Chapter 201 — A Cold

Yet Gao Yang believed that even without his own appearance, this world would one day free itself from such a state of stagnation. So long as humanity still thought, change would always come. If one wild mage was buried in obscurity, there would always be someone new to sum up the laws of runes and the concept of the magic web; there would always be some person of extraordinary talent—or merely extraordinary luck—to realize it all...

There was no need at all to worry whether this world's accumulation of technology was sufficient. It was not technological accumulation that was lacking here; what was lacking was only the process of popularization—and the power to ensure that popularization.

But since he had already appeared in this era, and had yet to see anyone besides himself recognize the significance of popularizing all this, then he was quite glad to do it all with his own hands...

Gao Yang's thoughts surged. Realizing that this world in fact held countless advanced technologies waiting for him to liberate, his fighting spirit blazed up once more—but just then, he saw a dark shadow flash suddenly across the square below, flying toward him.

With practiced ease, he shut the window.

"Gao Yang, I've got something to tell you—the machine works... squelch."

Only after the half-elf young lady had been bounced away with a squelch did Gao Yang realize that he seemed to have heard the words "machine works" just now. Was this Scourge of All Things here to report actual business?

Gao Yang hurriedly opened the window again, and almost the instant it opened he saw a dark shadow shoot up from below and slam into him with a whoosh: "Are you trying to kill me?! Who closes the window on purpose when they see someone coming!"

Gao Yang seized the flailing Amber: "Who's the one who never uses the front door every day! Next time I'm putting a rat trap on the window, I'm warning you—and what were you saying about the machine works?"

Amber flailed a few final times, and upon finding she could not break free, hurriedly got to business: "That Nicholas Egg seems to have had some kind of mishap—it just fell to the ground, and the place is in complete chaos!"

The machine tool had met with an accident?!

It was no exaggeration to say that at this moment Gao Yang broke out in a genuine cold sweat. Without a word he grabbed Amber by the belt, tucked her under his arm, and then, without even using the door, leaped straight out the window: "Hold on tight!"

"You're jumping out the window too!"

"Shut up!"

Gao Yang charged in a near-straight line all the way to the new workshop of the machine works. The territory's people along the route did not even see clearly what had happened—they only felt a gust of fierce wind sweep down the street. In mere minutes he had arrived at the place where Nicholas Egg made its home.

The main workshop of the new machine works was brightly lit. In the broad indoor space had gathered nearly all the craftsmen and apprentices of the machine works, and Nicholas Egg stood—or rather lay—in the middle of the crowd. It lay there quietly, its huge silver-white comic grin turned up to the heavens, looking simply ridiculous...

Gao Yang's mouth twitched. That comic paint job on the great sphere's surface was simply too eye-catching—so much so that even in a situation like this it made one feel pulled out of the scene. Still, he quickly adjusted and stepped forward to ask: "What on earth happened? Eggy, can you still hear me?"

"How many times have I told you—at least call me Boss Egg!" A buzzing sound came from within Nicholas Egg, and the sphere rocked slightly in place, but there was still no sign of it floating up. "I say, why are you humans all such alarmists... I'm not dead..."

Hearing that the iron-sphere alien still responded, Gao Yang finally breathed a sigh of relief, and then looked suspiciously at the great metal ball before him: "Then what's this..."

"Seems I've caught a bit of a cold," Nicholas Egg buzzed. "A sudden cold."

"A cold?"

"That's right, a cold. When you have a cold, you can't float. Isn't that just common sense?"

"...That is *not* common sense for humans!" Gao Yang's eyes went wide on the spot, and at the same time he felt keenly the gulf that differences between species could open up. Then, a little worried, he asked, "By the way, why does your species get colds in the first place? Did you catch a chill? Or did you catch it from someone?"

"Probably I came into contact with an irritant," Nikhsi Dan said in a muffled voice. "When I come into contact with certain specific energy fields or material irritants, I'm prone to colds... Today I tried processing a few new materials. There was likely an irritant among them."

Gao Shao turned sharply to the craftsmen and apprentices around them: "What did he come into contact with today?"

One rune craftsman shrank back a little: "My lord, the most unusual thing the director processed today should be this..."

As he spoke, he had the apprentices wheel over a large chunk of "raw stone" loaded on a handcart.

"This is a new ore the exploration team discovered in the Dark Mountains. Lady Hedy says she sensed very high magical activity in it."