Chapter 29
Steel supply was a critical matter for building the bathhouse.
“Hey, Mr. Cobb! When are you pouring the concrete?”
“We haven’t even finished making it yet!!”
It was because of the reinforced concrete Akion intended to introduce.
Akion had planned the public bathhouse with one basement level for the boiler room, a ground floor containing the baths, and a second floor for other facilities.
He had thought the second floor wouldn’t bear too much weight, so they wouldn’t need an enormous amount of rebar for this stage, but….
“Construction is being delayed because of the steel, Young Master!!”
“Steel…? We don’t have any?”
With the smelting technology of this era, they were nowhere near meeting the supply needs.
And the tight schedule had played a part too.
Concrete?
It could be made by mixing brick powder or volcanic ash into quicklime baked at high temperatures.
This was concrete even the Romans had used, so it was possible here too.
Aggregate?
Since a large river flowed beside Enersis and Ridasis, there was an abundance of high-quality river sand and gravel.
They only needed to sort it and increase its density.
“S-Sorry!”
“What can we do about our lack of technical skill? It’s all right, it’s fine.”
But steel supply had clear limits.
There was a limit to how many smithies they could add, and too few skilled workers to staff them.
Besides, was he supposed to pour all the steel into the bathhouse?
Akion’s other engineering projects would grind to a halt for months—no, for years.
He wouldn’t even be able to pay the employees’ wages, and would go bankrupt just like that.
“I’ve taken on way too much….”
“Akion seems down… I should comfort him with my feminine wiles.”
“The Tower Master? If she says you’re past your prime─ Hweeeeng!! I’m sowwy─!!”
He could fire off a request for support to Delphord, the head of the family, but Akion no longer wanted to be indebted to the count.
He was merely disappointed that construction of the bathhouse would have to be postponed.
Of course, it had happened because several factors had come into play, so he couldn’t blame Akion entirely.
“Everyone, I’m sure you’ve heard the name. This is Sir Cladd Steelburn.”
“Gasp?! Cladd Steelburn?!!”
“The first blacksmith ever to receive both the titles of Sword Master and Blacksmith─!!”
In a situation like this… Steelburn Forge, masters at producing steel, was coming here?
“It’s an honor to meet youuu!!”
“Heh heh, I look forward to working with you.”
Akion’s mouth began to water.
*
Akion was aware that he was an engineer at heart.
So he also knew his medical knowledge was far more limited than that of a modern doctor.
“How is the sensation in your fingertips?”
“Still numb.”
But it should be possible to alleviate it to some extent through diet.
Humans in this place had only survived if they were built different from birth, so even that much would be a blessing.
Still, if anyone questioned it, he could just call it food engineering and bluff his way through. Anyway.
There were four methods in total.
“Isn’t this just charcoal packed together…?”
“It’s been specially processed, so you can eat it. And it should be sweet. I mixed in honey.”
First, he had Cladd eat activated charcoal made by exposing finely powdered high-quality charcoal to high-temperature, high-pressure steam.
Activated charcoal was used in modern medicine to treat poisoning. It would surely help Cladd.
“Hmm. It’s rather… subtle, but the sweet-and-bitter taste is pretty good!”
But it wasn’t good if it got into the lungs, and above all, it tasted bad if eaten plain….
Akion asked the manor’s cook to mix it with honey and process it into pills.
“Take them two or three hours after eating, and drink plenty of water. No exceptions.”
“Young Master, this is exactly to Goldie’s taste!”
“Why are you eating it?”
Goldie got hooked on it and begged Akion to make more, but anyway.
Second, feed him pectin.
“This is apple-peel jelly. Please have it for dessert after your meal.”
“Apple peels and jelly? Ahem. A man like me eating something only women eat─.”
Pectin, abundant in apple peels and cores, has polysaccharide chains that clamp onto heavy metals like pincers.
Once that happened, they became structures that dissolved easily in water, greatly aiding the excretion of heavy metals.
At the very least, it should reduce the amount accumulating while he worked.
“Then may I eat it too?!”
“Why are you so obsessed with it, Tower Master…?”
This time, however, the Tower Master got hooked, forcing Akion to spend all day extracting pectin in front of a copper pot.
Anyway, the third was amino acids and sulfur compounds.
“Actually… my nephew won’t let me eat garlic because he says it smells. But it’s so delicious when roasted!”
“Sir Cladd, you have excellent taste!!”
