Kaijin Fighter: So I Have to Make Monsters, So What? – Chapter 419

=I guess, but…”

=As much as I like flexing my recently engineering knowledge, are you sure it was a good idea to install an aether engine on that ship?=

=But were the pneumatic messenger tubes necessary?=

________________________________________________

“Caw! Caw!”

As morning came and the sun rose over Pearl Tusk Harbor, the cries of seabirds reverberated in the air, heralding the dawn.

“Alright, time to get up and set up shop…fucking hell, no wonder ma said to invest in a building.”

“Is it squid season or salmon season?”

“You spotted that Blue-Tipped Sea Urchin Beast, where?”

Not many people were out and about due to sunlight barely being a thing at this point in the day, but the one who were were either merchants setting up their stalls, or seafolk getting ready to go out fishing or sailing.

Or in the case of a particular captain of a passenger vessel, getting their ship out of the dry docks.

“Ah, what a beautiful morning,” an old sea captain with a salt and pepper beard yawned whilst doing some morning stretches, “hopefully nothing goes wrong today.”

This old sea captain was a man known as Douglas Freeman, or Captain Douglas as was his professional title.

“First order of business is breakfast, and then, getting back to my beloved ship,” Douglas told himself after he finished his stretches and proceeded to go downstairs of the inn he was staying at.

It should be noted that while staying at the inn was a lovely experience, Captain Douglas preferred to be by his ship.

Douglas had been seaman for essentially all of his life, starting as a cabin boy for a merchant vessel in his early years, serving as a sailor in the navy for a spell, until finally becoming the captain of his own ferrying vessel. As far as he was concerned, there was no occupation better than one involving the sea.

However, after his latest voyage across the sea, his beloved vessel, the Nimoma, got attacked by vicious Dire Barnacles.

The average Dire Barnacle was as big as a wagon wheel and had significantly more teeth than an alligator. Luckily, nobody died, but the sheer amount of structural damages done to the ship was so extensive that Captain Douglas had no choice but to bring it into a dry dock to get everything fixed.

It took an excruciatingly long week to do so, but today was finally the day.

All Douglas had to do now was walk to the dry docks and grab his ship.

However, something strange yet amusing had occured on his way there, about half way through.

“Huh? What’s with all of these people standing for? Is someone giving away free pretzels?”

For reasons unclear to Captain Douglas, there was a massive crowd of people gathered directly in front of the entrance of a particular warehouse, one that stuck out.

“Wait a minute…didn’t this warehouse look… significantly different before?,” Douglas asked himself as he walked by the crowd of people staring at the building.

The warehouse in question used to be a fairly simple building made of clay bricks and wood, with a flower painted on the door.

This new building in it’s place was also built of the same stuff, but it looked… different.

The bricks were a deep red hue, the wooden supports were a rich white color while the flower painting that decorated it had somehow change into a whole ass mural depicting a whimsical fairy figure frolicking through a field of flowers.

A couple moments later, a worker exited from the building with a shock yet excitable look on his face.

The others were waiting for the worker to speak, until he finally performed a deep breath and then proceeded to explain everything that he saw inside.

“Guys! The warehouse! It’s like…three times bigger on the inside now! With these chambers of cold air and these crazy floating platforms, but all the original cargo inside appears to have gone missing, but-oh! There’s also a letter!” In his excitement, the worker pulled out a simple letter with a wax seal on it.

Correction, a simple letter that had a wax seal on it. The thing appeared to have broken open before being brought out.

“A letter?”

Curious of the contents of this letter, the people gathered as a member of the crowd that could read began to read the letter aloud.

Its contents were…shocking to say the least.

________________________________________________

To whomever owned this building and the cargo inside,

We are sorry to say but the original building and its contents was destroyed because of a fight that quickly turned from a duel to a riot.

As an apology for what we did, we rebuilt the building and added some improvements that should make storing goods.

Additionally, we weren’t able to provide the correct amount of money to compensate for the loss cargo.

As such, we hope these carefully selected aether art scrolls is enough to compensate for the destroyed goods.

Sincerely,

Ks and Zs

________________________________________________

“Aether arts?,” the man reading the letter aloud repeated with a questioning tone as he stared at the worker who brought the letter.

The man looked confused for a moment before realizing what the reader was referring to.

“Oh! Right! The best part! Come on in guys, you have to see these!”

The worker immediately re-entered the door behind while signalling his co-workers to follow.

The aforementioned co-workers looked a touch confused onto whether it was wise to enter such a strange building, but seeing how one of their own just zipped in and out with no issue, they decided to just go inside.

“Holy shit, it is actually bigger, what the fuck?”

“I guess those are the ice chambers…is ‘refrigerator’ what they are called or the name of the guy who made them.”

“Floating platforms…damn, I feel rich.”

Despite all of these fancy trappings though, the centerpiece for this warehouse of weird fortune was a lacquered box that sat in the middle of the empty warehouse floor.

The sight of the box on the floor gave people treasure chest vibes, whether or not that was a good thing was wholy subjectige.

“Guys, get over! The box ain’t gonna bite, but the contents of it definitely might,” the worker who lead them in joked as he stood next to the box.

The workers gathered around the box, curious as to whether the letter read telling the truth, and waited for their compatriot to open it up.

“Check it out!,” the worker said as he flung open the box lid.

Once everyone saw the content, their jaws dropped.

“One, two… I’m only counting six, I don’t think that’s enough Corporeal arts to cover the cost of all the destroyed fish.”

“Dude, do another sweep of your senses. Those ain’t Corporeal arts, they’re Ethereals!”

“Not only that, they’re all major Ethereal arts!”

“Holy shit…”

For full context as to why the workers were freaking out so much over these six little scrolls, the price of the goods missing need to be compared to the average market value of a major Ethereal art.

The content that was destroyed by these mysterious Ks and Zs were at least six tons of salted fish, several dozen barrels of fish oil and four tons of tea bricks.

This amount of goods had a market value combined of at least thirty thousand gold pieces, a respectable sum that not many people would be able to get their hands on unless they decided to go wandering ruins diving.

Now, it’s very hard to quantify the exact amount of money one would pay for a major Ethereal art, due to them always being sold in auction houses, but the prices could range from fifty thousand gold coins to five hundred thousand.

In essence, whoever turned the warehouse from a dinky little building to a massive storage complex, also compensated the owners of both with at least one hundred times initial value lost.

Many of the workers present had heard of generous rich folks who treated money like water, but they had always assumed them to be a myth.

As the workers stood there gobsmacked, they soon heard a voice coming from the entrance.

“Okay, so my warehouse not only looks real different but my workers have disappeared inside and-what the fuck?!”

“Oh! Hey boss! Come check this out!”

Evidently, the workers and owner of the sunflower warehouse, were going to have to get used to their new working conditions.

On the plus side, the letter they had received included instructions on how everything worked on the back.

“Well then, today is going to be a fun work day.”