The Scholar and Tetris

The black skeleton learned to steer the ship quickly and made no mistakes, while the white skeleton's dinner was finally edible.

Su Ming realized that the two skeletons had become much more capable. "Did you modify their control cores?" he asked Zijin.

"I finally got them working smoothly." The scholar showed a trace of lingering apprehension. "That classical system based on spirit fire was such a pain to work with. I only used it because the materials were so rare, and it nearly worked me to death."

"The initial training is complicated, but their ability to learn on their own is beyond anything a rune programming system can match," Su Ming said. "Still well worth it."

"It's worth it because they can operate all that equipment of yours," Zijin said. "They were Saint Rank materials, after all. Using them just to make servants would have been a terrible waste."

"True."

After dinner, Zijin took a bath.

With a steam engine aboard, there was never any shortage of hot water, and she loved that. With a stable supply of electricity, the LED lights installed throughout the ship also provided much better lighting than magic. The scholar said she went to bed much later now, and her work and studies had become much more efficient.

Wearing a nightgown patterned with little ducks, the girl studied books and wrote a paper at the long table in the brightly lit workshop.

After being forced to take two mechanics unit tests during the day, the scholar refused to touch that stuff again. Now she was doing some magic research to soothe her wounded heart. Su Ming, who had experienced the joys of teaching for the first time, found this deeply regrettable.

Su Ming glanced at the title of Zijin's paper: "On the Nature of Undead