Chapter 11
“Ooooo….”
The first waterworks system installed in the workshop.
More precisely, it was a flush toilet.
The craftsmen cried out in admiration as they looked at the now-pristine toilet bowls, washbasins, and faucets.
“I never thought it would be used for… this.”
“The bathroom has become as splendid as the count’s art gallery. Good heavens….”
“To think we can use clean water in the bathroom!”
“As expected, Young Master Akion must be a genius!!”
“You helped build it too, so stop praising him.”
When you turned the washbasin’s faucet, water came out, and pressing the drain stopper caused it to close automatically, allowing the basin to hold water.
And then there was the toilet?
- Whooosh~!
“Let me use it a little longer! How long are you going to hog it?”
“Just a little longer!”
It was a whole new world to them!!
How foul-smelling and filthy had pit latrines been? If you were unlucky, you could even fall into the cesspit and die.
But this flush toilet? It was freaking amazing!!
Pulling down the lever on the toilet automatically flushed away the waste through the siphon principle Akion had explained.
And it refilled in less than thirty seconds. Water flowed down through the tank and pipes to refill it.
- Gulp!
“Why are you drinking that?!!”
“Y-yes?”
Of course, there was also the unfortunate incident of a servant who had never seen a flush toilet drinking the water pooled in the bowl.
“It looked like clean water, so I got curious….”
“It is clean water!! But that’s where you do your business!!”
To an ordinary medieval person, the water pooled in the bowl would look clean.
But it would be dangerous because of leftover contaminants accumulated while people used it!
Akion thoroughly scolded the servant and warned him again and again.
“Young Master! How about making an instruction manual? Everyone in the estate can read, after all!”
“We’d better do that.”
Akion once again realized what this place was really like.
A subtly primitive medieval romantasy.
They used the metric system and had a rudimentary concept of hygiene, but they followed it in a sloppily primitive way.
<How to Use a Flush Toilet>
Without a guide like this, someone would surely drink toilet water again.
Akion hastily wrote a guide and hung it outside the workshop bathroom, telling everyone to read it before going in.
After that shocking incident had passed,
- Whooosh~!
“Whew, this is incredible.”
The shower room also became a hit.
A spectacle of thin streams cascading from a steel plate dotted with holes called a showerhead!
After scrubbing themselves with the Akion-brand soap provided there, every unpleasant sensation vanished from their bodies.
Fluffy hair and skin free of every itch!
And on top of that, a dozen or so streams of water shooting forcefully from narrow holes by Bernoulli’s principle!
The craftsmen who used this shower room even once….
“Hurry up and come out! I need to wash too!”
“Good grief, aren’t you being a little impatient?”
had become unable to live without it.
Because of this, it became the unwritten rule for every craftsman to shower before heading home.
- Trickle….
“The water pressure is a little weak.”
Of course, it had drawbacks too.
The water pressure currently depended on the water level in the tank. The only source of pressure was the potential energy from the rooftop water tank.
In other words, while the bathroom and shower room currently on the workshop’s first floor were fine, the bathrooms built on the second and third floors later might have weak water pressure.
“We could make the water tank a sealed structure.”
Of course, that meant replacing the water tank with a pressure tank that maintained a constant pressure.
And if the pressure became too strong and seemed likely to cause backflow, they could simply use a check valve, a device that prevented reverse flow.
Akion shed tears at the wisdom of the scientists who had come before him.
As expected, engineering was great!
And Hermione, who had become Akion’s research slave,
“Should I take a leave of absence from the Academy…?”
was afraid to leave Akion’s workshop.
“I’m helping with the engineering research you’re teaching me, and there are wonderfully clean and convenient toilets and bathrooms… This place feels more like an academy than the Academy does.”
“Sister. It’s not magi-engineering, just engineering.”
It was because she had become completely addicted to the modern flush bathroom Akion had created.
“Besides, if you want to inherit the title, you have to graduate from the Academy.”
“Urgh….”
However, an Academy diploma was essential if she wanted to inherit the Enersis countship.
And her elder brother and elder sister—Akion’s first older brother and second older sister—had already graduated from the Academy.
“I wish this technology would reach the capital soon. Or maybe Akion should come to the Academy!”
“What?! Hermione, that’s an excellent suggestion! As expected of you, Akion should become a professor in the Department of Magi-Engineering, which will be the Academy’s new department—”
“Ugh, stop spouting nonsense and get out of here, both of you.”
