"You mean to build a carrier starship?" Zhao Wan'er looked at Zhao Chen in astonishment, and Charlotte turned a surprised gaze his way as well.
"To be precise, a T2 Queen Bee-class Heavy Carrier Starship — and one built from ship technology I researched out myself." Zhao Chen claimed the honor for his own without the least reserve.
It was, in any case, System-issued; no one would be coming to fight him over the credit.
"That you researched out?" Zhao Wan'er was surprised, and eyed Zhao Chen with something like disbelief.
As a prodigy student of the Northstar Starship Military Academy, she knew full well the importance of T2 carrier-starship technology.
True, a T2 ship couldn't measure up to a star-shield-bearing T3. But for a great many lords' fleets and private fleets, and for interstellar adventurers, the T2 ship was the highest value-for-money choice going.
And as one of the two great titans among ship types, the worth of a carrier starship could well be imagined!
Zhao Chen shrugged, and didn't keep wrangling with Zhao Wan'er over the matter — for right now he had a great many things to see to, and time was pressing.
"Charlotte, I'll give you some funds. Over this stretch of time, you can use that woman in charge to buy up to 500 beast-folk slaves. My one requirement is that they must be female beast-folk slaves." Zhao Chen gave Charlotte the order.
Charlotte's heart gave a jolt. To rescue those beast-folk warriors sold into the Starlight Empire — the comrades who had once fought at her side — was a thing she'd dreamed of night after night.
As for Zhao Chen's final stipulation, that they must be female beast-folk slaves — she was still trying to make sense of his purpose.
But so long as she could save beast-folk slaves, nothing else mattered.
"Wan'er — over this next while, unless it's Jiang Hong with intelligence to report, no one is to disturb me," His piece said, Zhao Chen left Blizzard Zero.
He walked to a console on the far side of this great ship workshop, where stood row upon row of interstellar shipping containers — inside them, the various raw materials he'd bought, worth 1,000,001 half star coins!
And a starship-manufacturing platform besides!
"He… does he truly mean to build a T2 carrier starship all by himself?" Zhao Wan'er murmured.
"By himself? That… surely that can't be." Charlotte, too, found it a little hard to believe.
But the days that followed, one after another, began to make them believe: this was exactly what Zhao Chen intended!
He worked the mechanical arms and the various equipment, and set to the shipbuilding work day and night without cease.
And the progress was extraordinarily fast!
By the fifth day, Zhao Wan'er had already seen the carrier starship's keel laid complete!
Zhao Wan'er stood on the platform, watching this somewhat grubby, still-laboring brother of hers.
She felt this brother of hers had grown truly distant from her — never, until today, had he felt so distant.
For one person alone to complete the laying of a T2 carrier starship's keel in five days — one should know that even at a professional shipbuilder's yard, this step alone took a fortnight at the very least!
Yet in Zhao Chen's hands, the time was cut clean to a third — and that with him working entirely alone.
Over these five days, Zhao Wan'er had watched with her own eyes as Zhao Chen carried it through, step by step. He ran like some machine, resting a while at the console only during those procedures that needed no work from him, and left him nothing else to do besides.
In five days, he'd slept under 10 hours all told. And though he dosed himself with nutrient solution each day, the burden on his body was simply too great.
Zhao Wan'er clenched her fists. She strode quickly over before the oil-smeared Zhao Chen and hauled him around to face her.
"Do you have a death wish!"
Zhao Chen opened his eyes and looked at his little sister before him. "Did Jiang Hong contact you?"
Zhao Wan'er gave a start. She'd never imagined the first words out of this fellow, on seeing her, would be that.
"No… no, she didn't."
Zhao Chen's brow furrowed faintly, and he turned back toward his workbench. "Didn't I say — unless it's Jiang Hong contacting us, don't disturb me."
Zhao Wan'er bit her lip, and shouted, "Why have you changed so suddenly! Is it really necessary to work yourself half to death just to build one ship? We could do as Jiang Hong said — go back and wait at the Northstar Starship Military Academy first, and once the eldest sister comes…"
"So everything gets thrown onto the eldest sister's shoulders, is that it." Zhao Chen's hands didn't stop, but his voice dropped low.
