The Magical Little Shovel

"You actually completed the task?"

Gal looked at the ten Crystal Stones stacked neatly on Zhou Yi's cart in surprise.

Not many women could adapt so quickly and complete the task on their first time mining. The little girl before him did not look like someone who could succeed.

"Do you have strawberry-flavored Nutrient Solution?"

Although she had traded for two tubes of Nutrient Solution at noon, several more hours had passed, and Zhou Yi was hungry again...

Today, Zhou Yi finally understood what it meant to have food for one meal but not the next.

Looking at the pile of Nutrient Solution on and around Bill's desk, Zhou Yi made a flavor request.

"Not today. There's only the original flavor."

Gal counted out ten tubes on the desk and handed them to Zhou Yi.

"Fine."

Something was better than nothing.

Zhou Yi accepted the ten little tubes and looked at the clear liquid inside.

What they held seemed not to be Nutrient Solution, but her own sweat.

After settling her own payment, Zhou Yi did not hurry off to rest. Instead, she watched how everyone else was being paid.

She had not forgotten that Gal had said at the beginning that high-quality Mining Crystals would be settled separately.

After watching for a while, Zhou Yi noticed that Gal merely swept his eyes over stones like those on her cart.

But when someone had mined a Mining Crystal, Gal would stand up to inspect it carefully, even reaching out to touch a particular piece.

At first, Zhou Yi could not see anything special about them. They all seemed to be nothing more than large, white, translucent stones.

But after observing several times more closely, she found that the stones Gal touched really were slightly different.

First, they were smaller than ordinary stones. Though they were also white and translucent, they were clearly purer, with almost no impurities inside and a higher degree of transparency.

These had already reached the grade of Primary Crystal Stones, though they were still trash...

Primary Crystal Stones were generally cut into Star Coins. As hard currency, they contained a certain amount of energy.

Higher-quality Intermediate Crystal Stones could be used as mecha materials and contained more energy. High-Grade Crystal Stones were the Energy Crystal Cores commonly mentioned in mechas. The higher the quality, the smaller the volume.

Teacher Xiao Fu's class was in session again.

Through her observations, Zhou Yi discovered that Gal paid five tubes of Nutrient Solution for each Primary Crystal Stone, vastly more than for ordinary Crystal Stones.

A bold idea immediately arose in her heart, and she planned to try it when she got home.

Gal settled payments quickly. Though he was alone, he finished handling more than a hundred people in just an hour.

Everyone lined up again and returned to the surface.

In the end, Zhou Yi tucked away the seven large stones she had painstakingly mined and the ten tubes of Nutrient Solution she had earned, ending the day's work in satisfaction.

On the way back to school, Zhou Yi was still chatting with the system.

"Aren't they worried that someone will bring a spatial Star Treasure to steal Crystal Stones under the pretense of mining? They didn't even register anyone's identity information."

On the way there, Zhou Yi had even wondered whether she should use her real name.

As it turned out, she had worried for nothing. There was no step where they even asked for names.

It was as if these miners were nothing more than emotionless mining robots.

Rest assured, people with spatial Star Treasures would never go scavenging through trash. Well, except for you.

"I... Isn't that because I'm poor? What do you know? This is called building something from nothing."

Once back at school, Zhou Yi went straight to her dormitory. She took out the seven low-quality Crystal Stones and arranged them neatly in a circle on the floor.

Then she took her Crystal Marrow out of the little pink box with tongs and placed it in the center of the stones, pressing them tightly together.

He could not stay near the Crystal Marrow for too long, so once she had finished all this, she locked the door and went to the library.

The Crystal Marrow's energy density was so high that Crystal Ore always emerged alongside it. Having it alter a few shabby low-quality stones should not be a problem, right?

As usual, Zhou Yi headed straight for the storage room on the third floor when she arrived at the library.

The tools she had used last time were still there, and Zhou Yi picked through the pile of junk nearby and found two pieces of material.

What are you doing again?

Xiao Fu still vividly remembered Zhou Yi using a mecha to make a little box.

Zhou Yi did not answer. Her hands had already begun moving.

This time, she first drew a design on a sheet of paper with great seriousness before picking up the tools and beginning to cut.

After cutting came shaping, followed by joining and fusing.

Her technique was so practiced that she did not look like someone making something for only the second time.

Zhou Yi hammered and tinkered for half the day, far more seriously than when she had made the little box before.

After a full hour, an object gradually took shape in Zhou Yi's hands.

It was a small shovel with a triangular pointed head, modeled after the Engineer's Shovel designs Zhou Yi had seen in tomb-raiding films and dramas.

They were both used to dig through underground soil, so the principles were much the same.

Of course, both the shovel head and handle were forged from mech materials, so its durability went without saying.

Zhou Yi looked at the shovel in her hand with satisfaction, then made two more identical ones.

Not only was it tough enough and good for digging, but the handle was also retractable.

Shorter for convenient work, longer to serve as a weapon—at this stage, there was nothing more handy than this.

Zhou Yi was once again pleased with her own craftsmanship.

You're not a Star Weaver, you're a craftsman! You're wasting your talents! Shouldn't your goal be to awaken star patterns for mechs? Shouldn't you be creating the strongest combat mechs in the entire galaxy? Xiao Fu continued, heartbroken.

"Mm..."

She only heard the first half of Xiao Fu's words. Zhou Yi looked at the little shovel in her hand, and a bolder idea suddenly surfaced in her mind.

She had no Energy Crystal Core right now, so she couldn't own a complete mech of her own. That was why she had spent so much time making all these miscellaneous things.

But the item in her hand was made from mech materials too. Could she awaken star patterns on an object like this—one that didn't need an Energy Crystal Core to power it?

A great many thoughts flashed through Zhou Yi's mind in an instant, but she quickly gave up on the idea.

It was already very late, and she was both hungry and exhausted. She was also planning to head down into the mine again tomorrow.

The bolder idea could wait until later.

She downed two bottles of Nutrient Solution for dinner, then went straight to sleep in the warehouse.

Fortunately, she had spent so much time holed up in the warehouse, forgetting to eat and sleep, that there was a set of bedding here. Rolling herself up in it for one night would be enough.

The Crystal Marrow was still in her dorm room. Since she was anxious for results before going down into the mine tomorrow, she could only give the room to them.

After turning off the lights, everything around her went pitch-black.

Lying in the middle of the warehouse, Zhou Yi felt mechs surrounding her from every direction. For some reason, it made her feel as though she had returned to her mother's embrace, and she slept exceptionally soundly that night.