Chapter 16
So how are we going to build the mansion’s waterworks?
“Let’s connect this Bourdon-tube pressure gauge I made in advance, too─.”
“How on earth did you make that…?”
“You can measure pressure with something that tiny…?”
Akion had already laid pipes to the kitchen, toilets, and bathrooms, where running water was absolutely necessary.
Naturally, the Enersis craftsmen’s wails often echoed through the mansion, but still.
“Yes. When this wire is compressed and deformed, we measure the pressure from the force pressing it down.”
“Good heavens, such a method exists….”
First, they made a new water tank to fill with water─an Akion-made pressure tank.
They roughly made holes for the inlet pipe, outlet pipe, and air inlet, and while they were at it, attached a pressure gauge that measured pressure by the force crushing the wire.
They also made a small manhole for people to enter and exit. It was more hygienic to clean the water tank regularly.
“Young Master. Be honest with me. When did you make this thing called a pressure gauge?”
“……”
“So that sneaking out at night for the past few days was because of this, was it? Young Master, you need a spanking!”
“Goodness, the maid is hitting the Young Master!!”
The inlet pipe connected to the water-pump piping, and the outlet pipe to the running-water pipes they would install throughout the mansion.
The air inlet was for adjusting the initial pressure and served as an emergency outlet if the pressure kept rising because the turbine pump malfunctioned.
But before that, what about the body of the tank?
“Well, well.”
“Who would have thought of fastening sheets of metal together using such a principle….”
They heated the rivets to around 800 degrees Celsius, inserted them into holes drilled through both iron plates, and hammered them.
This firmly fastened the solid iron plate and the iron cover together.
After hammering scores of rivets from both sides, the blacksmiths marveled at the two iron masses, fantastically secured together.
In light of their decades of experience, this one rivet alone was an innovation among innovations.
“Young Master Akion is unquestionably a genius.”
“Mm-hmm, since he is my disciple.”
“When did I become your disciple again?”
And how would they get this water tank onto the roof?
Unfortunately, Akion had not yet developed a crane─that is, a lifting crane.
Since winter was approaching and they were short on time,
“Nnngh…!”
“Keep it up, keep pushing!”
They mobilized telekinetic mages.
Enersis had mages to spare. They called in everyone belonging to the mansion and the Mage Tower and somehow managed to get the tank onto the roof.
“If you had left it to me, it would have been done in no time.”
“Because I don’t know what kind of humiliation I’d suffer if I became indebted to the Tower Master.”
“Stop looking at me like I’m some pervert.”
The fact that the mages who heard this shed tears of blood was soon forgotten, however.
After that, they connected the new pressure pump to the existing water-pump piping and to the pipes that would send running water throughout the mansion,
“Pump more air into it.”
“Nnngh…! That’s all I’ve got…!”
“Did I not say to leave it to me?”
Then, if they summoned the mages once more to blow air into it and sealed and locked the manhole cover while maintaining high internal pressure…
“Complete.”
The pressure tank was finally finished.
And before long,
- Whooosh!!!
“Wooooow….”
In front of the newly remodeled, state-of-the-art modern kitchen.
The head maid turned on the faucet and let out a gasp that did not suit her age.
“Such clean water, gushing out like this….”
On top of that, the used water was discharged outside the mansion through the sewer pipes they had laid in advance.
As for the toilet in the bathroom? They merely had to maintain the toilet properly.
In other words, the servants no longer needed to perform most of their countless chores.
“Hahaha! Look, the water’s coming out of the showerhead even more forcefully!”
“It’s a little big, but what a huge bathtub… I never thought I’d be able to bathe again!”
Thanks to that, most of the servants, being either from noble families or commoners with magical talent… now even had time for the magical training that had been one of their reasons for joining Enersis.
“Could Young Master Akion perhaps be an apostle of the Heavenly Lord?”
“How can you say something so heretical…!’
“No, no. I didn’t mean it that way—I meant it as a compliment!”
Everyone was a little startled by one servant’s remark, but
“Well, I can understand why you’d think that.”
“Right!”
They felt strangely proud of those words, and grateful as well.
“But what are these red… dots? And what about the blue ones?”
“Young Master said they indicate the water temperature… Hmm. I’m not sure.”
And they did not yet know that this was not the end.
*
“We need to install a boiler.”
They had many devices already developed, and thanks to making up for everything with a flood of mage labor, the work did not take long.
