Elisae hummed softly to herself as the conference ended, watching as both the High Mother and the AI left the room. She didn’t leave so quickly, however, because she still had some things that she needed to hand over to Clara. After they left, Clara turned to look at Elisae, a small smile on her lips. “So, you said that you had some inheritances of an ancient empire?”

In truth, that wasn’t the only reason that Clara had asked for Elisae to participate. In fact, it wasn’t even something that she knew about until after their initial conversation. What Clara was interested in was Elisae herself. The Queen blessed by fate, whose karma was so good that it was believed that the heavens themselves smiled upon her. Thanks to Clara’s connection with Dana, she of course knew the truth of the matter, but the influence of her karma was still very real.

Clara knew that as long as Elisae herself wanted this to succeed, luck would be on their side. When she learned that Elisae happened to have the remnants of a machine empire, she had to question whether this was something fated, or if Elisae had simply had so many fortunate encounters that she had something for nearly any situation.

Elisae nodded her head with that same smile, opening up her inventory. “Of course! When I got these, I thought about bringing them out into the real world, but I had the feeling that I shouldn’t. You never know what’s going to happen when you get mysterious technology involved!”

Naturally, this conference room wasn’t a part of Fragments of Acidia, so Elisae could not truly pull the object from her inventory. All that she could do was retrieve the object data to show to Clara.

Self Replicating Autonomous Drone - DAMAGED

This drone comes fully equipped with a digital synthesizer, able to break down nearby materials in order to replicate itself. It can be programmed or modified to carry out a wide variety of tasks, whether military or civilian.

- This drone has been damaged beyond the point of usability. It is recommended to find a Galactic-level technician in order to repair.

Chaos Fragment Cannon - DAMAGED

This weapon can be installed on any space-faring vessel, capable of releasing F9-level power. Most effective when directed at a single unit, but can be configured to affect a cone at F7-level.

- This weapon has been damaged beyond the point of usability. It is recommended to find a Fragment-level technician in order to repair.

Clara blinked when she saw the details of the two items in Elisae’s possession. She could immediately tell why Elisae wouldn’t want to bring them to the real world. If the drone happened to be repaired improperly, it could devour an entire planet while replicating uncontrollably. As for the cannon… the fact that it was a chaos fragment cannon meant that it used the power of the void.

F9-level… if I remember right, the ships on the boss’s ships are only F3, with the missiles getting up to F5. F5 is already lethal for medium-strength gods if they get hit directly, from what we’ve seen. In that case, F9 should be similar to the flagship cannons of major empires.

Looking at the two files presented to her, Clara was rubbing her hands together. Then, a thought occurred to her. “Why don’t you just use your domain of Wishes to repair these?”

Elisae, however, simply shrugged her shoulders at that question. “Honestly? I find so much random stuff like this that it isn’t really worth it to use wishes all the time. That would just be draining my divinity for something I probably won’t end up using. Especially when it comes to doing a job I don’t actually know how to do, like repairing this tech.”

Clara nodded her head at that. “That’s fine. I know a guy that would love to get his hands on these.” A knowing smile flashed across her face, and she sent out a prayer.

Hey, Tubrock? Found a couple gadgets you might be interested in looking at. Naturally, she wasn’t going to entrust this work to someone from Fragments of Acidia itself, as they would most likely submit the finished product to their own empire. The only safe options were Tubrock or Ashley, and Tubrock was the more enthusiastic of the duo.

Let’s see, lass… aye, those would be curious. I s’pose ye wanna rope me in for starting this empire of yours?

Nope! Clara shook her head. Even she wasn’t brave enough to try to get one of the Greater Pantheon directly involved with a project this big. I just need you to help me get these two gadgets up and functioning.

There was a long silence from Tubrock, before he said in a somewhat sharper tone. ‘Fraid I didn’t catch that. I asked if ye wanted to rope me in for this empire of yours.

Clara hesitated for a moment, before dipping her head slightly. Tubrock, would you like to join our little project?

Well, if you’re gonna twist my arm, I suppose it can’t be helped! Clara gave a wry smile when she heard the tone in his reply. He must not have had any major projects in the works after completing Olympus. That, or he wanted to use this empire as the testing ground for some of his other ideas.

Or, perhaps, Tubrock just wanted someone to relax with and play. He hadn’t really taken much personal time in the last… ever.

The process of buying a trading company went surprisingly smoothly. From what I could tell, the company that Dana picked was one that didn’t have any ‘named NPCs’, meaning that they were all the basic programmed characters that populated the majority of the world. Thanks to that, she was able to purchase the company without any real roadblocks.