“Why did you suddenly get so happy about garlic, Young Master…?”
All he had to do was keep feeding him cooked garlic and egg yolks.
The fourth wasn’t a food, but a bath.
“Hweee. I never thought I’d enjoy such luxury in my old age….”
“Heh heh, even the blacksmith can’t resist a bath!”
“Indeed, indeed, this is our Young Master’s masterpiece!”
The bitter-tasting salt contained magnesium sulfate, which he dissolved in water and then used the strained hot water for bathing.
Salt was expensive in this era, but because the bathwater had a higher salt concentration than the body, magnesium ions would penetrate through the skin.
“Hmm. Skin fit for a noblewoman!”
“Thanks to Sir Cladd, I’ve enjoyed such luxury, but ahem. To be honest, I’m starting to want to do this every day.”
This should help neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine, which had been disrupted by the heavy metals.
“I never enjoyed such luxury even when I was head of the family. Thank you, Young Master Akion….”
“You devoted yourself to the Empire, Elder, so I’m merely giving something in return.”
More than anything, Cladd was a man worth investing expensive salt in.
Akion dreamed not only of Cladd sharing his knowledge of steel production,
but of having him stand in the smithy and personally take charge.
Even if he couldn’t hold a hammer, he could at least guide and direct them from the side.
Akion had never dreamed of a complete cure in the first place.
“So hurry up and make a full recovery.”
“Ho ho ho! Very well! I shall manage my health diligently, exactly as Young Master Akion instructed!”
And then came the day Cladd would turn Enersis’s blacksmiths into Blacksmiths.
When that day came, wouldn’t high-purity steel rebar start dropping with a resounding clang?
Akion was already enraptured by the happy vision.
*
Exactly two weeks passed like that,
- Vroooom!
- BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!!!!!
“Wooooooooow!!!”
“Amazing, Sir Cladd! You smashed apart a tree that would take both arms to embrace with the bare edge of your hand!!”
In just two weeks, Cladd had returned to the Sword Master of his prime.
Modern medical professionals would have foamed at the mouth, asking how he had been cured rather than merely alleviated….
“The strength of my prime! The vigor of youth!! And, heh heh heh heh heh…!”
“What the….”
It actually happened.
“Master powerrrrrr─!!!”
- Reverberate!!!
Amid the old man’s booming laughter shaking the manor,
Akion stared blankly at the thousand-year tree Cladd had smashed apart.
Wondering whether he had really only provided palliative treatment.
“Young Master Akion! The vigor of my youth has returned!! Thanks to the methods you taught me, I feel as though I’ve returned to my prime!!!”
“It’s only been two weeks, though?”
“Look at this!”
Gone were Cladd’s lumpy, discolored skin and feeble strength,
- Shiiine~!
- Creak…!
In their place, he gleamed with bronze muscles like humanity’s masterpiece.
“Ah. Aah─!! As expected of you, Sir Cladd…!!”
“As expected of Young Master Akion! You cured a Master!! You calmly accomplished a feat beyond the reach of ordinary men like us!!”
The blacksmiths of Akion’s workshop were cheering as they watched, calling Akion a genius alchemist.
Of course, alchemists in this era sometimes doubled as apothecaries. Anyway.
“Isn’t that what makes it exhilarating?!”
“I can’t help but admire you!!!”
“Don’t admire me.
How many times had an unintended result been both this terrible and this wonderful?
Akion stopped thinking.
If he went any further, he would go mad again.
“Young Master….”
“Akion….”
“Don’t ask.”
Goldie and the Tower Master watched the scene with him… and gazed at Akion with reverence.
“What in the world did you do…? The Master recovered to the level of his prime…!”
“Is this magi-engineering as well…?”
“It’s engineering. But this isn’t engineering either….”
Akion was exhausted from explaining himself.
He wanted to crawl into bed right that moment, treat all of this as a dream, and go night-night.
But the beneficiary whose health had improved thanks to his kindness had no intention of leaving him alone.
- Flash!
“Whaaaat?!”
“Hahahaha!! Young Master Akion!!! I’m truly grateful!!”
“I understand, so put me down!!”
Cladd, the gym-bro blacksmith Sword Master who had returned to a height of 195 centimeters.
He hoisted Akion up as if he were handling his grandson.
“If you don’t mind, Young Master, I’d like to think of you as my grandson and cherish you!”
“I understand, so put me dow─.”
- Whoooosh!
