Chapter 74

Nana simply took out a marker, then tore off a piece of cardboard from the pile of cardboard and wrote on it: [There are people under the bed, please do not step on or squeeze them]... Afterwards, she and Yato moved away from the snoring.

"... Isn't it dangerous for Operator Durin to sleep like that...?"

"Um... it's alright, actually. After all, the four of us are taking up such a big room... everyone knows that Durin always sleeps there."

"... If it's for a good night's sleep, how about having a bed custom-made with a blackout canopy by Closure? It's not good to always have it covered by the hovercraft."

"That's a good suggestion. Let's consider it after we return from this Ursus mission..."

Seeing Yato's smile but still keeping his voice low, Nana smiled too. Both of them took out their phones and added each other as friends on the local network, also sharing their team's access codes.

"If you're not getting enough rest, you can come to the Human Resources Department's break room... but mine is for a little kid, so the colors might be a bit bright... I wonder what the other members of Team A4 think..."

"Well, although Durin looks like a child, she is indeed an adult... As for the others, the old Ranger is on holiday and has gone to take care of his own things... As for me and Black Horn... we don't really like bright light."

"Yes, I understand... In short, the mission itself isn't difficult, but there are quite a few things and dangers to face... I'll probably be handling pre-departure preparations from now on. And before the official departure, I hope the Human Resources Department's Action Team and Team A4 will conduct an acclimatization training session as much as possible... because I might also order some non- Rhodes Island standard equipment from outside... everyone at least needs to know how to use it."

"Okay, I'll inform everyone to make preparations... You've worked hard too, Minister of Medic."

"Just call me Nana... Well then, I won't disturb your holiday any longer. See you next time."

The conversation ended in a gentle and soft-spoken manner, and as Nana left... Yato turned around and saw Durin, his hands raised and the hovercraft's bow disheveled.

"... What, did I wake you up?"

"Although I love sleeping, I would wake up if I were approached by that level of murderous aura... When she came to my side, her entire body was warning me of danger. I haven't felt this way in a long time."

Watching the girl, dressed only in a shirt, stretch and yawn, Yato took out a remote and turned up the brightness of the lounge lights slightly.

"Killing intent... that's not how you use that word. Minister Medic didn't intentionally exude killing intent... what you felt was more like the feeling of threat you get when facing a wild beast."

"Eh~ So this is what you call a minister? That's rare... In our team, you're the most cautious one, Yato. Isn't 'never speak too intimately with someone you don't know well' your motto?"

In response to the teasing of the short Durin girl, the masked Oni woman removed her eye mask, revealing pale indigo eyes that shone with a fantastical quality under the light... Then, the Oni woman drew the long sword she always carried at her waist, placed it on a cardboard box, and began to maintain it.

She couldn't recall when she stopped placing her hand on the knife handle in front of Medic.

But she also had her reasons.

"... It's just that it's rare to meet a colleague who has become a 'mother'... it's quite moving..."

PS: Waaaaaah, kitty!

PS2: After thinking about it, deploying a teammate of Weedy's caliber right away might not be enough... So, after searching around, who among the lower-level operators can help repair the vehicle? It has to be Durin.

The main problem is that Durin's pictures are getting increasingly erotic... There are more pictures of him without clothes than with clothes, which is a bit of a problem for me.

Let's go with something similar.

Image: "Durin", Location: "Images/1684903301-100361166-110347060. jpg"

3rd This Land: 074 Vehicle Enhancement, Perform a Gold Infusion

Nana had no idea how Yato had arranged things for her. The Kitty Killer, who valued efficiency and timeliness, returned to his office after informing the A4 Action Group, seeing that there was still some time before lunch, to begin the formal manpower mobilization report.

Folinic is an intern under my supervision, and her assignment is directly under the Emergency Department... The Human Resources Department Action Team and the Emergency Department's Action Team are actually one team, so Folinic's file status only needs to be checked in the system to see if she is on field duty.

