Struggle in the Steam Age

"This ship should be a special transport ship." Lawrence said, at this time everyone had all arrived at the bottom warehouse.

As soon as he got here, Lawrence discovered a design that was completely different from normal ships: the lowermost deck of the ship was reinforced with a large number of steel bars, and there was a small cabin wrapped in metal plates. Obviously, this ship should be prepared to transport some special things, so the lower space of the hull was specially remodeled.

The reinforcement bars were painted with black pitch, as was the surrounding bottom of the ship. It would have been hard to spot if Nora hadn't specifically pointed it out. This was especially true for that small cabin. The entire cabin was hidden behind a large pile of food and fresh water supplies. It seemed that the other party had added a partition to the back of the warehouse to create a dark room.

Even the other party prepared a thin layer of wood to cover the outside of this small cabin as a camouflage. If it wasn't for the fact that Nora's silk threads could penetrate almost everywhere, maybe they would only find this secret cabin as a mezzanine after dragging the boat back and cleaning up everything on the boat.

"It's no wonder that this ship is almost unarmed." Safir also saw the characteristics of this ship, "If I'm not wrong, this ship is a kind of camouflaged transport ship, and it may not be so legal to transport some There are some dangerous things. That’s why the lower decks will be strengthened like this, but considering the total load of the hull, they can only give up those firepower.”

Obviously, this boat spent a lot of money in order to avoid being discovered by others. For example, loading wooden fake guns to balance the added weight of the bottom cabin, or adding a secret cabin to the supply cabin. These modifications made the ship look no different from ordinary merchant ships of the same level, even if Nora didn't find anything wrong with the ship before going down to the bottom of the ship to check.

While Safir was talking, Lawrence took a few steps forward and pulled the door of the small cabin. It turned out that the door was not locked at all, so he just pulled it open. Since the entire cabin is only a dozen square meters, everything in the cabin appeared in front of Lawrence after the door was opened.

"It was like this when I just checked." Seeing Lawrence turn his head to look at herself, Nora immediately pointed to the rows of empty shelves inside the room and said. "There should have been some items on these shelves, but they should have disappeared at the same time as the people on the ship disappeared."

"Can you tell what those missing things are?" Lawrence walked into this small secret room and checked it. Unfortunately, even after using the identification technique, it could only show that it was a special secret room. A thin sheet of lead was embedded in the walls to hide certain magical reactions, but there was no clue as to what had been placed in this place before.

"Sorry, my lord, I can't. Because there are many things in this secret warehouse." Nora said with a look of regret. "So although there are a lot of traces in this house, due to the complex reflection of magic power, we cannot determine exactly what is missing in this accident."

"It sounds terrible." Lawrence began to summon a large number of phantoms of fire poisonous bees and soil ants as he spoke, and then directed the phantoms of these monsters to scatter and search in all directions of the ship.

Then he went to the gun position on the upper level and opened the gun window, and then summoned a large number of phantoms of molar fish in the sea to let them inspect the part below the waterline of the ship.

As usual, Lawrence summoned a large number of phantoms of monsters and scattered them around and inside the ship in an attempt to make a final inspection. Theoretically speaking, construct creatures tend to be strict when doing everything, and there will be no major omissions.

But Nora is not that kind of normal constructed creature, she is more like a person from a certain angle. So when doing some things, there will be omissions or even mistakes just like people.

However, because Nora is a constructed creature, the omissions in many places are completely different from humans. Therefore, after discovering this, Lawrence also developed the habit of letting himself and the little doll check each item as much as possible. Because in this way, we can find each other's weak points as much as possible and complete a perfect investigation as much as possible.

Nora's previous inspection was very serious, and Lawrence's monster phantoms found nothing in the cabin. But the molarfish swimming in the water spotted something that looked a little unusual beneath the hull. After discovering these things, Lawrence immediately summoned phantoms of several murlocs and asked them to fetch the things they found.

A few minutes later, the phantoms of two murlocs emerged from the water, and at the same time they were holding a washbasin-sized stone that looked like a model volcano. Then the phantoms of the two murlocs struggled to push this stone-like thing through the open gun port.

"This--what is it?" After the wet stone was placed on the floor of the middle deck, Safiel and Nora moved up curiously at the same time, and found that this thing was indeed like a small stone. volcano. What's even stranger is that there seems to be something alive in the groove in the middle of this thing.

"This thing should be a barnacle." As the most researched naturalist among the three people present, Lawrence quickly recognized what this stone was. "Besides this, there are three or four animals of the same size under the boat. I'm just taking one up as a specimen."

"You said this thing is a barnacle?" Safir's eyes widened. Although she was born in the inland area of ​​the White Eagle Federation, she spent her college years in a girls' school in the island country of Briton. So during that time, she and those classmates went to the beach more than once, so she naturally knew the normal size of the barnacles.

"This thing is indeed a barnacle, but its volume is a little bigger." Looking at the barnacle the size of a small washbasin, Lawrence explained, "And according to the situation at the bottom of the ship, it can be seen that the ship is not long. It had just been serviced once before, and there wasn't much marine life attached. So these barnacles must have stuck to the bottom of the boat from somewhere."

"In other words, the disappearance of the people on board is probably related to this abnormal-looking barnacle." Nora said immediately after hearing Lawrence's explanation. Although there is no connection between these two events for the time being, the possibility of two abnormal events happening at the same time and at the same place is really low, so Nora directly connected the two events together.

"Where did you say this barnacle came from?" Now that he found a possible clue to the disappearance of the crew on board, Safiel immediately walked to the side of the large barnacle and lifted it up, and then carefully Check out this barnacle.

"By the way, Lawrence. I remember you have a way of figuring out where something was before by looking at the microbes. Can it be used on this barnacle now?"

"Let me try, but don't have too much hope." Lawrence said, took out a series of experimental tools from the space bag and put them on the ground, and then took the barnacle inspection from Safir up.

"After all, it was possible to check out the previous time because the things stored in the box were very stable, but these barnacles have been in contact with the surrounding seawater at the bottom of the ship. So the information left on it should not be as clear as the last time."

Sure enough, after inspection, the microorganisms he isolated from this barnacle can be said to belong to the common microorganisms in the entire Star Sea, and it is not of much value for determining the source of the barnacle. But then Lawrence made important progress in his analysis of barnacle shells.