Chapter 6 – Getting Ready
Two days had passed since Nolen had crawled out of the magma river. In that time, Romy managed to repair a portion of her stored data—specifically, Earth's historical knowledge up to the late medieval era. It was the easiest to restore, containing useful primitive survival methods that aligned with Nolen's situation.
Compared to the Universal Almanac, a vast archive of Solarai knowledge cataloging thousands of worlds, species, cultures, and technologies, Earth's history was small, simple, and annoyingly primitive. But it was familiar to Nolen, and familiarity was worth more than gold here.
Using this restored knowledge, Nolen and Romy worked together to process the Magma Shark into useful gear.
He improvised tools.
He scavenged.
He applied everything he'd learned in the Xeno Adaptive Survival Protocol, a brutal two-year training course for young Solarai operatives preparing missions on alien worlds.
By the end of the second day, they had fashioned full leather clothing, sturdy gloves, makeshift shoes, two leather packs, and two Leiomano-style weapons: a sword and an axe made from black wood and the shark's teeth.
The design was inspired by ancient Polynesian craftsmanship. Romy recovered from Earth's archives—one of the few cultures that used shark teeth as weapons with deadly efficiency. It was primitive but very effective.
Nolen cinched the straps of his new gear and tested his range of motion. Rough, but usable.
"Alright," he murmured. "Time to move."
Romy's voice flowed into his mind through their direct link.
"I've modified your nanites. They can now cooperate more effectively to repair your body and adapt to this environment. It will assist with healing until my main systems recover.
"Good," Nolen said, stretching stiff muscles. "I do feel cooler. Didn't think I'd ever feel hot again in a place like this."
His body was healing, but he still felt the dull ache from the summoning—muscle fatigue, internal shock, and micro-damage throughout his system. The nanites had been working nonstop to stabilize him.
With his new gear, he moved faster, covering more ground. The magma-shark leather resisted heat exceptionally well, letting him walk closer to the river without worrying about losing a second wardrobe to fire.
"Let's gather more resources," Romy said. "You need protein intake. You still look terrible."
Nolen snorted. "I feel worse than I look. And I miss the food back home."
"We'll survive," Romy said simply. "Our priority is finding civilization. Someone, anyone, who can give us direction."
"Easy for you to say," Nolen grumbled. "You're just hitching a ride inside my body, Romy. Must be comfy in there."
"You're hilarious. Truly," she deadpanned. "In case you've forgotten, I can't leave your body until I repair my ability to generate an external crystal unit. But yes—sorry for prioritizing our survival, sir."
Nolen rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. Fair."
Hours passed as the two continued their trek down the river's edge. Eventually, Nolen settled onto a small rocky ledge overlooking a calmer section of magma. He dropped his pack and let his tired body sink into the warmth of the stone.
The magma river gurgled soothingly—strangely peaceful for something capable of killing anything in seconds.
He rubbed his back. His legs throbbed. His shoulders burned.
"So this is how Knight Shadow felt," he muttered. "Keeping up with superhumans while being just… human. Her armor never boosted strength or speed. It only gave abilities. Everything else she did was sheer will."
He winced. "Haven't felt pain like this since my XASP cadet training."
He shifted, thinking back on something he'd discovered yesterday. The Artisan title.
A production-type job ability that acted like a skill accelerator.
If he saw a technique, read about it, or practiced it with his hands, his body learned rapidly.
When he carved the shark hide, his proficiency shot upward.
When he gathered materials, he leveled that skill, too.
When he crafted armor and weapons, his hands moved smoothly, sharper, more intuitively.
It wasn't magic, well, it was magic, but it felt like some kind of game mechanic made real.
Romy noticed this and began analyzing the phenomenon.
During the summoning itself, when Nolen's senses were numb and her systems overloaded, she had still managed to scan the stone tablet the Princess used. The data was fragmented, corrupted, but recognizable. Enough for Romy to reconstruct how the tablet functioned and what energy it measured now that she can.
"Their tablet that I scanned was a translator essentially," Romy said, voice crisp. "It reads ambient magical signatures, your essence, your actions, your potential, and interprets them into titles, stats, and skills. Primitive but elegant. I've integrated the scan fragments into your system. I can monitor your growth internally now without those heavy objects."
"So, you can show my stats without their stone?"
"With reasonable accuracy. You may consider it… a portable version."
Nolen tossed a stone absentmindedly in the lava river that he had picked up.
"This world's physics says, 'stats exist,' and you're just… okay with that?"
"Adapt or malfunction," Romy replied. "I choose adaptation."
Together, they tested his new abilities throughout the day. Nolen found he could "focus" on an object and intuitively understand its properties—what it was made of, how to use it. It wasn't omniscience, but it was like a beginner-level appraisal skill enhanced by Romy's processing power and Earth's primitive crafting knowledge.
New knowledge popped into Nolen's head in short bursts of techniques, methods, and ideas, each refined as Romy ran alongside his thoughts with her own idea.
"Convenient little world," Romy mentioned.
"What else can I do? These skills keep leveling. Feels like I'm getting stronger."
"There are multiple energy signatures in this region," Romy replied. "We must stabilize your body before attempting to interact with them."
"Fine," Nolen sighed. "We've covered a lot of ground already. Let's rest before we push farther."
He leaned back, staring at the ash-clouded sky.
The world was harsh and strange, even Deadly, but somehow beautiful and exciting.
But what's important is that he needed to survive it.