Chapter 150
Rebecca and Jenny were soon called over, carrying a large, bulging bag—probably some of their “results.”
As soon as she saw Gawain, Rebecca immediately came closer. Just as he expected, the girl’s first words were full of curiosity: “Ancestor! Ancestor! What did you find inside the ruins? Why did Aunt Hetty come back looking so serious? And Sir Byron too…”
“Ahem, ahem,” Gawain coughed awkwardly, then gently pushed Rebecca’s head back. “It’s complicated. I’ll tell you when there’s time, but for now, don’t ask. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Rebecca was straightforward, but also easily distracted—just mention something interesting, and she’d light up. Hearing Gawain’s words, her face instantly brightened. She and Jenny began pulling things out of the bag. “Yes, yes, look at this! We’ve designed the rune array! I’m telling you, rune logic is amazing. Even though all the runes were calculated on paper, as long as you combine them strictly according to the formulas and rules, the effect will match the calculations exactly…”
Gawain’s eyes brightened when Rebecca pulled out several scrolls and a metal plate engraved with runes. “You’ve made a finished product?”
“A prototype,” Rebecca said sheepishly, scratching her head. “We couldn’t resist testing the final effect, so we asked Eggy for a universal base plate. The two of us spent half an afternoon hand-engraving a prototype.”
Gawain’s gaze fell on the blueprints. The runes and line patterns were several times more complex than those on a magic network unit, but all the runes and connecting lines were simpler and more straightforward than traditional magic circles. This was a completely different style: all unnecessary structures were stripped away, no decorative flourishes remained. Precise mathematical calculations placed every rune in the perfect spot, and the energy ratios between runes were perfectly balanced. Because of this extreme rationality, even though this array had nearly twice as many effective runes as a conventional “Scorching Ray” circle, it looked cleaner and more intuitive.
The rune array, engraved on a machine-pressed universal base plate, gave Gawain a fleeting sense of “industrial art.”
He picked up the palm-sized plate, made of cheap red copper. In the grooves of the runes, he saw dull quartz sand powder and hardened red sap resin. No expensive materials, no flashy engraving techniques—Gawain was almost certain this design could be mass-produced easily.
“You engraved this?” he asked Jenny, who was standing nearby.
Jenny straightened up and nodded respectfully. “Yes, my lord.”
Gawain smiled. “Good… Have you tested it?”
“Of course!” Rebecca said proudly. “We tested it with the magic network power supply at the steelworks! See, there’s a groove next to the fire rune at the tip—that’s where the scorching ray is released!”
Gawain examined the hexagonal base plate. At one pointed corner was the fire rune, the final energy discharge point. From the rune’s center to the plate’s tip ran a special groove filled with a quartz column. When activated, the scorching ray would shoot along this groove and quartz column—effective range about three to four hundred meters. With better quartz or enhanced runes, the range could improve further.
“The problem is, this thing needs to be within the magic network to work,” Rebecca puffed her cheeks. “Because the plate itself can’t generate mana. To use it outside the network, you’d have to power it with mana storage crystals or have a mage operate it. But if a mage is involved, it kind of defeats the purpose.”
In other words, not every mage is like her, who only knows how to cast a big fireball. Most mages can conjure scorching rays themselves easily, so they don’t need this…
Gawain smiled and pulled out the “mana capacitor” he had been studying, almost ready for assembly.
“I anticipated this problem and already found a solution.”
“What’s that?” Rebecca’s eyes lit up as she recognized the rune array on the new universal base plate. “That’s… a basic magic network unit? You mean to power the scorching ray array with a basic unit? That won’t work—I tried. The energy from a basic unit isn’t enough. Even stacking four together isn’t sufficient; you need a large magic network…”
“But with these mana storage crystals, it might be different,” Gawain said, pointing to the cheap crystals on the table before packing everything into a bag. “No time to waste. Let’s head to the mechanical workshop and have Nicholas Egg help us assemble these!”
“Great, great!” Rebecca jumped up excitedly, grabbing a still somewhat bewildered Jenny. “Let’s go! Eggy’s the fastest!”
