Chapter 13:
The second day of 'The First Great Exhibition' has started and regular civilians could enjoy the stands at the town and the industrial center. While for the day all of the Emilia camp, Ivan and Russell Fellow got aboard the train heading for Elior Forest and signed contracts assuring that they won't talk about whatever they see.
Most of the passengers wondered about how they would get to the forest, as far as they knew there isn't any road directly connecting the forest to the town and the only way to make the trip requires a few days on dragon. Roswaal quickly made the connection between the weird road and the train and Emilia already knew of the plan beforehand since she was going to make the demonstration and experiment.
Emilia sat beside Subaru for the entire journey and discussed about the las minute changes Subaru's team made to design 'Krieg-01'.
Subaru: "Do you think you can implement these last-minute changes?"
Emilia: "As long as your team doesn't change anything else. By the way you said this could blow up, right?"
Subaru: "Yes, but I found a way to make this work."
Emilia: "Really, how?"
Subaru: "I load it and hide in a hole or something immediately."
Emilia: "Geeez you are still so reckless. How about you let me solve it?"
Subaru: "What? And let you to possibly suffer damage from a defective design?"
Emilia: "No, I won't leave neither me nor anyone else to suffer damage. Look at this."
Emilia made a small ice sculpture the shape a human, then a few features appeared on the sculpture and it ended up looked like a small Subaru.
Subaru: "So…how will this solve our little problem?"
Emilia: "Keep looking…walk."
The sculpture started to walk and Subaru was impressed by the previously unknow power of Emilia.
Subaru: "This…its awesome. How did you learn to do this?"
Emilia: "A small secret of mine, maybe I read about it somewhere maybe I didn't."
Subaru: "That's not fair. Anyway, can it do more specific actions?"
Emilia: "Want to see a fight between two Smolbarus?"
Subaru: "Wait, where did that name come from?"
Emilia: "Look mine will have a longsword, how about yours?"
Emilia made another ice Subaru in front of Subaru while having her Subaru go in front of her.
Subaru: "Give mine a poleaxe."
The two where ended up playing a turn base tabletop, at this size Emilia could probably make a few hundred Smolbarus but decided to limit herself to a few dozen in order to conserve mana for the upcoming experiment/demonstration. The game the two had ended up calling the attention of Garfield, Otto and Petra so they ended up playing it teams with Emilia as a neutral party.
One hour later they arrived at the Elior Forest village, where a few carriages would take them to the designed test ground. Almost everyone was wondering why they had to go so far from the village.
Once they arrived at the testing ground, they saw it was a big clearing in the forest, there was a big trench to accommodate all the visitors and Subaru took Emilia and Ram to the center of the clearing.
Subaru: "Ram I need you to use clairvoyance and confirm that we don't have and unwanted onlookers."
Ram: "You can't even be sure of that yourself? You're lucky that I'm so kind to help you out."
Subaru: "As expected from nee-sama. Emilia, I will need you make Krieg-01 looking parallel to the trench ideally we want to have a good look at the results."
Emilia: "Any particular direction you recommend?"
Subaru: "Since we don't know the range of this thing I say north, there aren't any villages in that direction."
Emilia: "Should we wait for Ram to finish or start now?"
Subaru: "I say we wai…"
Ram: "Barusu, we have company."
Subaru: "Where?"
Emilia: "Are they hostile?"
Ram: "Fifteen armed men to the west 600 meters, one of them seems like a noble or at least very wealthy."
Emilia: "To many to be hunters."
Subaru: "Are they looking in this direction?"
Ram: "Two of them are looking at us right now and one is looking at the trench. The rest are just on standby."
Emilia: "Let's get back to the trench and get Beatrice, Garfield and Rem to intercept them."
Subaru: "Agreed, let's move."
The trio headed back to the trench, got the three people they needed and decided to flank the spies. They sneaked up to the group of men undetected and rapidly took them out one by one without the rest noticing, until only the 3 observes and the noble where left. At that point they announced their presence and ordered them to surrender themselves. Subaru was surprised to see that the noble was indeed Christoph Fuchs.
Subaru: "So Mister Fuchs we meet again."
Fuchs: "Seems like so sir Subaru."
Emilia: "You know him Subaru?"
Subaru: "Yes, he lost his company to our mass production, so he has grudge against me."
Emilia: "Oh. What are you here for? Did anyone send you?"
Fuchs: "Like I would tell that to a Witch."
Subaru: "Mister Fucks it's not that we are asking, we are demanding."
Fuchs: "What are you demanding Hero, don't you know what titles I have?"
Subaru: "Do you think that matters?"
Fuchs: "What kind of question it that? Of course it matters, I have more status than any Witch, hero and demi-human scum!"
Garfield kicked the man in the stomach and sent him flying.
Subaru: "Enough Garfield."
Garfield: "Yes capt'n."
Emilia pointed to the men that escorted Fuchs.
Emilia: "You guys, do you know anything?"
Guard 1: "No madam, we were just hired by Mister Fuchs for this."
Emilia: "Did he tell you anything?"
Observer 1: "We are to learn anything we can from this place."
Observer 2: "He also hired more men, but we don't know anything about them."