However, Folinic's departure means that the ship's Emergency Department services will be suspended, leaving no one to act as a fire brigade or emergency personnel. If an emergency occurs on the ship while she is away and no one answers the emergency phone, it would be quite a bad thing.

Nana told Kal'tsit about it on her phone... Kal'tsit replied that there was no need to worry, as a new attending physician-level member would take over in Kazdel.

However, since the files of those three people haven't been logged into Rhodes Island yet, Nana doesn't know their details. But since Kal'tsit has made arrangements, Nana can go and handle her own affairs without worry.

For example, Su Sulo, who is also a colleague in the Medical Department.

Although she is not an operations operator, she belongs to the Medical Department and has experience working with Nana... so as long as she notifies Su Sulo's superior Touch, via mobile phone and reports to the head of the Medical Department, Kal'tsit, via PRTS, she can be transferred to the operations team.

It seems that because of the addition of many interns, the Medical Department's work can continue even though Nana has been transferred away from Su Sulo... The only question is whether Touch will go crazy with the increased workload after taking away a senior medical operator like Su Sulo...

Nana could only say that she would bring back gifts for the Medical Department members... Sending more small gifts to build good relationships would reduce resistance if there was a need to regroup the troops in the future.

Unlike the Medical Department, the action team falls entirely within the authority of the Human Resources Department.

Rosemary, as Senior Elite Operator, maintains her own independent organizational structure because Kal'tsit granted her permission to use her, making it the most convenient time for Little Cat to handle her personnel file.

Although Huang became Elite Operator in the past three years, she still belonged to the E3 Action Group. To mobilize her, it was necessary to notify ACE through the system... And because the E3 Action Group did not carry out field missions, Huang was thus brazenly stuffed into Nana's team by Nana using the authority of the Human Resources Department.

It made Nana wonder if she was abusing her power.

Of course, if Nana really wanted to abuse the Human Resources Department's manpower allocation authority, Nana would probably transfer all of Rhodes Island's high-level combatants into her own squad...

In reality, Senior Elite Operator like ACE and Outcast have ministerial-level authority... Nana, nominally the Human Resources Department, only has authority on par with everyone else. Leaving aside issues like access permissions, abuse of power is out of the question...

The main reason why Nana feels she is abusing her power is probably because, during her time at the ICA, the Kitty Killer's operations were entirely handled by her agent.

Now, she has the power to control Rhodes Island's personnel arrangements, fitting her own ideas into her missions with the people she wants... For Nana, this is a completely new experience.

Finally, I added my electronic signature to the end of Folinic's written "Notification Regarding Operator Vanilla's Transfer to the Reserve Operator Training Camp"... Aside from almost writing "77" instead of "Medic," there were no other problems.

"... Then came the notification of the team merger between Franka, Liskarm, and Jessica... and the A4 Action Group's call-up request report..."

With all the formalities settled, Nana looked at everyone's files and began preparing the action plan and materials... In the past, her manager had handled all these things for Nana; now she had to learn to make decisions on her own.

First, let's assess their abilities... The old friends have the Little Cat to help with their training, and once they meet the Little Cat, Nana will have a pretty good idea of everyone's skill level... As for the A4 Squad, judging from the information, they seem to be a very traditional Mercenaries team.

A captain who uses a knife and has a relatively aggressive approach to action.

A heavily armored unit wielding a shield, serving as the captain and the one with the most complex thought processes.

A sorcerer responsible for maintaining all the team's belongings and also acting as their mascot. Another

There's also a seasoned sniper operator with extensive combat experience and a comprehensive knowledge of all things—a veritable encyclopedia...

Just as Closure recommended, this setup seems perfectly capable of being used for logistics, and even deployed alongside the main force for an offensive.

Rhodes Island members should have a higher level of professionalism than ICA members, so Nana probably won't worry about fighting on the front lines while her support staff just drive off... After all, she's an operator Kal'tsit has labeled as the 'cornerstone of Rhodes Island,' so her trust level should be maxed out.

