Chapter 135: Starting with the Basics
Scroll had read the ancient book several times. Roland trusted her to have retained it exactly, which meant her analysis was drawn from the actual text rather than her impression of it.
She sat across from him with the same focused stillness she brought to everything and considered the map Ferlin had drawn for him.
“The content corresponds,” she said. “The book describes the fall of the Holy City of Taquila to the Devils. It describes survivors scattering in all directions. If those three points on the map are the locations of installations from that period — defense towers, supply caches, emergency shelters — then this map was made by someone who knew where those installations were.”
“Which means someone from the Church’s organization, from that era.”
“Or someone who found the map and copied it. But yes — the most probable origin is a survivor of the Taquila period.” She paused. “The Church has suppressed this history entirely. But it seems they couldn’t suppress the physical objects.”
“They didn’t know the map existed,” Roland said. “It’s been in a knight’s family basement for four centuries.” He looked at the triangle’s three points. “The hexagonal star in the Concealing Forest — Lightning can reach it in a day. We know roughly where the North Slope point corresponds on current terrain. The Taquila point—” He traced the line with one finger. “Fifty kilometers, minimum, through territory the Army of Judges has already demonstrated a willingness to move through.”
“The forest point first, then.”
“The forest point first.” He closed the illusion of the book. “I’ll brief Lightning this afternoon, after I’m done at the mine.” He stood. “Keep the evening lessons running. Soraya can make additional copies of whatever you need.”
“She already has,” Scroll said, with faint satisfaction.
The North Slope testing area had expanded twice since winter.
The two bore-holes for the cannon production were still there — Roland had kept them as reference markers — but the area around them had developed into something recognizable as a small industrial yard: organized storage for raw material, sorting areas, the first furnace Karl had completed on the hillside above, and now Anna’s workspace, which had the particular quality of a place where serious work was being done with unusual precision.
She was at the table when Roland arrived. Two steel pipes stood on the surface beside her: perfectly cylindrical, smooth-bore, their interiors visible as clear apertures when Roland held them to the light.
He turned one over in his hands. The bore was exact — the same diameter throughout, the walls uniform, the cut ends flat enough to use as measuring references. He pressed his finger into the bore.
“How did you make these?”
Anna held out a fresh steel bar — the kind they used for raw stock — and showed him. A thread of black fire entered the end of the bar, invisible except in her awareness of it, and moved through the interior. Then it widened, rotated around the bar’s central axis, and the displacement happened: a thin curl of extremely hot metal separated from the interior and fell away, and the bore was complete.
The demonstration took about forty seconds.
Roland set the pipe down carefully.
“Range still five meters?”
“For gross movement. Precise control — within three meters.”
“And God’s Stones still suppress it.”
“Yes.” She said it without complaint, as simple fact. “The flame disappears at the Stone’s boundary.”
He ran the classification in his mind. Summoned ability, suppression-vulnerable, limited range — the same constraints as before her evolution, but the output within those constraints had changed categorically. Hot-wire cutting with controllable width and temperature, capable of producing industrial tolerances that no machining process available in this world could match.
She’s a manufacturing system, he thought, and then felt the inadequacy of that framing. She was also a person who had stayed up all night working through particle physics and emerged with a new relationship to her own power.
“We’re testing output duration and capacity today,” he said. “Then I have something I want to build.”
Nightingale was already at the perimeter, watching Anna’s internal state.
The tests took an hour. Duration: Anna could sustain precise work for roughly three hours before her control degraded to the point where tolerances became unreliable. Capacity: no single operation pushed her limits — it was accumulation over time that wore her down. Recovery rate: complete after a full night’s sleep, partial after two to three hours of rest.
He wrote down the numbers and looked at them. Three productive hours per day, precisely. Partial recovery available for non-precision tasks.
This was a production schedule, not a weapon capability. He would plan accordingly.
“Now,” he said, “something basic.”
He described what he wanted: a steel strip, two fingers wide, one millimeter thick. Tick marks at precisely equal intervals — one centimeter apart, verified by comparison against the reference he had already worked out and committed to memory. Ten centimeters of finished ruler.
Anna looked at him. “You want a measuring tool.”
