NOVEL WEB Chapter 138: Conversions and Comparisons
Lia watched in anticipation as the cocoon fell away, revealing the creature within. It was an absolutely enormous gray whale with a ship-like top half, absolutely covered in scars. Curiously, Lia wasn’t able to see any visible weapons, indicating that any weapons that had been on the ship when it was converted had likely been incorporated into the whale’s Skills or stats.
The whale pulled slightly closer to the dock, then part of its upper body detached and formed a gangplank that they could walk up on. “Handy.” Rose said. “Looks like we won’t need to worry about anchors too much.”
“Huh, I didn’t even think about that.” Lia replied, boarding the ship and motioning for Rose to follow. “If you don’t mind, I’m hoping we can mostly focus on the weaponry.” She said. “You know, since your time here is limited and Samantha should be able to judge whether or not it’s viable as a regular ship.”
“Sounds sensible.” Rose replied, boarding the ship. “Would you mind if we had it submerge, though? I’d like to see how it works.”
“Sure.” Lia replied. “Let’s go inside just in case this doesn’t work like the other ship, though.”
Rose nodded, and the two headed into the captain’s quarters, which looked remarkably similar to the ones on the other ship, with one major difference; the windows seemed off in a way that Lia couldn’t quite place. Frowning, Lia walked up to one and reached up to touch it and see if the texture was any different, only to be shocked when her hand phased through it.
Rose walked over and curiously placed her own hand through, then turned to Lia. “I assume the other ship’s windows aren’t like this?” She asked.
“No.” Lia confirmed. “They were still made of this skin stuff, but I don’t think you can put your hand through them.”
Rose took out a small rock from her dimensional storage, then poked it through the window. When that worked, she cast a small spell, watching as a small glob of water flew straight through it and splashed onto the dock below. Her testing finished, she gave Lia a wide grin. “Looks like the outside is armored, but it lets us fire through it just fine, like some advanced shield spells. I’m guessing this isn’t ‘standard’ for warships and is one of the benefits of having you convert it personally, but either way it’s a huge boon.”
“Neat.” Lia replied. “I suppose that’s part of the reason why I couldn’t see any weapons from outside.”
“Yeah, no point having them out in the open if you can keep them behind cover.” Rose said. “Anyway, submerging?”
“Oh, right. Um, please submerge now.” And, at Lia’s command, the deck began to cover itself, the ship slowly sinking into the water as it did. “Okay, looks like it’s like the other ship.” Lia said. “We’ll be fine to go onto the deck while it’s underwater, but if we’re on the deck when it comes up we’ll get splashed a bit when the cover retracts.”
“Got it.” Rose said. “I do want to try one thing really quick before we go out though.” She stuck her hand through the window, then pulled it back. “Okay, we can still put stuff through the windows while the ship’s underwater.” She confirmed. “We’ll have to instruct people not to put body parts out while the ship is too deep, though, it seems that whatever the ship does to make us not feel the pressure of the water only applies to things that are inside the ship. Someone’ll get their hand crushed if they’re not careful.”
With that out of the way, they went out onto the deck, where Rose confirmed that the covering acted in the same way that the windows did. “We are really going to have to experiment with this.” She said. “If we’re lucky, we can find a way to cocoon a whole ship from underneath, but failing that we can just sink the ship from below and convert people who are in the water. If we could develop long-range living cannons that fire modeling wax…no, we can think about that later. Let’s see the rest of the ship first.”
“Any particular reason the cannons need to be living?” Lia asked, heading towards the hatch that would take them belowdecks.
“Seeing how well this ship has already turned out, I see no reason not to make any military asset larger than a sword or suit of armor into some sort of converted thing, provided it’s not like, a building, and even buildings have potential to be useful in conversion, even if they’re a lot harder to convert.” Rose replied. “We’re hooking inanimate objects into the system, which will allow for those objects to grow in power as they gain levels, gain more uses as they get Skills, and even evolve into more potent forms. Plus, it eases repairs by allowing normal healing spells to be used instead of needing more specialized spells.
“The only downsides are the increased food consumption, new vulnerability to psychic attacks, and the fact that they completely stop functioning if they die, but those are all minor things. I mean, food isn’t an issue at the moment, and won’t be in the future once I work out the last kinks with my new plants, we can get them resistance to psychic abilities, and if the objects are getting hit enough to die, then they’d likely be useless even if they weren’t living.”
Lia lifted the hatch and began to walk down the stairs it had covered, Rose close behind. “I’ll put living cannons on my to-do list, then.” She said. “Uh…any idea where we’d get any that we can afford to experiment with?”
“Amelia can probably whip one up, and failing that, the Dimension of Discounts will almost certainly stock one, or…even multiple types. I seem to recall hearing that people had experimented with gunpowder-based cannons but decided they weren’t as efficient as the normal, Mana-powered ones, it’s possible Connie has those, too.”