Although in terms of team configuration, the A4 action team lacking medical and auxiliary operators cannot engage in continuous high-intensity confrontation. But if the logistics team encounters that situation, either the front-line action team is dead and the enemy's large forces advance here, or the captain himself has a fatal omission in grasping the battlefield situation...

Nana took a deep breath, reminding herself that she held more than just her own life in her hands... Then she began checking the team's safety precautions.

First, regarding measures to stabilize the condition of Oripathy within the team... In the team, Hoshiguma, Su Sulo, Franka, Black Horn, and Yato are all the Infected... If we add myself and Little Cat, who are in the special case of having negative infection rates but are still the Infected, then 7 out of the 12 members of the team need to be monitored for their infection status in this operation.

Nana knew that Rhodes Island possessed an Originium infection detection device improved by the Engineering Department, but according to the files kept by the Human Resources Department, the device, which was mostly made into wristbands and legbands, only had a monitoring end and no network connectivity... It seemed that due to privacy regulations, the infection records would only be updated at Rhodes Island after Rhodes Island notified or dispatched a messenger to collect the data, and the Medical Department's use of the data to formulate subsequent treatments was a matter for later.

Essentially, the infection monitoring loop doesn't have the ability to actively intervene in the disease... That's why Nana insisted on bringing Su Sulo along... In critical moments, without a doctor in the team, someone might really die suddenly.

We can't really expect Nana, who only knows how to perform emergency surgery and end-of-life care, to treat Oripathy.

But having doctors is not enough; you also need medicine... However, counterintuitively, Rhodes Island headquarters doesn't have a large stockpile of Oripathy inhibitors.

After Rhodes Island's pharmaceutical factories around the world ship their products, most of them are distributed to Rhodes Island's various offices nearby... Only some large factories will accumulate enough drugs every few weeks or even months, and then transport them to Rhodes Island's main island via large third-party transport aircraft.

In many cases, if Rhodes Island wants to replenish its medicines, in addition to growing or synthesizing them itself, it needs Rhodes Island Landship to shuttle between various pharmaceutical factories to purchase the goods.

The bad news is that the current drug inventory on Rhodes Island's main ship clearly doesn't allow Nana to squander it. The amount of blocking drugs Nana can mobilize is only enough for one team to go out and meet their own drug needs.

The good news is that Kazdel has a pharmaceutical factory invested in by Rhodes Island. Although it's not large, its inventory is enough for Nana to fill an Exploration Vehicle and go to Ursus to perform in front of people in the name of Rhodes Island. This would definitely be enough to infiltrate the Infected's social circle as bait.

Clearly, even during the civil war, neither the Kazdel nor the White Emperor's faction intended to target the pharmaceutical factory... Nana doesn't know if it was due to an internal Sarkaz agreement, but it was simply the White Emperor Faction's faction protecting it... In any case, the factory wasn't interfered with by the Sarkaz, nor was it blown up by competitors from other countries... This really demonstrates Kal'tsit's ability to survive in the cracks.

After all... if a large pharmaceutical company were to continuously supply the Sarkaz with Oripathy prevention drugs, the thought of the Court Army's Sarkaz being able to use Originium Arts without worrying about Oripathy would be a heart-stopping experience for the surrounding countries.

That's a bit of a tangent... Anyway, the Kitty Killer first applied for a truckload of medicine in the system, with a ratio of four common medicines to six Oripathy blocking medicines, and the purpose was marked as Ursus Icebreaker... Of course, some were for personal use as well.

After ensuring the availability of medication, the next step is vehicle maintenance.

She took out the usage Blacksteel for that vehicle again... The main body of the vehicle should be fine, but what worried Nana more was the living area inside the vehicle.

Of course, Blacksteel said they would thoroughly clean the place before delivering it, and previous users would take their personal belongings with them... The situation like TDD's, where they hastily took someone's belongings along with their belongings, will obviously not happen again.