“I want the standard for a measuring tool. Everything else gets made from it.”
She cut the strip in four minutes. Then she spent another twenty on the tick marks — each line a fraction of a millimeter wide, exactly spaced, the depth consistent throughout. When she set it down on the table and Roland measured the intervals against his reference, they were exact.
He picked it up and held it.
This is the beginning. Standardized lengths. Then standardized weights. Then volumes, forces, temperatures — all anchored to physical references rather than arbitrary convention. A consistent measurement system that could be taught in the evening classes, published in the technical manuals, used by Karl’s masons and Prius’s animal handlers and the alchemy laboratory he was building.
You couldn’t build an industrial society on inconsistent units. You couldn’t quality-control a cannon bore if every smith measured differently. You couldn’t instruct a thousand farmers to apply exactly the right amount of fertilizer if “a handful” meant something different to each of them.
He set the ruler down on the table with a deliberate care that was probably visible.
“I’m going to need more of these,” he said. “Enough to make reference standards for every working group in Border Town.”
Anna nodded, already considering the problem.
Chapter 135 To start with the basics
– “The Devils grow in number each day, but we become less.”
“The Holy City of Taqila has already fallen into the hands of the enemies, the
only option left to us is to scatter in all directions.”
“We fled over mountains and across rivers, as far as possible from the Gates
of Hell.”
“But next time, where should we flee?” –
“What do you think about it?” Back in his office, Roland closed the illusion
of the ancient book and turned to Scroll to get her opinion of it.
“In case what the Knight remembered is the truth, this would really be an
incredible coincidence.” Scroll pondered for a moment about her next
words, “The content of the treasure map and what’s recorded in the ancient
book is the same, so this proves that the Church had once stepped into the
Wild Lands and constructed a point of resistance against the Devils there. In
addition, the points marked on the map are perhaps the defense towers, posts,
warehouses, or whatever they built there.”
“You mean… this isn’t really a treasure map?”
“Of course. After all, the Church isn’t a group of bandits or pirates; they do
not need to hide their treasures, but they would leave behind a drawing to
help the future generations.”
Roland nodded, “Well, so… this is just such a map?”
“Although it is not clear why the Church did not record this period in history,
I believe that the ruins buried in the eastern forest aren’t the only one of its
kind.” Analyzed Scroll, “If the locations marked on the map are just some
facilities, the chance that we find something after all these centuries aren’t
that high, but if it has a storage warehouse in the basement, it will probably
be another underground site, and we might be able to uncover some clues
from it.”
“What kind of clues?”
“Like the reason that the Church is concealing the existence of the devils?
Why do they resist the devil, but still carefully conceal it?” She paused, her
voice becoming a little unsteady,” and… why do they call us witches the
Devil’s messengers and why do they want to kill us?”
Roland did not know how to comfort her, so he was unable to find the right
words as he fell silent after a moment. Only after a while he slowly began,
“Unfortunately he didn’t know how accurate the picture was. According to
his statement, the original map wasn’t drawn by hand.”
“Do you want Nightingale to go to the knight’s house?”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Roland denied, “The treasure map has already
been passed on for hundreds of years, so the possibility that the storeroom is
filled with God’s Stones of Retaliation or other traps is high.” Pointing at the
triangle symbol, “For now, this place is out of reach, in any case. If this is the
area of our North Slope mine, then the location of the hexagonal star is at
least 50 kilometers away from us, almost as far as the distance between
Border Town to Longsong Stronghold. With the exception of Lightning, who
can travel that distance within a day, the rest of us would need to walk for
two to three days. What will we do if we were to meet some of the Devils
during the journey… I don’t want you to have any kind of mishap.”
“You can let Lightning explore the forest from the air; maybe she will be able
to find something,” Scroll suggested.
“That is a viable option.” Roland immediately stood up, “The next time she
comes back I will give her her new mission, but for now I want to go to the
North Slope Mine while you get ready to give your next lesson. If you need
more copies of the books, you should find Soraya, she will handle it for you.
Don’t forget to continue to give them lessons this evening.”
