Chapter 551 - 551: The Warship's Repaired

For a whole month after that, driven by the need to make up for ten years away and a childhood he'd missed, Kian did nothing else but stay home with his wife and kids.

At first Topknot No. 1, Butch, and Topknot No. 2, Biff, were wary of this stranger. But after a month together, the wariness melted away, and they got to know each other well.

Late one night, Butch and Biff lay in their beds, tucked in.

Kian sat on a stool by the bed with a book in his hand, telling them a story.

"And then they all went kaput! The End~"

Kian closed the book with a grin, and Butch and Biff shouted together: "KAPUT!"

Kian stood up, dusted off his butt, and was about to head to the bedroom when Butch suddenly asked:

"Dad, Mom says you're founding a Knight House and you're gonna let us pilot big mechs. Where's the mech?"

Kian grinned.

"Don't worry. In a while I'll bring over some Knights with properly trained machine spirits for you to pilot.

"But machine spirits are really hot-tempered, especially Knight machine spirits. You have to be strong yourselves to tame them!"

Butch nodded eagerly.

"Dad, Mom makes us do mental training every day, and she gives us that holy water you left.

"She hired Rejuvenat doctors and tech-priests to monitor our mental strength all the time, too.

"Right now our mental strength can hold steady against the psychic overflow of fifteen hundred cogitator arrays."

When Kian heard the number fifteen hundred, he sucked in a breath too.

Two kids barely past ten with that kind of mental strength. That was really something!

Maybe it had to do with the holy water and sanctified oil he'd left behind, and with the long, steady mental training they'd been doing.

Piloting a Titan required withstanding the psychic overflow of five thousand cogitator arrays. The two topknots were already at fifteen hundred. Piloting a Knight would be no problem.

Kian thought about it and said:

"With your mental strength now, you've definitely got enough to pilot a Knight. But Knight machine spirits are weird and warlike, and they might make things hard for you to test you.

"If a machine spirit gives you trouble, you need the strength to generate bioelectricity from your own body and shock the command throne right back!

"So you'd better build your mental strength up to two thousand arrays first. Once you're at two thousand, you can do the ascension rite.

"Then even if the machine spirit gives you trouble, you can pound it until it's on its knees and can't get up!"

The two topknots were thrilled. Ever since they were old enough to understand, their mother had been telling them stories about the Knight Houses.

They were kids. Kids can't resist the idea of piloting giant mechs. Every day they'd hoped their long-lost old man would bring Knights back for them to pilot.

So every day they'd done the mental training their mother set for them.

From barely withstanding a dozen or so arrays at the start, they'd worked all the way up to fifteen hundred, all for the day they could become badass Knight pilots!

Once the older one was settled, the younger one said:

"Dad, why do we have to have this hairstyle? It looks so weird.

"And why is my name Biff? It sounds so random. It feels like you found me in a dumpster."

Biff looked a little hurt, and Kian hurried to reassure him.

"Your hairstyles mean something. In this universe, a lot of people never amount to anything, and a lot of people accomplish great things.

"And most of the people with this hairstyle accomplished great things!

"You two are going to do great things someday, so your hair has to point that way too.

"As for your name, it's to make people underestimate you!

"Someday when you run into an enemy and you introduce yourselves, the moment they hear your name is Biff, they'll look down on you a little.

"Then you go all out and catch them completely off guard. You'll win every time!

"Back in humanity's 2K era, this trick was called sandbagging!

"Okay, kids, it's late. Go to sleep. Tomorrow your old man will tell you the story of the Lord Regent riding his invisible motorbike."

After leaving the boys' room, Kian went to his bedroom. Nightingale was already lying there, reading a book.

Kian went over and wrapped her in his arms, and they were affectionate for a while. Nightingale laughed.

"Ten years. I've aged a whole ten years, you know. Look, I've even got smile lines here.

"And you, you're still so young and strong."

Kian looked at Nightingale adoringly.

"That's fine. As the saying goes, a woman is like wine. She only gets better with age.

"Here, this is blue lipstick. Tonight we're going to recreate a sea creature from Old Terra: the blue-ringed octopus."

...

After a month of family time and rest, Kian's relationship with his family was back to normal, and he felt it was about time to get back to work.

First he made a trip up to the Spire, to the residence of the Planetary Governor, Zeppelin, to find out how things stood on the planet.

Zeppelin and his steward had grown even older. Ten more years had let the radiation take its toll, and they both looked very worn.

Fortunately, since Kian had been off clearing the planet's debts all over the place, the planet no longer faced extinction, so Zeppelin and his steward didn't have much of a workload.

Governor Zeppelin said:

"In the ten years you were gone, we paid off every last bit of the planet's tithe. Now we're just an ordinary agricultural tithe world.

"The reason we paid it off so fast is that, for the ten years you were away, the captain you hired kept running the trade route between our planet and the Forge World with solid-fuel rocket freighters.

"In the first two years, the Captain ran ten rocket container ships between our planet and the Forge World for one round trip.

"In the second two years, he reinvested all the profit from the first run into new rockets. Over those two years the number of rockets shot up to sixty, and seven were lost in transit.

"In the third two years, it shot up to a hundred and twenty. In the fourth, a hundred and eighty. In the fifth, three hundred.

"The Captain says three hundred solid-fuel rocket freighters is the limit. The number won't go any higher.

"Unless some rockets get destroyed by space debris in transit, that's the cargo limit between the Forge World and our planet. Any more would be redundant.

"Over these ten years, thanks to the trade, we've not only paid off the tithe, we've even turned our planet into a light-industry world.

"Without harming the natural environment, our planet has a complete production chain for laser weapons. From laspistols to high-energy laser cannons, we can make them all.

"Oh, and that Sword-class escort of yours was repaired in the eighth year after you disappeared. The Angels towed it from the Forge World to our planet, and right now it's anchored in low orbit above us!"

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