Before Gawain could stand, the air nearby suddenly warped. Amber, who had been quietly observing all along, finally couldn’t hold back and jumped out: “I’m coming too! I’m coming!”
Rebecca was startled and instinctively threw a fireball at her. “Whoa!”
If Gawain hadn’t reacted quickly and slapped the fireball away, that night she probably wouldn’t have been sleeping in a tent…
The mechanical workshop was brightly lit, the sound of machines never ceasing.
What had once been an empty shed was now a domain of steel and machinery. Metal ingots from the steelworks were brought in batches, then processed by Nicholas Egg into various parts or further reinforced and reforged according to blueprints. Human craftsmen assisted, learning mechanical principles from the blueprints while assembling parts made by Nicholas Egg into all kinds of machines—mostly basic machine tools, but also some urgent “special orders” directly from the lords.
Gawain recalled that large-scale industrial assembly lines were still far off, but the workshop already buzzed with the roar of machines. Some basic parts no longer required Nicholas Egg’s direct forging; machine tools on one side of the shed could produce them. These machine tools were powered by two optimized first-generation mana engines. To ensure these engines had ample power, Rebecca had installed the first batch of hive magic network nodes inside the workshop. So far, everything was running smoothly.
Upon entering, Gawain saw a lively scene: mana engines driving processing machines on the west side, continuously producing various mechanical parts and urgently needed metal tools; human craftsmen busily working between machines, gradually adapting to this new production style; and in the center of the shed floated the iron-sphere alien’s territory—a no-man’s zone several meters around him. Numerous metal ingots were levitated by unknown forces, rapidly shaped into sturdy parts that were difficult to make by machine or hand. Finished parts automatically dropped into nearby storage areas for the craftsmen to use.
Gawain watched the iron sphere from a distance, thinking it looked like a “gathering of swords” from some martial arts tale…
He stepped forward, and Rebecca called out from afar, “Eggy! We need your help!”
Nicholas Egg quickly cleared the floating parts aside and turned toward Gawain. “Ah, more work—my lord is here too?”
Normally, Gawain couldn’t tell if Nicholas Egg had turned around, since the iron sphere was smooth all around with no front or back. But this time, he immediately noticed the difference—because a face had been painted on him!
At the sight of that face, Gawain froze in place, nearly falling over. You can’t blame him—who wouldn’t be thrown off by a 1.3-meter-wide “funny face” floating right in front of them, greeting them like an old friend?
Gawain stared dumbfounded at the “face”: the curved eyes, the sideways glance, the mischievous mouth. He was speechless for a full five seconds before the first thought popped into his head: Has some fellow time traveler sneaked into my territory?!
Who painted that ridiculous expression?!
Just as he was about to ask around, Rebecca noticed Gawain’s stunned expression and grinned. “Ancestor! You’re startled! Did I do a good job?”
Gawain turned his head with a creak and glared at Rebecca. “You painted that?”
“Yep!” Rebecca nodded matter-of-factly. “Every time I talk to Eggy, I can’t tell which side is the front. He also complained that people always sneak up behind him and scare him. So I came up with the idea to paint a face on him…”
“You… just painted it randomly?” Gawain scrutinized the girl, who always seemed to surprise him, trying to find any hint of a time traveler in her. “Don’t you think the expression looks a bit… off?”
“I just wanted to paint a smile,” Rebecca scratched her head. “But my hand did shake a bit… maybe several times, so the eyes look a little weird.”
Gawain’s mouth twitched. “How do others react when they see him with that face?”
Rebecca thought for a moment and nodded. “Pretty festive, actually.”
Jenny nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it’s quite cheerful.”
Gawain: “…”
Meanwhile, Nicholas Egg floated over to Gawain, wobbling his huge, comical body. “What do you think of my new look? I feel like having a face makes it easier to interact with you humans.”
“Well… if you’re happy,” Gawain said, trying to keep a straight face as he pulled out the materials he’d brought. “But let’s get down to business. I want you to help me assemble a new… weapon.”
“Oh? A weapon this time, not a machine?” Nicholas Egg sounded intrigued. “What kind?”
“For now, I’m calling it—the Thermal Ray Gun.”
(End of chapter)