Chapter 52: A World Where Magic Exists

Although the smithy was already under construction, it was far from completion—and in fact, according to Gawain’s plan, this wooden building wasn’t really a “smithy” in the way people of this world understood it. He only called it that temporarily for convenience’s sake.

In his mind, he intended to name the place the “Cecil Steelworks”…

As the only blacksmith in the territory, the old man Hammer was quite puzzled by the duke’s order to build this “smithy.” To him, the building occupied an unnecessarily vast area. Besides the surprisingly large wooden structure, there was a hundred-meter-wide open yard and a wooden shed with only a few supports erected so far. Calling such a sprawling facility a “smithy” seemed utterly inappropriate. Yet he dared not say the renowned founding duke was an ignorant amateur giving foolish orders—though he thought exactly that in his heart, he would never voice it.

After all, he was just a commoner, while the other was a high noble who stood on equal footing with the king.

Because of the smithy’s enormous footprint, it had to be placed on the eastern edge of the camp. Its “big yard” stretched out into the wilderness beyond, looking almost ridiculous, like a bulge on an otherwise neat wooden fence. The tools brought from Tansang Town looked pitifully few inside this giant smithy: they barely filled a corner of the wooden building, and the only smelting furnace was set up outside under a simple wooden shelter to protect it from wind and rain.

For Gawain, the reason for reserving such a large site for the smithy, right next to the territory’s border, was simply to accommodate future production needs and make expansion easier. The traditional smithies of this era—one master with a few apprentices, a small hut with a single furnace, the clanging of iron—were not what he needed.

But he had no way to explain all this to the old blacksmith and his slow-witted apprentices.

Besides production capacity and future expansion, Gawain had no intention of following the example of some previous transmigrators he’d read about in novels, who built a bunch of primitive blast furnaces right in their yards. Although he had considered it, after seeing Hetty use magic to help a raft dock and reinforce the camp’s foundations a few days ago, he put that idea aside for the time being. Instead, he had the territory’s only blacksmith, Hammer, build a traditional furnace in the yard.

Gawain arrived at the smithy where Rebecca was already waiting, along with the gray-haired old blacksmith Hammer and his apprentices. A few townsfolk in short shirts stood in the yard, their large baskets filled with the first batch of ore.

Gawain walked straight to the traditional furnace.

It was a rather crude-looking furnace about a meter tall, clearly divided into two parts. The bottom was a swollen hemispherical structure, tapering quickly into a cylindrical chimney above. On the lower hemisphere, there were two openings: one near the bottom for adding fuel, and another near the cylinder for pouring in ore.

Nothing unusual about these parts—it was just an ordinary furnace. But what made it special was on the side.

There were three runes arranged there.

Each rune was carved on a piece of jet-black stone, all carefully polished and precisely positioned before being embedded into the furnace body to ensure equal spacing and parallel edges. The lowest stone bore a triangle symbol with a wavy line inside—the starting character for the fire element from the magic books. The middle stone showed a square enclosing a diamond, representing the earth element’s initial character. The top stone displayed a swirling symbol related to the wind element, though not its starting character.

Besides these three stones, the furnace’s material contained tiny sparkling dust particles. Gawain recognized them immediately: quartz sand—the quartz sand of “this world.”

Quartz sand was a magic-conductive material. Though its effect was extremely weak, it was cheap enough for commoners to use, so it was widely employed.

Gawain looked up at the old blacksmith. “Did you make this furnace?”

“Yes, yes, my lord…” The old smith, startled by the lord’s question, nervously clutched his cap and quickly lowered his head. “Oh, half of it I made myself, and half I supervised my apprentices to make…”

Gawain nodded but asked no more.

Magic was a transcendent power, beyond the reach of “commoners.” Yet in this world, saturated with magical energy, even those who couldn’t cast spells lived with traces of magic in their daily lives.

Some basic uses of magic didn’t require knowledge or ability to cast spells—everyone had magic within them. By using specific materials and carving simple symbols on specially shaped objects, anyone could slightly tap into those ubiquitous mysterious forces.

