Chapter 00098: Easing the Lord’s Burdens
# Easing the Lord’s Burdens
Chapter 98
Novel: AFK Game: Portal to Another World
Chapter 98: Easing the Lord’s Burdens
Year 648 of the Demon Lord Calendar.
The seventh of May, at night.
The first waterwheel, built by the riverside, was now complete.
Although it was only a small one, it was enough to verify its usefulness.
However, on the very day it was successfully built, it was commandeered by Audel.
No one knew what she was tinkering with inside, but those who passed by could always hear the sounds of clanking and banging coming from within.
The passersby all thought it was a mage's business and best not to meddle.
What if she took a disliking to you and turned you into a frog?
The Leon Territory was only so big.
News spread like wildfire, and soon, everyone made a detour whenever they passed near the waterwheel.
"Did you really make compressed biscuits?"
Viola crossed her arms, finding Audel's claim a little hard to believe.
"I tried a few times, and I finally succeeded."
Audel was kneading dough on a board, her face covered in flour.
The technology behind compressed biscuits was indeed not very advanced, and the recipe was simple.
However, without the right tools, it was nearly impossible to make them at home.
Grains like barley, wheat, and oats were ground into flour and mixed into a dough.
It was then cut into small rectangular pieces, pierced with holes using a wooden stick, and left to air-dry before being baked in an oven.
The finished product was an extremely solid hard biscuit.
"The air-drying process takes a whole day. This is the finished product from my previous attempt. It can also be stored for a very long time."
Viola took a bite and immediately frowned.
"It doesn't taste good. It's too hard, not like the compressed biscuits you brought from the Lord."
Zola tried one as well and agreed that it wasn't good enough.
Soldiers needed to eat their fill to have the strength to fight, but just eating these biscuits would take a lot of effort and strain one's teeth.
"It's not a compressed biscuit yet, after all."
Audel snapped her fingers, and immediately, a string of blue light flew over from the side, lifting the plate of biscuits and carrying it towards a stone mill on the side.
It was an invisible servant created by magic, capable of following simple commands.
The biscuits were poured into the stone mill and ground into fine, granular powder.
Audel collected it in a large bowl, then poured in olive oil and salt.
"Turning grain powder into biscuits, then grinding the biscuits back into powder... isn't that a bit redundant?"
"If I don't do it this way, the grain is raw. The later steps won't cook the grain powder."
Once Audel had evenly mixed the powder and oil in the large pottery bowl, she took out a steel mold.
"I made a special trip back to the City of Academics to have a dwarf forge this mold for me. The molds made by the local blacksmiths in the Leon Territory aren't sturdy enough; they're too soft."
The blacksmiths in the Leon Territory primarily forged farming tools and couldn't create anything too sophisticated.
In this regard, one really had to rely on the dwarves.
After pouring the powder into the mold, Audel placed a lid with a protrusion on top and then set the mold under the water-powered trip-hammer.
The water-powered trip-hammer was a power-storing hammer that operated using the force of water.
The rotation of the waterwheel, through a series of gears, slowly lifted the massive hammer, which was equipped with a latch to prevent it from dropping suddenly halfway through its ascent.
Once it was fully charged, she pulled a lever, and the massive hammer, now at full force, slammed down onto the steel mold with a clang.
After repeating this several times, Audel opened the lid on the back of the mold, pushed with her finger, and took out the finished product.
What was once a mixture of powder and oil had now become a solid, and it really did look like a compressed biscuit.
"Although there's still a gap compared to the Lord's compressed biscuits, the properties are similar."
The advantage of compressed biscuits was their high energy content and ease of storage and transport.
Although they were very hard, they could be soaked in hot water to make porridge.
This was much more convenient than lighting a fire to bake bread for a meal.
Making this item was manageable in all aspects, except that it required over six tons of pressure to form the biscuit.
That was why it was so difficult to make at home without purchasing specialized hydraulic tools.
