The Will to Live Is My Strongest Skill

A few days earlier.

​Iron watched as the settlers smoothly wrapped up their day's work. Nearby, Elyria hovered in the air, dangling her legs.

​Iron silently followed the movements of Clerk and the others for a while, and then quietly asked:

"Don't you think we're attracting an unusual number of capable people? It happened last time, and now this time... Do you think it's my influence factor kicking in? Or just luck?"

​Elyria snorted, did a somersault in the air, and looked at him with undisguised skepticism:

"Ha! It's just luck, of course! You think far too highly of yourself, Iron."

​The engineer looked at her, but still gave a restrained nod:

​"Let's assume so. But... what about Noah? He wasn't nearly this capable when we first met. Although... you couldn't exactly call him weak when we first met, either."

​"Yep," Elyria agreed, twisting her fingers thoughtfully. "He was already incredibly strong back then."

​Iron shifted his gaze to his right arm, clenching and unclenching the metal palm of his prosthetic.

​"Listen, I'm thinking of getting my biological arm back."

​"Really? Seriously?" Elyria said in surprise, but a second later added sadly:

​"That's cool and all... but I don't want you to get rid of this hunk of metal!"

​"Whether you want it or not, this thing pisses me off," Iron cut her off. "And it's not a 'hunk of metal,' it's a 'Centurion,' for your information. But the problem lies elsewhere: to start regenerating living tissue, I'll need a colossal amount of energy. And not my own, but from an external source."

​"Well, Noah has plenty of mana," Elyria waved her little hand dismissively.

​Iron sharply turned his head toward her in surprise:

​"Are you serious?"

​"Yep."

​"That makes things significantly easier..." Iron muttered, but immediately frowned. "Wait. If he has that much mana, why doesn't he use magic?"

​"He can't just yet," Elyria explained, plopping down on a transparent cushion of air. "He's too tense, rigid, and emotionally closed-off. If his personality softens even a little in the future, he'll be able to use magic without much trouble!"

​She paused for a moment, looking off toward the camp, and added quietly:

​"Well... assuming he's capable of changing at all."

​"Alright, this is all very interesting, of course," Iron interrupted her, steering the conversation back to practical matters. "But how will Noah's mana get into my equipment if he can't channel it himself? Can you act as a conduit and channel his energy into the Bio-Matrix Resonator?"

​Elyria bit her lip thoughtfully, propping her chin on her little fist:

​"Hmm... I probably can. But it won't be easy, so keep that in mind."

​"Well, if you say you can do it, then you can," Iron concluded.

​Present time.

​Iron smoothly decelerated in midair and touched down in front of a dark opening.

​Taking a step forward, Iron began his descent down the steep incline. His feet sank slightly into the loose, crumbly soil, leaving deep footprints.

​The farther he went, the faster the daylight disappeared. A few dozen meters later, absolute darkness closed in around him. Without breaking his stride, Iron snapped his fingers. A faint glow appeared around his left hand: he triggered air ionization and instantly excited the photons in the local space. A smooth, bright sphere of white light formed above his shoulder. It hovered silently in the air and drifted along behind him, perfectly illuminating the path.

​After walking a little further, Iron stepped onto a level clearing inside a giant underground grotto. Earthen rock still dominated the surroundings, but the sheer scale of the space was staggering.

​"Lumon, activate the scanner," Iron commanded mentally.

​A scanning grid swept across the walls and ceiling of the cavern, displaying the structure and chemical composition of the surrounding rock.

​"Alright... In the cave I need stalactites or limestone, hematite, quartz sand, and quartz itself," Iron muttered. "But according to Lumon, this particular cave only contains limestone."

​With a sigh, he adjusted his sleeve:

​"Alright, let's go looking."

​The search dragged on. Iron made his way through winding underground corridors, carefully studying the surrounding structure. Over time, the earthen walls gave way to solid stone. Iron paused periodically, brushing his fingers against the rough rock, reading the density and vibrations within the rock.

​Rounding another corner, he froze. He detected a faint resonance—the movement of water deep within the rock.

​Taking a couple of steps toward the blind stone wall, Iron thrust his right hand forward and pressed his palm against the solid rock. In the next instant, he focused a kinetic impulse and triggered a high-frequency vibration. The rock in front of him vaporized, disintegrating into fine dust hundreds of meters into the rock, opening up a passage.

​Iron stepped into the newly formed tunnel and emerged onto the edge of a giant ledge.

​Before him stretched a colossal, damp limestone chamber. Thousands of stone "icicle" stalactites hung from the ceiling, while massive pyramids of stalagmites rose from the floor.

​"Just what I need," Iron said calmly, scanning the cavern.

​He raised both hands. Forcing vectors of power onto the surrounding space, Iron began neatly slicing and lifting entire slabs of limestone and the strongest stalactites into the air.

​He clenched his fingers, and Iron and the enormous load of rock vanished, reappearing in the village's central plaza, where he dropped everything onto the ground with a heavy crash.

​Iron commanded briefly:

​"Come on, next one."

​A new three-dimensional map unfolded on Iron's retinas. The second location was deep within a mountain gorge.

​Iron snapped his fingers and materialized instantly at the very bottom of a gloomy stone canyon.

​Massive gray cliffs towered all around. Iron walked slowly along the gorge, carefully scanning the rock face. A couple of minutes later, he stopped: running through the middle of a dark, sheer cliff face was a thick, incredibly bright white stripe, looking like frozen lightning or an underground river. A quartz vein.

​"Excellent," Iron whispered, heading along the white vein and deeper into the adjoining cave.

​After walking several dozen meters in complete silence, Iron froze. Lumon highlighted a hidden void behind a stone partition—a sealed natural pocket inside the rock.

​Iron reached out a hand, directing resonance at the wall. With a quiet crack, the stone barrier crumbled.

Inside the cavity grew enormous hexagonal crystals of flawless, transparent rock crystal. They were sharp and pristine, sparkling in the light of his hovering sphere.

​Iron activated his vector fields. The quartz crystals detached from the surrounding rock without a single scratch and smoothly hovered in the air around him.

​After several successive teleportation trips, Iron transported the entire harvested batch of crystal to the village, stacking it near their supplies.

​A short while later, Iron had barely returned to the village from his final run with the quartz when Lumon—without waiting for a command—instantly updated the data, pointing to a new location.

​The very next moment, Iron materialized in another deep canyon, with an underground river rushing along its floor.

​The area was essentially an underground beach. The water washed over the rock, eroding fine particles and leaving behind giant deposits of smooth, delicate yellowish-white sand. In the light of the sphere hovering over his shoulder, millions of microscopic quartz crystals sparkled and shimmered brightly, turning the shore into a continuous, glittering canvas.

​Under Iron's control, kilograms of sparkling quartz sand rose smoothly into the air, forming a dense cloud.

​Iron vanished, and once again he was in the village's central plaza. The massive cloud of sand dropped to the ground with a dull thud next to the rest of the materials.

​Exhaling slightly, Iron thought to himself:

​"...In the end, teleporting my own body is vastly easier and safer than taking people along with me."

​Barely had the last grain of sand settled onto the communal pile of building materials when Lumon projected another three-dimensional map. This time, the marker pointed to a location far beyond the forest.

​Iron studied the map carefully and spoke:

​"Can you give me the coordinates?"

​"Coordinates generated and transmitted to the navigation system," Lumon's even voice chimed in instantly, and a precise string of spatial values flashed in the corner of Iron's vision.

After verifying the received data and ensuring the arrival point was safe, the space around Iron warped, and with a quiet pop, he vanished.

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