“Well, yeah, of course they are.” Lia replied. “All you have to do to use a Mana cannon is aim it and put some Mana in, and it’ll blast out a spell. Honestly, I’m not sure why people even bother experimenting with gunpowder; no matter what you need some sort of physical ammunition, the gunpowder is risky to store and useless if it gets too wet, and actually using whatever you’re making requires a lot of time and training. Yeah, it doesn’t need any Mana or Stamina, and the attacks do a surprising amount of damage, but the drawbacks are just too big.”
“I seem to recall reading something about summoned Heroes introducing the idea?” Rose said. “It seems that, on their planes, they have much more efficient ways of using gunpowder and guns are actually a weapon worth using over a crossbow. Regardless, if Connie has gunpowder cannons in addition to the regular ones, we should experiment with them, maybe we can make them useful via conversion?”
“You might be right.” Lia said. “It’ll all depend on how expensive they are, I guess. If they’re too pricey, the Blood Money is probably better spent on other things that are more likely to be useful.”
“Yeah, it’s something for later.” Rose agreed. “It can wait until we’re more established.”
The two of them poked around a bit more before they found what the ship’s weapons had become. The windows near the outer walls had these odd knee-high pillars that lit up when approached, an interface not dissimilar to status windows appearing above them. It seemed to be controls for a cannon of some sort, which would draw from the ship’s own prodigious Mana pool to fire shots.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have a good way of testing it at the moment, since trying to fire it would only result in damage to the shipyard. Still, between the ship’s stats and what Rose’s Analysis Skill was telling her, Rose was confident that the power wasn’t any worse than whatever the cannons had been like before.
The ship had six of those cannons on each side, as well as many additional windows from which attacks could be launched. Other than that, the only notable change from the other ship was that the head area had controls for each of the cannons, as well as a way to fire all cannons on a side at once. Furthermore, they realized that the deck also contained six cannons for each side, and they had simply missed them due to having gone belowdecks so quickly.
In the head room, in addition to the “mouth” that the other ship had, there was an area filled with magic circuits not dissimilar to the ones Lia had seen on the few cannons she had seen up-close. A short investigation revealed that they were, in fact, those same circuits, ones that were designed to allowed the average person to easily charge something with Mana. In this case, the thing they were charging was the ship itself, allowing them to refill its Mana, and thus the cannons, in the midst of battle.
Finally, numerous displays were set up around the room, showing what appeared to the view from each individual window the ship had. Taking all of it in, Lia couldn’t help but be shocked at the sheer difference in scope that this room had compared to the one in the other ship; it seemed so much more…advanced, like all of the ship’s operations could be controlled from this one place. The only reason people would need to leave was if they needed to shoot out the windows themselves, or fish, or…whatever else sailors did on deck. Regardless, all of the day to day “sailing” could be done without needing to leave the room.
“I like this room.” Rose said, taking a seat in one of the chairs near the status panel. “I like it a lot. Being able to see an overview of the whole ship and its surroundings from here is incredible, the only downside is that it’s in the most obvious location to target, but I suppose we can’t have everything. We’ll just have to put in efforts to armor this area more. And…thinking of, I believe you mentioned that all the vital organs were put into one place?”
“Yeah, it’s right in the middle of the ship.” Lia confirmed. “I think we passed it on the way here, it’s a small bulge on the wall.”
“Well, it needs to be armored too.” Rose replied. “It’s a giant weak point and we can’t just leave it as-is. Maybe we should have Samantha take a look at it? She’d know more about ship armor than us.”
“I’ll ask her when we’re done here.” Lia said. “Which…anything else you want to see?”
“Not really, I think I have a good enough understanding to make a judgement call. And, as you probably figured, I think this is absolutely outstanding. In fact, I recommend taking the time to go convert the rest of the ships here, assuming Samantha is testing conversion on a warship and not a merchant ship. Even if we should probably have you do most of the immediate ship conversions, it can’t hurt to know what a ‘normal’ converted ship looks like. It’ll help us decide how best to split your time in the future.”
Lia nodded, instructed the ship to surface, then began to lead her wife topside. “And how is your work for the day going?” She asked. “Connie said you were waiting for some sort of scout report?”
“Yeah.” Rose confirmed. “The enemy has been moving differently in the last couple of days, and we’re thinking they’re gearing up for some sort of attack. So, we have people out to scout various likely locations that they would attack from, and Amelia and I are getting ready to intercept them as they set up camp. If we don’t find them, then I’m going to make the areas…less than ideal to stay in with a nuisance plant I finished developing recently.”
“Oh?” Lia asked. “Tell me more about this new plant.”
Rose shrugged. “It’s nothing overly insidious, just…super annoying. Basically, imagine if poison ivy grew to full size in a couple of hours and was a lot harder to fully kill. Honestly, the hardest part was making it so it wouldn’t destroy the environment wherever it’s planted; I settled on forcing it to need some of my Mana to survive, so I’ll load some up in the soil in an area, plant the seeds, then for the next week or two that area is going to be almost completely overtaken by the stuff. When it dies, it’ll revitalize the soil and make room for whatever vegetation was there before, but while it’s alive it’ll be a massive problem to anyone who wants to set up shop there.”
“And if they just try to kill it with magic or something?”
