The Stupid Goblins Who Only Know Explosions

After eating the pastries Alice had made, Kraft did not rush to build a remote-controlled robot. While that would ensure safety, it would lack the feeling of direct experience. Data alone could not reveal everything, especially since these engineering creations might not obey Earth’s laws of physics. So he wanted to find a solution that offered the best of both worlds.

What about putting an iron shell around himself?

Kraft thought of exoskeleton armor, but quickly dismissed it. An exoskeleton would cut off his sense of touch, making it little better than a remote-controlled robot.

Wait… touch?

Kraft suddenly thought of Alice’s pain system. Though its feedback was merely simulated by programming, it was clearly extremely realistic, no different from that of an ordinary person.

Then, as long as he built another robot identical to Alice, replaced its cognitive core with a manual control device, and projected its tactile feedback onto a computer to convert it into data, that should be enough for Kraft to conduct his tests.

Kraft, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, sprang to his feet and rushed to the workbench.

Unfortunately, the miraculous handcrafting skills of engineering could not be used to make other things. Otherwise, Kraft could have saved a fortune. Even so, they still saved him quite a bit of time when producing certain components.

To keep the test robot from being easily blown apart, Kraft spared no expense and used high-quality materials.

A special alloy he had learned about in his dreams—Moon God Titanium – Castrated Version.

One of its rare metals did not exist on Earth. According to the dream’s records, it was native to an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Never mind whether such an asteroid existed in reality; even if it did, Kraft had no way to build a spaceship yet. And even if he could build one, he had no detailed star charts.

So in the end, he used metals available on Earth as substitutes. Though this reduced the strength of the Moon God Titanium Alloy considerably, it could still crush other alloys without a problem.

Of course, if Captain America’s shield from the comics was real too, then that might not be the case.

A flash of inspiration struck Kraft. He ordered Haro beside him, "Search for information on Captain America’s shield, then make a backup first. I’ll look at it once I’m done here."

"Received, received." Haro, who was being rolled around as a toy by Bea, stretched out its arms and legs and ran to its dedicated dock. "Work begins, work begins."

"Meow~~~"

Bea, whose game had been interrupted, gave Kraft an unhappy cry. But Kraft was busy with his research and did not notice at all.

Bea also knew that this was what Kraft was like whenever he entered research mode, so she restrained her instinct to go bother him. Still, she had to vent that irritation somewhere. Thus, the little black cat turned her gaze toward the stupid dog running laps with a Mechanical Squirrel.

Bea lowered herself and silently approached Quinn, who knew nothing of this and was still gleefully running about. Then she suddenly pounced, slapping his nose with one paw.

"RUA!"

When Kraft finished his work, what he saw was Quinn’s pitiful, teary-eyed dog face.

"…What now?"

Kraft stretched lazily and looked at Quinn, who was squatting by his feet and wagging his tail nonstop, with some helplessness.

Compared to Bea, who had defied the setting that Bombay Cats were among the three dumbest cat breeds, Quinn’s intelligence had certainly lived up to his ranking somewhere below seventy-ninth. The stupid things he did on a normal day were countless. Yet after being taught a lesson because of them, he often put on an innocent look and ran to Kraft to seek justice.

"Bea bullied me again! Big Bro, you have to stand up for me!"

Quinn loudly accused the little black cat of her brutal deeds… Kraft was used to it by now.

He glanced at Bea, who was lying nearby and flicking her tail. She looked utterly relaxed, as if she had every reason to be confident.

"You provoked her first again, didn’t you?"

Kraft tugged Quinn’s ear and questioned him.

"I didn’t!"

Quinn anxiously paced in circles, but he had no actual evidence.

"I didn’t!"

Now that was strange. Kraft scratched his head in confusion. Quinn did not look like he was lying, but Bea looked completely righteous…

Had these two little ones already learned how to act?

"The surveillance footage! Big Bro, you can check the surveillance footage!"

Quinn suddenly remembered how he had secretly caused trouble before, only to be caught on camera.

"Hm?"

Seeing how certain Quinn was, could it be that I had wrongly blamed him?

Kraft glanced at Bea again. Seeing that she still looked as calm and composed as ever only made him more confused.

So he decisively had Haro pull up the earlier surveillance footage and project it onto the wall.

"…I have nothing to say."

After watching the footage, Quinn turned to look at Kraft.

Kraft awkwardly rubbed his nose. Quinn had been made the target of Bea’s anger because of him.

He reached out and rubbed Quinn’s head, comforting him. "I’ll have Alice make you some big bones to eat tonight."

"That’s great, awooo!"

Quinn immediately cheered up and happily wagged his tail.

Then Kraft helplessly looked at Bea, who was grooming herself. "Once I’m done testing, I’ll make you a few toys. So stop tormenting Haro and Quinn."

The Mechanical Squirrels Kraft made would actively follow people, so Bea had no desire to catch them. The Mechanical Squirrels produced by the factory had a limited operating time, which was why Bea used Haro for entertainment instead.

"Got it, meow~"

Bea rolled over and answered while flicking her tail.

After resolving the issues with his two pets, Kraft sat down in front of the computer and began operating the robot he had just built.

Since it was only a test robot, its appearance was extremely crude. It merely had a humanoid shape, with no fingers or toes. Overall, it looked like an oil drum with rods and spheres attached to it, draped in a layer of artificial skin for tactile feedback. It had no facial features either; a camera had simply been crudely stuffed into its head.

He controlled the test robot to put on a pair of Gnome Rocket Boots and had it run across the open space in the workshop.

At the very least, judging by the results alone, these Gnome Rocket Boots were quite useful.

According to Haro’s measurements, the robot’s movement speed had increased by 37.6%, considerably worse than the original version from the dream. Their duration was also only sixteen seconds.

He checked the tactile feedback again. The condition of the legs was good, and there seemed to be no discomfort caused to the body.

Still, he needed to test them a few more times.

After refilling the Gnome Rocket Boots with gunpowder, Kraft began another round of tests.

The following period was basically spent testing the performance of these rocket boots. Naturally, Kraft also found time to make the toys he had promised Bea.

After a series of tests, the alloy Kraft selected actually performed slightly better than mithril. It was a material used in alien spacecraft, yet all its ingredients could be found on Earth. Its original name was a string of characters, so Kraft simply renamed it Mithril Alloy.

Furthermore, during the repeated tests of these alloys, the Gnome Rocket Boots did malfunction and refuse to work at times, but they never exploded even once.

Kraft recalled the engineering books from his dreams…

So everything written in The Stupid Goblins Who Only Know Explosions was fucking true…

The game’s cooldown times felt a little strange when applied to reality, so I changed them to the time needed to replace the energy source or wait for it to recover.

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