Chapter 7:

1 week after Emilia's departure the construction team sent by Roswaal arrived and after a short revision of Subaru's plans by the architect got to work giving priority to the steel mill.

The steel mill would be made of brick, the roof would be made of iron plates mounted in a way to allow placement of chimneys further down the line, the walls would have huge windows on all sides for venting the heat, it was also tall for a 1 story building, some 7 meters tall. It would be 40 meters long and 20 meters wide.

The factory would follow a similar design dimension wise, but its walls and roof would be made of wood, and only have enough windows to let light inside.

Both would be located close to each other and relatively far from the house.

Subaru was worried that this move could call some unwanted attention to his project, but it was a necessary step. William has made his new and safer steel steam engine along with 2 big steam engines. Since he started to make them out of steel his manufacturing has slowed down. He was called by Subaru to speak about a small change in plans.

Subaru: "We received a letter from Ivan's friend, but is not good."

Beatrice: "I say that you are a bit to pessimist now in fact."

Subaru: "You really think so Beako? Any way I'm going to need you to get smart Will."

William: "What do you mean sir?"

Subaru: "She does know the best way to mass produce steel, and it is a different way from the one you use as far as I can see, but she can't come here until done with her job in about 3 months."

Beatrice: "But we have good news in fact. Here read."

William: "What?" He started to read "She sent the instructions. So, what's the bad news all about?"

Subaru: "Huh? You don't have trouble understanding it?"

Beatrice: "Told you I suppose."

Subaru: "Like can you start making steel like that right now?"

William: "Not right now, I need to get the feel of it first, of course it would be better to have the author here, but it shouldn't be an issue."

Subaru: "What a relief. We are going to check on Ivan. Anything you want to tell him?"

William: "I think not."

Beatrice: "Then we are off in fact."

They left to check on Ivan who has already made a design to convert raw cotton into cotton treads but was struggling with a design to make fabric in a more automated way. The duo entered to check on him.

Beatrice: "Ivan have you made a breakthrough I wonder?" She ran up his desk.

Ivan: "Sadly I haven't, and honestly I don't know if I can do so soon."

Subaru: "Should we get someone who works on this from the town?"

Ivan: "I would like to go myself to take a better look at the manufacturing and talk to the guild leader."

Subaru: "We will be at odds as soon we displace them."

Ivan: "Yet they still let me see if I pay enough, so greedy…" He fell deep into his thoughts.

Beatrice: "If you're not making any progress, you might as well go, I suppose."

Subaru: "Ok then we will follow Beako's plan. You can go investigate as soon as you're ready, and can take a much money as needed, we really need this to work."

Beatrice: "Do not betray mine or my contractors hopes on you in fact."

Ivan: "Thank you I will start investigating as soon as possible then."

Subaru: "More than investigating I'd say we are stealing manufacturing secrets."

Beatrice: "They aren't secret in the first place I suppose."

Ivan: "She is right, we just don't work in that area."

Subaru: "Whatever you guys say."

The next day Ivan made his investigation this time much more detailed and finally got a design by the end of the day, he is now helping William make his 2 designs real for further improvement. Meanwhile Subaru and Beatrice receive a group of 15 men from the town, they were hired to make the road to Elior forest and guided them close to the factory area.

Men 1: "So mister Subaru how do we make your road with wood and iron wont it be more expensive?"

Subaru: "Well I am about to show you how to make the road, but I must first tell you it is a different type from the stone ones you normally see. And about the cost…"

Beatrice: "You shouldn't care about costs. You will be paid in the end in fact."

Subaru: "Beako…any way, it is simple, you must first place the wooden planks." He places the planks 1 meter from the other. "Once you place enough of them to cover the length of the rods." He walks to the metal rod with a volunteer. "You use these pincers to lift them up between 2 people and place them on the small holes in the wood" He places the T shaped rod of 4 meters on top of the planks and aligns the holes on the planks and rod and then repeats the same with another rod. "Once everything is lined up properly you must use these bigger nails in the bigger holes to anchor the wood to the ground and the small nails are for fastening the rails to the wood."

Men 6: "So the weird rods are called rails?"

Subaru: "Yes, and you must make the road follow this thread." He points to a thread that indicates the road for the next 10 kilometers

Men 2: "Do the rails have to touch each other or not?"

Subaru: "I almost forgot about that, leave a small space of 3 to 5 millimeters between each rail but do not let them touch each other."

With his explanation done, and no more questions being asked, Subaru and Beatrice watched and corrected the work of the men until they got good at it. Once they got good Subaru and Beatrice left them to receive a shipment of more rails and planks. Then they went to see a very tired and exhausted Ivan and a moderately tired William.

Subaru: "What happened to him?"

William: "He spent all night working on his design and helped me sir." Ivan was half asleep.

Beatrice: "So sleep deprivation…and why do you look so tired in fact?"

William: "Did you see his design? It has over one hundred individual pieces, of the small ones there are like 8 designs that have to be made 10 times each!"

Subaru: "Maybe it was a little too much. Did you make it out of iron?"

William: "Yes sir."

Beatrice: "All this for only one machine I wonder?"

William: "Do not worry lady Beatrice, we are working on the hardest to make of the 2 machines right now."

Beatrice: "So the other one will be easier to make?"

William: "Yes, at least I expect it to be like so."

Subaru: "And what machine are you making?"

William: "Ivan!"

Ivan: "The fabric machine."

Subaru: "You two should better rest."

Beatrice: "My contractor is right in fact."

Subaru decides to let William and Ivan end the day early and goes to check the progress of the railway. On site they discover that the men managed to build some 160 meters and used one fourth of the stockpile.

Beatrice: "Seems like they advanced a lot for being their first day I suppose."