More importantly, since we had purchased the company, we wouldn’t need to personally handle the deliveries, unless it was to a destination that we wanted to visit for some reason. Otherwise, Dana could just give orders to the company and let them carry out their business operations on their own. With her overseeing things, I was sure that the company would be able to grow.

When Dana got back from buying that company, however, she seemed somewhat distracted. Noticing my gaze, she took the initiative to explain what was going on. “This game has a business management system. It’s… sort of like a guild, I guess? Only, more specialized. From what I can tell, the system is customized for each type of business. I have information panels for all of the company’s employees, their ships, and their clientele. Since the new company is focused primarily on trade, I also have market information for any sector where we do business.”

I gave a small nod when I heard that. “That sounds… convenient.” Something like that might be a good idea to work out for the real world, if Ashley could reverse engineer the system.

“I suppose.” Dana shrugged her shoulders, moving to sit down in one of the free seats. “The market in this area is pretty stable, so there’s not much room for us to really grow. If we want to grow the company, it’ll need to be done in one of two ways.”

“One, I send them out to more distant systems, playing the galactic market. If I do that, I should be able to ensure a pseudo-stable profit, but it will be rather slow. The other method is that we personally find rare goods that can be sold.”

I couldn’t help but nod at Dana’s logic, before a thought occurred to me. “Can we abuse the Digital Conversion system to break the market? If we can find a material that has a high market cost, but is relatively cheap to replicate…”

However, Dana shook her head to shoot down the suggestion. “Digital Conversion was a system that Fifi integrated into this world’s history, since it was a required system in order for the game to function. Named NPCs all have access to it. The base price for most items on the market start at the conversion cost, fluctuating depending on local availability.”

“For situations like our previous hunt to get special materials for our weapons, the cost of creating those materials was more expensive than simply hiring a team to retrieve them. Especially since most of them were monster components or materials rich in energy.”

I couldn’t help but nod at that. “So it would be either buying low and selling high, or going on an adventure. Personally, I’d take the adventure.”

Tsubaki nodded her head in agreement. “I concur. With the strength of our group, retrieving rare materials should not be difficult.”

Dana gave a noncommittal shrug, turning and adjusting the display on a terminal near her seat. “Well, there are three types of resources we can go after. The first is ‘strategic resources’. These are resources that respawn like Mage Heart and Blood Heart. Their appearance in this game is somewhat random. You can have a strategic vein of iron on one planet, and on another, it might be a vein of divine gold. Every strategic resource is worth a large sum due to its theoretically unlimited supply. That also means that we’d need to explore to find those types of nodes.”

“The second type is ‘hazardous resources’. These are resources that are either innately dangerous to carry, or are in a dangerous environment. The environment can be anything from the nest of a powerful monster to the heart of an old star. Most of the materials that we needed for our artifacts came from this type.”

“The last type--”

“Monster materials.” Tsubaki finished, Dana nodding her head.

“That’s right. These made up the rest of what we needed for our artifacts. The materials from powerful monsters that can’t be easily slain. Their remains are highly sought after for a variety of reasons.”

Hearing her list out these three options, I briefly fell into thought. “Is there any way to detect if a planet has a strategic resource?”

Unfortunately, Dana shook her head. “Not without using a special vein scanner on the material itself. The scanner can tell whether or not a material comes from a strategic vein. But, without spending the time to mine up the initial sample, there isn’t a feasible way to get that information.”

“In that case, hunting for strategic resources would be too inefficient. For monsters… we won’t avoid them, but we won’t go out of our way to hunt for them, either. Let’s go for the hazardous resources, and we’ll just clear out any monsters that get in our way. Also, be sure that none of the materials we go after are hazardous because of memetic effects. The last thing I want is to suddenly believe I’m a potato.”

Dana chuckled slightly at that. “You got it, boss. In that case, I’ll make a note on the map of the known hazardous resources, as well as their value.”

As she said that, Lifre jumped up, running to the pilot’s seat.. “Awesome! Let’s go make some money! Wait… weren’t we able to buy the company because money’s not an issue for us?”

With a small smile, Dana explained. “We’re not getting these goods to sell them because we need the money. The goods are used to help us network. The boss’s goal with this business is to get in contact with some of the different tech advancements available in this world. To do so, we need to have connections in military, research, and government branches. Once all of that is achieved, we’ll be able to gain access to more technology like the Hyperlane Network.”

“Ohhh.” Lifre nodded her head. “In that case, let’s go make friends by beating up the baddies!”