Audel's use of the water-powered trip-hammer was barely sufficient, and she had to constantly adjust the ratio of oil to powder to get it to form properly.
It had taken a great deal of effort.
"The next step is to wrap them in oil paper and store them in boxes. With the current production capacity of the Leon Territory, I estimate we can't mass-produce them on a large scale just yet."
A major reason for this was the lack of oil.
The primary vegetable oil in this world was olive oil, and the Leon Territory did not produce olives.
To get oil, they had to wait for merchants to arrive.
But the land-based trade routes were already blocked, and before the sea routes were open, oil simply couldn't be transported here.
"Only when the paper mill is completed and the peanut and rapeseed crops gifted by the Lord are harvested on a large scale can compressed biscuits be mass-produced. I strongly suspect the Lord anticipated all of this, which is why he had you, Viola, build the paper mill and cultivate new crops."
"Of course! The greatness of the Lord's foresight is not something a mere mortal can fathom!"
Viola was, as always, of the 'whatever the Lord says is right' persuasion.
But Audel didn't think so.
Even a god must have things they haven't accounted for.
And it was this unaccounted-for area that Audel wanted to test.
So she went along with Viola's words, saying, "Since the Lord is so great, shouldn't we also help ease his burdens?"
Viola was no fool.
She immediately sensed the hidden meaning in those words and became alert.
"What are you up to this time?"
"Nothing much. In a couple of days, I have to go back to the City of Academics to prepare for my new thesis, but before that, there's something I'm very curious about..."
"You might as well just say it."
"Simple, then. What the Lord lacks right now are the Rings of the Demon King, which is why his authority is insufficient."
"We've been asking around, but unless we leave the Leon Territory, there's almost no news."
"No, you and the Royal Guards have overlooked one place."
"What is it?"
"I've heard my father mention that, according to legend, the Avaluus Royal Family possesses a treasure that can connect to the Demon God."
Although Audel was also royalty, she was not from the direct line.
She wasn't qualified to see it, let alone take it for research.
She had never cared about it before.
After all, the Demon God was just a legend, and his very existence was questionable.
But now that there was no doubt about his existence, that treasure became extremely suspicious.
"What are you trying to say?"
"Have you ever considered that the treasure might actually be one of the Rings of the Demon King?"
Viola had never really thought about this, because the object didn't look like a ring at all.
Under Audel's expectant gaze, Viola hesitated for a long time before reaching into her collar and pulling out a necklace.
She pointed to the pendant and said, "This is the treasure you've heard about."
The pendant on the necklace was an oval-shaped black object.
It looked like metal, as smooth as a shrunken egg.
If this thing were dropped on the ground, it was unlikely anyone would even pick it up.
It truly showed no element related to a ring.
"Can you let me study it?"
"You can, but it cannot leave my sight."
Besides the fact that this item had been passed down through generations of the Avaluus Royal Family, Viola also believed it was a crucial reason why she had gained the Demon God's attention.
Naturally, she was unwilling to let it go easily.
"Don't worry, I'll study it right in front of you."
Despite her words, Audel didn't have a track record of doing things that would put Viola at ease.
Holding the necklace, she muttered some words.
A magical radiance flickered from time to time as if she were checking for something inside the pendant.
"Give it up. My father, the King, had many highly skilled mages study it, but none of them found anything."
"Indeed. Magic is completely unable to probe it. It's just like an ordinary metal object."
From her tone, it seemed as if Audel was about to give up, but in the next moment, she picked up an awl from the table and pricked her finger.
"It's not that their magic wasn't proficient enough, but that they lacked the most crucial element: the royal bloodline."
Audel squeezed out a drop of blood and let it fall onto the pendant.
In the next instant, the pendant, which had been just a lump of black iron, lit up with a brilliant magical radiance.
Layer upon layer of petal-like structures rapidly bloomed open.
Before the astonished eyes of Viola and Zola, a golden ring appeared in the center of the pendant, hovering slightly...
(End of this chapter)