Thus, Akion ignored their nonsense yet again today.
“Young Master, so you want this technology to become the exclusive asset of our county?”
“It’s too big a job for me to monopolize. And… if possible, I’d like to install waterworks like this in the capital too.”
Of course, Akion also sympathized with their wishes.
If proper hygiene took root through modern waterworks, people could escape various ills, including infectious diseases.
Besides, it would be amusing to see people making a fuss over the water system he had built, astonished by it.
“But it’d take too much work.”
The problem was that this would become a massive civil engineering project.
For now, with only one bathroom and shower room in the three-story workshop, they could get away with letting the wastewater flow somewhere else… but what if it expanded to the scale of the county, far larger than the estate?
They would have to build a sewer system to handle it, and there were only two ways to proceed quickly and easily.
“When are we digging the ground?”
“Are there not plenty of humans?”
“Then we’d ruin an entire year’s harvest. And from what I hear, earth magic is quite expensive for civil engineering.”
First, they could conscript every farmer in the middle of farming season and have them dig up the ground for an entire year.
Or they could hire earth mages for the civil engineering, but according to what Akion had heard, they could not get enough efficiency to justify the cost of hiring them.
“We should just make an excavator.”
“An excava…tor?”
Second, Akion would have to create construction machinery for civil engineering and building.
An excavator, or a lifting machine such as a tower crane.
But had medieval materials engineering here advanced enough to churn out the alloys needed for those machines?
Who knew? It had been hard enough teaching the people here about MSDS.
“Let’s take a break for now, shall we? Let’s rest properly for about two weeks.”
So it was time for him to rest a little.
Incandescent bulbs, motors, and now the turbine pump. He had charged ahead without a break for nearly nine months.
“Pardon?”
“Young Master, what are you saying? You’re giving us a vacation? And you’ll pay us even if we don’t come in?!”
“Call a priest quickly! The young master must be possessed by a demon!!”
“Do you take me for Satan or something? Get home, now. Do you want to rest without pay?”
And so, the craftsmen dispatched from each guild, the mages affiliated with Enersis, and the many people he had hired as needed—
Akion sent them all on vacation with bonuses. He told them to rest well and come back.
“I should rest too….”
To install bathrooms and shower rooms in the estate as well, he would need to develop pressure tanks and check valves to prevent backflow.
“To think the words ‘rest’ would come from Young Master’s mouth….”
“Akion. Since this may be an illness whose symptoms haven’t appeared yet, you should go to the clinic for an examination.”
“What? Were you suffering from a terminal illness or something…?”
“I’m telling you, I’m not.”
Akion had, in no small part, endured until now on the strength of the Enersis bloodline, but he realized that his body was finally reaching its limit.
“Hoho, Young Master Akion. It feels as though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”
“I’ve been holed up in the workshop so long that the estate feels unfamiliar. How have you been, Chief Butler?”
“But you were coordinating the budget with me just the other day! Ho ho ho!”
After a full nine months, Akion had finally returned to the estate.
The workshop was right next door, on the estate grounds, but still.
*
Akion sent Hermione off to the Academy with a lighting stand in her hands,
and around the time he was indulging in the lavish luxury of waking at nine in the morning rather than six,
“…….”
When Akion woke up, a heavy weight was pressing down on his stomach.
You might think it was Goldie, but Goldie was a tough golden-retriever girl who shook his shoulders violently every time, shouting, “Wake up!”
She would never wake Akion this way.
Besides, judging by the voice, it sounded like the master of some mage tower.
- Peek
And when Akion opened his eyes….
“Apparently, this is the killer outfit that’s popular among the young ladies of the capital. ”
The Tower Master was posing somewhat seductively in a bunny-girl outfit.
While straddling Akion, who was lying down.
Seeing the rabbit-ear headband rising between her two horns, Akion once again felt that this was a romantasy world.
The fact that such a high-quality bunny girl existed in a medieval romantasy could only be explained by it being a romantasy.
“Hehe, what I ordered happened to arrive, so I changed into it and came here. I heard this is what young ladies wear these days when they want to capture men’s hearts.”
“Tower Master….”
“Hehehe… You can’t take your eyes off me. Akion, have you been captivated by this lady’s heavenly beauty?”
Perhaps she was trying to seduce him, because the Tower Master shook her body as she had last time.
Akion wanted to say, “Oh dear, ma’am. You’re doing this again,” but….
“Tower Master. Forgive my impertinence, but may I ask you one thing?”