Nana's concern wasn't about the residual effects of the previous user's use... but rather the living area's adaptability to the Ursus region.

It's important to know that the vehicle had undergone special modifications... Back then, in order to resist the Catastrophes Originium Rain that was codenamed Black Edge, TDD's Ship Affairs Department urgently reinforced the Exploration Vehicle with an outer layer of armor and Originium-resistant materials for the Originium.

There was nothing inherently wrong with this, but the problem was that in order to complete the modification as quickly as possible without affecting its future use, TDD's ship crew chose to directly remove the multi-layer insulation panels of the Exploration Vehicle's interlayer and replace them with Originium -resistant materials... In Columbia, where the climate is relatively mild, the lack of insulation materials could simply be solved by increasing the power of the vehicle's air conditioning.

However, in the vast Snowfield of Ursus, the dangerously low temperatures are not a problem for a particular season or time of day, but rather a constant threat.

It would be uneconomical to expect air conditioning to solve all low-temperature problems based on this... after all, other devices also require electricity.

Using lead-lined plates designed to counteract Originium radiation for insulation is definitely not an option.

"... So, we need to prepare replacement interlayer fittings... and have the Engineering Department manufacture them? Is there enough time? We'll be arriving in Kazdel soon, a place with distinct summers and winters. Can we order ready-made insulation materials there?"

After thinking about it for a while, Nana still felt it was better not to have high expectations for Kazdel's industrial capabilities... Just to be on the safe side, Nana called Closure native of Kazdel, for advice.

She completely agreed with Nana's guess. The cola-flavored Bloodfiend even recommended that Nana go directly to Raythean Industries to buy a ready-made one while the Intercity Network was still running... After all, Rhodes Island's own Engineering Department was currently focused on processing its own orders, and even if Nana placed an expedited order, Closure wouldn't be able to conjure up the insulation layer for the Exploration Vehicle before arriving in Kazdel.

After all, Rhodes Island isn't the Columbia Security Bureau... Kal'tsit has never even played with this toy car that took years to come out of the box.

Since Closure said this was the only way to make it in time for Nana's trip, and out of trust in Rhodes Island's chief engineer, Nana wrote Closure's words into the funding request form submitted to Kal'tsit and placed the order in the name of Rhodes Island Medic.

Since Nana had free access to the internet, the contact process was quick and convenient. The representative from Raythean Industries was very friendly after hearing that it was 'Medic from Rhodes Island'. Seeing that they offered a 10% discount and removed the initial offer, Nana didn't haggle over the price, and the whole deal was finalized very easily.

Whether Kal'tsit would hang Closure up and beat her up after receiving the bill for six million Lungmen Dollar was none of Nana's business... after all, she probably hadn't even returned from Ursus by then.

After ordering the insulation components, Nana also considered adding some other things to the car...

When Raythean Industries heard that Nana was going to modify the Hero Exploration Vehicle, they put a lot of effort into promoting their products... including miniaturized vehicle-mounted automatic Originium Cannon and close-range defense systems that were only available to the armies of various countries.

The former is a copy of a city defense cannon, but it is a small, single-mounted turret with a caliber of only 100 mm, while the latter has a caliber of 20 mm and a rate of fire of up to 12,000 rounds per minute.

They are typically installed on Landship like Rhodes Island, which are over 500 meters long, to intercept incoming spells and projectiles, as well as to suppress smaller targets like road bandits.

The prototype of this thing is obviously the Revolver Gun used by the Laterano Pontiff's Gun-Knights, and Nana knows that Columbia and Victoria have both conducted research and imitation of similar weapons... However, it is only Columbia, a place that uses Firearms Arts as its main weapon, that would tacitly allow Raythean Industries to complete the imitation under the watchful eyes of Laterano.

It was never commercialized... or rather, given its international relations with Laterano, Raythean Industries never openly sold the replica weapons from the Revolver Gun Base.

