Chapter 234: Tyr’s Curiosity

People living in Cecile often warn newcomers: this land was founded by ancient heroes, so it’s full of things that seem bizarre, even downright unbelievable by today’s standards. When you encounter these mind-bending oddities, it’s best not to freak out—because most of them are harmless. If you really can’t make sense of them, just think of them as ancient magical technology or relics from a bygone era.

The citizens of Cecile have long grown accustomed to the rumbling machines churning away in factories, and to the sight of a gleaming silver-white metal sphere floating and drifting across the territory. But recently, they’ve had to get used to a new spectacle: a strange woman with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a serpent slithering—or more accurately, “wriggling”—through the streets and alleys.

It was the fourth week of winter, the sky clear, windless, and mostly cloudless. Gawain was on his way to inspect the production line at the newly completed “Runic Substrate Foundry.” Walking beside him was a figure who, under normal circumstances, would hardly ever be seen outdoors: the sea witch Tyr.

Tyr seemed to have finally adjusted her near-comatose sleep schedule—ever since the recent Conjunction of the Stars, she had entered a strange “hyperactive state.” In short, she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t lie still, and felt restless and eager to stir up trouble. So she had to crawl out of her beloved saltwater tank and start wandering around Cecile’s territory. Gawain had no reason to lock her up in the lord’s manor, but to prevent this peculiar creature from causing chaos, he came up with a compromise: let Tyr follow him around.

Apparently, the sea witch was quite content with this arrangement—as long as she could roam freely, she was happy.

Walking along the road to the factory district, Gawain couldn’t help but glance back at Tyr, who was energetically wriggling forward beside him. “So, what’s going on with you? Why are you suddenly willing to come out and move around?”

“Can’t help it. The stars realigned recently,” Tyr said, clearly annoyed. Deep down, she still wished she could find a saltwater pool and sleep herself to death, but her current state made it impossible to settle down. “When the magical currents surge, the elements become more active—we sea witches are elemental beings, after all.”

Gawain raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re… elemental beings?”

“Why, don’t I look like one?” Tyr put her hands on her hips and tapped the ground with the tip of her tail for emphasis. “We are elemental beings!”

“My impression of elementals is quite different,” Gawain said with a wry smile. “I always thought elementals were these chaotic, unstable forms that needed spells or magical cores to maintain their presence in the physical world. Otherwise, they could only manifest briefly by using elemental mediums as ‘fuel’…”

Tyr scoffed. “That’s low-grade stuff. We sea witches are stable elemental beings who can exist in the real world. We’re high-tier.”

Gawain had no time to argue with this sea witch. After all, these deep-sea tricksters had even dared to snack on ancient gods like seafood—what else could surprise him? He was just curious how long Tyr’s newfound active state would last. “So, how long do you think this… hyperactive phase will last?”

Tyr thought for a moment, uncertain. “Hard to say. Maybe about a month?”

Hearing that, Gawain frowned and looked down at the long tail dragging behind her. “If you really plan to be active for a whole month, you’d better get used to walking upright. Dragging that tail around all day in the territory is a bit too conspicuous…”

As he spoke, he glanced around and sure enough, he caught some curious but cautious looks from the common folk and soldiers nearby. In other places, a sea witch like Tyr would probably provoke outright hostility and panic. But here, thanks to Gawain’s protection and the territory’s frequent exposure to strange phenomena—which had built up a kind of “public immunity”—people’s reactions were mostly curiosity and caution. Of course, some were probably scared in secret, but with Gawain standing there, who dared voice it?

Tyr, however, paid no mind to Gawain’s warning. She swayed like a piece of seaweed. “I haven’t caused any panic, have I? And your people seem pretty adaptable. If I wiggle around in front of them a few more times, they’ll get used to it—after all, they’re already used to that big flying metal ball, right?”

Gawain couldn’t argue with that. In terms of sheer strangeness, the smooth, faceless Nicholas “Egg” was far more bizarre than Tyr. At least the sea witch had half a human form; Egg’s face was just paint Rebecca slapped on… Compared to that, Tyr’s wandering around was nothing.

