Hikaru took the rock-sugar pear drink Changchun handed him, sipped, stood, and stretched. "Repulse, you don't need someone to show you the way to the mess, do you?" he said with a grin.
The two naval districts were laid out more or less the same—he was purely teasing her.
Repulse bit her lip. "Master, are you trying to send me away the moment we meet?"
"As if."
He was about to joke further when Tirpitz suddenly stood and pulled him tight into her arms.
…What? Did Tirpitz suddenly need a top-up of "Commander energy"?
His thoughts veered—then he saw Vittorio Veneto and Bismarck also staring tensely toward the door, and it clicked.
Something was happening in the warehouse.
An Abyssal raid?
Boom!
The outer wall of the summoning quiet room burst open. Prince of Wales strode in with her rigging fully deployed.
She didn't even notice Repulse. Seeing Hikaru unharmed, she exhaled—then said, cool and sharp, "What just happened?"
Like a kitten pinched by the scruff, Blücher was dragged out of the construction warehouse in Prince of Wales's grip.
Boom!
Prince of Wales flung her—girl and rigging together—down onto the ground.
Lexington, Yamato, and Deutschland, who had rushed over, were wide-eyed.
Even Saint George and Alaska, who had halted repairs and hurried in from the mess, stared in shock.
A moment ago Lexington and the others' faces had changed; without a word, they'd dropped everything and bolted, while the hot-tempered Prince of Wales had literally smashed through a wall.
With a reaction like that, they'd assumed some Abyssal submarine flagship had slipped ashore and infiltrated the district.
And the culprit was… Blücher?
What did she do?
"I—I accidentally touched some weird thing," Blücher said, aggrieved, lifting her head from the floor. "It just… refitted me on the spot. I can compensate you."
Deutschland's eyes went round. "Blücher, why do you look more grown-up all of a sudden?"
Only then did they really take in Blücher's face.
"Some shipgirls do look more mature after a refit," Yamato said, voice faintly trembling as she fixed on Hikaru. "Hikaru—this 'weird thing' Blücher mentioned…"
Hikaru knew exactly what had happened, and couldn't help a wry smile.
"Nothing more than a warship refit core. In the old district we used most of them drilling tactics. Generally, if a shipgirl meets the refit requirements, she can consume the corresponding cores and some resources to refit directly. Hardly anything remarkable."
Back then, every shipgirl who could refit did. Hikaru stockpiled thousands of various refit cores from daily campaign reserves—so of course it hadn't seemed rare.
Later, while searching for the missing Hikaru, the shipgirls burned through all resources, then broke down the cores for more just to keep sortieing—consuming that small mountain of cores to the last.
What remained in the warehouse now were monthly-event rewards from the past few runs.
Leipzig's look at Blücher turned downright murderous. As quartermaster, she hated anyone laying hands on the warehouse stock—let alone using something like a thief.
Where Lexington and the others were already breathing easier after the false alarm, Yamato and the visiting shipgirls were simply dumbstruck.
What's the best way to strengthen a shipgirl?
Right—refit.
Refits usually bump a shipgirl's rarity up a tier; almost every stat improves, and a refitted shipgirl invariably gains a skill.
Which is exactly why refits were so demanding.
They cost piles of resources, required a target level, and needed a kind of lightning-strike "epiphany."
Without that epiphany, you might never refit in your life.
And now Hikaru was saying you could just burn a few so-called refit cores and—bam—refit?
That's cheating. Is that even real?
Yamato slowly turned to stare straight at Ella.
Ella took a half-step back. "Don't glare at me like that. I forgot to mention: the full name is Warship Refit Core—they're used to learn tactics and to refit the matching hull types."
Silently, she added in her heart: and you can break them down for a hundred or two hundred units of resources.
With Ella's confirmation, Yamato felt the world tilt.
She had to crouch to avoid actually fainting; even so, the floor underfoot seemed to roll and spin, her head swimming.
It had to be the island—swaying beneath her feet.
[End of Chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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