Completion! The Temporary Office on the Factory's Second Floor
The temporary office on the second floor of the factory. Once the commotion from the test run had died down, Aila slammed a bundle of promissory notes onto the desk in irritation and rubbed her dry face with both hands.
"Test run be damned— we’re really out of time now, Elpanso."
Dark circles from exhaustion and stress shadowed her eyes.
"It’s been ten days since that bastard Valerius jacked up the checkpoint tolls by twenty times. The cotton fabrics piling up in the warehouse are about to sprout mold, and wholesalers are swarming the factory gates every damn day, grabbing collars and demanding refunds."
"Just refund them with the advance payments we got and send ’em packing. We’ve got plenty of capital stockpiled, right?"
Aila let out a hollow laugh at my words.
"What good’s money if it’s all tied up!" She thrust a ledger streaked with red lines in front of my face. "Those massive advances from the Southern Alliance merchants? They’re locked in Veritas Oath Scrolls. If we don’t deliver the promised cotton fabrics to their territories by the deadline, we’re hit with triple the penalty for breach of contract! The second we pay that, our cash flow dries up and we’re bankrupt on the spot!"
Her finger jabbed at the calendar.
"One month left. Exactly one. If we don’t get that ugly beast afloat, sail upriver to the sea, and haul the goods to the Southern Alliance’s free trade port in that time… we’re leashed by Valerius and done for."
One month. Insanely tight to recast a massive boiler, mount it on the ship, and set sail for its maiden voyage.
"Don’t worry, partner." I flashed her a thick merchant’s grin, the kind that oozed confidence despite her trembling anxiety. "I’ve formulated the perfect equation from my failures. One month? A week’s plenty. While Valerius chokes on our dust, we’ll be belching black smoke across the ocean, hauling cotton back from the south."
At my resolute tone, Aila nodded, half-doubting but biting her lower lip hard.
"…Yeah. A guy who walked out unscathed from a boiler explosion? Nothing’s beyond you. Get on those dwarves outside right now. Money’s no object—boil the heart of that goddamn ship today!"
*
"Alright, listen up!" I barked, unfurling blueprints and notes with a gravelly voice. "Dump every last bit of that cast iron we’ve been smelting in the old flatbed furnaces! Junk iron full of impurities can’t withstand mana steam pressure. From now on, we’re forging a new metal this world’s never seen—ultra-high-strength alloy!"
The soot-blackened dwarves murmured at my declaration.
"A new metal? Smelting ore and pouring molten iron doesn’t change."
"If impurities are the issue, just hammer it ten, twenty times to refine it! Trust us dwarves!"
One dwarf thumped his tempered arm muscles, gripping his sledgehammer, and continued. "Or did you bring some legendary mithril ore? That might just do it!"
"Brute hammering won’t catch micro-cracks inside." I waved him off firmly and pointed to sacks of ore I’d prepped for the dwarf foreman. "First: flood the furnace melt with limestone to form basic slag. Float out every bit of sulfur and phosphorus!"
The foreman scratched his beard and tilted his head at my orders.
"Sulfur? Phosphorus? What kinda ghost-talk is that, boss? Hundreds of years handling steel, and I’ve never heard of those minerals."
"Ah." I sighed shortly. No way Earth’s chemical names would click with fantasy craftsmen. Drawing from Kang Woojin’s memories, I switched to intuitive terms they’d grasp. "You know, the yellow dust that reeks like rotten eggs when smelting, and the bone-powder stuff that glows ghostly blue in the dark."
Then the foreman slapped his forehead with an "aha!"
"Oh! Devil’s Tears (sulfur) and Goblin Stone (phosphorus)! But why skim ’em outta the melt?"
His shout sparked protests from the smiths, who leaped up in disbelief.
"Boss! You’re the expert on machining, sure, but steel’s our domain! Devil’s Tears make the melt fluid, filling every mold corner perfectly!"
"Right! And Goblin Stone ain’t impurity—it hardens steel like rock once cooled! It’s blacksmith gospel, a gift from the earth! Strip those, and the iron’ll be soft as mush!"