“You should thank Egg for paving the way. He’s raised everyone’s tolerance for weird stuff by a thousandfold,” Gawain said with a laugh. “Alright, if you’re happy like this, I won’t interfere too much. But please be mindful—humans have limited capacity for new things. They’ve only just adapted to a ‘foreign visitor’ walking around with a snake tail or fish tail. So maybe hold off on the octopus or crab forms you mentioned last time…”

Tyr pouted in disappointment. She had been curious whether walking on land in her octopus form might be more stable, but that idea was shot down before she could try. The sea witch was not pleased.

But she quickly forgot her minor grievance, because she was finally seeing the factory everyone in the territory talked about and took pride in: the “machine-made goods factory.”

The Cecile Runic Foundry was a newly spun-off factory from the Mechanical Workshop, part of Gawain’s “industrial systematization” plan.

According to Gawain’s design, the Mechanical Workshop shouldn’t be a pure production unit. Instead, it should serve as an “upstream” facility focused on research, development, and initial prototype manufacturing. Its role was to build the first machine, not to mass-produce.

Within the Mechanical Workshop, a new industrial chain or process would be created from scratch. Craftsmen, apprentices, and Egg would build prototypes and conduct trial production. Once the process matured enough to become part of the industrial system, it should spin off into an independent factory or a production line within a factory, embarking on a path of independent growth and industrialization.

This was Gawain’s method to quickly build the magical industrial system he envisioned. It might not be perfect, but it was the best fit for the territory right now.

Only by shaping each link in the industrial chain and getting them running in their respective roles—establishing division of labor and assembly line production—could the territory break free from the traditional workshop-craftsman model and the inefficient, wasteful hodgepodge production.

Inside the Runic Foundry, Tyr watched with wide-eyed wonder as orderly machines lined up. Hexagonal universal substrates were fed onto stamping presses. With a thunderous clang, heavy steel hammers driven by flywheels struck the substrate surfaces, imprinting intricate rune grooves onto the relatively soft material. Then, the substrates were dipped into a mixture of quartz sand and hot resin to fill the rune grooves with magical conductive material. Excess resin on the surface would be scraped off and recycled in the next step. After the conductive material hardened, machines polished the substrates to ensure no stray conductive material remained outside the rune grooves—if the substrate was simple, this completed the process. For more complex ones, some manual work was still needed, like embedding crystals into reserved grooves.

This was completely different from the way Tyr had heard land-dwellers made things. It reminded her of the factories in Antavian that were just starting to run again.

As Tyr marveled at the foundry’s production, Gawain carefully observed her reactions.

Her face showed genuine curiosity, which eased Gawain’s mind—things were moving in the direction he hoped.

He didn’t mind letting Tyr see the so-called “technical secrets” of his territory. In fact, if this usually lazy sea witch wanted to see the original designs of the magic network, he wouldn’t object.

Because Tyr came from a society clearly far more advanced than human civilization—her home was even more developed than the Elven Silver Empire.

He wasn’t worried about her stealing any technology. In fact, if she showed interest in any of Cecile’s tech, he’d be even happier.

Only by sparking Tyr’s curiosity and attention could he open up a dialogue on technology. Though he hated to admit it, human civilization was clearly a “low-level” one in Tyr’s eyes. Not that she looked down on humans—she showed no trace of disdain—but the technological gap was an undeniable fact that needed no words.

In this situation, Gawain had to try and see if Cecile’s developing “magical industry” could catch Tyr’s interest. If it did, then technical discussions would flow naturally.

When the moment felt right, he came to her side. “What do you think?”

“Very…” Tyr opened her mouth, intending to compliment with “advanced,” but quickly reconsidered. Gawain probably didn’t need flattery, and the factory wasn’t quite at that level yet. So she changed her words. “A very interesting production method. So you humans have already started mass-producing magical items this way? I thought you were still making magic tools in workshops and labs… that’s what our last ‘traveling sister’ said when she returned.”

“Actually… most other places on this continent are still like that,” Gawain said with a wry smile and a shake of his head. “This is probably the only place that uses machines to mass-produce magic arrays.”

(End of chapter)