Chapter 116 — The Metal Master

Old Hammer, the blacksmith, stared wide-eyed, watching that strange machine spin at furious speed with a look of astonishment and blank bewilderment.

Its core brimmed with the radiance of magic; the repulsion mechanism—crude, to put it mildly—was driven back and forth by a simple array and a series of mechanical linkages, and the heavy flywheel spun furiously, driven by the connecting rod and crankshaft, faster than any windmill, waterwheel, or hand-cranked wheel. He knew full well how heavy that great iron wheel was—a thing that, once spinning, could easily shatter a man's bones—and yet it had been set in motion, and set in motion with the greatest of ease.

The two rune artisans standing beside him, however, saw more, and thought more.

They were servants trained by mages. If rune masters were the "circuit engineers" who designed the blueprints of magic arrays, then rune artisans were the "mechanical engineers" responsible for building the mechanical parts of magical contraptions, and so they naturally understood far more of such matters than an ordinary blacksmith.

Rune artisans built all manner of mechanisms and magical tools day in and day out, and were of course entirely familiar with the repulsion array, the most basic of trifles. Yet it had never once occurred to them that this simple, parlor-trick-level thing could produce such wondrous effects—that with only a workable set of mechanical linkages, an array originally good for nothing but pushing a mechanism door or a falling-rock trap could be made to cycle and switch automatically. Though the whole magic engine was propelled by magical force, its inner principle was utterly different from that of any magical tool before it!

In the magic engine, magic was no longer the sole and total power; it was no longer used crudely, but transformed by cleverer and more indirect means, amplified, and turned into something more... practical.

At first, having been ordered to work alongside a pack of blacksmiths and blacksmith apprentices, the rune artisans had harbored a trace of resentment. But after seeing the finished magic engine, that resentment was involuntarily replaced by a kind of epiphany: they finally understood what that female steward named Hetty had meant when she said, upon their first arrival in this domain, "Cast aside all old thoughts and bonds, and submit to the new order of this land." Compared with the brand-new things they had witnessed in this land, those rules and bonds truly counted for nothing.

A blacksmith apprentice stared at the steadily running magic engine and could not help muttering, "This is what we built..."

Hammer hurriedly cut his apprentice off: "No—this is the wisdom of the Duke and the Viscount, and of Lady Hetty."

"No," Gao Yang cut Hammer off in turn. "This is what you built. Make no mistake—honor belongs to every pair of hands that labored. So all who contributed to building the magic engine shall receive not only rewards but glory. Every one of your names will be recorded, cast into nameplates and set upon the first-generation magic engine, and written into the history books of Cecil."

The artisans and apprentices exchanged glances. Hammer twisted his beard so hard he tore out several hairs without even noticing, and it was only when the two rune artisans from the royal capital—men who had seen a bit of the world—bowed in thanks that the old blacksmith finally came to his senses and hastily followed suit.

Gao Yang withdrew his gaze and looked at the still-running magic engine prototype with barely suppressed delight and excitement.

It was terribly noisy, and the spinning flywheel sent the whole machine shuddering violently. Given the imprecision of the parts, all of this was unavoidable. Gao Yang was certain that a considerable portion of the machine's power would be lost to friction among those substandard components, and that its output and service life would surely suffer as well—but these were mere trifles. The important thing was that the machine ran, just as he had foreseen.

First solve whether it can be done; then consider whether it is done well.

Gao Yang watched the primitive machine almost in a trance—but suddenly, a flicker of doubt and worry surfaced in the depths of his eyes.

Yet that subtle shift of feeling vanished in an instant.

Meanwhile, Hetty had begun testing the machine's strength: she used a Hand of Evocation or a Gravity Spell to slowly press down on the machine's output shaft. After several trials in a row, she could not help but exclaim in admiration, "This machine is immensely powerful. I made a rough test—at full speed it could haul a half-ton block of iron straight up vertically. And if you used the pulley system or reduction gears you mentioned before, there's no telling how much more its strength could be multiplied. Besides, this is only because we used rather cheap runic materials, and the connecting rods are ordinary steel rather than sturdier purple steel—so there's enormous room for improvement."

Rebecca knew none of those handy support spells, nor could she just fling a great fireball at it to test the machine's health bar—so she stood nearby scratching her chin and pondering something more practical: "Ancestor Yan, what do you think this machine could do?"

Gao Yang glanced at the girl with amusement: "You tell me what you think."

"Seems like all sorts of monotonous, repetitive work that needs a lot of strength could be handed over to it. Like driving a mill, for instance? Or driving that big saw at the sawmill? Its strength is certainly enough, and you wouldn't have to worry about wind direction or river currents at all!"

"There are plenty of uses. It can drive a waterwheel, haul the mine carts over at the mines, pump water out of the shafts, drive a great hammer to forge steel. With the right molds, it could press a whole steel plate into armor—or parts for anything else—the way you press biscuits. It could be set in a brickyard to drive other machines that press brick blanks, instead of needing a dozen serfs to shape each brick by hand in wooden molds as they do now..."

Gao Yang rattled off the applications he considered most important at present, while those around him fell one by one into bewilderment. They had never had any notion of machines replacing human labor. Even though windmills and water mills existed in this world, those were crude and rough things—how could they possibly leap, all at once, to imagining the various machines that could be connected to a magic engine?

It was Hammer, though, whose eyes lit up at the mention of machines driving a great hammer to forge steel and pressing steel plates directly into armor parts. His professional instinct told him at once that this was a path full of promise.

As for Rebecca, her eyes sparkled the entire time. Basically, the moment a use popped out of Gao Yang's mouth, a whole heap of levers, bearings, and gears popped into her head along with it. Though those things could not yet be assembled into a working machine, she felt that with just a little time to herself, she could tinker into existence, one by one, the things envisioned by the Xuanmai Sect!

But just then, Hetty spoke up with a frown, somewhat troubled: "The key problem is that we only have one machine... Building a new magic engine takes time and effort, and it must be within the coverage of the magic net to run. That's a serious problem."

As she spoke, she pulled the lever to cut off the magic engine's power and let it gradually quiet down—the blasted thing was uncommonly noisy; with it running here, everyone around had to shout to be heard.

"Laying the magic net doesn't cost much—it's all basic runes, and the blueprints are ready-made. The trouble is that the machines are hard to build... mainly because hand-crafting these parts takes too much time," Gao Yang said, rubbing his chin. "But there's no help for it. For now we still have to make them by hand..."