Unbelievable. Medieval smiths’ fatal ignorance, ossified by oral tradition and bias. I laughed dryly and shattered their outdated dogma head-on.
"That shallow thinking’s exactly why the last boiler ripped apart, you stubborn mules!"
"Wh-what?!"
"Devil’s Tears? Makes it flow nice? Sure, for casting. But mixed in, it causes red-hot brittleness—the steel’s grain shatters like straw under mana steam heat! Goblin Stone? Hardens at room temp? Nah, that’s room-temperature brittleness, making it snap like winter glass!"
My thunderous roar and fact-bomb logic silenced the fired-up dwarves. Lifelong smiths, flames their cradle—yet today they learned their cherished "blessings" were ticking bombs that burst and snapped steel.
"That’s why we slam in limestone. To float those bastard impurities mistaken for blessings right out!"
The basics of modern steelmaking: ruthless impurity control.
"Next, neutralize any leftover sulfur—er, Devil’s Tears—with manganese. Keep carbon under 0.15% for extra-low-carbon steel. Maximize toughness so plates endure without cracking."
"B-but boss, it’ll get tough, yeah, but low carbon means too soft for pressure, right?" the deflated foreman ventured cautiously.
I pulled two small ore samples from my bag and held them high.
"That’s why we add these!"
"Silvery tough ore from Armang Mountains’ depths: chromite. And dark gray pyroxene: molybdenite!"
Earth’s chrome and molybdenum—alpha and omega of special steels. In this fantasy world? Mere pigments for pottery or smith-rejected waste, too refractory to smelt easily.
"Mix exactly one percent chromite, 0.5 percent molybdenite into the melt! No 0.1 percent tolerance!"
The foreman took my alloy ratio blueprint with trembling hands.
"Chromite and molybdenite in the melt? Treasures used sparingly even for legendary swords, poured into a house-sized boiler… You’re insane, boss!"
"Sanity doesn’t overturn worlds. Forge skin for a true monster—immovable as Taesan, untearable at hundreds of degrees Celsius!"
"Ooooh—!!"
My bellow ignited fanatic fire in the dwarves’ and artisans’ eyes. Masters of metal all their lives, now beholding chemical purity and perfect alloy ratios beyond hammers. Their boiling blood surged uncontrollably before this wondrous truth.
Whoosh—!!
Furnace flames roared skyward over Peluah’s harbor.
"Boss says: dump the limestone! Skim every slag!"
Limestone turned foul impurities to slag, skimmed away. Manganese soothed the melt; finally, chrome and molybdenum shifted its hue to mesmerizing bluish silver.
"Hold the temp! No quenching! Cool slow at room air to prevent grain defects!"
The miracle melt—480 MPa yield strength, proven in Earth’s Taesan labs—cascaded like a waterfall into fantasy molds.
Sizzz—!!
Bellows and quenching ran day and night.
Three days later.
Cracking free from molds, the new boiler was no crude iron lump. Gleaming subtly, flawless—a pinnacle of modern engineering, true special alloy steel in glory.
I crammed graphite powder and copper gasket layers into every seam, torquing bolts like mad.
"Sealed perfect. Not a wisp of steam escapes."
Wiping sweat-slick brow, I gazed fondly at the new heart nestled in the ragged, sail-less brig’s core. Massive iron waterwheels flanked the hull, bluish menace poised to shred currents.
"Boss! Ship’s assembled! Coal’s loaded full!"
The soot-caked foreman grinned in report.
The moment arrived.
I raised my hand high to Aila, pacing anxiously dockside, and wholesalers awaiting, fates tied to our factory.
"All aboard! Cram the hold with cotton—no gaps!"
Hundreds of cartloads of fabric vanished into the cargo bay. The ship sank heavy; Rene River’s chop slapped the hull.
"Well then."
I gripped the engine throttle tight.
"Shall we go grab Valerius by the throat?"
The true steel behemoth’s maiden voyage was about to begin.