The big drill

A week passed quickly on Euronia 4. At first, the human warships tried bombarding them a few times, but the thick cloud cover made the attacks ineffective. Eventually, they stopped wasting ammunition.

The week was fairly quiet. More than seventy percent of the Glory Knight was damaged, and repairing it would require vast amounts of resources and minerals. For now, it could only serve as scrap metal and a fortress.

Using the warship as their base, Cheng Mingrui often took his Boyz out to explore the planet's environment and resources.

The more they explored, the more frustrated he became. There were no minerals at all, just rocks.

The spores scattered by the Orks had also begun taking root and sprouting on the bare rocks. Huge mushrooms stubbornly grew out of the hard stone and soil.

Perhaps because the environment was too harsh, many of the mushrooms looked sickly, and some had even withered away.

Looking at the Mushroom Farm before him, Cheng Mingrui felt miserable. How was he supposed to farm saline-alkaline land like this? This wasn't Civilization VI, where he could restart if he got a bad spawn.

"Sneaky Boss!" An Ork Boy came racing over on an enormous yellow Squig.

"Wot is it? Don't bother me unless it's urgent. I'm proper fed up right now." Cheng Mingrui didn't even feel like kicking the Ork Boy.

"It's the well! The well! Something's happened, Boss!" The Ork Boy was frantic, but Cheng Mingrui wasn't concerned at all.

"The Boyz kicking off again? I don't get it. They fought and sang the whole way here without a break, and not one of 'em said they were tired. Now I ask 'em to dig a few wells, and every last one starts whining."

Cheng Mingrui rose from his crouch and shook out his arms, ready to head over to the wells and knock some sense into the troublemakers. As long as they got a fight, whether they were beating someone up or getting beaten themselves, the Boyz would settle down for a while.

"It's water! The Boyz dug up water!" The Ork Boy finally managed to get the whole sentence out.

Cheng Mingrui's eyes widened. "Now that's good news! I thought we'd have to dig for at least a month. Didn't expect us to get this lucky. Come on! Let's get to the well. The Mushroom Farm needs loads of water."

An enormous drilling rig towered over a valley crisscrossed with gullies. The rig was thick and massive, with a blue-painted head of Gork mounted on top.

The huge drill kept boring down through the rock with a deafening roar, but even that racket couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of the Boyz around it. They weren't hard at work, though. They were fighting... to get out of working.

A group of blue-painted Boyz defeated the red-painted Boyz, then stood on the platform and bellowed a triumphant "Waaagh!"

The defeated red Boyz hung their heads. They obediently took tools from the Gretchin and trudged miserably down into the mine to start working.

This was another solution Cheng Mingrui had devised. Ork Boyz loved war and fighting, and hated monotonous labor. Fighting contests greatly eased their resentment, cutting their riots from three a day to one.

When they saw their boss arrive, the gathered Boyz parted to let him through.

"Didn't you say you'd struck water? Hurry up and take me there," Cheng Mingrui demanded eagerly.

An enormous, dinosaur-like Squig came up to Cheng Mingrui, casting a shadow that could completely cover his five-meter-tall frame.

"Sneaky Boss!" Clever Git waved at Cheng Mingrui from atop the Squig's head. He had grown not just bigger, but fatter too.

"We struck water! Proper good water! Told you our drill and my Squig were the business!"

"Enough blabbering. How's the water quality? How much is coming out?"

Clever Git hurriedly jumped down from the Squig and led Cheng Mingrui into the mine. The tunnel was deep. After walking for who knew how long, they finally reached a small opening in the wall, where a trickle of murky, sandy water seeped out.

Cheng Mingrui gave Clever Git a sidelong look. His eyes conveyed just one thing: That's it?

"Didn't you brag that you'd find water within a week? You've only got two days left now. And I happen to be getting sick of eating Squig."

Orks could actually get energy by basking in sunlight-they were mushroom people, after all. But when they used up too much energy, they still needed food to sustain themselves, which was why they had mouths too.

Most of the time, they used those mouths to eat for fun, rather than out of hunger. Squigs were the most common item on the menu in Ork society. They came in many varieties and flavors, and were highly versatile.

Plenty of Orks liked eating Gretchin too, especially skewered and roasted. Gretchin were always keen to find themselves a boss, hoping his protection would let them survive a little longer in Ork society.

Clever Git's eyes darted about as he wracked his brains so hard that smoke almost rose from his head. Cheng Mingrui thought he looked rather pitiful. He had only been joking. Even eating Squig had taken plenty of mental preparation; he really couldn't bring himself to eat a Gretchin.

"Boss... this bit of water really ain't enough. I'll get the Boyz to put their backs into it and keep digging." Clever Git was cunning enough not to quibble that this trickle still counted as water.

"Speaking of which, Boss, wot do you need water for? If it's for drinking, I know a kind of juicy Squig that tastes proper good. If you want something tastier, I can brew mushroom booze too."

Smack! Cheng Mingrui punched Clever Git in the head. Even though he held back, the blow still sent him splatting onto the ground.

"What's going on in that head of yours? Juicy Squigs? Booze? This lousy planet barely has any water, and the Mushroom Farm is withering. It looks ready to die! We can't grow new Boyz or Squigs, and you're still thinking about that nonsense?"

"Huh? Boss, you want water for the Mushroom Farm?" Clever Git looked incredulous, as though Cheng Mingrui's words had shattered his entire worldview.

"What else? How do you farm without water? Crops need watering!" Cheng Mingrui had never farmed in his previous life, but he at least knew that plants needed water and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to grow.

They couldn't possibly grow out of nothing. Surely they still had to obey conservation of energy.

"..." Clever Git stared at Cheng Mingrui with even greater disbelief, as though he had seen a ghost. But wary of his fists, he said timidly, "Mushroom Farm... if you want it to grow well, you need Snotlings to tend it. Find the stupidest Snotlings you can. They sleep in the field, and the mushrooms grow proper lush."

"Huh?!" Cheng Mingrui looked at Clever Git as though he were an idiot. His eyes clearly said, Are you fucking kidding me?

"Boss, let me look after the Mushroom Farm! Give me ten days, and I'll definitely grow you Gretchin and Boyz!" Perhaps sensing murderous intent in Cheng Mingrui's gaze, Clever Git's survival instinct flared.

Cheng Mingrui didn't know whether Clever Git was just fobbing him off to buy time for an escape, but a powerful instinct in his mind seemed to be telling him to let Clever Git try.