Chapter 70: When the Usual Tricks Don’t Work…

The plan to have the stubborn fireball kid make primitive cement had failed, but Gawain wasn’t about to give up so easily. Just because Earth’s methods didn’t translate perfectly didn’t mean Earth’s ideas were wrong. Maybe the formulas were different here, but that didn’t mean the material had no value. At the very least, a cheap, abundant, sturdy, and easy-to-work building material should have a place anywhere—even if it had to be renamed “magic something-or-other” in this world.

He sent Rebecca to keep experimenting with new production techniques, sharing with her the general idea and his expected goals. This wasn’t blind trial and error: although his own method had failed, Gawain knew this world once had “cement.”

Deep within the mountain ruins, he and his team had seen this material firsthand. The ancient engineers of the Gondor Empire had built that fortress in the mountains not with stone, but with an artificial material—one stronger and more durable than ordinary stone. Even after a thousand years, it showed no sign of crumbling.

In Gawain Cecil’s memory, this material had been developed long before the “Age of Sparks,” back in the “Age of Steel,” and had been used for a full millennium. After many improvements, by the end of Gondor’s era, it was one of the most common building materials in the empire.

That was what Gawain regretted most: after Gondor’s collapse, much technology was lost. Some because it depended on the deep blue magic wells, some because the groups who mastered the techniques were wiped out without leaving records, and some because the raw materials or environments needed were now contaminated. Gondor’s “otherworldly cement” was one of those lost technologies.

Due to the chaos of that era, Gawain wasn’t sure which of these reasons caused the loss—but probably not the magic wells. Producing this otherworldly cement, like Earth’s cement, didn’t require complex equipment or advanced energy. So it was likely talent extinction, lost records, or raw material issues. Either way, this foundational technology—one of civilization’s cornerstones—was simply gone.

Seven centuries later, the people of Ansu still built houses from stone and wood. Nobles with means would lavishly use mages’ shaping spells and alchemical potions to make their palaces and castles more refined and sturdy—but that was obviously not what Gawain wanted: universal, cheap, mass-producible.

Though the technology was broken, it wasn’t hopeless. After all, it had once been one of Gondor’s most common basic technologies. Even if Gawain hadn’t made it himself, he had seen it before, and fragments of the technique still lingered in his mind. He handed these fragments to Rebecca. How much she could restore it… well, that depended on the stubborn fireball kid’s skill.

At this point, Gawain couldn’t help but sigh: if only the Gawain Cecil from seven hundred years ago had been a keyboard warrior… If he’d spread some of his effort into miscellaneous knowledge, things would be so much better now. At the very least, he could have remembered the cement formula!

Embracing the spirit of “a satellite refined over hundreds of thousands of years isn’t afraid of anything,” Gawain shamelessly muttered about the original owner of this body, then began listing the experiments he had to conduct next.

Over the following days, Amber watched as Gawain sent people to haul a huge pile of stuff into the camp tent: strange mineral powders, metal containers pieced together, crystal lenses of all sizes, magnets and metal wires commonly used by mages and diviners. The clutter covered the entire table. About half had been urgently purchased from Tansang Town; the rest were crafted under Gawain’s guidance by Hetty and the artisans.

Looking at the mess, the half-elf lady was utterly baffled. “What are you trying to do?”

Without looking up, Gawain fiddled with the lenses and replied, “Experiments.”

“Nobles are so hard to understand,” Amber blinked, then suddenly her eyes lit up as if she’d caught Gawain red-handed. “Aha! I knew it! You can’t keep up the act—you’ve finally started wasting time and money! I told you, no sane noble could endure this long of hardship. You’re finally going off the rails… Ow, ow, ow!”

Gawain twisted Amber’s ear twice before letting go, curiously eyeing this perpetually annoying companion. “I just don’t get it. Do you forget you get hit? Can’t you be a little cuter?”

“You’re the one talking nonsense! I’m a grand thief, and you’ve chained me here as your bodyguard. Usually, I’m either guarding your pile of weird scribbles or patrolling the hills collecting intel. When I have free time, you make me study your scribbles with you. Do you even respect my profession?”

Amber spoke with conviction, her main point boiled down to three words: I’m bored.

