The oil search is going a lot faster with the birth of the camera.
Good job, my adorable little cameras!
With just our eyes, Kohaku-chan, we were entirely dependent on you.
Hey, ground search team, howdy do?
There's a suspicious blur just past
the big river beyond Mount Fuji.
Okies, thanks for checking it out.
Gotcha, we're on it.
We're going to take ten billion aerial photos by the time winter arrives.
There's no finding jack once everything's covered in snow.
We'll find it by then.
The black jewel sleeping in the ground... Oil!
First Contact
Where the hell is the oil?
Ow!
Chestnuts...
These aerial photos are great for overwintering prep!
We're deep into fall now.
The season of harvest.
It grew in just a few months!
Wheat is amazing!
No wonder it was chosen as a staple worldwide.
It's a buffet!
F-Farming is back torture.
Not to worry, Yo!
Leave the rest to me!
I'm still good to keep going!
You're the only one with infinite strength, idiot.
The yields from agriculture are orders of magnitude more than from hunting.
So is what it takes out of you.
I can see why they didn't bother with it until there were more people.
Now that we, humanity, have acquired a staple crop,
it's time to open the three-star Francois restaurant!
Understood.
I'll begin developing the menu immediately.
Allow me to peruse the aerial photos for ingredient reference.
Not a bad idea.
People are a bit done from the insane amount of work we have now.
You can't get muscles to work just through inspiration.
Work is science.
And the gasoline for humans is food, after all.
Ideally, something that gets us plenty of protein and preserves well...
Insanely delicious high-end gourmet cooking!
Let's see...
Truffles? Caviar? Foie gras?
No way. None of that's ever happening.
We don't even have the ingredients.
"Not possible"?
I've never heard those words come out of Francois's mouth.
Just watch.
High-end gourmet protein that preserves well.
Understood.
Then the dish to be prepared is boar rillettes with black truffle.
T-Truffle?!
And, thinking this might happen, I've summoned the help
of the learned expert most knowledgeable of
the flora and fauna surrounding Ishigami Village.
Learned...
...expert?
Long time no see, everyone!
Suika!
Seriously, they're way too well-prepared.
That's Francois.
Let's see...
It's hard to tell what this long, stretchy blob is,
but it looks like it's rubbing its body against a branch.
I'm just guessing, but it might be a boar.
Boar meat!
So, meat aside, what do we do about the truffles?
They're so expensive that they're called "black diamonds."
You can find truffles growing in any ordinary forest around here.
Even in Japan.
Are you serious?!
I see, black mushrooms.
I spotted boars in aerial photos.
Is this a photo from that area, too?
With my eyesight...
I don't know if you're going to see mushrooms in an aerial photo.
It's not even a matter of eyesight.
Who knows?
Kohaku-chan might pull it off.
It's true that she has ridiculous eyesight...
But maybe the real reason her eyes are so stupid-good
is because she has the observational skills of someone
who's lived their entire life in the wild.
I found them.
Black diamonds.
There's no way you're seeing mushrooms in that blurry-ass photo.
What is this black splotch, then?
Now that you mention it, it's suspicious.
Proportionally, this looks about the size of a puddle, I think.
Could it be...
The black jewel seeping up to the surface...
This discovery's worth its weight in gold!
It's the super rare treasure trove we've been looking for this whole time!
The Sagara Oil Fields!
The photo's too blurry to tell where exactly it is.
Not a problem!
We can narrow it down by splitting up on the ground!
Our task is to help
provide strength to the searchers by pampering them at a so-called restaurant.
We still haven't found our black diamond, the truffles, though.
Not to worry, Suika-sama.
The boars know what the black jewels smell like.
I'm not very knowledgeable about science,
but there's a famous anecdote that's common knowledge to any chef:
The scent of truffles has the same composition as boar love pheromones.
Because of that, they can root out truffles that are in the ground.
Ooh! I found something!
It's mine now!
Yup, here we go.
This is why we stopped using boars and pigs for hunting truffles.
It'll be okay, Francois!
Leave this to the Great Detective Duo, Suika and Chalk!
We just need my dog, Chalk, to go after the same scent along the ground.
It's no use...
Damn it, if only the photos were just a little more clear...
This is harsh.
Seriously.
We're looking for a puddle in this vast forest.
We need more hints.
Once it snows, any puddle will vanish without a trace.
We'll have to find it first,
or all we've accomplished so far will have been for nothing.
There's only so much my brain's good for.
I must be missing something...
Some hilariously large hint.
Somewhere around here in my hippocampus.
Then the dish to be prepared is boar rillettes with black truffle.
What do we do about the truffles?
They're so expensive that they're called "black diamonds."
I spotted boars in aerial photos.
Is this a photo from that area, too?
We still haven't found our black diamond, the truffles, though.
Not to worry, Suika-sama.
The boars know what the black jewels smell like.
The boars know what they smell like.
The boars!
That's how the Sagara Oil Fields were discovered in 1872.
I don't think anyone knows anything about that.
Wild boars love playing in the mud.
But they came across this boar that reeked of oil.
They were like, "What the hell?" So they set it loose and followed it, and...
We found the truffles, so we can make the dishes for the restaurant now!
Let's get started immediately.
First, we'll simmer the boar meat for the rillette.
This boar has a strange scent of oil.
Don't simmer him!
