Oh My God! You’re So Tall!

Kraft entered the dream again.

This dream took place in a somewhat cluttered room. Still, most researchers were like that; compared to them, this room was already quite tidy.

Most of the furniture in the room was made of wood. The table was covered with parts like gears and bolts. A technologically outdated but exquisitely crafted hunting rifle with fine engravings hung on the wall. The bookshelf beside it was crammed full of books, and on top of it sat a mechanical doll that danced nonstop.

Judging by its overall style, this dream seemed to be set in an era similar to Earth’s sixteenth or seventeenth century. But the strange floating chandelier overhead, along with the dream’s protagonist working near the bench, proved that things were not so simple.

Magic Technology? Steampunk? 2077?

A few more baffling terms popped into Kraft’s mind.

Without dwelling on what they meant, Kraft let out a deep sigh. The sense of age displayed by the setting, along with the faintly revealed fantasy worldview, left him with little hope for this dream.

Still, he walked over to the dream’s protagonist. No matter what, broadening his horizons was a good thing.

The dream’s protagonist was an old man with a full head and beard of white hair. Rather than wearing a lab coat like most researchers, he wore red leather armor and a pair of red goggles perched on his nose. Most importantly…

He was far shorter than even fourteen-year-old Kraft.

Yet Kraft paid no attention to that. Instead, his gaze was drawn to the blueprint on the workbench.

Unlike the old-fashioned atmosphere of the surrounding furnishings, the design on the blueprint was exceptionally refined, its complexity far beyond what this era should have been capable of. Though Kraft could not fully understand it, he could see that it included an energy core. That meant this thing required no special abilities to operate. The only question was whether the materials it used could be replaced with alternatives found on Earth.

Since he could not understand the blueprint, Kraft did not waste time at the workbench. He could retrieve the dream memory whenever he wanted in the future and look at it again once he understood it.

He walked over to the bookshelf and glanced at the spines. Unfortunately, there did not seem to be a custom of putting titles on them here, so Kraft casually picked one and pulled it out.

"Goblins Who Don’t Know How to Innovate"

Kraft:…

He decisively stuffed the book back onto the shelf and chose another.

"Gnome Engineering Is the Future"

Kraft:…

Well, at least he had figured out that the mechanical technology here was called engineering, and that it had at least two branches…

Kraft looked back at the diminutive old man still working at the bench. So he was not a human with dwarfism; his race was actually gnome?

The world really was vast…

Kraft once again marveled at the wonders of different worlds, then continued browsing the books on the shelf.

"Researching with a Gnome’s Mindset," "The Stupid Goblins Who Only Know Explosions," "Engineering: From Beginner to Grave," "One Hundred Tips for Building Energy Cores," "Biographies of Famous Craftsmen," "Gnomes Who Made Great Contributions to Engineering"…

After reading the titles of every book on the shelf, Kraft directly picked up Engineering: From Beginner to Grave and began flipping through it.

The thing the dream’s protagonist was making seemed fairly difficult. At any rate, Kraft had already skimmed through the thick Engineering: From Beginner to Grave, yet the dream had not ended.

After finishing the book in his hands, Kraft had gained far more than he had expected.

Engineering really was a scientific technology that required no special abilities to power it. Furthermore, in its early- and mid-stage designs, most of the required materials had counterparts on Earth. Even if Earth lacked them, similar substitutes could be found without affecting their functionality.

The only thing that disappointed him was that many later engineering creations required magical materials. Those materials were generally used to construct cores, and he had no solution for that. He could only see later whether purely technological cores could replace them.

Though Kraft desperately wanted to rush to the laboratory and study it properly, the gnome’s work was not yet finished, and he could not wake up on his own. So he picked up the first book he had drawn, Goblins Who Don’t Know How to Innovate, and started reading it.

Although the title was steeped in prejudice, it should still be enough to help him understand what the goblin branch, different from Gnome Engineering, was like.

Unlike Gnome Engineering, which invented all sorts of bizarre gadgets, Goblin Engineering was more practical and closer to Earth’s industrial systems. Its main focus was manufacturing various gunpowder weapons and matching goggles. Yet compared with Earth’s firearms, the weapons made by goblins had no real advantages. They only seemed special because magical materials had been added. The goggles, on the other hand, were somewhat interesting and gave Kraft quite a few ideas by analogy.