Now that Roland had already held the first lessons of his new primary
course, he could give the teachers position to Scroll. With her phonetic
reading and writing and her ability to repeat everything from memory she had
once heard or read, Roland believed she had everything that was needed to
become a good teacher.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Scroll said as she saluted and left.
The testing and production area near the North Slope Mine was now more
than two-times as large as it was before, and the two holes needed for the
production of the twelve-pound cannon were still left on the ground. When
Roland arrived in the testing area, he immediately saw Anna practicing her
new ability. On the table next to her, there laid two finished products that
looked exactly like steel pipes.
He immediately held them up to take a closer look; the steel pipes were
perfectly round and had a totally smooth surface without any pores, the hole
in the middle was equally wide on both sides, and the sunlight passed
through without any problems through the hole in the pipe. To compare the
thickness of the pipe-walls, Roland placed his fingers into the holes. This
way, he discovered that they were exactly the same size.
Roland couldn’t stop admiring her work, “How were you able to make this?
“Take a look,” Anna picked up a freshly cut steel bar, laid it flat on her hand,
and inserted a thread of her black flame into one end, leading it through the
complete body. Then she let the thread rotate around the center of a circle,
and soon the hole was complete.
What an amazing ability, he thought, with her magic, she is capable of hot
wire cutting, and at the same time her accuracy and control are incomparable.
Anna alone is enough to push the industrial production to a new height inside
Border Town. Trying to restrain his excitement, he said, “Let’s do some
basic tests first.”
The basic test included the testing of the scope of her abilities, her ability’s
strength, and its duration.
Nightingale also took part in the test; she appeared out of her fog and was
responsible for observing if there were any changes to the magic inside of
Anna’s body.
The results showed that in addition to a substantial increase in the strength of
her ability and the duration at which she was able to cast her magic, the range
at which she was able to use her flame was still around five meters, and it
was only within a range of three meters that she was able to carry out her
precise control.
Furthermore, her magic still belonged to the category of summoning, and
could still be suppressed by God’s Stone of Retaliation. When Anna ordered
her black flame to enter the range of the stone, the flame would still suddenly
disappear.
Unless she could evolve to the point of directly accessing her magic, she
wouldn’t be able to get past this hurdle.
However, Anna’s new capabilities still belonged to the category of earth-
changing. With her black flame, it became much easier to produce the
industrial machinery, and her ability to reproduce all kinds of tools could be
considered as the method to push the level of machine processing to a whole
new level.
However, a large-scale industrial production wasn’t something that one
person could do on their own. For example, Karl had already finished one of
the furnaces he had to build on the hillside near the North Slope Mine.
However, by the time they tested it, they discovered that although they could
use it to produce clay bricks for the creation of cement, its temperature
tolerance was not up to the level that they had needed. So, in the end, they
still had to rely on Anna alone to produce the required cement – fortunately,
since her day of adulthood, it was no longer required of her to step inside the
dusty room to complete the calcining process.
It wasn’t the case that Roland was unable to find a solution to the temperature
problem. For example, they could use the steam engine to create enough wind
in order to improve the furnace’s temperature, and they could then let the
heated up air circulate to minimize the heat loss. But without Anna, they were
unable to create another steam engine. After all, only she could complete the
welding of the key components.
It could be said that the creation of industrial machinery was built on the
Anna’s shoulders. The moment they lost her, the so-called industrial
revolution would be nothing more than flowers in a mirror and the moon
reflected in the lake.
During the Months of the Demons, Roland had done everything he could in
order to survive, and now that the threat of the demonic beasts no longer
existed and Longsong Stronghold had provided them with enough additional
population and capital, he naturally wanted to change the present situation.
– “First, let us start with the basics.”
He let Anna cut out a two-finger wide and one millimeter-thick steel sheet.
He then measured a centimeter-long distance on it, and repeated this until he
had a ten-centimeter-long ruler. Then he let Anna’s black flame climb up the
steel sheet, and create vertical marks at a regular distance. Under her fine
control, the distance between each vertical mark was almost exactly the
same.
Roland’s intention was that this ruler was only the start. Afterwards, he
wanted to create various kinds of measuring tools to define the samples for
uniform weights and measures. These standard units would then be written as
the norm into manuals, becoming an inseparable part of his educational
courses.