I Think That's Pretty Scientific

Chapter 24: 024: The Stupid Goblins Who Only Know How to Blow Things Up

After eating the pastries Alice had made, Kraft didn’t rush to build remote-controlled robots. While that would ensure safety, it wouldn’t provide a direct sensory experience—raw data alone doesn’t reveal the whole picture. Besides, these engineering creations might not even follow Earth’s laws of physics, so he wanted to find a solution that offered the best of both worlds. Put on an iron shell or something? Kraft thought of exoskeleton armor, but quickly dismissed the idea—an exoskeleton would block his sense of touch, making it no better than a remote-controlled robot. Wait a minute… tactile sensation? Kraft suddenly thought of Alice’s pain perception system. Although it was just feedback simulated by a program, it was clearly very realistic—no different from that of an ordinary person. So, if he built another robot identical to Alice, replaced its core processing unit with a manual control device, and projected its tactile feedback onto a computer to convert it into data, that should be enough for Kraft to conduct his tests. Kraft, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaped to his feet, rushed over to the workbench, and began working. Unfortunately, his engineering “hand-crafting” skills couldn’t be applied to the construction of other objects—otherwise, Kraft could have saved a fortune. Even so, they did save him a considerable amount of time when fabricating certain components. To prevent the test robot from being easily blown up, Kraft spared no expense and used top-quality materials. A special alloy he’d learned about in his dreams—Lunar Titanium: Castrated Edition. Because it contained a certain rare metal not found on Earth, data from the dream indicated it was a specialty of an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Setting aside whether this asteroid even existed in the real world, even if it did, Kraft currently lacked the means to build a spaceship; and even if he could build one, he had no specific star charts. So in the end, he resorted to using metals already available on Earth as substitutes. Although this significantly reduced the strength of the Lunar God Titanium alloy, it was still more than capable of outperforming other alloys. Of course, if Captain America’s shield from the comics were real, that might be a different story. A flash of inspiration struck Kraft, and he ordered Harlow, who was standing nearby, “Search for information on Captain America’s shield, then make a backup copy. We’ll look at it once I’m done here.” “Roger that, roger that,” Harlow—who had been being rolled around like a toy by Beya—stretched out its limbs and scampered over to its dedicated base. “Time to get to work, time to get to work.” “Meow~~~” Beya, whose playtime had been interrupted, meowed unhappily at Kraft, but he was too busy with his research to even notice. Beya knew Kraft was like this once he got into research mode, so she suppressed her instinct to bother him. But she still needed to vent her frustration somehow, so the little black cat turned her gaze toward the dumb dog running in circles with a mechanical squirrel. Beya crouched low and crept silently toward Quinn, who was oblivious to everything and still frolicking. Then she lunged forward and slapped him right on the nose. “RUA!” When Kraft finished his work, all he saw was Quinn’s whiny, dog-like face. “…What’s wrong now?” Kraft stretched and looked somewhat exasperatedly at Quinn, who was crouched at his feet, wagging his tail incessantly. Unlike Beya, who defied the “Three Dumbest Bombay Cats” trope, Quinn’s intelligence actually lived up to his ranking—well outside the top 79. He’d pulled more than a few stupid stunts over the years, yet whenever he got scolded for them, he’d often put on an innocent act and run to Kraft to have him stand up for him. “Beya’s picking on me again! Big bro, you’ve gotta stand up for me!” Quinn loudly denounced the little black cat’s cruel behavior… Kraft was used to it by now. He glanced at Beya, who was lounging nearby, swishing her tail. Seeing how relaxed and self-assured she looked, he felt quite confident. “You were the one who picked a fight with her again, weren’t you?” Kraft tugged at Quinn’s ear and asked accusingly. “I didn’t!” Frustrated, Quinn kept pacing in circles, yet he had no concrete evidence to back up his claim. “I didn’t!” That was strange. Kraft scratched his head in confusion; Quinn didn’t seem like he was lying, but Beya looked completely convinced she was in the right… Had these two little ones already learned how to act? “Check the surveillance footage! Big brother, you can check the surveillance footage!” Quinn suddenly remembered a time when he’d secretly gotten into trouble and been caught on camera. “Huh?” Seeing how adamant Quinn was, could it be that I’d wrongly accused him? Kraft glanced at Beya again and, seeing that she still looked completely unfazed, became even more confused. So he simply had Harlow pull up the previous surveillance footage and project it onto the wall. “…I’m speechless.” After watching the footage, Quinn turned to look at Kraft. Kraft gave an awkward smile and rubbed his nose—Quinn was taking his anger out on him because of this. Reaching out to ruffle Quinn’s doggy head, Kraft soothed him, “I’ll have Alice make you a big bone to eat tonight.” “Yay!” Quinn’s mood brightened instantly, and he began wagging his tail happily. Then Kraft looked helplessly at Beya, who was grooming herself: “Once I’m done with the tests, I’ll make you some toys, so please stop picking on Harlow and Quinn.” The mechanical squirrels Kraft made himself would follow people on their own, so Beya had absolutely no desire to chase them. And since the factory-made mechanical squirrels had a limited lifespan, that was why Beya turned to Harro for some fun. “Got it, meow~” Beya rolled over, wagged her tail, and replied. Having settled the matter with his two pets, Kraft sat down at the computer and began operating the robot he’d just built. Since it was just a test robot, its appearance was very crude—it was merely human-shaped, with no fingers or toes. Overall, it looked like a gas can with a stick and a ball attached to it, covered with a layer of synthetic skin for haptic feedback. It had no facial features; a camera had simply been roughly mounted on its head. The person controlling the test robot put a pair of dwarf rocket boots on it and had it run around the open area of the workshop. Setting aside other considerations, judging purely by the results, these dwarf rocket boots were quite effective. According to Haro’s monitoring, the robot’s movement speed increased by 37. 6%—which was significantly worse than the original version in the dream—and the effect lasted only 16 seconds. After checking the haptic feedback, the legs felt fine—it didn’t seem to cause any discomfort. Still, it would be best to run a few more tests. After refilling the gnome rocket boots with gunpowder, Kraft began testing them again. The rest of the time was spent primarily testing the performance of these rocket boots; of course, Kraft also found time to finish the toy he’d promised Beya. After a series of tests, the alloy Kraft selected performed even slightly better than Mithril—a material used in alien spacecraft, yet made entirely from raw materials found on Earth. Its original name was a string of characters, but Kraft simply renamed it “Mithril Alloy.” Furthermore, during the repeated testing of these alloys, although the dwarf rocket boots experienced malfunctions and failures, they never once exploded. Kraft thought back to the engineering books from his dream… So everything in that book, *Stupid Goblins Who Only Know How to Explode*, was actually true… Applying the game’s cooldown times to the real world felt a bit odd, so I replaced them with the time it takes to swap out energy sources or wait for energy to recharge. It’s a new month—time for double updates! Hand over all your recommendation votes! [Xiao Zhang. jpg]