Chapter 79
“Hahaha! Workshop Master, long time no see!”
A precisely drafted blueprint based on Asterra’s 3D design.
Such precise metalworking is currently impossible for anyone but the artisans belonging to Akion’s workshop.
“I didn’t expect Sir Clad to be here in the capital.”
“My granddaughter entered the Academy with this year’s class too!”
As it happened, Clad—the proud swordmaster and blacksmith of Steelburn—had just come up to the capital.
“You said your granddaughter was in the Faculty of Knightly Arts, right? I hear she’s taking my lecture this time too.”
“Indeed! But, ahem. It seems she’s already gotten herself a boyfriend….”
“Oh dear. That must be weighing on you.”
“Hmm. Indeed.”
The problem was that his granddaughter already had a boyfriend.
Why, she had enrolled alongside the young master of a baronial family who had been with her since their days in the viscount’s territory, and they had even been holding hands!!
“This old man never wanted that….”
Clad had wanted to pair his granddaughter up with Akion, but
the Steelburn viscountial family had so few children that he couldn’t afford to make an enemy of them.
And since his granddaughter was as stubborn as Clad himself… Clad had already given up.
“What can I do? As long as he isn’t a layabout! I’ve decided to accept him as long as he has the skill to protect my granddaughter.”
“His broad-mindedness will make her boyfriend happy. In any case, Sir Clad, I need your handiwork.”
“Do you only seek me out when you need something, Workshop Master? Of course, I’m joking! Hahahaha!”
Akion was already providing Clad’s family, Steelburn, with full support in numerous ways.
Asking him to arrange a marriage as well would be a bit much.
“Now, let me see those blueprints!!”
“I’d like you to make this.”
“Ohooo… This must use illusion magic to reveal the completed form! Amazing!”
“Heh, hehe. It’s not that amazing….”
Spread out before Clad were the flat blueprints, along with Asterra’s 3D design drawings.
“Good heavens.”
As Clad examined them one by one, he alternated between looking at Akion and Asterra in admiration.
“Workshop Master Akion. And… Lady Asterra?”
“P-please, just call me Asterra.”
“Thank you. Ahem. In any case, I have a proposal for you both. Could you make this three-dimensional design model usable by us?”
“Th-this?”
Asterra had developed millimeter-perfect precision for carving a chibi version of Akion.
Thanks to that, even her 3D designs had errors reduced to the micrometer level.
“Uh… Sis. Is it possible?”
“I-I don’t know… Illusion magic can ultimately only be used by m-mages….”
The problem was that magic belonged exclusively to mages.
Non-mages could not easily come into contact with it.
“Young Master, Miss! Goldie was thinking, and the outfit Young Master is wearing has mana circuits in it, right?”
“Oh?”
“Ah?”
But there was one case where they did come into contact with it.
The all-weather Academy uniform made under Akion’s direction.
More precisely, the magic fabric combining mana circuits with Sir Montefio’s magic-circle compression technology was an example.
“A-Akion.”
“Yes.”
“I… could I change my research topic to this?”
Just as when she had carved the chibi Akion VTuber mascot, Asterra took considerable joy in making and designing things.
Taking note of that, Akion had also chosen device development as her research area.
“Whatever you’re comfortable with, Sis.”
“Th-thank you!”
Akion was quite happy that Asterra had finally chosen a topic for herself.
In his previous life, his research had been halted because its subject overlapped with that of the lab next door,
and there had also been times when he was forced to accept research topics he disliked and work on them.
At the very least, Akion wanted to respect the people working under him.
“So, Sir Clad, can you make it?”
“What do you take this old man for? Of course I can! Hahaha!”
Returning to the matter at hand, Akion had gained access to Clad’s high-precision handiwork.
“The only problem is that I don’t have a forge. Workshop Master, I actually no longer need to return to the main family… Since things have turned out this way….”
“Oh, of course we’ll install a Korex furnace for our workshop’s greatest ace, Sir Clad! Use the vacant lot as much as you like!”
“Hahaha!! This is why I can never bring myself to hate you, Workshop Master!”
Now that the people from Akion’s workshop in Enersis were coming up, they could build the necessary infrastructure for him.
“So what is this?”
“A coffee-bean grinder.”
“Huh? You need a high-precision machine just to grind a little coffee?”
In the process, Clad had made exactly the same remark as Princess Flare.
But Akion had reflected after getting angry last time.
Getting angry at someone for not understanding was no different from what his parents in his previous life had done, after all.
“Just wait and see. I’ll make you a coffee drink that’ll knock your socks off.”
“Hmm? Well, they say a meal comes before sightseeing. You must have a reason, Workshop Master. Very well!”
Instead, Akion vowed to make a coffee drink that everyone could look forward to.
*
- Rrrr.
- Pshiiii…….
In truth, pulling espresso shots was already possible at this point.
They needed one professor each specializing in water magic, fire magic, and wind magic to produce high-temperature, high-pressure water,
a professor from the Faculty of Knightly Arts capable of controlling things precisely enough to grind the particles evenly,
a professor specializing in telekinetic magic to hold the beans in place so they would not spill out,
and finally, a professor specializing in ice magic to make the ice.
“So… this is really supposed to be delicious?”
The problem was that hiring all that manpower was ridiculously expensive.
Still, Akion was a wealthy man, and the Academy professors were curious enough to agree.
The people Akion had coaxed into helping him stared blankly at the espresso concentrate set down before them.
“The aroma… It really is superb!”
Ariba, the café owner watching from the side, was deeply moved by the fragrance.
It was like discovering an entirely new coffee with an appeal different from drip coffee.
