The Boss, who always had a scary face, opened his eyes wide in surprise, a rare sight. That was understandable; the magius engine exists because it was impossible for a person to keep up with the script processing. Doing the processing by yourself goes beyond common sense. Dietrich who experienced the movement of Guyale firsthand aside, no one could have stopped the Boss’ expression from turning doubtful. Dietrich’s expression, on the other hand, turned sharp.
“... Even if I believe everything you said is true, then what? What does it have to do with this fellow breaking apart because of mana depletion?”
“I took the place of the magius engine, which meant I could control all functions of the machine freely. When I was delivering the final blow to the Behemoth, I turned off the safety device, using all my remaining mana in that attack. In the end, I accidentally used up the mana that was keeping the structure intact.”
“Damn it! How do you want me to resolve the issue that way!! The limiter was meant to keep the mana from depleting completely!”
The Boss had a stern tone, but he could only shake his head at Eru’s recklessness. He breathed out a sigh that was exceptionally heavy, and gave up on lecturing Eru.
“That might be so, but I am the only one who can control it that way, so you are not in a hurry to solve this, right?”
“Of course, it would be a disaster if it could be done easily!! Forget it. And the crystal tissue snapping from fatigue was related to you, too, right? No, you broke it right?”
“You are right… But being told that in my face still makes me unhappy.”
“Can it, so it really is your fault!!”
“That was the burden of full control. Guyale was under an abnormal amount of strain and broke. This made our situation desperate, too.”
“You… After replacing it with new parts, it should operate smoothly for more than a month. But you broke it in just one battle…”
The Boss couldn’t help looking up and covering his forehead with his palm. At this point, he couldn’t do anything about it. The work on hand was already a headache, but he noticed the possibility of something worse happening.
“Hey, wait. Boy, if you get serious, would all the machines you pilot get destroyed?”
“The possibility is high. The Karrdator operated by the Knights has better crystal tissue, so it would probably last longer.”
So it’s a problem of bearing the load-- Eru grumbled casually. The Boss glanced at him through slitted eyes and his face turned sour.
“Tch! If I don’t improve this, I would lose face as a craftsman. That might be so, but I can’t solve the problem immediately.”
Speaking of which, pilots that would be so reckless were unheard of, so it’s natural for the solution to not exist. Anyway, this was not a problem this facility could tackle. Finding an answer to improve the design was not something you could settle it in one day.
The repairs would be left for later, the research to solve this issue would be done later -- the Boss secretly came up with a plan. Unfortunately, there was someone who treats unrealistic options as something normal.
“If that is so, I just happen to have a great idea! And there is no downside to it-- the most important thing right now is increasing the toughness of the crystal tissue, right?”
That person was Eru. He raised his hand cheerfully, saying something shocking in a loud voice.
“Huh? Increase the toughness of the crystal tissue? That is easy to say, but how long do you think alchemists spent researching that? In fact, there has been no breakthrough for the past hundred years.”
“Ah, no. When I say increasing toughness, I am not referring to the crystal tissue itself. I lack the expertise on alchemy anyway, so I want to work on the way crystal tissue is ‘used’.”
In the face of the people who were popping out question marks because of the term ‘used’, Eru used this chance to explain:
“Here is how an old story goes: ‘One arrow is easy to break, but it is hard to do so when three of them are tied together’. Which means…”
His proposal was to bind several crystal tissue together in the form of a ‘rope’, By combining the weak individual strands together, the toughness could be increased. By braiding it together, it could improve its elasticity compared to longer strands and enhance power output.
“... I call it ‘strand crystal tissue’. What do you think?”
Eru was brimming with smiles, like a salesman concluding his pitch. Following this, he braided the crystal tissue on the spot and presented the flexible ‘rope’ for everyone to see.
The twins didn’t seem to understand, just accepting everything Eru said. Batson and the craftsmen present reacted very strongly.
The Boss picked up the crystal tissue with a slow and deliberate motion and studied it. He started shaking his hand and then fell deep into thought. With his past experience of attempting to improve the Silhouette Knight, he wanted to say something, but gave up after failing to find the words. The Boss sighed and said: