“You’re trying to commit suicide?”

“What? No! I’m going to live!”

“But nothing survives in the Deep Dark.”

“Well, the Jzanna can.”

“Eh-nothing other than a species that grows to eat whole planets can live in the Deep Dark.” Leete corrected.

“Well not anymore!” Kohn was a little worried, but his excitement coupled with all the water sealed tests pushed that into a deep corner in his mind. “With this new suit you’re now going to be able to send people out to fight the Jzanna, repair ships, or do whatever!”

“This little prototype of yours will fail horribly and you’ll die.”

It was a little hard to tell whether Leete was concerned or preparing to say ‘I told you so’ when he died.

“Nah.”

“Even if this does work, how do you plan to get to the asteroids to get the material we need?”

“We’ve designed short burst magic into the feet that will allow me to control the direction that I go in.” He didn’t add in the part that he added on in his head.

‘I hope anyway.’

It was untested technology. Spells. Tech-ells? Spology? Kohn would later think of a good name for the hybrid combination of magic and science.

“What about air? And heat? You’ll die without those.”

“The suit seals itself tightly and regulates heat and air. As long as it has mana and the tank on the back isn’t empty you’ll live.”

“Well then how will mine the rocks?”

Geez. Leete was so negative about this whole expedition. True the fleet had to practically stop, but it’s not like there was anything chasing them. And the Prince didn’t seem to mind that the trip would take a couple hours longer.

“For that I hired the best person with the most experience to design the ultimate tool. Armorer?”

He had asked the Armorer to create the best tool that the Kingdom had ever produced. Something that would look just as cool as the suit that he’d use in space. Something that would allow him to level mountains or make the smallest of cuts in a rock. An awesome tool with both power and precision.

Kohn was just as excited to see what the Armorer had made as he was to go out into space. Would it be some king of mining laser? Or maybe a series of spells that sucked the metals out of the ground? Ooh! What about some kind of sonar or sound blasting setup that pulverizes the asteroid so he could just grab and pick up what he needed to get?

What was he going to give him?

He felt a heavy weight fall into his hand.

‘It feels like a handle for something.’

Turning to see what he held, Kohn was shocked.

The Armorer had dropped a single sided pickaxe into his hands.

A blank expression on his face, Kohn asked in a very calm tone. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s the mining tool you wanted.”

“This… it’s just a pickaxe.”

“It’s a good pickaxe.”

“I asked you for something that would look just as cool as the suit…”

“The pickaxe is made from the same material as the suit. Same materials, same ‘coolness’ right?”

“…What about the part where it could level mountains?”

“Given enough time and the power of the suit I’m sure you could mine something as small as a mountain in no time. Say half a year?”

Kohn was at a loss for words. He wanted to yell back that that wasn’t what he had in mind at all, but what the Armorer had said completely fit the list of his demands for the tool.

Wordlessly and with slumped shoulders he walked into the Phantasm bay.

The small fighter looking ships were firmly locked in place along the wall. Normally they’d be on a tube type track where they would be launched into space, but due to the setup all the tracks fired at the same time. For Kohn who only planned on using just his suit to mine, the other ships would be useless and would waste the mana required to power them. So rather than reconfiguring the tracks to only fire one, they just removed the other ships.

The pickaxe could apparently be held down against his back using the same spell they had imbued to hold weapons. So his hands were free to wedge himself into the Phantasm track launcher.

A few of the other people from Earth were watching. More than a few had been just as excited as him to see the Rockman variation suit. They chatted quietly amongst each other off near the entrance.

“Doesn’t Kohn seem a little depressed?”

“Why would he be depressed? He’s going to be launched into space while wearing a magical robot suit!”

“He’s only going out into space to mine a couple asteroids.”

“It’s really dangerous, especially since he admitted they never tested the suit in space before.”

“What?”

“Yeah, but why does he have an ordinary pickaxe? Couldn’t he have got some kind of magic bomb spell or mining laser? It’s just so mundane.”

Kohn cried inside the sealed suit. He could hear every word they were saying thanks to the sensory spells and he agreed completely. It just wasn’t a fantasy type tool!

“Good luck out there.”

The doors sealed shut and the lights in the room dimmed to a deep blue before the g-forces pelted him in the Phantasm brace.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The brace hit the edge of the track and disappeared from underneath him as he flew out the open port. His flesh and bones were still feeling the g-forces so he tilted his legs and fired off a few bursts of the thrusters in order to flip his body around. Then he fired the thrusters for a full 3 seconds and came down to a manageable slow drift.

It worked! He was still alive!

Now that the g-forces were no longer trying to crush him he was able to actually take a breath and take note of things. Heat felt normal, air was… well air. And the thrusters worked like a charm. So far everything was working like it was supposed to!

[Hey Earth boy! Can you hear me out there?]

Hearing the Armorer’s voice in his head quickly soured his mood.

“Yeah I can hear you.”

The spell allowed each person to speak normally. It was just really weird to hear them coming from inside your skull.

[Good! The ships sensors are saying that you’ve slowed yourself down. You don’t know how good it is to hear that the boots worked!]

“What? What are you talking about?”

[Honestly I didn’t know how to tell you this, but… I wasn’t sure it was going to work like you wanted!]

“Then why did you launch me out of the ship like that?”

[Hmm. Now that I think about it we probably could have just let you walk to the end of the tracks and just opened the outer doors for you.]

Kohn faced palmed himself. It was a habit that he had picked up recently ever since he got to know the Armorer, but in the suit there was a bit more power behind it causing him to spin uncontrollably for a little bit.

[Boy! You alright?]

“Yeah I’m fine.”

[Why were you suddenly spinning? Did the boots fire off randomly again? That happened a lot in testing.]

‘When I get back inside I am so going to hurt you.’

[Boy… your thoughts appear as text on the ship.]

“I’m heading towards the asteroids.”

A small highlighted rock appeared on his suits shield screen. They had scanned the asteroid road earlier and found that this one was the likeliest candidate to have what they needed. Small was of course a relative term as it was about twice as big as the Dark Vessels.

And this ‘small’ rock in particular was quite deep in the asteroid road so he had to fly for a while. They couldn’t risk putting the ships too close otherwise there might be unnecessary damages.

Mining proved to be a pretty simple and boring job even in space. The only real difference was that everything that you broke off didn’t need to be cleared away as everything just floated off into space. That and he felt very little exertion since the suit did most of the heavy lifting.

[Nearly filled the sack yet boy?]

That was also depressing. The best way to collect all the rocks he mined was simply by putting them into a sack of cloth that they got from the ship.

‘Why couldn’t they create a more magical, fantasy way of mining?!’

Oddly Kohn liked to turn back to the ship when he spoke to them. Maybe he could feel the sensors on his skin or maybe he could just imagine people watching a display of him. Either way he just found it rude to talk with his back turned towards them.

“Yeah yeah, it’s nearly full! Let me just get a few more chunks and I’ll head on back…” Kohn trailed off as a larger piece of rock with a deep crevice spun around.

An oddly familiar long snake-like tail and 3 wing-fins with claws were sticking out of the crevice.

“Oh, shit.”