Chapter 451: The Fruit of Wisdom
To be honest, Gawain sometimes reflected on whether there was something off about how he recruited people and built his domain—because the individuals gathered around him (the Sphere, the Fish, the Lightbulb, and so on) all had such strikingly distinctive traits. Their abilities were undoubtedly impressive, but their pronounced quirks often turned straightforward matters into awkward situations. Nicholas Egg was, without a doubt, the master of this particular art.
That sphere of his could even turn into a cube—how was anyone supposed to reason with that?
Ever since this new printing press came along, it was hard to even write a proper commendation report. For other project leads, you could say they worked tirelessly, to the point of exhaustion or illness, maybe even coughing up blood, or refusing to leave the front lines despite injuries. But for the Mechanical Research Institute’s director, the report would have to say something like: “Due to extreme fatigue, the director developed twelve new edges”—and if you didn’t attach seven or eight illustrations and two pages of explanatory notes, anyone reading it would think the author’s brain had been caught in a door.
“You’ve… worked hard…” Gawain’s eye twitched as he looked at the iron sphere alien. “After this project wraps up, you should take a couple of days off…”
“Ah, don’t worry, just a minor glitch. I’ll recover quickly,” Nicholas Egg said as if he hadn’t noticed how many people were startled by his current shape. “But first, let’s see this device in action—you’ll be pleased.”
Gawain forced himself to look away from the twelve new edges sprouting from Nicholas Egg and focused on what really mattered here.
The “Arcane Printing Press,” unlike any printing machine he’d known in principle, structure, or design, was now fully prepared.
“Let’s begin,” Gawain nodded. “Start with the initial editing. Rebecca, you operate it yourself.”
Rebecca, who had come along with Gawain to inspect the results, had been waiting eagerly for this moment. She responded cheerfully and quickly walked over to the small cabinet beside the Arcane Printing Press.
She pulled a lever on the side of the cabinet, and a faint hum came from inside. A subtle glow appeared on the projection crystal embedded at the top of the cabinet, followed by a pale blue halo spreading across the entire device’s upper surface.
It looked like the holographic display of a magic network communicator in standby mode—except this one had a bright square border marking the layout area.
At the same time the small “cabinet” powered up, a crystal embedded on a metal platform connecting the cabinet to the main press also lit up—Gawain realized this connecting structure was actually the Arcane Printing Press’s “scanning device.”
An assistant stepped forward and placed a sheet of pre-written paper on the metal platform.
Immediately, the holographic projection above the cabinet displayed the image of that paper. Up to this point, every step was familiar to any mage in this world—this was just a common illusion magic and crystal craft technique.
But when Rebecca pressed the first key on the “keyboard” atop the cabinet, Gawain saw something that conventional illusion magic never produced:
Below the image of the paper in the hologram, the characters Rebecca typed appeared.
She quickly typed out a sentence: “The above is the physical scanning function; this sentence is the text editing function.”
Then Rebecca pulled a lever beside the keyboard, and a faint mechanical whirring came from inside the cabinet. She continued typing, and new characters appeared below the previous sentence.
“How do you input text into a holographic projection like this?” Gawain asked, finally voicing a question he’d overlooked before. It puzzled him deeply: given the current progress in Cecil’s runic logic, computer technology was still a distant dream. Technicians couldn’t yet create data-processing magic arrays, and Jenny’s team had no leads either. So how was Rebecca managing text editing on a device like this?
Was it purely mechanical? If so, how did the mechanical process translate into symbols on a holographic display?
“Oh, it’s not complicated in principle, just complex in structure,” Rebecca explained. “There are only 28 letters, plus about thirty common punctuation marks. We made thirty-seven small white crystals inside this cabinet, each pre-engraved with a character. These crystals are arranged on a linked lever system in a fan-shaped disk. At the front of the disk is a tiny window, and on the other side of the window is a movable thin paperboard. Behind the paperboard is another crystal that moves with it, used for scanning. When you press a rune trigger on this ‘keyboard,’ the corresponding crystal is pushed to the front window and activated, burning a black character onto the paperboard. Then the crystal behind projects the pattern. By adjusting the distance between the crystal and paperboard, you can also change the character size…”
As she spoke, Rebecca opened a side panel of the cabinet, revealing a complex and astonishing mechanical structure. It vaguely resembled the mechanical typewriters Gawain remembered.