However, as time passed, the weather in the fortress was gradually growing colder.
Akion began to feel the need for a boiler.
“But Akion. Wouldn’t the boiler you say you’re installing beneath the floor require far too many processes?”
However, the heated-floor system he had first dreamed of, with every floor in the mansion warming up… was simply too big a project.
“Son. Are you telling me we should go live somewhere else…? The money you’ve earned is certainly more than enough to buy this mansion, but please reconsider once more, thinking of your father’s age.”
“I suppose it is a bit much…?”
First, they would have to rip up all the wooden flooring, lay boiler pipes underneath, install an additional floor to support those pipes, and so on and so forth….
The project had grown far too large.
On top of that, they would have to drive out the people living there for a while, and winter was just around the corner….
“Then let’s give up….”
“You’re more disappointed than I expected. Here, come lie down and use my lap as a pillow.”
Akion shelved his dream of an underfloor hot-water boiler for the time being.
The family had enough money to own a vacation home, but evicting everyone from a mansion that already had its own heating measures, even temporarily, would be too much.
“Hehehe, how adorable you are, lying there so quietly… Do you like my thighs that much? If you admit it, I’ll let you have my thighs until the day you die.”
“Goldie. Thighs.”
“Yes!”
“A-ah! Don’t go!”
Then the next item was a hot-water boiler.
By hot-water boiler, this time he meant one that provided hot water from faucets and the like, not the same kind as the underfloor hot-water boiler.
Unlike a household boiler, this was possible because they had installed separate inlet pipes for hot water.
“The most important part is the heat exchanger.”
“Hmm. Knowing how meticulous you are, Akion… You must be planning not to contaminate the hot water you use directly, correct?”
“Huh… how did you know?”
“Hehe. Aren’t you my disciple?”
“When did that happen?”
Of these, three required the most careful management.
The heat exchanger that would boil water furiously inside the boiler.
The heat-resistant turbine pump that would move the water heated to a rolling boil.
The switch that would cut off the mana when it reached a certain temperature.
If even one of these three malfunctioned, the boiler might explode.
Just in case, Akion also made a kill switch by adapting the Bourdon-tube pressure gauge he had made last time.
Akion connected the prototype hot-water boiler he had made to the hot-water mat that he had had the blacksmiths make.
Modern people would have called it ‘just the water tank for a heated mat,’ but anyway.
- Click.
“How is it?”
When Akion inserted a large mana stone into the boiler, filled the water tank with water, and switched it on,
“Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm….”
“Mheee….”
“Please don’t answer me with animal noises.”
The result was superb.
Early adopter Goldie Heritage and the Tower Master could never get up from the hot-water mat again.
“So this is a household boiler… I feel as though I stopped you for nothing.”
“If this was what you had in mind, I think it would be fine even if we tore up the entire mansion….”
“By the time it was finished, winter would be over. Where would you stay in the meantime?”
The Tower Master & Goldie had grasped the principle of the household underfloor heating Akion had wanted.
Watching the two of them slowly melt into the mat,
Akion instinctively realized that this too could make money, but!
“Now that things have come to this, it can’t be helped.”
Akion wanted to spend this winter in warmth; selling it came second.
Since an underfloor boiler was not immediately possible, he instead distributed hot-water mats throughout the mansion.
He began installing a hot-water boiler in the basement to supply hot water to the water system.
The principle was similar to the existing pressure tank, but it used a heat exchanger heated by a mana stone, turning the pressure tank into a boiler tank.
They had to be even more careful about pressure management. Even in the midst of that, Akion—
“Young Master. We’ve completed the electric heater.”
“Oh, already?”
Akion took part in developing the electric heater.
He did not lead it; he merely participated. Because the principle itself was similar to that of the incandescent bulb….
“As expected, knowing the principle let you make it in no time.”
“Hahaha! We could never have made it this quickly without the Young Master’s advice and guidance!”
The craftsmen from the various guilds who had worked with Akion all this time joined forces to make it.
Akion had wanted it that way, and the craftsmen were honored to have seized the opportunity to put engineering into practice as well.
“All right, shall we mass-produce this now?”
“We gotta?”
“Come on, we made it all the way to a prototype. You’re not saying we can’t mass-produce it, are you? Come on, let’s keep our chins up!”
Of course, they had forgotten what kind of person Akion was.
- Clang!
