"There are so many mysterious and unknown things in this world......"

Byron sat in the office of the military administration of the port and couldn't help but sigh.

Outside the window, the ebb and flow of the tide from the distant sea, the occasional chirping of seabirds passing low across the harbor area, the slanting sunlight spilling from the vast sea all the way into the large buildings of the North Harbor, casting a well-defined light and shadow between the brand-new ramps, houses, towers, and fences, a group of soldiers striding in a neat line towards the lookout of the changing of the guard, and in the distance, magic guide carts full of supplies pressed over the newly built concrete road, and merchants who responded to the recruitment lined up at the checkpoint waiting to pass. The roar of construction machinery could be heard from farther away – in the direction of the No. 2 Port Link Bridge.

In the office of the Management Office, a soft warm breeze blows, two visitor representatives sit in a chair with a back at their desks, a beautiful woman with medium-long blue hair, wearing a long navy blue dress of unknown texture with a golden pendant on her forehead, carefully studying several crystal vessels placed on the table, and the other is a woman who is almost entirely covered in scales and tough leather, as if a human being and some kind of deep-sea creature are fused together, the latter is particularly striking. Her lower limbs, which resemble a fusion of sea snakes and fishes, "sit" on the chair in a very awkward position, the extra half of the tail seems to not know how to place it, and has been shaking awkwardly, although its upper body is obviously feminine, but it is full of the characteristics of deep-sea creatures.

Byron's gaze couldn't help but fall on the "Naga" again, and he explained: "I'm sorry, Lady Helen, I don't mean to be offended—but it's the first time I've seen a Naga in person. ”

"Everyone should have seen 'Naga' for the first time," Naga, the woman who was sitting awkwardly in her chair, smiled, and didn't seem to care, "after all, we were only ...... a while ago Get back on your feet. ”

"Your crystal processing technology is not the same as before," the blue-haired woman sitting next to her seemed to be completely unconcerned about the conversation between Byron and Helen, she curiously picked up the cup on the table and shook it, "I remember the last time I saw the artificial white crystal on land, there were still a lot of impurities and bubbles in it, which could only be broken and used as the base material for the runes......"

"Uh...... Crafts and utensils-grade white crystals have been ...... for many years" Byron didn't care about the Siren's troubles, only showed a hint of confusion, "Lady Viola, can I ask you about the 'last time'?" ”

“…… I don't remember exactly, I don't really care about things outside of the technical realm, but I vaguely remember that you humans were still trying to find a way to break through the offshore blockade at that time......" The blue-haired Siren, known as Lady Viola, thought for a moment and nodded seriously, "Well, now you're also trying to figure out how to break through the offshore blockade, so it shouldn't be long." ”

Byron was stunned for a moment before he realized how the other party's timeline jumped, and was immediately dumbfounded: "What you said is not the Age of Sail seven hundred years ago...... Seven centuries have passed, Lady Viola! ”

The blue-haired Kraken spread his hand: "Look, I'll just say it won't be long. ”

Rao is always self-paying Byron, who has good eloquence and reflexes, doesn't know how to pick up this kind of topic at the moment, but Naga Helen on the side helps break the embarrassment: "The Kraken's concept of time is very different from that of humans, and Ms. Viola's concept of time is very ...... even in the Kraken Awesome. Please understand this. ”

"Oh, oh...... Of course, of course, in fact, I know some immortal races, and I can understand the difference between you and humans in terms of time concept," Byron was stunned for a moment, then nodded and said, then he stood up with a smile and opened his hands to the two visitors in front of him, "Anyway, thank you very much Io for the technical assistance provided to Cecil, the technical team you brought is very important to the North Harbor. We're now at a critical juncture in the whole project – would you be interested in taking a trip to the shipyard with me? The rest of the tech team should already be over there. ”

Naga Helen immediately jumped out of her chair, a smile on her heterogeneous face, "Of course, that's what we're here for. ”

……

On the east side of the North Harbor, in the newly built shipyard near Sheltered Bay, the roar of machinery is constantly being heard, and the busy construction work is gradually coming to an end.

A new steel-based ship lies quietly in dry dock, secured by a large number of support structures on both sides of the hull, and along the scaffolding along the hull and skeleton, technicians are inspecting the key structures of the new ship and confirming that the vital power ridge has been installed in place. Welding flashes are lit up one after another in the few openings in the hull that have not yet been closed, where the builders are sealing the mechanical structures and critical compartments in various places.

On the ground at the end of the dock, there is a platform several meters above the ground, where the technicians in charge of the shipbuilding and some special "guests" are gathering.

Some of them were humans dressed in Cecil's naval or technician uniforms, while the rest were beautiful women and "nagas" with distinct features of deep-sea creatures. Together, they were watching the progress of the slipway not far away, some reaching out to point at the various parts of the ship, while others were holding drawings in their hands and reading them to the people next to them.

Obviously, the "cooperation" of these people has only just begun, and there is still a very obvious strangeness to each other, and the human technicians can't help but look curiously at the krakens and Naga, who are always curious about the other magic machines in this shipbuilding facility, and they sometimes discuss and sometimes gossip, but on the whole, the atmosphere is quite harmonious.

A magic guide car stopped near the platform, and Byron, Viola, and Helen stepped out of the car, Helen was still curiously looking at the "strange car" she had just ridden, but Viola had already set her eyes on the slipway. Byron looked at the platform not far away, his eyes swept over the Kraken and Naga who had been mixed with his technicians, and couldn't help but say to himself, "It looks like the atmosphere is not bad......"

In fact, the technicians had arrived in North Harbor only yesterday – they had suddenly emerged from the nearby sea, startling the beach patrolmen at the time. And after a hurried welcome ceremony, these "technical experts" from afar went straight to work.