He had developed some tact after the incident involving her “old-lady fat” last time.
“Could it be that you’re still taking that comment about your old-lady fat to hear—”
“Shut up.”
He had also learned that he was still not tactful enough. Anyway.
As the dragon’s (no romantic experience, a virgin) ominous killing intent poured out, cold sweat streamed down Akion’s face.
To escape this situation—and to correct some of the Tower Master’s slightly inaccurate information—he changed the subject.
“Tower Master. Do you know what ‘killer outfit’ means?”
Namely, the meaning of “killer outfit,” which the Tower Master did not know.
“As I said, it is an outfit worn only when a man and woman are alone together. Or are you saying the information this lady has is wrong?”
“You’re not wrong, but more precisely, it means the woman wears it with the goal of having a ‘relationship’ with the man no matter what.”
“……Why do you stress the word ‘relationship’?”
At this point, the Tower Master seemed to catch on as well, and her eyes began to tremble.
A crash course from Akion for her benefit.
Akion held up a ring in one hand and counted on his fingers with the other.
And swish, swish.
He gave her a very explicit and direct demonstration.
“Gasp?!”
And the Tower Master also knew that obscene joke very well.
Her face flushed bright red—and….
- Crash!!!
The wall of Akion’s bedroom burst apart.
Literally. The entire wall where the window had been was blown away.
“F-forget this! If you tell anyone what happened today, I’ll bring a great calamity upon Enersis!”
“Y-yes, yes. I’ll add the wall repairs to your tab.”
The deeply embarrassed Tower Master had spread her wings and flown outside at near-supersonic speed.
The Tower Master, now a criminal who had damaged the building, fled like that,
“I heard a tremendous crash! What happened… Gasp?!”
“Young Master! Tell Goldie! Some bad dog did something to the young master’s bedroom—!”
The family retainers came rushing over after hearing the commotion and asked what had happened.
For the Tower Master’s honor, Akion told them she had panicked and accidentally done it,
“The Tower Master in a bunny suit.”
“……Goldie didn’t hear a thing!”
But he tattled to Goldie.
Why should Akion be the only one who knew about something this entertaining?
Goldie nodded vigorously with an evil yet adorable smile.
Anyway, after Akion finished giving his report from the perspective of both victim and witness….
“Follow me.”
The Tower Master, back in her usual uniform and with her face slightly flushed, came to fetch him.
“Bunny Tower Master— Urk.”
“Shut up!”
A mage tower master (dragon) who spasmed in embarrassment at even a keyword.
Akion resolved to tease her about it for years to come.
“The Tower Master is so cu— Eeeek! Goldie, don’t pinch my cheek! The Tower Master isn’t supposed to be this violent—!”
“Ahem. Anyway! Follow me today. Didn’t I promise to show you around the mage tower?”
“Oh, right.”
In the process, Akion realized he had forgotten the promise he had made to the Tower Master.
“Goldie, why didn’t you wake me?”
“Well, you were sleeping so soundly, Young Master….”
“If you say so, I suppose that’s how it was. Thank you for being considerate.”
“Why don’t you treat this lady so warmly?”
Today was the day he would tour the mage tower, as promised to the Tower Master.
A mage tower was like a research institute where mages gathered together, leading the way in technology even in this subtly primitive medieval romantasy.
“You may look forward to it. My tower is great, having stood longer than any other mage tower. I shall show you a new world of magic.”
“Magic itself is fascinating to me, so I’m sure anything will be a feast for my eyes.”
“We find your magi-engineering more fascinating, Young Master.”
“It’s not magi-engineering. It’s engineering.”
Of them, he decided to tour the Ridasid Mage Tower.
*
And Akion regretted it.
“More! Mooore!!! Bestow more knowledge upon us!!!”
“Young Master. Hehe… if you would only permit me, might I extract your brain and draw out all your knowledge, every last bit…? Heeheehee…!”
“It would be faster to cram the knowledge into us than for you to teach it to us! Young Master Akion, please permit us to merge our minds with yours!!”
He realized that the mages’ madness over knowledge was even crazier than he had expected.
“Aaaaah!! Science is wonderful! Engineering is fun!!”
“I want to hear this every day! The secrets hidden in phenomena we took for granted!!”
“What about making Young Master Akion an elder of the mage tower? Then he would be obligated to lecture at the mage tower!”
“Oh.”
“Oh, fuck.”
Akion wanted to go home.
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