This wasn’t true spellcasting. To real “supernaturals,” such effects were laughably weak—like picking up a stick from the ground to use as a cane, or grabbing a stone to crack a walnut. Even illiterate commoners could remember how to draw a few symbols with minor effects. But that tiny bit of power made this world fundamentally different from Gawain’s familiar homeland.

Like the difference of one degree in boiling water.

Thanks to those three runes, this “traditional furnace” could smelt iron using just firewood as fuel, without a bellows or optimized combustion chamber.

If the fire rune were carved on a piece of mythril, the furnace could even use straw as fuel!

But precisely because of these ancient runes, humans here had never thought to improve furnace efficiency by enhancing fuel combustion. Instead, they only refined the materials used for the runes and the runes’ formats themselves.

So Gawain didn’t build any blast furnaces. He first came to inspect this primitive, backward traditional furnace.

Old blacksmith Hammer grew increasingly nervous under the gaze of this high noble. He didn’t understand why the lord suddenly asked a question and then studied the furnace so intently. He wondered if he’d done something wrong. All he knew was that nobles were powerful and unpredictable. Though Lady Rebecca and the previous lord were kind and generous, this man was the legendary pioneering hero, a thorough warrior, and a duke. What kind of temperament would such a noble have?

Just as the old smith fretted, Gawain straightened up and asked his second question: “With this furnace, assuming a steady supply of ore, how much iron can you smelt in a day?”

Hammer finally relaxed. “At fifty catties a day, using that kind of ore over there,” he said proudly.

Gawain frowned. “Only that much?”

With those runes assisting, the output was just this little?

“That’s little?” Hammer couldn’t help but say, then quickly added, “I’m not questioning your judgment, my lord, but…”

“It’s okay. Don’t be nervous talking to me,” Gawain reassured the old craftsman. “I’m your lord, not a bandit here to kill you.”

“Yes… yes, my lord,” Hammer wiped his sweat nervously and explained, “But this really is the limit. The furnace looks big outside, but the inside space is limited. After each batch, we have to rest for an hour to let the runes cool down. That means cooling the whole furnace, then relighting it… With all that, fifty catties a day is really the max!”

“Cooling the runes?” Gawain frowned.

“Yes,” Hammer said. “These are just little tricks we commoners carve on black stones, nothing like the real magic runes of the mages. They break easily, especially the fire rune. If it’s exposed to fire element energy too long, it cracks. Even using tougher materials doesn’t help. Once a rune cracks, the whole furnace is ruined. So we absolutely can’t burn continuously when smelting.”

“What if the furnace were bigger?” Gawain asked.

“That won’t work either,” Hammer said worriedly, thinking the duke only asked hard questions. “The runes can only provide this much firepower. If the furnace grows, the firepower won’t be enough, and the ore won’t melt into iron. The earth rune would fail too, and the refined iron would have more impurities, making it useless…”

Gawain rubbed his chin. “So the production limit is entirely because of these runes?”

The old smith blinked, not fully understanding what “production limit” meant, but nodded quickly. “Yes, yes, the runes.”

Gawain looked at Rebecca. “What if we replaced the runes with… uh, maybe we should call Hetty over…”

Rebecca blushed deeply. “Ancestor, I understand magic theory! It’s just that I can’t construct spell models…”

“Your theory is good?” Gawain raised an eyebrow. “Then how do you think we should solve this problem?”

Rebecca thought hard. “Since you said the runes are the bottleneck, why not replace them?”

“With what?”

Rebecca kept thinking. “Actually, these runes are very simple in function—just raising temperature, controlling airflow, managing impurities—and their effects are very weak. If we replaced them with real magic circles, efficiency would improve by who knows how many times. Plus, magic circles can self-regulate energy and run continuously without self-destruction…”

Gawain raised an eyebrow. “Carve a magic circle on every smelting furnace?”

“But that’s not practical,” Rebecca stuck out her tongue. “Hetty and I can help carve a few magic circles, but… the blacksmiths and apprentices can’t use them!”

(End of chapter)