She continued, “But it has obvious drawbacks. First, it consumes a paperboard each time, though that’s acceptable. Second, you have to be careful when typing—if you make a mistake, the paperboard is marked. A few errors can be corrected by rolling the paperboard back and covering the mistake with a black block key, but too many errors ruin readability, and you have to start over…”
“Incredible…” Gawain stared at the intricate mechanism in awe. The cleverly designed levers, springs, gears, and slides held a strange charm. They were the crystallization of human wisdom before the digital age, the pinnacle of mechanical craftsmanship. He widened his eyes at Rebecca. “Did you come up with this?”
“My assistants and I worked on it,” Rebecca scratched her head. “Strictly speaking, I just proposed the idea; the design was done entirely by my assistants—two new mage technicians who came from the capital and were clockmakers. They’re very skilled at designing intricate mechanical devices, but they never had the chance to create such strange and wonderful things back in the capital.”
Nicholas Egg grunted from nearby, “I was planning to bring those two clockmakers over to the Mechanical Research Institute, but they’re more interested in mage technology.”
Clockmakers…
Gawain looked at the complex mechanism inside the cabinet and nodded with admiration. “Excellent, excellent—they’re talents, just like Cohen. They need to be nurtured carefully. Now, continue.”
“Alright,” Rebecca nodded happily. “Next is just sending the edited content to the Arcane Transfer Cylinder and printing it out!”
She pulled another lever beside the cabinet. As the machine’s internal parts whirred rapidly, Gawain saw the core device in the middle of the press—the Arcane Transfer Cylinder—glow with neat blue light patterns.
That was the printing pattern Rebecca had just finished editing.
After two seconds of preheating and curing, the pattern on the cylinder stabilized. Then the other parts of the press began working: smooth white paper was fed to the center, laid over a black “ink plate,” and the transfer cylinder pressed down on the paper, quickly rolling from left to right.
The printed sheet was swiftly rolled away, followed immediately by the next sheet…
Amid the machine’s rhythmic sounds, Rebecca explained the subsequent process to Gawain: “It can print 300 sheets continuously, then rests for about a minute to recharge, heat, and cure the cylinder, while swapping out the ink plate below to start a new round. The replaced ink plate is sent to a heating platform to smooth the surface, then cooled and reused.”
Gawain was completely captivated by the running machine—the rapid printing, the repetitive, efficient mechanical structure, and the sounds of gears and levers working together. It reminded him of the first time the mana engine started up. A surge of excitement filled his mind, and he couldn’t help but praise, “Wonderful… better than I imagined!”
“I actually think there’s room for improvement,” Rebecca said proudly, her face glowing as if her “ancestor” had just praised her, though she tried to keep a composed expression. “I think the one-minute rest in the middle is the biggest waste. If we improve the coating formula on the transfer cylinder or the projection crystals inside, it should work longer continuously. Also, the ink plate gets uneven from ink consumption and needs reheating and cooling to smooth out. That needs fixing too…”
Gawain heard her, but before he could respond, Hetty broke the silence: “I can’t say about the first improvement, but for the second, I have an idea—why not make the ink plate into a ‘ribbon’ that circulates under the printing platform? Then add a heating and smoothing device on the side of the machine, like a heated roller. That should solve the problem. You could try using Blue Vein Moonlight Cloth as the ribbon’s base—it’s already mass-produced in the factory, cheap, sturdy, and resistant to deformation.”
“Oh, right!” Rebecca clapped her hands, eyes shining as she looked at Hetty. “Auntie, you’re amazing! Wisdom really comes with age…”
Hetty: “…”
Gawain: “…”
“Good times, good times,” Gawain said quickly, holding back his once-in-a-lifetime great-granddaughter from raising her staff with spikes and steel edges. Then he turned back to Rebecca. “Anyway, improvements are definitely needed. New machines always have flaws. Your ideas are limited alone, so work with your team, and maybe listen to the operators’ feedback. Mr. Gawain, what do you think of this machine?”
Gawain Orlando, the scholar from the capital and current head of the news and publishing department, had been staring wide-eyed at the complex, exquisitely crafted machine since it started. Now, finally coming to his senses, he exclaimed, “What an incredible creation… If only I were younger—I’d insist on understanding its principles. But for now… my greatest desire is to write an article introducing this marvel to everyone. Even if many can’t grasp its workings, I want them to know that a group of brilliant geniuses in our domain created such a magnificent machine!”
“Then write it,” Gawain smiled. “After the war news from Rockhold Fortress, it’s time to release something that relaxes people and sparks their curiosity.”
(There’s a novel called I Am the Behind-the-Scenes Boss. Not sure if anyone’s read it. The beginning might feel a bit cliché or dry, but the concept is great. Worth checking out if you’re in a reading slump.)
(End of chapter)