Daily Life with NB – 1

It had been a week since NB showed me CLBS-1283.

As always, I had to adapt to this new dimension I had set foot in, and as a way to adapt, I decided to help NB with their work.

There wasn’t much I could do with my shrunken body.

Most of the repair work was done by robots attached to the base (NB called the place with the Dimensional Shift ship that).

Whether it was human foresight anticipating the Ark’s takeover of Aaru, the base’s robots were kept offline.

Being offline had the disadvantage of slowing down the work because they couldn’t work simultaneously, but for NB, who had infinite time, the slow work speed wasn’t a big problem.

NB boosted my self-esteem by saying that the only good thing about my joining was that we could now operate two robots at once.

“When I give you the signal, just press the button.”

NB treated me in a businesslike manner, and I didn’t particularly want to feel warmth from NB.

“Like this?”

“Excellent.”

NB gave me a thumbs up, probably having seen it somewhere.

The sight of NB raising only their thumb with a dry face was a little funny.

Repair work at the base usually took place at night. After dinner, we spent about two hours at the base, and I asked if it wouldn’t be better to set up a base here altogether.

Then NB said that they would consider sleeping at the base when it got colder.

After the repair work, before going to sleep, and when the sun rose at the tail end of dawn, NB would sneak up to me and wake me up.

I would rub my sleepy eyes, eat the simple breakfast that NB had prepared, and then enter Aaru with the bright sunlight on my back.

Like playing a stealth game, we dodged the Drones with perfect timing and entered the city.

At first, my heart was pounding, but after following NB around for about two days, I got used to it.

The secret was that the stealth skills I had learned while traveling with Master helped me adapt.

We went through alleys and side streets, packing the things we needed into our backpacks.

I also packed my own necessities with my small hands.

After spending time like that, when the sun was high in the sky, we ate lunch at one of the few remaining bases in Aaru.

I ate a chocolate-coated energy bar and disposed of the trash by throwing it into the bushes near the base.

The schedule after lunch varied depending on the day’s scavenging situation.

If the scavenging wasn’t good, we would take a lap around the junkyard and return to Base A-11, and if the scavenging was good, we would go to the library and look for books on Dimensional Shift theory.

If not, we would talk until the surveillance Drone’s shift changed.

“Why does Kang In-ho help me?”

“Because I have a place I want to go back to.”

“Unlike your appearance, you seem to know a lot about dimensions.”

NB scanned my small body up and down, and I thought that they looked really human.

“The probability of the Dimensional Shift ship going to the dimension that Kang In-ho wants to return to is very low. CLBS-1283 only has the function of opening Dimensional Shift passages and exploring them.”

“So there’s a chance.”

I pretended to be a positive person.

It wasn’t reckless optimism.

However, the damn goddess’s curse on my soul would definitely work in some way, and I was trying to create an exception to break that curse.

If I were to Dimensional Shift with a human body, not a soul, how would this curse work?

I was very curious about that.

“Challenging a near-impossible probability… would it be correct to define this as a ‘human’ action?”

“Not necessarily.”

I chuckled and waved my hand, and the aperture in NB’s eyes moved.

“Wait.”

Then they moved closer to me.

I pulled my body back at NB’s sudden approach, but I couldn’t create much distance.

“It seems you’ve been scratched.”

NB placed their hand over my right hand.

As NB said, there was a red line on my right hand, probably from a scratch somewhere.

Blood wasn’t flowing, but when NB pointed it out, a sudden stinging sensation rushed in.

“There is disinfectant at Base A-11, so I will disinfect it when we return. There will be some limitations in treatment because there is no medical module.”

“It’s just a scratch, so disinfecting it should be enough.”

Although the body is different, I’ve been stabbed with a knife and had my neck cut off.

This level of scratch doesn’t even count as an injury.

The wind that had been blowing through Aaru entered the base where we were hiding.

The cool breeze cooled my forehead and ruffled NB’s neat hair.

I closed my eyes and felt the wind.

It didn’t feel so bad for a wind blowing in the last city of a ruined world.

The most perfect and safest place in the world, completely cut off from unnecessary contact with the outside.

The deepest part of Aaru. The Cradle.

Unlike the name of the place, a huge rectangular parallelepiped device was placed in the center of the Cradle.

The body of the device, which was the height of a three-story apartment building, was flashing with gaudy lights.

It has many names.

ID Integrated Saving System, Ark.

[Special information confirmed. Analyzing.]

An orange light came on in the Ark’s body, which manages everything in Aaru.

The Ark began calculations while watching the screen captured by the reconnaissance Drone.

[The last time waste was dumped in the junkyard was 15 minutes ago from the present.]

[Confirmed that some of the waste is abnormally sinking.]

[Probability due to simple weight 97%]

[Probability due to wildlife out of control 3%]

[The total number of individuals in Aaru must be maintained at the specified number]

[Start tracking wildlife]

[Start deploying 132 Drones nearby]