Chapter 543: Each Stuck in Their Own Quagmire

When Victoria returned to her chambers in the upper levels of Silverkeep, snowflakes were drifting down in a steady flurry outside the window.

This winter’s snow had come relentlessly, one storm after another. Especially in the latter half of the Bittercold Month, the snow barely ceased.

A proper snowfall promised a bountiful harvest next year, but it also made the Bittercold Month all the more unbearable. After this latest storm, many villages on the outskirts of the capital would likely suffer heavy losses again…

The biting northern wind circled above the ancient royal city, swirling the falling snow into a hazy veil. Maggie, Victoria’s black-haired maid, closed the wooden shutters from the inside, shutting out the bleak, frozen world beyond. The fireplace roared warmly in the corner, keeping the lavish room cozy and comfortable—as if the icy wasteland outside belonged to another realm entirely.

“Your complexion doesn’t look well,” Maggie said softly as she stepped forward to help the duchess remove her cloak. “Was today’s meeting still unproductive?”

“There are too many mediocre fools sitting in those seats—everyone’s vision is as short-sighted as a field mouse’s,” Victoria shook her head. “What’s worse, I can’t even kick them out.”

Maggie hung the cloak on a nearby rack and replied quietly, “After all, the country still depends on them to function.”

Victoria glanced at her trusted maid and friend. Though officially her servant, Maggie possessed keen insight and extraordinary power. As the “Northern Steward,” she was one of Victoria’s most reliable confidantes. When alone, they could speak freely on most matters.

“The country doesn’t have to rely on those outdated nobles to keep running,” the duchess said calmly. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

Maggie lifted her eyelids and met Victoria’s gaze. “Yes, but the cost is high. And there’s one crucial point—you are one of them, and an inseparable part at that.”

Victoria fell silent for a moment.

Indeed, she couldn’t walk a different path.

“Don’t dwell on that now. There’s something more important,” Maggie’s words pulled Victoria from her thoughts. The black-haired maid picked up a wax-sealed scroll from a nearby table and handed it to the duchess. “A letter for you—from the Grant Duke of the Southern Territories, delivered by the Whitefeather Gryphon.”

Victoria’s eyes widened in surprise as she took the scroll. “Duke Cecil?”

Instinctively, she sensed something unsettling in the letter. She had only just returned to the capital, yet the southern duke had hurriedly sent a personal letter—delivered by gryphon messenger in the coldest month of the year. Whatever the matter, it must be urgent.

She quickly broke the seal and unfolded the letter. As she read, her brow furrowed.

Maggie stood quietly nearby, not asking about the contents. Though close, their relationship had boundaries.

“Maggie,” Victoria asked immediately after scanning the letter, “when did the mages’ association’s astrologers report the red shift at the sun’s base?”

The maid thought for a moment. “It should have been on the 10th of the Bittercold Month.”

“The 10th of the Bittercold Month… the same day…” Victoria lowered her head, eyes fixed on the letter. “It can’t be a coincidence…”

Noticing Maggie’s curious glance, she took a deep breath and continued, “Duke Cecil warns that the Grant Wall experienced a major anomaly on the 10th—an extensive overload that lasted three full days. By the time this letter was sent, the wall had calmed, but the duke believes the barrier suffered permanent damage during the overload.”

Maggie’s eyes widened in shock, no attempt to hide her astonishment.

“It looks like I’ll have to summon the royal mages and scholars,” Victoria said gravely. “And… call another round of the nobles’ council.”

Her voice betrayed a hint of weariness when she mentioned the “nobles’ council.”

But as someone well-versed in Ansu’s system, she knew that no matter what she did—even as the queen—she couldn’t bypass the nobles.

“A real quagmire.”

…

Pale blue runes flickered and overlapped on the layered rune plates. Surging arcane energy crackled with electric arcs, sparking between energy nodes and gears. On the experimental platform built specifically for testing large devices, a heavy, complex power mechanism slowly began to move under magical propulsion. The grinding and turning of steel sounded like a rising roar, causing the entire platform to tremble slightly.

Over twenty meters away, separated by two layers of magical shields, Rebecca and Kamail stood on the monitoring platform among the technicians, their eyes fixed intently on the machine and the various magical devices surrounding it. Each mage-technician was focused on their assigned monitoring unit.

Suddenly, a dazzling spark appeared atop a tower-like device at one corner of the platform.

“Amplifier One is overloaded!!”

“Amplifiers Two and Three are unbalanced—protective tiles may have melted!”

“The core is heating up; the amplifier groups are interfering with each other—”

“Shut it down immediately!” Rebecca’s eyes widened as she shouted, “Stop it! Stop it now!!”

A mage-technician sprang up to pull a lever beside the control panel, but his hurried motion caused the lever to jam between the ‘run’ and ‘emergency stop’ positions. A strange humming came from beneath the console, and arcane sparks began erupting from the rune devices on the platform.

“Let me handle this!” Rebecca yelled in the emergency. She grabbed her ever-present iron staff and swung it hard against the control panel. Having designed the entire console herself, she knew exactly where to strike—even though smashing it wasn’t part of the protocol. With a loud crash, part of the panel caved in, severing the magical connections below.

The arcane sparks quickly faded and vanished. After a low, sustained hum, the entire apparatus gradually ground to a halt. But at one corner, a two-meter-tall tower device still billowed thick smoke—most of the system was intact, but some parts were badly damaged.

As the machine stopped, the waiting staff rushed over, pointing at the still-radiating heat from the alloy tower. Their engineering mage terminals unleashed a flurry of weakened ice cone spells, the magical frost rapidly cooling the tower.

Rebecca craned her neck to watch the scene near the platform. From behind her came Kamail’s voice: “How’s the situation?”