“They’re welcome to try.” Rose snorted. “I did my best to make the plant resistant to magic, they’re going to have to put in effort to fully eradicate it or it’ll all be back in a few hours. And, if they’re willing to waste that much time and Mana to actually get rid of it, then it did its job just fine.”
The two emerged onto the deck, and quickly made their way off of the ship. They said their farewells, and Lia made her way over to dock five, where Samantha was overseeing the conversion of another ship.
“My Queen, how did it go?” Samantha asked.
“Rose thinks it was a huge success.” Lia replied. “She recommends having me convert all the ships in here, if that’s possible. Or, well, all but one warship, we want to see the differences between a warship I convert and a regular warship.”
Samantha nodded. “The merchant vessel we had you convert earlier was the only non-warship we have. We were in the process of retrofitting it to be a warship, and that’s the only reason it was even here. And like I mentioned before, modeling wax shouldn’t be an issue, so if we’re careful with how we allocate the various fish and aquatic monsters we should be fine.”
She paused for a moment before continuing. “I hate to ask this of you after you came all the way to this dock, but would it be possible for you to start going dock to dock and having our workers prepare the ships for conversion? I’d do it myself, but I’d like to take fifteen or twenty minutes to examine the ship you just looked at so I can see what the differences actually are.”
Lia tilted her head to the side. “You do? Why didn’t you come with Rose and I, then?”
Samantha blushed. “I wanted to give you and your wife a little alone time, thought I might be intruding.”
“That’s sweet.” Lia said. “I don’t have any problem helping get things ready, it beats just sitting here and waiting for the ship to finish.”
“Thank you, my Queen.” Samantha said. “If you need me, you know where to look.”
Samantha set off, and Lia began the process of visiting each dock and getting the process of cocooning the ships underway. Fortunately, the workers had no issues dropping what they were doing to assist, so the process took no more than twenty minutes. When she had finished, she returned to dock five, where she sat back and waited for Samantha.
A few minutes later, Samantha returned, looking very satisfied. “As expected, the ship looks phenomenal.” She said. “This one here should be done in less than ten minutes, I’m afraid there’s not much entertainment to be had while we wait, though.”
“Seven minutes, to be precise.” Lia said, holding up her tablet. “Apparently, I can check with this. I wasn’t sure if it would work if I didn’t initiate the conversion, but I’m glad to say it does, I just had to sort of ‘scan’ the cocoon with it.”
“Is there any way I can get one of those?” Samantha asked. “It seems interesting.”
Lia thought on that for a moment. “Probably not, sorry. This only works because it’s directly connected to me and my swarm management Skills, and I don’t think trying to tax those with more things connected to them is wise, not unless the scope of their use is large.”
Samantha nodded. “Ah, in that case, I don’t need one. I thought it might be nice, but it wouldn’t see a ton of use since I don’t convert things too much. Or…didn’t, but even if I am the one to do all the ship conversions, it’d be used once a week at most after all the current ships are converted.”
“I’ll put making something sort of similar on the to-do list for later, though I won’t personally deal with it, I’m not skilled enough in magical engineering to make something like this. Even if you won’t have much use for it, I’m sure there are plenty of people who will. At the very least, making some sort of one-hour timer that displays the time left should be doable. I know it’s possible even without magic if we use clockwork, but with magic we could make it a lot more convenient to use and maybe even easier to make, too.”
“Well, having a bunch of those we can start whenever we start the conversion of something would fit basically all my use cases.” Samantha replied.
The two chatted until the ship finished conversion, then set about inspecting it. As Rose had guessed, the windows that were only tangible from one side were something that was unique to the ship Lia had converted and in their place were the regular windows that she had seen in the first ship they had converted.
Overall, the ship was just not as convenient, and that was shown the most in the command center; gone were the displays of the ship’s status and surroundings, as well as the central control for all cannons, the only defining features of the room being the auxiliary mouth and Mana-dumping spot. And, most notably of all, the deck wasn’t covered when the ship submerged. Instead, there was a sort of low rumble that must have been meant to signify that the ship was going underwater and that people should get inside.
“This really is just objectively worse, isn’t it?” Samantha said, giving a low whistle. “I don’t think I realized just how impactful having you do the conversion was.”
“Me neither.” Lia admitted. “I haven’t really done a direct comparison like this before, and I haven’t actually looked at the ability that makes my conversions stronger in a while. We should…probably reconvert this ship, no point in having it be the only warship with worse stuff.”
“Yeah.” Samantha agreed. “I think I recall one of the lasses mentioning having the ability to cocoon members of the swarm? If not, we’ll probably have to bring some outside help in, which could take a bit.”
Lia nodded. “Let’s ask around while we wait for the rest of the ships to be ready. We need to get this started ASAP, since it’ll take longer with just the one person cocooning it.”
So, they did. And, as it turned out, one of the workers did have the ability to cocoon members of the swarm, it apparently having come as part of some creation-based race. Once she had cocooned the ship again, Lia set it to converting, returned to the spot where Amelia would be pick her up from in a few hours, and began to sort through her Skills, Titles, and various other abilities that might impact conversion. Now that she was taking converting things more seriously, she needed to know exactly what she was capable of when compared to others.