"The eldest sister's a member of the imperial navy now, and a starship captain in the Princess's own guard fleet besides; so long as she steps in, this matter can be settled with ease!" Zhao Wan'er said.
Without lifting his head, Zhao Chen said, "So everything gets thrown onto the eldest sister's shoulders, is that it."
Zhao Wan'er stopped short. For reasons she couldn't name, those words of Zhao Chen's pricked at her like a thorn — and it hurt.
"I know you're close with the eldest sister. The eldest sister never cared for me from the time I was small — because I took from her what should have been hers." Zhao Chen spoke with a rueful smile, his hands never ceasing their work.
"The eldest sister is brilliant — just like you. She was recruited straight by the imperial military's starship academy, and could pilot a warship into battle at all of 20! Before she was even 30, she'd become the captain of a T3 ship. In our Starlight Empire, those who can achieve the like by their own strength alone can be counted on one's fingers. And while our father still lived, she kept the fief in perfect order. The Owl Dragon Star System, which back then was already on the verge of collapse, she wrenched half a breath of life back into by main force, and so kept it going to this day. At the time I'd have been about two. Of our father's passing I have not a shred of memory — so in honesty, I have no great feeling for them. Later I heard that, after Father's death, she applied to stay on in the Starlight Empire's imperial navy. But in truth she'd originally meant to return to the Owl Dragon Star System. Her application to come back was submitted, and her superiors sent it back down three times over, hoping she'd give it further thought. What was it that made her, all at once, drop that thrice-filed application to return? That made her choose to stay in the imperial navy? It was the words our father spoke to the eldest sister as he lay dying. Just what he said I don't know, but the gist of it was surely nothing but this: the Owl Dragon Star System's title, in the years to come, is to go to me — and he hoped the eldest sister would guard the Owl Dragon Star System well, and assist me."
At this Zhao Chen's gaze dimmed a little. "How cruel a demand that was to make of the eldest sister. Little as I've dealt with her, I heard it from the servants. The eldest sister's dream from childhood was to become the lord of the Owl Dragon Star System — to forge the Owl Dragon Star System into a flourishing, thriving interstellar fief! And on account of that selfish demand of Father's, that dream of the eldest sister's was shattered outright — and worse, she was cruelly bidden to go and assist the very person who'd taken her dream from her. Were it me, I don't think I could have done it. Even for my own little brother! Why? When I'm plainly the abler one, the one with the greater gift, the one who'd done so much besides — why should it all go to him? By what right! And yet she… our eldest sister — she didn't make a sound. She gave Father her word."
At some point Zhao Chen had, without quite realizing it, begun to sink into this body's memories; the emotions and feelings that had once been its own now worked upon him too. Before, he'd tried to keep them in check — but he'd found these feelings were like a flood-tide: the more he dammed them, the more furiously they surged.
And so Zhao Chen had decided to accept them, and be at peace with it. Whoever the Zhao Chen of that moment truly was — the ordinary man Zhao Chen of his past life, or Zhao Chen the Second Young Master of the Owl Dragon Star System — none of it mattered.
He wanted only to do things as he himself saw fit.
"All these years, the eldest sister has sent word of the good and kept silent on the bad. On top of building her own career, she's had to safeguard the development of the Owl Dragon Star System. Do you truly think all that is a small matter? We may not see it, but I can well imagine the loneliness the eldest sister has borne through all this, alone."
Zhao Chen turned his head and looked at Zhao Wan'er. "I have no wish to see the eldest sister like this. The sacrifices she's made are already more than enough! I am a man, and I am the lord of Owl Dragon! These things ought, by rights, to fall to me to bear — and now that I have the means, I mean to give them everything I have! Not to hide behind the eldest sister as some timid, spineless Second Young Master."
In that moment, Zhao Wan'er looked at the brother before her — and for the first time she found that in the eyes of this once-nondescript brother of hers there was, of all things, a light.
An emotion beyond her power to name spread through her heart.