Little Crow happily bounced and hopped around me like a bird cheering with excitement—though she really was a bird. Her mind still did not work very well, but she knew that the treasure she had found had been acknowledged, and that made her especially happy.
I turned the silvery-white metal plate over and over in my hands. Little Crow had dug it out of the "junk pile" in the corner of the yard, where Sakina and Sona had placed all the unidentified objects they had found in the Ancient Relic. No one could figure out their purpose or value, but they had been reluctant to throw them away, so they had ended up piled in the corner. This silvery-white piece of metal was only the size of a palm and felt almost weightless in my hand, possessing a density and strength utterly at odds with its material. I had tested it just now: without using any extraordinary strength, it was impossible to bend this metal plate, only a few millimeters thick, with bare hands. Its edges were irregular, but there were no signs of tearing. It seemed to have been processed into this shape from the beginning. One side was smooth, while the other had many neat, regularly arranged indentations embedded with crystals of unknown purpose. Along the lower edge was a neat row of tiny characters, resembling some kind of serial number.
With a shape like this, it was hard not to associate it with some high-tech mechanical device. Though I could not tell its purpose, I guessed it was some sort of component, from a device beyond this world's technological level.
In fact, even if it was not some kind of component, it definitely was not something that should have appeared in this world. The processing technique used