We want you to take us to where you were playing in the mud.
To where the black jewel, oil, is.
Goink!
Oh, man...
She's already tamed it!
Thank you, Sagara!
Sagara?
You gave that boar a name?
It's our food, you know.
You gotta start with a name if you want to make friends.
This is definitely it.
The mysterious black puddle I saw in the aerial photo.
Senku, what are you...
The dark mud water is burning, even though it's water!
And this is the power we're using to move the boat, right?
Yeah.
Humanity, even in this new world, has acquired oil, the king of resources.
We've discovered the Sagara Oil Fields!
m 0 0 l 168 0 l 168 60 l 0 60
Oil acquired!!
You did a big thing, Sagara!
But Francois is going to cook you now...
Francois.
Let's hear it from the chef.
Should we eat that boar?
No.
It smells of oil. It's unfit for consumption.
The smell is soaked in.
You heard her.
Take it, leave it, it's up to you.
Thank goodness!
We can be friends!
Gotta reward people for their accomplishments, or it won't improve morale.
You're right.
But is that really your reason?
What else would it be?
Let's get right to an oil test.
Is this...
A motorboat.
Oh, did you mean the engine?
It's a Stirling engine.
Remember the Stirling refrigerator we made to freeze Tsukasa?
The thing that creates a temperature difference when you pump a piston?
I'm just using it in reverse.
No, not that.
Working an engine using a temperature difference is...
I'm not asking about the engine.
With this boat, we can finally set out.
To the sea!
Depending on the quality of the Sagara Oil Fields, anyway.
Is it really safe to put this in? Are you sure?
Hey, it's the love potion!
Are you in love with someone, Senku?
Love potion?
What are you talking about, Taiju-chan?
You made some for me that day, remember?
So that I would have the confidence to confess to Yuzuriha.
That last moment before we were petrified.
A drug that'll stimulate your pheromone output to the max.
A love potion, if you will.
Take this, and you're set, ten billion percent.
I did! I said that!
I told you it was a love potion!
You still believe that, you meathead?!
That was gasoline!
What?! It was?!
If you think it smells the same with no prior knowledge,
it must be true.
The oil from the Sagara Oil Fields has the same five-to-twelve carbon content,
that of high-quality gasoline,
that I made from a plastic bottle cap that day.
Which means, Senku, the last thing you made using science in the old world
was gasoline.
And just this moment, we, in the new world, have caught up.
And now we're going to exceed that!
We're going! Everyone on board!
Holy crap, it's freaking fast!
We're finally leaving Japan!
To a new world not yet touched by humanity!
To the open seas!
With a ship of science!
Damn, the coast's already gone!
The horizon is only a few kilometers ahead.
I've never been surrounded by the sea.
It's lonely, like we're the only ones in this world.
Yup.
I did know in my head that 70% of the world is water.
I don't even know where we came from anymore.
Are you sure we can get back home?
And we're going hundreds of times farther when we hit the ocean, right?
This is insane.
Not to worry.
We have our sextant!
Didn't you say it's trash quality?
Yeah.
We're betting all of our lives on it.
We want ten billion percent accurate coordinates.
Well, sure, we want that, but what are you making now, Senku-chan?
We're making a GPS.
G...
P...
S?!
Yeah.
It's in car navigation systems and phones and stuff.
It uses satellites to estimate your position.
Car navigation?
Satellites?
There's no way we're making satellites!
Obviously!
That's why we're using a massive land-based radio beacon.
We'll use the power of the water wheel, which is way more powerful than a battery.
to unleash the full potential of the cell phone!
Switch on!
Testing radio beacon.
Though we're depending on Ukyo-sama, our resident sonar operator.
We'll spin the antenna around randomly and get a rough estimate of our position
from the direction of the signal and its distance.
I love how analog and DIY the last part of it is.
Can you tell which direction you're going from out on the sea?
Yeah, perfectly!
Ahem.
Ruri-chwan.
Remember that first phone call between you and Chrome?
Chrome chickened out and couldn't tell you how he felt.
Did you see that, Ruri? Pretty awesome, right?!
Science is insane!
So why don't you make the move this time, calling for the first time overseas?
There's nothing wrong with the girl being the one to share her feelings.
F-Feelings?
What might you be talking about?
Chrome...
Everyone's...
Ah-ha, the famous trope!
Radio noise right when it's getting good.
It's not noise.
Why?
There's suddenly a powerful signal coming from somewhere.
It's so saturated, I can't even tell where it's coming from.
Plasma or something?
No.
It's not a natural phenomenon.
It's deliberate.
They're clearly using our frequency on purpose.
Which means someone must have noticed when we fired off
that powerful signal from our beacon.
Wait, what do you mean, "someone"?
If someone else has revived, they would have already...
Wait a second...
Is this Morse code?
It's a message to us.
It's repeating the same signal over and over.
Um...
Is that a W?
H...
Huh?
W H Y.
Huh?
Why?
"Why?"
Why, why, why, why?!
Hey.
Are you the mastermind behind humanity's petrification?
We finally meet.
I've been waiting 3,700 years for this.
This is exhilarating!
Next Episode
Eyes of Science
This is a work of fiction, but the plants, animals, and production methods described are based on reality. Foraging and making things on your own accord is extremely dangerous and, in some cases, illegal. Please do not imitate without expertise.