After half a day of tinkering with Aileaf, Cerqin chose the energy storage unit first—the ship’s heart ahead of its claws.

It drew a line between magic devices and Arcanotechnology, two rivers running toward different seas.

Magic devices feed power straight into the spell array with magic crystals, then a mana-gathering array sails alongside, wind pushing canvas.

Arcanotechnology moves differently; big systems fill cisterns first, charging and storing, then use crystals as backup lanterns.

In steady draw, it drinks from stored energy like rain caught in vats, cutting crystal burn.

That’s the sharp edge of Arcanotechnology, a blade that saves coin.

The snag is scale; the larger the device, the broader and knottier its roots, though hulls are flat fields easy to replant.

After sketching the designs, Cerqin ran the numbers; add a mana storage module and upgrade the gathering system, and you halve crystal loss.

That’s a fortune saved, a coin jar heavy as stone.

She also sorted the ship’s mana conduits like veins and set up controls, plus automatic doors blooming open in the common cabins.

Right then Silver Luan surfaced and slipped aboard, bringing back several space rings brimming with raw ore.

“How much do we need?” Cerqin’s voice skittered like a pebble over water.

“Mm… about ten trips?” Silver Luan counted shells in her mind.

“Ah—” Her face darkened like a storm cloud, and she smacked Cerqin on the head.

“Mana-blast mining in the sea is a nightmare—like trying to light a fire in rain.”

“Why hit me…” Cerqin covered her head, eyes brimming like dew, and scooted toward petite Aileaf like a hurt crab.

Silver Luan rolled her eyes like a cresting wave and kept on. “Why so much?”

“That’s a conservative estimate… We don’t have empty space rings. I didn’t think the expedition would wrap this fast. My bracelet’s crammed.”

Cerqin pulled raw ore from her ring and dropped it into the hollow furnace, metal thudding like stones, and signaled Aileaf to pour molten metal.

“This ore’s better than I expected,” she murmured, admiring grain tight as bone.

Silver Luan took the emptied ring, resigned as a gray sky. The crew had said it already: the Black Dragon Battleship is a mid-class warship, not a freighter; its corridors are gills, not granaries.

If they unload the adventure gear from their space kits and stash it on board, they could lighten the nets and trim a few trips.

“By afternoon the fleet should be here,” Cerqin said suddenly, a shoal forming in her mind. “Refit won’t be that fast—two or three days. We’ll toss the sundries onto the other ships. One more run now should tide us over.”

Silver Luan’s hands were a cat’s claws as she pinched Cerqin’s cheeks. “You could’ve said that earlier.”

“Uh… I just forgot…”

Time slipped like sand. Refined magic metal turned to parts, scales glinting on the bench, and with Aileaf’s help a full storage group came together fast.

“Given the Black Dragon’s power, twelve storage groups should do. Any more and we’ve got nowhere to plant them.”

Cerqin checked the blueprints again, then set a one-meter-tall semi-finished module in a shadowed corner like a pale tree, and started the second.

Arcanotechnology’s greatest edge is cost and versatility, blade and bread in one.

Magical items are hard to craft—rare as cranes—and the maker has to be a high-tier practitioner.

Worse, the cost is sky-high, making mass production like handwoven silk—beautiful, but slow.

Hands busy, Cerqin chewed on the expedition’s pinch point. Frustration settled first, fog in the chest; the root was communication in the wild.

Even now, with the danger gone, their message bobbed in surf. Eastern Sea City couldn’t be told; they had to wait for the support team and report per the plan.

If only there were a way to string words across valleys and waves, even simple ones, and reach the city from the field.

The Sanctuary’s simple secret-message method is what most powers use, sparrow-quick and straightforward.

You can send one-way, simple messages from outside to the city, an arrow loosed at dusk.

The snag is the mother-child talisman. The child slip burns once; the mother sheet only receives. The cost drips heavy.

Its strength is moonlight across the ocean—distance and mana weather don’t matter.

Especially mana weather. Arcanotech transmissions are weak tea; they lean on mana, and waves scatter in wind.

Unless you plant fixed nodes like lighthouses between cities, fog eats your signals.

So fixed intercity networks might be Arcanotechnology’s ridge line, as high as it gets.

“If we didn’t use mana…” Cerqin gave a wry smile, a bridge sketched in air. Easy to say, hard to build.

Turning mana into something like Negative Energy means swapping water for sand; the core nature is different and needs ground-up study.

“What’s wrong?” Aileaf’s spiritual force flowed like a quick stream, shaping metal faster than Cerqin’s hands, and she looked up, eyes bright as spring leaves.

“Nothing…”

Knock, knock—two knuckles drummed rain on wood, cutting her thought.

Cerqin paused. “Did the fleet arrive already? That fast.” Noon’s light tilted.

Before work, she’d drawn a line in the sand for crew and knights: don’t disturb her unless urgent or until the whole team arrived.

The support fleet from Eastern Sea City came quicker than migrating birds.

When Cerqin and Aileaf reached the deck, Silver Luan was just climbing aboard, water peeling off her like glass. The three stared at the massive fleet, faces three masks in the wind.

“A battle fleet…”

A dozen-plus medium warships like the Black Dragon Battleship ringed three leviathans, steel whales pressing forward at speed.

“So over the top…”

“Spring Tide’s hand, most likely,” someone muttered, a tide tugged by a far moon.

Imperfect comms had called a storm with a single flare; the emergency signal dragged in this huge battle fleet.

This sea unit could match the Empire’s regular army—waves cut like blades, and the sea bowed.

From afar, Cerqin spotted familiar figures on a large warship’s deck: members of the Holy Maiden’s guard including Qianli, and a high-ranking Divine Officer. The sight lifted and warmed her, a lantern in chest.

After a brisk handover, she laid out the situation stone by stone. Though unexpected, the fleet wasn’t wasted.

Once she shared the plan, the Divine Officer wheeled two of the three large warships home like turning swans.

Warships are poor shovels for deep-sea mining. One large ship with the mid-class squadron is enough as a ring of gulls for perimeter guard.

They’d wait for the Divine Officer to carry word back, let Spring Tide sign off, and then for cargo ships to haul in materials like ants across a pier.

Cerqin wasn’t planning to return. The Sanctuary could force-extract, sure, but the sea-crystal vein should feed Arcanotechnology’s rise, a glittering river under dark waves.

She was the discoverer and the lead; the anchor lay in her hands, responsibility as steady as weight.

More than that, new ideas burned like dawn. Refitting warships was one; raising a steel island on the waves, building a sea platform and a marine base, was the heart of it.