They arrived earlier than everyone expected, but luckily the news reached Byron's ears a few weeks ago, and a lot of information about Naga and the Kraken had been conveyed to the main staff of the port's facilities through the audio-visual materials of the meeting in recent weeks, so that these "visitors from the deep" did not cause any confusion in the North Harbor.

This special "Deep Sea Expert" is led by Viola, a beautiful lady with blue hair who calls herself a "witch of the depths" - what appears to be a title for a technical position, according to the Kraken. In addition, Viola has two main Naga assistants, one of whom is Helen, and the other is a male Naga nicknamed "The Philosopher" - the Naga did not show up in the management office, but followed the other Kraken and Naga to the shipyard early in the morning, and now he is standing on a platform not far away, but Byron really can't tell which Naga is looking like he is.

"This is the ship you built...... Viola's gaze slowly moved on the slipway, the large ship with its metal shell reflected in her beautiful eyes, she looked at the streamlined bottom, the magic wings placed on both sides of the hull, and some structures on the deck, and nodded slightly, "The man-made ship on land is very different from our means of transportation, but at least it looks reasonable. ”

"There's nothing wrong with the exterior structure," Naga Helen nodded as well, "but ...... We didn't expect you to get to this point. I thought you would wait until we came before actually starting to build new ships. ”

"No one can say when you're going to be here when the construction of the North Harbor begins, and we can't just stop everything and wait for someone else's technical team," Byron said with a laugh, "and we have experience in inland waterway shipbuilding, which may not be useful at sea, but at least enough to build an experimental offshore prototype – which is not only a valuable experience for us to get the facilities in the North Harbor up to speed as quickly as possible." ”

Byron was very honest, but there were still some things that were not said - in fact, Gawain had discussed with him about building sea ships long before the Krakens' technical team set off, and there was a rule that both of them agreed on, that is, no matter whether the third-party technical experts came or not, when they came, Cecil's own R&D and construction projects should go according to plan, even if it would cause some loss of resources, from the perspective of laying a solid foundation and mastering the technology to accumulate experience, everything was worth it.

After all, a foreigner is a foreigner after all, and no matter how good the technical expert is, it is not his own, and it is good to have a good relationship with more allies, but it is very unwise to build one's major projects entirely on the help of other people's technical experts.

Byron didn't know if the "Witch of the Depths" next to him and the "Naga" on the other side, who had been the Child of the Storm, could think of this, and he didn't care much about it, he just looked at the beautiful steel ship on the slipway with some pride, and smiled: "It's a beautiful ship, isn't it?" ”

"Does it have a name?" Helen looked at Byron, her yellow-brown eyes filled with curiosity.

“…… Actually, I wanted to name it 'Pea' at first, but His Majesty didn't agree, and my daughter talked to me for half an hour," Byron shrugged, "and now it's officially called 'Curiosity', and I think that's also in line with its positioning—it will be a symbol of humanity's re-exploration of the sea after the end of the Age of Classical Sail, and we will use it to reopen the coastal route of the Northwest Ring of the continent, and try to explore the dividing line between the far sea and the near sea." ”

"Curious...... Not a bad name, indeed," Helen blinked, her long tail covered in scales sweeping across the ground with a rustling sound, "Curious......"

There seemed to be some complexity in the Naga's tone, perhaps she thought of the courage and exploration of humanity when it first set out to the sea, perhaps it was the ephemeral glory of the Storm Church in the Age of Classical Sail, or it was the regrettable situation of the Storm Priests falling into darkness and humanity being far from the sea for hundreds of years...... However, the scales on her cheeks and her body that she hadn't fully mastered prevented her from making as many expressions as she did as a human, so in the end all her exclamations came down to a single sigh.

……

On the platform at the end of the dry dock, a tall male Naga with deep-set eye sockets and pale cyan scales on his skin withdrew his gaze to the sea at the end of the dock.

Nearby, a Naga companion quipped, "Philosopher, you don't want to compose poetry again, do you?" You've been exclamating like this today. ”

"I'm just thinking about what else needs to be perfected and remodeled on the Curiosity," Naga, a tall male with sunken eye sockets, glanced at his companion beside him, "The technology used in this ship is very new to us, and the ships built by the Church of the Storm were all powered by magic, manpower, and sails, while the Curiosity mainly relies on magic machinery to propel it...... Depending on the power system, the hull structure and the characteristics of the ship when sailing will be very different, and these are all things that must be considered. ”

"That's true," a Kraken Deepwater Technician nodded, "We're here to provide technical support, but we're also going to have to study the human magic technology to figure out how to support it......"

The Naga technician, nicknamed "The ...... of Mankind," couldn't help but mumble softly when he heard the words, but then he shook his head, "But no matter how it changes, the laws of nature will never change, and the basic principles of ship navigation will not change much." ”

His speech was quickly recognized by the technicians present, who came together again from different races, different forces, and even completely different ways of understanding the world, and began to study the drawings of the "Curiosity".

Byron, who was standing not far from the platform, watched the movements of the technicians on the platform, and as a transcendent being, he could hear their discussions—purely technical matters, the "admiral" did not know, but he understood things beyond technology.

In the matter of exploring the sea, the Typhon people did go one step earlier, they started earlier, they have a richer heritage, they have a better coastline and natural ports, and there is a unique natural island chain between the near sea and the far sea, which can be used to build a forward base, and the advantages are too great to ignore.

But the Cecil will still be able to catch up with confidence.

The Cecil knew magic, the Nagas, who were once the Children of the Storm, knew how to build ships, and the Sirens knew the sea.

Now, these three things have come together.

This is the strength of the Cecil people in this field.