Closing Goblins Who Don’t Know How to Innovate, Kraft felt fortunate that he had dreamed of the gnome branch of engineering. Even after removing the prejudiced parts of the book, Goblin Engineering was not much help to him. Gnome Engineering, however, had many marvelous gadgets that interested him greatly.

He turned and glanced at the gnome still hard at work. His creation was already more than halfway finished, and it looked like it was going to be a robot.

Kraft scratched his head.

The blueprint he had seen earlier had clearly been shaped like a car, hadn’t it?

Still, that did fit the gnome engineers’ tendency to come up with whatever popped into their heads.

Although he was curious how the gnome had made a robot from a car blueprint, Kraft had only briefly looked through books related to engineering. Understanding the gnome’s wild maneuvers was clearly still beyond him, so he turned back around and planned to keep reading.

This time, he would pick a thinner one. Kraft ran his fingers along the shelf. The robot was clearly almost finished, and there was not enough time to keep studying, so he intended to find another kind of book to relax his mind.

In the end, Kraft chose Biographies of Famous Craftsmen. He could relax while also learning more about the specifics of this world.

Then, as he flipped through it, Kraft realized…

I think I’ve dreamed of this world before?

Some of the names and major events in this book had also come up with that orc blacksmith. However, there had been too few books in the orc’s home, so Kraft had mostly heard about them when the orc named Saru Nu Gang spoke with others.

Thinking about the visitors of various races who had come to the orc blacksmith’s place, along with the Night Elves, dwarves, Chromatic Dragons, and other races mentioned in this book, as well as villainous forces such as the Burning Legion and the Lich King, Kraft unconsciously scratched his head.

"This world really is a complicated mess…"

Because he could automatically learn the languages mastered by a dream’s owner while inside the dream, besides the Common Tongue, Orcish, and Troll language he had learned from Saru Nu Gang, Kraft also learned Gnomish, Dwarvish, and parts of Elvish and Human Language here.

"More useless knowledge…"

Elvish in particular. Elves were probably the race that appeared most frequently in dreams aside from humans, and the Elvish languages of different worlds varied as well. Kraft now knew more than a handful of different Elvish languages.

Judging from the worldview shown in the book, engineering seemed to be only a relatively unimportant branch in this world. The main theme was still magic and Longswords, which explained why this world had such a strange technology tree.

Furthermore, according to the book’s introduction, the owner of this dream did not seem to be some nobody either. Master Craftsman Ovosbak was a leading figure in the Gnome Engineering system and had even personally created the Ironforge Squirrel Rampage Incident.

After Kraft finished reading the biographies, Ovosbak’s construction was nearing its end as well. Normally, dreams went from the completion of the creation to testing, then either a successful or failed test, and then ended. Occasionally, they lasted a bit longer, but that was rare.

Kraft moved closer to Ovosbak. This gnome Master Craftsman had made a robot with a rather bizarre appearance. It was much taller than Ovosbak himself. Instead of a head, the top of the robot held a seat and a control console.

"Oh my God! I’m so tall!"

Ovosbak climbed into the robot and cheered happily in a shrill voice.

Only then did Kraft understand that the robot’s bizarre shape was actually imitating Ovosbak’s own outfit…

Fine. As long as you’re happy…

Kraft twitched the corner of his mouth as he looked at the highly abstract design.

As Ovosbak pushed a lever on the console, the Ovosbak Robot made a chugging sound, and thick black smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe behind it.

"Forward, my baby!"

The Ovosbak Robot shakily lifted a foot and began walking around inside the room.

"Yahoo—! Now, enter combat mode!"

Ovosbak excitedly pressed several buttons on the console. A heap of miscellaneous weapons sprang out from all parts of the Ovosbak Robot’s body, and then…

Electrical sparks began flashing from every one of its joints.

"Huh?"

Ovosbak’s smile suddenly froze.

Kraft’s heart also skipped a beat.

This plot! I’ve fucking seen it at Professor Agasa’s!

"BOOM!!!"

The Ovosbak Robot exploded without surprise, and Kraft jolted awake because of it.

"Fuck!"