After spending a few days with the three from the Manor of Erudition, I've come to realise how awful my original design is. Normally something as poorly built as the Big Metal Dragons shouldn't even be able to move properly, I was metaphorically and literally forcing it to move using my abilities.
Since the original design wasn't made to be pilotable, we start with designing the automaton version first. The three of them were absolutely astonished when they heard the Big Metal Dragon was able to walk around as it shouldn't have been possible for it to do so under normal circumstances, despite the precautions I took for it to be able to move upright. Not just the legs, but all the other joints were poorly made and put together and this should have resulted in the inability to move. The lesson learnt, leave the designing to the professionals.
The first thing we do is decide the base material that will be used to remake the Big Metal Dragon. I had proposed the use of the three metals of Lausiel, lauferro, adamantium, and flarium. But they were only mildly impressed with them as they have a metal here, hihi'irokane. It has similar toughness to adamantium, impossible to melt like flarium, and it can conduct energy just as well as lauferro, all this while also being lightweight. As they heard that is, none of the three has ever actually worked with this metal, actually, the metal itself is nearly nonexistent. From the long yet short explanation that Hakase gave, there are only a few things made from this metal and all of them are considered to be national treasures to the three empires and Zhongyang.
There is the question of hihi'irokane supposedly being impossible to melt, but putting that aside, no one even knows where to mine the metal, all that is known is that it exists in the form of artefacts belonging to the Council of Zhongyang and the Imperial Families of Shenzhou, Yamato, and Samhan.
Of course, there isn't any hihi'irokane here at Manor of Erudition, such a treasure wouldn't ever show up in a place like this. But since Hakase proposed the idea of using it then she should also have an idea of how to obtain it. It was here I figured out why these three are wanted by the three empires, Hakase wanted to sneak into the Treasury or another Council affiliated building to steal a hihi'irokane artefact. Gyosu also agreed to this idea while Boshi tried hard to convince them not to or they'd get kicked out of Zhongyang as they did everywhere else. While this conversation was going on Yue and collapsed laughing at the absurdity while was there thinking if these guys were ok in the head, even though the more Hakase and Gyosu talked about it, the more I was coming around to the idea.
Eventually, the conversation got derailed so much that we stopped talking about materials entirely and focused only on how to break into the areas where there might be a hihi'irokane artefact. Even Boshi gave up after some time and actually thought about this seriously. Yue, on the other hand, was absolutely dumbfounded that we were actually serious about this and even openly talked about it in front of one of the higher-ups of the Treasury, although Hakase, Boshi, nor Gyosu knew about that.
Apparently, the three of them had actually done this before, breaking into the Treasury and other well guarded areas that house important items for the sake of their research. And Boshi even argued against it every time before eventually assisting anyway. Yue was astonished to hear this as when we were heading back to the hotel that day, she mentioned that there had been reports of theft in the past but the trail died and the case was left unsolved. Thankfully she thought it was interesting and while she doesn't intend to assist she won't say anything either.
The same day once we got back to the inn, Lia looked at me with a knowing glance, likely having eavesdropped on the contents of the discussion. Even though she didn't say anything, Aurelia thought something was up and of course, it's near impossible for most people to hide completely from her. Needless to say, Wanjing was amused while Aurelia was upset that I was already finding a new way to cause trouble. But she too was interested in hihi'irokane so with a bit of convincing I got her to agree and from then on our entire group started to spend their days at the Manor of Erudition.
With a few days of planning and preliminary scouting, we've come to the conclusion that the artefacts are located somewhere within the Tower of Paradise, the building where most of the Council members live and have their meetings. Yue neither confirmed or denied this, but after having Aurelia walk around the street the tower is located she said there was something hidden beneath the ground which could be a storeroom, but she wasn't very clear on it as there was something disrupting her view and sticking around for too long could provoke the suspicion of the Demigods that live in the tower.
"So how should we do this? We've snuck into a few places during our stay in Zhongyang, but the Tower of Paradise is on a completely different level compared to the places we've snuck into in the past. This isn't like the Treasury where just about anyone can walk in." Gyosu says.
"My first thought is to have Cordelia sneak around using the smallest size she can go with her Size Modification, similar to how she was crawling around in between the floorboards of the Treasury in Shipping. But getting inside is probably the first major difficulty of this operation," Aurelia says.
"I can probably dig my way through as no mineral or metal is capable of standing in my way, but I can't go in alone, I'm almost certain I'll get lost and I really don't want to be stuck in a place while surrounded by Demigods," I say.
"What if we somehow got you a map of the Tower?" Boshi asks.
"It's unfortunately hopeless. Cory is just not capable of finding her way on her own. Unless someone is physically there to guide her she will get lost. We've already experienced how poorly she handles directions," Lia says.
"Yeah, like, sending Teacher in alone is like leaving her to get caught," Wanjing says.
""Just what should we do?"" we all ask out loud.
After all the time we've spent talking about it, we're all very interested in hihi'irokane so we're reluctant to give this up. It's just the difficulty of this operation is near impossible.
we spend a few hours trying to think of a solution, but to no avail and just as it seems like we're going to give it up, a blinding light blocks all vision in the room as a familiar and annoying voice is soon heard.
"Hey, hey~, it's everyone's adorable genius who's eternally seventeen~! Coming to save the day from the pits of despair~ it's Magical Girl Serabane-chan~!"