“Waaaaaaaaaah─!!!”
And so Akion learned that people could fly too.
For roughly six seconds.
Because Cladd had thrown him straight up into the air.
“Long live Young Master Akion! Long live Enersissss!!!”
“Long live Sir Cladd!! Long live Enersisssss─!!!”
“Please put me doooooown─!!!”
Akion felt like crying.
* * *
And so, as Enersis’s steel-production muscles gradually grew.
- Clang!
“Young Master Akion.”
Cladd, whose face looked sixty but whose body belonged to a lethal Sword Master blacksmith capable of making even gym bros cower.
He took the two blueprints back out in front of Akion.
“I joined your workshop to repay my debt to you, but… with these two machines, the efficiency of a smithy’s work would increase dramatically.”
The forging machine and the mana furnace—or what was also called an electric arc furnace.
The forging machine was a sort of hammering machine that could be implemented using the motor Akion possessed.
That one should be easy to build if they used it with a damper as a shock absorber….
“So… you mean this is a dreamlike furnace that melts everything from scrap metal to iron ore all at once?”
This blasted mana furnace was the problem.
From Cladd’s explanation, it was difficult to call it an electric arc furnace, actually.
“That’s right! If you unleash powerful lightning magic, an enormous bolt of lightning forms at the electrodes. Its temperature is enough to melt a suit of armor in an instant!”
Up to that point, it had sounded similar to the electric furnace from his previous life—from the modern era—
“At that point, you stack coal and limestone layer by layer, just as we do in Steelburn Forge’s blast furnace. At least forty layers, I’d say.”
In fact, it was similar to a modern blast furnace.
The difference was that its heat source was ultra-high-voltage lightning of the sort used in an electric arc furnace instead of 1,200°C hot blast.
“Do you use coal reprocessed at high temperatures in Steelburn Forge’s existing blast furnace? From the way you describe it, it sounds as though you also process the iron ore separately before using it.”
“Good heavens…! That is our Steelburn smelting recipe in its entirety. You have quite extensive knowledge in this field as well, Young Master….”
“And this would be a furnace that could skip that entire reprocessing stage.”
“Precisely. You truly are a genius!”
Instead, unlike a conventional blast furnace, it used a process that skipped reprocessing the materials.
It was a smelting-reduction furnace using the COREX process.
Since that was unnecessarily complicated, Akion decided to remember it as a COREX furnace from then on.
“I already built a small one at the main house and tested it in practice. By now… I imagine we’ve finished at least one! Ho ho ho!”
But he had conceived of this using only medieval-level technology and knowledge?
And he had even built a prototype and completed practical testing??
Akion thought the muscular old man in front of him seemed even more of a genius.
“Elder, are you really sure you don’t need to return to the main house?”
“Heh heh. I understand your concern, Young Master.”
What could be the reason for casually giving up such a valuable talent?
Was it the former head’s opinion? Or the current head of that viscount family?
“Don’t worry. From the beginning, Steelburn had been watching for an opportunity to establish ties with Enersis. If we can secure that with a few blacksmiths and one or two mana furnaces, it’s a bargain! Heh heh!”
“So that’s why you mentioned last time that Steelburn’s blacksmiths would be moving here….”
As if to dispel Akion’s worries, Cladd immediately revealed his intentions.
It looked as though he was giving everything away, but every single thing was exactly what Akion and Enersis needed.
“And… ahem! I have a lovely granddaughter, you see… I’d like to introduce her to Young Master Akion.”
“Is she good with her hands?”
“Of course! I taught her myself! She’s my grandniece and my apprentice, in a manner of speaking!”
A deal to build a steel facility, arriving at exactly the right time for Akion, who desperately needed a large-scale steel supply?
With the local designer and blacksmith in charge, plus the option of having skilled workers relocate here?!
Though Cladd’s mention of his grandniece did give him pause….
- Clap!
“What the heck, let’s build it. And how about we call it a COREX furnace?”
“COREX! What a fitting name! I look forward to working with you, Workshop Master Akion!”
They were only going to meet her once; what problem could there be!
If taking one step closer to a peaceful engineering-life world meant he had to pay any price… Akion steeled himself to pay it.
“Oh my, it’s already gotten late. I’ll take my leave first.”
“Have a good night, Workshop Master! Heh heh, I need to write a letter right away. Perhaps I’ll have a great-grandchild before long…!”
He did hear a somewhat ominous mutter, though.