intelligent, and capable—appeared more to her taste than Marmotte, who meddled in every little thing.
Hmph.
Even the medical knowledge she did possess had no opportunity to be put to use.
Pola only did housework, so he had no chance of getting hurt, while Green Shark the Neanderthal was tough enough to leap right back up after being shot as long as the bleeding was stopped, giving Marmotte no opening to intervene.
Her limbs were not bound, yet there was nothing she could do.
Marmotte felt as though she had been locked in a laboratory again.
.
.
.
Building a very simple settlement.
Green Shark gathered this and that, and I processed it. We repeated that over and over.
Overflowing with strength, Green Shark uprooted entire trees. Whenever I tried to make her even stone tools, she would break them within half a day while collecting all sorts of things.
It was physically exhausting, but surprisingly enough, it suited my temperament well enough to be enjoyable.
[Minor Mental Break Warning: Marmotte]
If there was a problem, it was this one.
Yesterday, she tried to treat a splinter lodged in my finger by performing an incision, extraction, and suturing. Green Shark had suppressed her—physically—and now she was thoroughly cowed.
After one failure after another, Marmotte was simply doing nothing.
Crackle, crackle
"Burning nicely."
"Warm."
Even amid all that, our progress continued smoothly.
Once we burned the abundant trees nearby to make a crude furnace, we were able to smelt steel.
The recreation of the Iron Age!
What? Now we should make a diamond pickaxe?
"Why not go kill an Ender Dragon while you’re at it?"
"A dragon. Never killed one yet."
I shuddered at the confidence implied by Green Shark, despite the fact that I had clearly been joking.
According to the tech tree, this was the stage where iron swords and iron armor ought to appear. But the blueprints stored in my brain implant contained a technological revolution capable of skipping straight past the medieval era.
"It’s done."
That was the generator.
Electricity was the source of all power. With adequate generating facilities and batteries, an industrial revolution would follow.
The internal combustion engine was ready, so using the chemfuel from the boomalope we had killed on the first day would make this easy.
"No more feeding firewood into the campfire every night!"
Click
While Green Shark was out gathering, I vigorously flipped the switch on the handmade generator.
Fuel flowed adequately into the internal combustion engine, sparks flew, explosions occurred, and the turbine began spinning, turning rotational energy into....
"Huh?"
Silence—
But nothing happened.
Was something wrong? I checked the blueprint again.
It was a handmade, improvised device manufactured in the field, so its specifications might not have been perfect, but it should not have been defective enough to be fatal.
"It should either explode or work. How can it not even start at all?"
The fuel was from a boomalope, so that was not the issue.
Boombalopes had been genetically engineered with great precision for chemfuel production. Even if they had adapted to the local environment, too little time had passed for them to evolve enough to alter the fuel’s composition.
The fuel was fine, and there was nothing wrong with the blueprint.
Then I had a rough idea what the issue was. Time to put on a convincing act.
"Oh no. What. Could. Be. Wrong?"
Twitch
The ears peeking out from inside the shelter flicked sharply.
"A generator built to standard Middle Realm specifications. Isn’t working?"
If the fuel and blueprint were both fine, then the problem had to lie in the combustion process.
Combustion was ultimately a type of oxidation reaction, which required an adequate supply of oxygen.
"Hmm. I wish there were someone who could help me."
"I suppose I have no choice!"
Marmotte crossed her arms haughtily, but her tail swished vigorously as she sidled closer.
"Hmph, I knew you couldn’t manage it on your own, did I not?"
She ambled over and examined the generator blueprint. Then she pointed to a spot.
"The oxygen concentration is too low to run the engine. You need to increase the supercharger output."
"I see."
I had forgotten because I had no trouble breathing, but this planet was, in every sense, alien to me.
Even if it had been terraformed for habitation, its atmosphere did not perfectly match that of my home planet.
With Marmotte’s help, I compressed the air, and only then...
Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble
"It worked!"
"Wow!"
The generator began running with a fierce roar, and Marmotte hopped up and down in celebration.
[Burning Passion: +14]
One could call it a happy ending of sorts.
.
"Hey, Marmotte."
"What?"
"It’s cramped."
Three people were now crowded onto the single bed in our tiny barracks.
It was originally my bed, but Green Shark was behind me, snoring as she held me in her arms.
Marmotte had her face buried deeply against my chest.
"You’re the big one."
Having taken over someone else’s bed, she made that excuse with shameless audacity.
Still, perhaps because she had cheered up, her sharp tone had softened somewhat.
"Is that so?"
"It is."
I stroked Marmotte’s head.
It was wonderfully soft and fluffy.
"....Pola."
I was not certain, but I thought I heard that just before falling asleep.
-----
Today’s average for the frontier worlds.
Assign work priorities according to passion.
Except firefighting.
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