“No need to guess—just build a new one…” Rebecca said with a grimace. “Aunt Hetty will kill me… Last time I submitted the repair budget, she nearly had tears in her eyes…”

“I’ll report it,” Kamail said after a brief pause. “Accidents and failures are inevitable in research.”

“But eight amplifiers and two large arcane engines burned out in six days—that’s different…” Rebecca frowned deeply. She looked up at the makeshift lab, constructed with steel supports and prefab panels on the city outskirts, and felt a dull ache in her head.

This lab was built under the ancestors’ orders, far from residential areas, with strict safety isolation and new operating procedures. The arrangement had indeed improved safety, but the success rate of experiments… seemed unchanged.

“Why is it always overloads and interference that trip us up…” Rebecca muttered.

A senior mage-technician reviewed recent data and said, “Tests show that densely stacking and layering arcane network units greatly boosts output and fits into the engine’s head, but it causes frequent overloads and interference among amplifier groups and repulsion mechanisms. The multi-layered arcane network’s power is unstable and impure.”

“To make multi-layer arcane networks practical, we first need to solve the interference between layers,” Kamail added. “Also, the starting pressure on the power mechanism is too high. We need to redesign the transmission and gearing to reduce startup speed and instantaneous pressure on the arcane engines. The last two engines failed due to sudden pressure spikes.”

“Looks like mechanical transmission isn’t suitable for a behemoth like the ‘Arcane Locomotive.’ The gearing can’t handle such shocks,” Rebecca shook her head. “If all else fails… we could try the ‘hydraulic transmission’ our ancestor once mentioned.”

She frowned, thinking of another problem. “But just reducing instantaneous pressure on the arcane engines isn’t enough… Mechanical pressure can be lowered, but the amplifiers and arcane network still have to bear the magical load.”

“The rune array’s magical power is rigid… it’s tough,” Kamail murmured. “Even if we reduce the engine’s startup load, maintaining operation is still a huge challenge for the amplifiers.”

This was a common problem for most arcane machinery: no matter how precise or complex, at its core, it was still a series of “magic circles.”

Each magic circle consumed a fixed amount of mana per activation. The spell’s potency might vary with materials or environment, but the mana cost remained constant.

Even if the engine’s startup pressure was minimized, the mana required to run it would be fully reflected on the amplifiers and arcane network units supplying it. Each repulsion rune consumed its share of mana, no discounts.

The result: the engine’s mechanical parts might hold up, but the runes in the power supply would still burn out—just like today.

One problem after another, and before one was solved, a dozen more sprang up: mechanical structure, material strength, magical interference, device load… all piled together with no clear solution.

A true quagmire.

Looking at the archmage before her, Rebecca suddenly asked, “Master Kamail, what kind of transportation did the Gondor Empire have back then? Surely such a vast empire needed large-scale transport like the arcane locomotive, right?”

Hearing Rebecca’s question, Kamail couldn’t help but reveal a hint of nostalgia. “Back in the day… we didn’t use mechanical magical vehicles. Instead, we harnessed the power of large elemental summons to transport goods—like summoning the Heralds of the Hurricane and the Lords of the Waves. Their strength was so immense, they could literally move mountains and seas…”

Rebecca was stunned. “Wait… you could actually summon and control such high-level elemental beings? How did you get them to help?”

“Simple. You just forge a summoning contract and offer half a ton of deep-blue magic crystals…”

“Okay, you can stop right there.”

Half a ton of deep-blue magic crystals?! Forget the Heralds of the Hurricane—probably even a Wind Elemental Lord would kneel down just to deliver goods for you Gondorians!

Rebecca marveled at the extravagant ways of the old Gondor Empire, but soon the practical problems facing the current magi-train project crowded back into her mind.

The marquis’s daughter rubbed her forehead. “My head hurts…”

Kamail looked at this brilliant yet somewhat naive young woman and felt an urge to comfort her. But before he could speak, Rebecca suddenly looked up. “Actually, I think… maybe our current approach is a bit off. Or maybe… we should try a different direction?”

“You mean…?”

“Focusing all the power in the locomotive seems straightforward and brute-force, but it’s incredibly difficult to pull off. Shoving all that massive power into one place is inherently unstable,” Rebecca said thoughtfully, her brilliant mind racing. “Master Kamail, do you remember we had another plan? If we couldn’t build a high-powered locomotive, we could distribute several smaller magical engines across multiple cars, turning them into power cars…”

“I remember that plan ran into synchronization issues between the power cars,” Kamail mused. “Do you think coordinating them would be easier than the problems we’re facing with the locomotive?”

“What if it is?” Rebecca replied. “We’ve already planned for both options, and since the key components of the locomotive’s power system are fried and need to be rebuilt anyway, why not set up another test platform and try the distributed power approach? Of course, we won’t abandon the concentrated power plan—we’ll keep working on it. Maybe the two approaches can complement each other and help us find a breakthrough!”

As she spoke, the young woman’s mind kept turning. “Also… I’ve been thinking about using a continuous weight-reduction array to lighten the entire train’s load. But since weight reduction is an area-effect spell, we’d have to figure out how to control its effective range carefully to prevent imbalance when the train turns… Still, I think these ideas might be the key to a breakthrough.”

Such optimism.

Yet looking into Rebecca’s passionate eyes, Kamail found himself infected by her enthusiasm—maybe there was some truth to it.

“All right,” the ancient archmage nodded. “Let’s finalize the plans tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll go to Lady Hetty together to request funding.”

“…Wait? Aren’t you going?”

“We’ll go together,” Kamail buzzed. “You’re the head of the entire magical engineering department. With such a major project change, you need to be there in person.”

The archmage’s reasoning was sound and authoritative.

Rebecca had no choice but to accept it.

(End of chapter)