Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 105: Cracking the shell

"What are we even searching for?"

Four more times did Theo stop to wave his hand and magically create a perfectly straight and comfortably wide tunnel. And for all four of those times, every new stretch of the tunnel would align perfectly with the last.

And with over a minute needed to cross from one end of the stretch to the other, Callane finally lost her patience and asked.

Only for Theo to put on a mysterious smile.

"Black gold."

Was his answer, spoken both like the greatest secret but also casually as if it was the most common knowledge in the world.

And yet…

Despite her immense roots in trading and goods processing, this was Callane's first time hearing of such a thing.

Still, while his answer couldn't be any less satisfactory, that smile…?

'For a moment, he looked like Theo again,' Callane thought, gritting her teeth as sharp pain struck her across the chest, prompting the girl to slightly massage her heart.

In the end, however, Theo didn't keep Callane in the shadows for long, for within just the next three tunnel lengths, he apparently arrived right where he wanted to go.

"This is…?"

Looking around, Callane struggled to make out anything in the near-perfect darkness of the tunnel.

Then, the whole room lit up.

'Wait, room? Since when?!'

What was supposed to be just a tunnel now turned into a considerably sized, open area lit up by a torch somehow standing perfectly still on the corner of its butt!

Stunned, Callane could only watch as Theo then swung his artifact again, creating long vents capable of introducing proper airflow before he started to dig down, using the shape of the room as a blueprint and just… excavating all the dirt and stone that would be in the way if he moved the blueprint a bit further down and away.

Just a few more waves of Theo's hand and he created amphitheater-like steps, each roughly a meter high, gradually descending to where a black patch cut off from the otherwise gray stone.

'Black?'

Callane squinted her eyes as she connected the dots.

'But… isn't this just coal?'

This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.

Weirded out, she then could do nothing but stand in place and watch how Theo materialized a massive tower-like structure with an elongated gateway leading up to it and a void-oozing, black mouth at its front.

He then danced around, adding up those weird, black-chain poles that he quickly connected to the machine before adding those magical lanes, manifesting them from the massive machine's mouth and then leading them up the steps, to the very tunnel the two of them took to arrive here.

"Is that black gold you talked about just… coal?"

Finally, Callane's desire for understanding helped her overcome the constant shocks of watching Theo's exploits.

"Oh, so you know about it," finally, Theo reacted quite openly, a small smile marking his lips as Callane struck the conversation over a topic that he was clearly interested in.

"Yeah. Most consider it a waste, a uselessly hard stone to deal with when mining out other materials. Normally, only big forges would order some, but we've recently started to replace wood and charcoal with it," Callane happily elaborated, starved for the one drug she could gain through such a simple, relaxed conversation.

"Oh?" Theo raised his eyebrows, staring right back at Callane's face with genuine interest sparking in his eyes. "That's a step in a good direction," he nodded his head before reaching out to help the girl climb the first of the steps.

When they were having a relaxed conversation like that, Theo…

His demeanor would be exactly the same as the Theo that Callane knew!

And, in a way, after all the lengths she came to save him, this felt not only like a fitting reward for her efforts but also a spark that reignited the feelings she thought she had lost when Theo's brother schemed to make her his fiancée.

"We just didn't want to let it go to waste," Callane nonchalantly shook her shoulders. "If it burns, it can save us on the firewood, so why not use it?"

Hearing this, Theo chuckled a little, a small little jump that made Callane's heart jump too.

"You just wait until you get to the steam engines," he chuckled again before shaking his head and then climbing the last of the steps, helping Callane climb all throughout the climb.

Turning around, Theo attempted to pull away and focus on his task…

But Callane refused to let him.

When Theo pulled his hand away, she simply followed with the pull, refusing to let go of Theo's hand.

A split-second decision that took her by surprise.

"Huh?" Slightly startled, Theo looked down, more curious than surprised after restoring himself from the momentary lapse in stability.

"I…" Callane looked up, her heart pulling her forth, but as she stood in Theo's face, sparsely lit by the distant rays of light from the torch…

She simply failed to find the right words necessary for her to produce a single sound.

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"Huh?"

Feeling the tug on his hand, Theo nearly lost his balance.

Thankfully, it was all too gentle to be an attempt to tackle him, giving him ample room to recover before looking back, curious about what just happened.

In the end, it turned out to be a rather small thing.

After he helped Callane up the stairs as they were having quite the pleasant and relaxed conversation, when he attempted to pull off… She followed through rather than just letting go of his hand. And as he looked down to her hand before moving his sights over her face…

'How adorable.'

Callane's face was covered in a deep blush, her cheeks nearly matching the fiery color of her hair.

"I…"

She attempted to say something, only for her blush to intensify even further as she lowered her head to hide her face away… But, quite noticeably, she still refused to let go of Theo's hand!

'Right, even if I don't remember a single thing, I'm still someone she used to know. And judging from what she said back at the factory…'

For a moment, Theo tensed up a bit, only to then relax as he sighed away and… enclosed his fingers down on the girl's hand as he gently tugged her along.

'This is the least I can do for her. After all, regardless if it was needed or not, she still risked her life to come and try to save me, didn't she?'

The next few minutes grew pretty weird.

Even though all they did was just walk as Theo dragged along the conveyor belt and power line, just by the factor of holding each other's hands did this walk turn into… something else.

Despite Theo's best attempts to figure it out, he couldn't arrive at a satisfactory explanation… Besides just one.

According to this risky theory, just by holding his hand and walking in silence along his side, Callane started to slowly crack the shell Theo erected around his soul to keep himself from the loneliness of the place.

A shell that made him focus on nothing but the goals ahead, the risks he had to contain, the potential routes for progress and expansion…

Ever since his execution period started, Theo removed himself from the equation of his own life, only getting the minimal rest he absolutely needed, focusing with all his might on every task he partook in, sparing himself only enough slack not to collapse.

Yet, as the warmth of Callane's hand slowly seeped through Theo's palm and towards his heart, as the sense of presence of another person slowly started to fill him up…

*Click.*

Something in Theo's mind clicked, sending him stumbling face-first to the ground pretty much as soon as the two stepped out from the tunnel upon reaching the factory floor.