Red Tiller (2)
The reason I hadn't rushed building the cultivator was that winter still hadn't passed.
"Rachel, how long does winter usually last around here?"
"Winter? Hmm... it usually starts warming up after about two or three months. Why? Are you cold? Shall I fetch you something warmer?"
And now, a full month into winter, I was finally ready to begin production of the cultivators.
The winter chill would gradually start to fade.
The transmission towers already had something of a proper shape to them, and recruitment for the pilot electricity program in Iron Hall was nearly finished.
My goal was to complete the electrical supply for the pilot zone perfectly before Wendy's coming-of-age ceremony began.
"Good. The transformers are installed too..."
Once the pilot zone was decided, the infrastructure would be done soon enough. Meter production was progressing steadily, and more importantly, we had secured enough wire.
The only real task left was the filament. Everything else could run without me.
When I entered the lab, Andersen was filling a massive glass vessel with water, an inverted beaker set into it, and moving iron and sulfuric acid into place.
"You have arrived? Preparations are complete."
"Thank you for your hard work. Let's begin."
What we were attempting was the collection of hydrogen gas.
The method was to react iron with sulfuric acid and capture the resulting hydrogen through water displacement.
Taking advantage of the gas's poor solubility in water, you filled a wide-mouthed glass bottle completely, sealed the mouth, then inverted it underwater. That was it.
Connect a glass tube from the iron-and-acid reaction into that mouth, and the gas would push the water out and fill the bottle.
"Ooooh! The water truly is vanishing!"
Andersen's eyes went wide with wonder as he carefully recorded the phenomenon in his book.
"Water displacement... a most fitting name. Alchemists would faint dead away if they learned of this method."
There were alchemists? That hadn't even crossed my mind. I was already keenly feeling the gaps in my chemical knowledge—wouldn't someone of Andersen's caliber be a huge help?
"Do you know any alchemists? Ones with skill comparable to yours, Magic Advisor?"
"Hmm... there is one, though I know not where he is now."
"Ah... is there any way to contact him?"
Andersen rubbed his chin in thought, then twisted his lips.
"It is not impossible."
"Really?! Then could you try reaching out? An outstanding alchemist would be a tremendous help to our research."
"I can try... though whether word will reach him is another matter. And more than that, the fellow is an eccentric of the first order..."
"That's fine! It's not like I haven't dealt with a few eccentrics before."
"An eccentric beyond your imagination. His skill is certain, at least... Very well. I shall attempt contact."
"Thank you."
If the skill was solid, I was ready to accept even a personality wreck.
"How fares the cultivator construction?"
"That just needs the engine and it's done. Honestly, if Vulcan had committed to researching it, they could have built one."
If your only purpose was tilling soil, it wasn't that hard to make.
You just mounted blades on a vehicle to tear up the ground. And for something on the scale of a cultivator, the engine didn't even need to be that powerful.
A four-stroke engine would be more than enough. The principle was simple—just cycle through intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust.
Vulcan hasn't exactly been sitting idle either.
From what I'd seen, they'd been pouring effort into studying the Black Terahole's engine. With enough work, they could have realized something like this.
The problem is they're wasting time in the wrong places.
If this world could produce gasoline or diesel, things would be far easier—but for now that wasn't possible, so we had to use mana fuel refined from mana stones.
And that technology belonged to Vulcan alone.
Come to think of it, maybe the time spent hadn't been wasted after all.
"Once you complete it, Vulcan may well begin development of their own. I hear they succeeded with a ballista and the principality is running trials. The fourth Black Terahole's performance is said to far exceed the previous models as well."
"That's good news. I'm glad Vulcan is seeing results too. We're not competing with them right now."
You only compete when there's something to compete over.
"And even if they do try to catch up, spring will already have passed by then."
For me, the priority was transferring technology and raising the overall standard.
"Let's get back to it. This won't take much longer."
At last we had reached the final stretch.
Wolframite reacted with a caustic soda solution at a high temperature of 150–200°C produced sodium tungstate.
React that with sulfuric acid to precipitate tungstic acid.
Then heat it above 600 degrees to obtain tungsten trioxide.
Now came the true final step.
Take the hydrogen gas we had collected earlier and react it with the tungsten trioxide in a specially built high-temperature furnace—and pure tungsten powder would emerge.
"I cannot fathom this extravagance. How much gold are you pouring into a furnace that will barely last a few uses?"
Uncle Amos clicked his tongue as he eyed the furnace slowly falling apart, clearly unimpressed.
"It can't be helped. The early stages always demand heavy capital."
"Tsk. Can you not build a furnace that can withstand this heat? With something like that, I could try working other minerals as well."
"That's exactly why we're doing this."
"...So this is the material for it?"
"Yes. Tungsten is an insane heat-resistant mineral that can hold up to 3,400 degrees."
That was precisely why I was pouring money into this like water into a bottomless jar.
Force the heat and durability up with mana circuits and magic, extract tungsten just once—and from then on, the heat-resistance problem would be completely solved.
Because after that, you could just make things out of tungsten.
As for the firepower... I'll have to impose on Andersen a little.
I could dump mana fuel to raise the heat, but that got expensive fast, so Andersen's magic had to make up the difference.