Subaru: "Yes, I expect us to reach Elior forest in no time. But now we must assess the quality of the work."

Beatrice: "Indeed. But I expect it to be good or acceptable in fact."

Subaru: "So do I, they do not have much space to fuck up."

They inspect the rails installed by the men one on each side while talking to one another.

Subaru: "To think we have to do this for the next week."

Beatrice: "It was your idea to check on the work for one week in fact."

Subaru: "But I get to spend more time with you Beako." He picks Beatrice up and walks the way back like that.

7 days pass and the first machine that makes fabric is ready and assembled. Subaru has bought cotton threads for testing. The machine is hooked on to a steam engine for its first test trial in the testing ground it took one complete day to move the machine.

Subaru: "Minimum configuration start!"

William started the machine and the mechanism struggled to start, so he pulled the wheel to help it start. They knew the machine would not get stuck because they tested making the mechanism move by hand. Now they needed to know how well and fast a decent piece of fabric could be made and at what configuration the machine worked best. The valve that let the steam to the piston chamber now had different configurations to let more, less or all the vapor into the piston for more or less speed/power.

Subaru: "Next configuration start!"

They only tested up to 60% power since the machine made some dangerous creaking noises at 60%. Looking at the fabrics they unanimously decided that the fabric of 20% power was the best.

Ivan: "So each steam engine of this size can power a maximum of 5 of these."

Subaru: "We still have to test with a steel one, but I think it's a safe guess."

Beatrice: "Maybe if we lubricate more, we can have some spare power and not have the engine going at top capacity I suppose."

Ivan: "Maybe, but it could get offset by the change to steel."

William: "Or the change to steel can make it use less power."

Subaru: "We will figure out later, lets disassemble and start going home. We need to check each piece in detail to know where to reinforce or make more space."

Beatrice: "I still find ridiculous we manage to make this good piece of cloth in 124 seconds in fact."

William: "Yeah me to, I wonder how long it takes artisans to make one like this."

Ivan: "According to the guild leader in the town 1 square meter piece can take up to 2 days to make." (I do not know how long it takes to manually make a piece of cloth, so I made up this number)

William: "They are so done for."

Subaru: "Let's just hope it does not get violent."

Beatrice: "What do you mean I wonder?"

Subaru: "If I am not mistaken in my world people that had their jobs made obsolete by machines and automation sometimes got to mad and raided factories destroying the machinery."

Beatrice: "That doesn't make sense I suppose."

Subaru: "It doesn't need to."

They finished moving all the parts of the machine the next day, but Ivan started to change some parts of the design as soon as they started to disassemble to make assembling easier as well as any potential repairs needed. Soon he started to receive feedback from William and gave more space to some areas and decreased the space in others. Some 3 days after concluding the test he started to build the steel prototype with William.

William while Ivan was occupied designing was helping Subaru and Beatrice make a new carriage that would go on the railway. Unlike other machines they made, Subaru insisted that this one must have 2 engines to deliver power. They debated a while not agreeing on how to connect the 2 engines. Until Beatrice shut both up and showed them how a hand drill works. They decided to connect the 2 engines with Beatrice's approach. When testing to surprise of William Subaru hooked up a cart filled with rails and wood.

Subaru: "This is why I need it to have 2 engines to move heavy payloads, depending on how well it goes we can add more carts."

William: "I thought it was only for speed."

Beatrice: "Top speed depends more on how fast the engine goes more than the number of engines in fact."

Subaru: "And with the railway growing we need a way to move men and material to the end for further extension."

William: "How long is the railway sir?"

Subaru: "Uh…"

Beatrice: "Some 2.8 kilometers approximately in fact."

William: "Where did you get all the iron and rails for that."

Subaru: "We have every single smith in town working for us."

Beatrice: "And the consumption of iron in town quadrupled, that actually has brough attention here I suppose."

William: "How are we not short on iron?"

Beatrice: "We actually have an iron shortage in fact."

Subaru: "But we are taking steps to solve this issue."

William: "Sir what would that solution be?"

Subaru: "There are rumors and actual documents of an iron mine in the nearby woods it was abandoned some 200 years ago for unknown reasons, but if we find it we can hopefully extract some iron locally."

William: "Sir you must excuse me but. Do you really think we can find an abandoned mine from 200 years ago?"

Beatrice: "Actually Emilia found some remnants of a long-gone settlement to the east."

William: "How do we know it belonged to them?"

Subaru: "We don't, but that is the only explanation to the remains."

Beatrice: "We called reinforcements from the faction to search for it in fact."

William: "I see, your always one step ahead."

Subaru: "Maybe but let's get testing I want to know how fast it can go."

They started the train and it started moving and Subaru and Beatrice followed on the side mounting Patrasche. The train was not faster than Patrasche but moved a payload much heavier than the dragon could ever hope at a decent speed. Beatrice calculated it went at 50 km per hour when at top speed. But the ease of the start indicated that they could easily double the payload. They made it to the end of the rails, dropped the payload and then headed back.

William: "I was not expecting it to move so fast with suck heavy cargo."

Beatrice: "And I say we can increase the cargo without losing speed."

Subaru: "We will have to make more carts then."

William: "The metal wheels are hard to make but I fortunately made more than needed last time sir."

Subaru: "Then Beako and me won't bother you when making the newest carts."

The next day Ivan had finished his design and William was hard at work making it a reality. 9 days after they started to make the steel fabric machine they had finally finished. In the test the machine also worked best at 20% power but worked slightly faster than its iron counterpart reducing time to 87 seconds. They disassembled the machine, and some minor changes were made to the design all oriented to make assembling and logistics of operating and repairing easier.