“What is this whitish layer of foam piled on top?”
“It’s called crema. It’s the result of the fats and water-soluble compounds in the beans mixing with the carbon dioxide that was in them.”
“Carbon… dioxide?”
“You can think of it as working on the same principle as the bubbles in beer.”
“Aha! I understand!”
In fact, the professors had come after hearing Akion say, ‘I’ll make you something delicious,’
so they had been a little disappointed when he said he was simply going to give them coffee.
“Professor, could you give me some chilled milk?”
“Here you are.”
“Now, if we mix this with milk in a two-to-three ratio….”
But the tart, nutty fragrance rising from the coffee shook their mana-awakened senses to the core.
Drip coffee was an excellent beverage too, but they were astonished and impressed that such a different coffee could come from the same beans.
“All right, this is an iced café latte. Everyone, give it a try.”
“Coffee, chilled….”
“And with milk. Hmm….”
But they were going to drink it cold?
And mix it with that expensive milk?
Of course, thanks to the developed dairy industry in the south, milk there was inexpensive,
but milk was generally expensive because of the cost of transporting it to the capital without it spoiling.
“Go on, give it a try.”
“This Ariba… trusts Professor Akion! Gulp!”
Besides, this coffee was not exactly a cheap drink either.
Thus, still uncertain, they took a sip of the iced café latte.
“Oh!”
“Good heavens.”
“How can it be this nutty…!”
They marveled at the tremendous nuttiness lingering in their mouths alongside the coffee’s aroma.
The coffee’s acidity and bitterness were mellowed out, while the milk’s nuttiness brought a fragrant flavor that enveloped them!
Even with the drink chilled, each individual flavor came through clearly, and the professors were thoroughly satisfied.
“What do you think?”
“This… I truly want to drink it every day.”
“Personally, I’d like to drink it every morning.”
“How much are you going to sell this for?”
The professors gave it glowing reviews.
They openly declared that they wanted to buy it and drink it right away.
And Ariba…
“Actually, when Professor Akion asked me for cold drip coffee, I considered challenging him to a duel.”
“I apologize for that.”
He began to pour out the feelings he had been holding in.
While Akion was seeing an Italian in him, Ariba…
“No, I know now that there was a purpose behind it all.”
He began to feel something beyond admiration—he was moved.
“It really is… delicious…!”
“Is it really that good?”
Ariba literally began to cry.
The café latte was simply that much to his taste.
“When I was creating the recipe, securing fresh milk was so difficult that I gave up long ago. If I’d known this would happen, I should have tried tasting it with milk much sooner…! Sob!!”
“I did wonder whether it really went with an espresso shot in the first place….”
While Ariba was overcome with emotion, Akion brought over the remaining shots and poured them into his own drink container.
Inside it was…
“Hmm? Professor Akion. Isn’t that ice water?”
“Yes. It’s called an iced Americano.”
The ice water and the espresso shot combined to create an iced Americano.
“It’s one of my absolute favorite drinks—.”
- Clack.
“Professor Akion.”
“Yes?”
Then Ariba seized Akion by the wrist.
“Why would you take that wonderful espresso and do that…!”
“Eek.”
Along with a face like an evil spirit,
“Why are you wasting it like thaaaat—!!”
“Aah!”
And Ariba was thoroughly triggered.
He could forgive the iced latte because it was delicious… but he could not tolerate an iced Americano.
“If anything!! Drink it!! Straight!! You made such an exquisite coffee concentrate yourself, so why would you ruin it like thaaaaat!!!!”
“C-calm down!!”
“Oh no, save me, Akion!”
In the end, Akion only survived after offering up a demitasse filled with sugar.
“Hoo-hoo-hoo! This, this is it! A new way to enjoy coffee! Just as Professor Akion said, from now on I’ll call this a demitasse!”
“Yes, yes….”
* * *
So how could they pull espresso shots easily without hiring the professors from the Faculty of Magic?
“Sis Hermione.”
“Yeah!”
This was when they needed an espresso machine.
The machine needed a water tank and boiler capable of maintaining high pressure.
It also needed hot, high-pressure water to brew the coffee, and later it would need to steam milk to make steamed milk.
“Let’s make a pressure boiler. A small one. Since we’re doing this, let’s make a large one too and put it in the laboratory quarters.”
“Uuugh… Do we really need one?”
However, after the Enersis boiler explosion, Hermione had developed a mild case of PTSD regarding boilers.
The explosion of hot water that had burst through the mansion floor that day was still engraved in Hermione’s mind.
“Sis.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you planning to do after returning home? Which family are you thinking of marrying into?”
But Akion was the one in charge both at the mansion and at the Academy.
Besides, hadn’t Enersis been normalized by Akion?
There was not much room left for Hermione to establish herself there.
If things went wrong, she might even be sold off as a fiancée, just as Akion had been in the past…!
“Fiiine… I get it.”
“That’s right. Get your master’s degree, then your doctorate. Huh? You’ll have to join the Tower as an experienced hire!”
For a fourth-year student like her, the only option left was to enroll in graduate school in the Department of Magi-Engineering.
“Ugh, I’m not as smart as you!!”
“You calculate turbulence practically in real time. What are you whining about? If I say do it, do it!”
“Ugh! Just you wait!”
His own older sister, who had bullied him in the past, had become a research slave.
And now Asterra had entered his lab as well.
“One day, I’ll get that guy…!”
“A-Akion might hear us…! Not now, but soon, the Saintess will be there and everyone will be gathering, right? Then, if we….”
“That… isn’t a bad idea.”
Their complaints were truly sweet to Akion!