Everyone, excited at the thought of going on vacation, dropped the tools or random bits of scrap in their hands and stared in horror.
“N-no!”
“We can. Let’s do it within a week.”
“Nooooo─!!”
Akion found the craftsmen’s wails utterly sweet.
*
Exactly one month later.
“The bath preparations are finished, I assume?”
Countess Lucretia, about to take a bath in the middle of winter in a medieval romantasy world.
If they had been the servants of old, they would have cursed inwardly while hauling hot water—or something along those lines—but
“Yes, my lady.”
- Fwoosh~!
They merely opened the bathroom door to show steam billowing out.
- Squelch, squelch.
The floor was covered not in wooden boards but in colorful tiles that Akion called ceramic.
Countess Lucretia crossed the newly renovated bathroom in the nude.
And then,
- Steaming hot….
- Gulp.
Even though it had not been heated with fire magic in the middle of winter, she swallowed at the sight of the bathtub belching out copious steam.
“Is this… truly a bathtub…?”
The bathtub itself was truly magnificent.
Its exterior was encased in gleaming bronze, while the interior displayed a pale, milky-white color thanks to something called enamel coating.
“Hoo.”
The countess wanted to throw herself in at once and confirm that this was her bathtub.
However, she had to preserve her dignity even in the bathroom, so she carefully lowered herself into the tub.
- Whooosh.
“Haaaaaa….”
Despite all that resolve, she was so blissfully exhilarated that the first thing to escape her was a buoyant sigh.
It held the heat of hot water as well as a wooden tub,
yet rather than being crude, it satisfied her aesthetic sensibilities more than any bathtub she had ever seen,
“Haaa.”
and above all, it had overwhelmingly warm hot water that billowed steam!
In warmth that even melted away her ill feelings toward Akion, Countess Lucretia did not know what to do.
She had scolded him, but Akion had installed a ceiling fan for her.
He had caught her taking his electric fan, but he had remodeled her bathroom anyway.
The family head had caught her asking the second son, who would soon return, for help, but Akion had pretended not to notice and completely redone the bathroom as a new gift to her.
“……”
- Splash!
Suddenly embarrassed, the countess only peeked her eyes above the water and exhaled bubbles.
Perhaps Akion was doing this simply because he wanted Lucretia to fill the place left by the mother who had passed away when he was young….
She reflected on her own wrongdoing, wondering whether she had been too harsh with a child who had even given up his claim to the countship.
“Carlena.”
“Yes, my lady.”
So she decided to summon the courage to make the first move.
“Do you happen to know… what Akion likes?”
"The youngest Young Master likes thinly sliced, grilled pork belly.”
To make peace with Akion.
*
Akion stared at the pack of grilled pork belly in his hands.
“I heard you like this.”
“……Why are you giving me this?”
And he was bewildered by the sudden change in attitude of the person who had given it to him, Countess Lucretia.
“I liked the bathtub.”
“Ah….”
From Akion’s sigh, Lucretia guessed he meant, ‘For something so trivial.’
‘I didn’t give it to him to make peace.’
Of course, Akion’s true feelings were different.
Where would seventeen years of torment go? He had merely laid down this insurance in case she said something else later.
He had no desire to get along with Countess Lucretia, no matter when, where, or how.
“And, Akion. If you wish… I would also like to help with your research.”
“Pardon?”
…but!
A new slave was always welcome. She was volunteering to become his research slave of her own accord, like a daughter!
Above all, she was a high-ranking mage. She might not be as capable as the Tower Master, but she was still an….
“I may not be as capable as the Tower Master who resides by your side… but my eighth-tier magic should be of some help.”
- Fwoosh!
An eighth-tier fire mage.
Just as Hermione had possessed a high level of understanding of water, the countess might be ahead of Akion in her understanding of fire.
If so, his various research projects would gain momentum.
“Hermione will be returning in a few days, so let’s all get together then. And….”
Even so.
“If you wish, you may call me Mother.”
“That’s a bit much.”
Pretending to be his mother was crossing the line.
Countess Lucretia grew slightly dejected.
*
A few days later,
- Bang!
“Young Master, it’s an emergency!”
Yet another servant brought Akion an urgent letter.
“Who sent me something this time? What is it?”
“They say Lady Hermione is in danger!”
“……Tell me in detail.”
It was news that his research slave, Hermione Enersis, had been taken captive by someone.
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