“You could learn a thing or two from Betty,” Gawain sighed, rubbing his forehead. “She’s busy all day but still comes to me to learn to read. You can’t even manage basic arithmetic?”

“Oh? That little maid is really learning to write?” Amber blinked, suddenly interested. “No wonder people say they hear her muttering to herself when she’s alone, and she’s always drawing in the dirt with a stick whenever she has time…”

“Alright, alright. I’m done caring about you. If you’re really that bored, go play outside,” Gawain waved her off. “But three things are forbidden: no stealing, no messing around where people are working, and no fighting—well, fighting geese is allowed.”

Amber immediately brightened at the permission and rolled back into the shadows, her body fading as she muttered, “You’re really weird, always emphasizing geese around me…”

Once Amber left, Gawain finally had a chance to focus on the pile of stuff.

He had already tested some of it; the rest was still under verification.

Before sitting down, he glanced at a large basket nearby and sighed softly.

Inside were the indescribable polymer lumps Rebecca had produced while trying to make cement. She had planned to throw them away, but Gawain kept them, placing them where he could see them at all times.

He treated them as a warning, a symbol, a constant reminder that “this world” is “this world.”

Pulling his gaze away, he looked at a container on the table and bent down to jot new notes in Chinese:

“Ansu Year 735, Frost Moon 46, Day 23 of camp expansion. Gunpowder production failed. Classic Earth recipes and various modified formulas all ineffective. None produced rapid combustion or released large amounts of heat quickly. The classic formula’s product was completely non-flammable. Modified formula #1 burned quietly in air but with a dim, weak flame—worse than burning straw. Formula #2 also burned quietly but with a bright, stable flame. Intended for lighting, but it emitted a pungent odor…

“Further testing may yield a usable otherworldly gunpowder formula, but I’m beginning to suspect this path isn’t optimal. It drifts further from this world’s ‘magic’ and the power is disappointing. Developing an industrially mass-producible explosive rune might be more reliable than gunpowder.”

Besides this new entry, the paper held many other notes, which Gawain scanned:

“Ansu 735, Frost Moon 45, Day 22 of camp expansion. Confirmed electromagnetic induction is ineffective—at least the ‘magnet to electricity’ process. No current generated in coils. Magnets have north and south poles, properties matching Earth’s magnets. Hetty’s wind element rune can detect even the faintest electrical stimulus. The coils, though crude, meet requirements. So the problem must be with electromagnetic induction itself. Unable to verify if ‘electricity to magnetism’ also fails, as Hetty’s lightning bolt magic can’t provide a steady, safe current. She nearly singed Amber’s hair with a palm-sized lightning blast…

“Looks like the plan to use a generator to power wind magic arrays must be shelved for now, or until we master thermoelectric generation or similar methods.”

“…Time to give up on the steam engine. The experimental results are maddening: water boils here just like on Earth, but the steam’s driving force is pitifully weak. Perhaps the expansion coefficient of water vapor here is far smaller than on Earth. I suspect this ‘water’ isn’t really water, or that the ubiquitous ‘water element’ here is interfering. This illogical stuff alters water’s behavior during phase changes…

“…Though I drink it, wash with it, and water plants with it, that proves nothing. My body is composed of this world’s elements; my senses operate under its rules. Except for the Earth-born consciousness in my head, no part of me can step outside this world’s ‘worldview’ to observe objectively… Is the blue sky I see truly ‘blue’?

“…In any case, the approach must change. A core pride of Earth’s civilization has been dealt a heavy blow: I can’t ‘boil water’ here. Without boilers, how do I get basic machines running?”

“Ansu 735… Hetty has never heard of ‘coal.’ That druid named Pittman hasn’t either. In fact, even Gawain Cecil’s memories lack anything like it… The good news is charcoal can still be made.

“…The Typhon Empire produces a ‘burnable stone,’ but it’s not coal. It’s a white ‘burning rock,’ apparently a type of marine sediment. It burns longer than wood but is hard to ignite and unstable, with a foul smell. Only the poor use it for heating. Worth noting.

“…Holy crap, gold is a semiconductor, and pure silver is non-conductive… What the hell?!

“I think I need a whole advanced team to give me a full periodic table… or at least a rundown of common substances’ properties.

“But there isn’t one.

“Guess I’ll just wash up and sleep.”

(End of chapter)