The reason they're willing to give it to Nana now is probably because Medic is from Columbia, or perhaps they're hoping to invest in Rhodes Island.

After all, there are real profits to be made from a deep partnership with Rhodes Island. Blacksteel has managed to get rid of its the Infected employees over the past three years, and it's hard to say that it hasn't already made a fortune.

However... this close-in weapon system requires a massive ammunition depot to function...

This might not be a big deal for Landship of Rhodes Island's size, but for Exploration Vehicle like the Base Walker, where every inch of space is crucial, it's truly a bit too extravagant.

Despite the strong recommendation from Raythean Industries, Nana still purchased two vehicle-mounted automatic cannons to address the issue of the Exploration Vehicle's lack of weaponry.

They will cover the vehicle's entire omnidirectional threat from the left and right, and from the front and back... Although it is indeed difficult to fire two weapons at the same time with such a diagonal arrangement, it is enough for self-defense weapons to fire without blind spots.

However... in this way, the two turrets cost two million, and the accompanying ammunition and electronic equipment cost eight million. As a result, Nana only made one preparation, and Rhodes Island threw away sixteen million Lungmen Dollar, which is half the price of Exploration Vehicle.

It seemed that the other party also noticed Nana's hesitation when she was about to pay the bill, and the Raythean Industries staff then readily provided free interior and exterior cleaning, vehicle maintenance, and assembly and modification services.

Although it's unclear why everyone suddenly seems to know that I'm driving to Ursus, Raythean Industries assured me that if Blacksteel delivered the car to them, they would install equipment and perform vehicle maintenance free of charge... ensuring the mission was completed on time and to a high standard, and even delivering it to Nana for free.

In the past, Nana would definitely not have cared about such small favors, but they said that if Rhodes Island was even one second late, Raythean Industries would pay ten times the amount of this order in cash as compensation.

This confident statement left the cat, who was new to large-scale online shopping, feeling a little dizzy... and even suddenly hoping that the other party would be a little late... after all, there was money to be made.

The other party seemed to know that if they didn't appease the client after completing such a large transaction of ten million, this would be their last transaction with Rhodes Island.

Raythean Industries guaranteed they would completely refurbish the vehicles' tires, brake discs, and other critical components. As for the complimentary pink living quarters, supposedly designed for children and female crews with over 99% popularity, Nana saw them as nothing more than sugar-coated bullets...

Since we've already bought the ammunition, we might as well take advantage of the sugar coating.

After gritting her teeth and mentally criticizing Raythean Industries' actions, Nana chose a less glaring renovation plan... This was taken into account that Yato had photosensitivity, as recorded in the Yato file, and that Durin had morbid narcolepsy.

The vehicle refurbishment and maintenance can be considered as completing the most difficult part of the mission: the vehicle itself.

After all, Nana's original plan was to have Durin take charge of these things, which would be a huge workload and a heavy task... For someone with narcolepsy, this would probably be worse than killing her.

Ultimately, Nana resolved the issue by outsourcing it.

After informing Blacksteel to send the vehicle to Raythean Industries next to their headquarters, Nana began to rack her brains about how to write the expense report.

Ah... is this the reason why my manager always frowns before I start a mission?

Nana also began to understand how painful it was to ask her superiors for funding.

In short, Closure first. Send the final contract, quotation, and communication records to the Engineering Department all at once. Closure first sent a question mark in the PRTS channel, and then Nana's phone rang.

Caller ID -- Kal'tsit.

PS: Waaaaaaah!

3rd This land: 075 Receiving a package

Nana has gone missing; she's been missing for several days.

Or perhaps the word 'missing' doesn't quite fit, since she wasn't actually lost, and she still washes up and goes to sleep at night with Rosemary, who patiently waits...

But the Little Cat couldn't find Nana before dawn, and not only did Nana not participate in the supposed acclimatization training, Nana also didn't show up at the celebratory dinner after the training was completed.