Looking at Andersen's face—the expression of a man who had become human firewood and was thoroughly existential about it—I did feel a little bad. But what choice was there? Even self-made conglomerate chairmen all had days like this.
"Let's go right away. Where is Andersen?"
"There you go, boy. You're hungry now, so you're eating well."
Erdin squatted on the ground, feeding a pile of hay to his horse.
Unlike when he first arrived, Erdin already looked like a local.
"Young master, you're up early. I've boiled some barley porridge—come and eat."
"Very well."
Even the barley porridge he had found truly unappetizing when he first stayed here had become something he could manage now.
The hut they slept in cooled almost as soon as the fire was lit, the bitter cold seeping through; the wind slipped inside, and even at night he could never rest easily.
The food was mostly things with no real taste to speak of—barley porridge, potato pancakes, hard barley bread.
What did these people live for? Why did they work so hard?
Eating the hot barley porridge, he felt his stomach fill with a solid warmth. Plain as it was, it was strangely decent.
"I have a question."
"Ask anything, young master."
"If you endure a whole year of this hardship, how much of a harvest do you actually get?"
"Haha, a natural thing to wonder about. Well, if all goes well, we take barley and wheat in summer, and beans, millet, and buckwheat in autumn. In a good year, we can get enough grain for our family to last the winter. After taxes, it's roughly three or four sacks of barley and about two of wheat."
"...That's all?"
"That's right. But not every year is a good year, so we have to leave it to the heavens. Too much rain or a drought can cut the harvest in half, and if pests come through, every crop in the ground can be ruined."
The farmer said it as if it were nothing, and Erdin was shaken. Even he—a knight—had found these past few weeks of labor exhausting. What must it be like for them?
To endure a full year of that toil... for so little.
"The taxes take a great deal, then."
"Hahaha. Still, we're the ones using this field and these crops in their place, aren't we? Just being allowed to make a living this way is something to be grateful for."
"Is there nothing you want from the Lobel family?"
"Something we want... Well, a lot of our farm tools broke this year. If they could support us with those, that would be good."
Only now did Erdin understand why Robon had told him to talk with these people. Did the people of the family who ruled this territory even know?
Back home they only thought about how to extract more tax—they never seemed to look closely at these people's hardships.
If Arnold becomes family head... just imagining it is horrifying.
"I've eaten well. Shall we get up? What should I do?"
"Quite a bit of snow fell last night. You can pick the remaining stones out of that patch. We have to clear the stones before we sow in spring if the grain is to grow well."
"Understood."
Erdin resolved to help them as much as he could until he returned to the family. And to experience the things he had never known.
Perhaps this, he thought, could become the difference between Arnold and himself.
Vrrrm—vrrrrm—!
Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle!!
I opened the throttle and spun the crank handle a few quick turns. The cultivator's engine shuddered and spat out a plume of white smoke.
"Perfect!"
The compact mana engine mounted on top was silver metal, linked to the exposed cylinders, exhaust, and fuel tank.
I had also fitted a small muffler to cut down the engine noise and the heat coming off the exhaust.
The body used a thick steel frame; along the bottom, using the latest techniques, I had mounted several curved blades that could break and turn even the hardest soil with ease. Around the blades I installed a safety cover to keep stones and dirt from flying.
The first cultivator I had ever built.
I named it the Red Tiller.
Even back when I was building robots, I had never made one of these—but once you understood the principle and the purpose, construction wasn't that hard.
I sat in the seat and drove the rattling cultivator toward the nearby farmsteads.
Even if the Iron Cliff territory's main resource was minerals, that didn't mean farming didn't happen at all. There simply wasn't much land suited to it.
"What do you think?"
"Splendid."
Andersen clapped as he watched the cultivator crawl rattling across the ground.
"Watching you, Director, one truly feels that innovation is not so different from this."
"Exactly. Break even a tiny bit of fixed thinking, and change tends to come in a big way."
"Ah..."
Andersen's focus went distant. He let out a low sound and closed his eyes.
What? Another epiphany? What did I even do?
He shut his eyes, moved his mana, and stirred the wind. I killed the engine at once and waited, holding my breath.
A moment later Andersen opened his eyes, his demeanor a little calmer.
"My circle has grown smaller."
"...What? Your circle got smaller? What does that mean?"
"It means there is no need to keep it large. I tried it on a whim, and it truly shrank."
I had no idea what he was talking about. I barely understood what a circle was in the first place. Probably just another way of saying he had grown as a mage. But did mages usually grow this easily?
In every comic or novel I'd ever seen, it took mages forever to get stronger once.
"So you're seventh circle now?"
"That is not the case. Simply... consider my efficiency improved."
"Oh-ho."
"In any event, I owe it to you, Director."
"Then from now on, the human fire—uh, the fire-lighting. I'll be counting on you."
"Understood."
Getting an epiphany while watching someone drive a cultivator felt a bit much. The world of mages was truly beyond understanding.
Chirp—chirp—chirp—
Birdsong drifted over.
Looking up, I saw shadowed birds rising into the sky with the approach of dusk.
"Spring will be here soon."
"I should take the cultivator over to the Lobels."