Subaru: "What are you planning Fuchs?"
Subaru was worried about the knowledge of another group of armed men probably near them.
Fuchs: "How dare you treat a noble like this."
Fuchs was laying on the ground panting in pain from Garfield's kick.
Subaru: "Answer Fuchs…my patience is running out. I really hope you don't plan something stupid."
Fuchs: "You dare you treat me like a prisoner!"
Subaru looked towards Emilia and she gave him a nod. He then picked Fuchs by his hair and dragged him far from the others. Fuchs yelled all the way due the unexpected treatment he got.
Emilia: "Since you are so cooperative, you will be treated better than that man. For now, we will send you to the nearby village."
All the men: "Thank you for your consideration madam."
Meanwhile.
Subaru: "Last chance before I get more physical."
Fuchs: "Do you think you will get away with this?"
Subaru: "Don't worry about that, I have the power to make you forget this day ever happened."
Fuchs was genuinely scared before, but Subaru's last statement made him terrified of this so-called hero.
Fuchs: "I was just planning to get the secret of how to make fabric so cheap, that's all."
Beatrice reveals herself. She had shadowed the two all the way.
Beatrice: "He is lying in fact."
Subaru: "Come on spit it out."
Fuchs: "H-how did you…"
Subaru: "Spit it out!"
Fuchs: "I-I also hired men to steal the plans of the trains!"
Beatrice: "You're still lying."
Fuchs: "Fine, I'll say it. I hired men to blow up the rails and get you killed Sir Subaru!"
Subaru: "You what?!"
Fuchs: "Please, please forgive me, I was an idiot to try and kill such a legendary hero!"
Subaru: "Do you realize that you could have killed Emilia and the others!"
Beatrice: "Subaru calm down in fact, we have to get them away for now to make the demonstration. We can fix any problem with the railway later."
Subaru: "Yes let's head back. I had enough of you Fuchs."
Subaru smacks Fuchs in the head with the pommel of his whip knocking him out. Beatrice and Subaru drag Fuchs along and soon meet with the others. They head back to the trench and send the unwanted visits on a carriage to the town.
Subaru had Ram check the area again, once she gave the all-clear signal Emilia constructed 'Krieg-01' and made an ice Subaru. 'Krieg-01' was made entirely of ice, and it seemed like a simple vertical tube that could have its elevation adjusted. The ice Subaru took up a metal cylinder with fins at the bottom. Emilia ran into the trench and with everyone observing, the ice Subaru placed the metal cylinder on top of the tube, almost letting it drop inside. Subaru yelled "Fire!" and Emilia made the ice Subaru drop the metal thing, 'krieg-01' blew up, destroying the ice Subaru and itself.
Subaru: "Well, that what tests are for after all."
Emilia: "You were going to do this! Don't you realize you could have hurt yourself?"
Subaru: "Yeah, but no one got hurt, anyways…" He now talked to the rest of the people in the trench. "…It's not over yet, we still have more rounds to test!"
Emilia made another ice 'krieg-01' and Subaru, she had him pick a round from a different pile and then get into firing position. "Fire!" yelled Subaru, and the ice Subaru dropped the round, this time it made a "Boom!" and the round flew out of the cylinder and landed some 6 meters from "krieg-01" blowing everything up once more.
Subaru: "We need more propellent, Emilia try pile 4. Are you taking notes Ivan?"
Emilia: "On it."
Ivan: "Yes boss, I'm taking note of everything that works and doesn't work."
The next attempt is made with the same start as the last two attempts. This time the round also makes a "BOOM!" but it flies out of sight, blowing up in the forest.
Subaru: "Uhhh…Ram, can you figure out how far it went?"
Ram: "Some…800 meters. It's quite destructive Barusu, should it be like that?"
Subaru: "Yes, this a weapon after all."
Almost everyone was shocked by the reveal. Except for Emilia, Ivan and Beatrice.
Subaru: "It's called a mortar, but this is a very crude prototype. Now let's continue we have more types of rounds to fire."
The mortars kept firing for a few hours, some types of rounds blew up inside the mortars, some midair, some had more range and some less, the furthest a mortar round was recoded is 2.700 meters. One surpassed that, but it went out of Ram's clairvoyance range, so it was effectively lost. Once the rounds ran out, Ivan was content with the results. Emilia's ice brand arts saved Subaru's division a few days' worth of testing and manufacturing.
Once the testing was done, all the people present went to the village while Roswaal flew ahead to check if the railway was still intact. Subaru went to talk to Fuchs. Basically, Fuchs was to swear to never attempt to harm Subaru nor anyone that was involved with him, and he did. After that Fuchs was to go on the train back to the town where he would be let of the hook.
Roswaal returned and said that the railway was intact and that the workers caught a few men laying firestones on the rails. They all started to board the train to head back to the town after Roswaal told the good news.
They arrived in the Town just before night fall, this was the final day of the 'The First Great Exhibition'. The next day everyone would depart from the town and these 'vacations' would be over. Subaru decided to have a last date with Emilia before departing and she accepted. They talked about many things during the date and then Emilia had a question.
Emilia: "So, how exactly do the mortar rounds work? Why do they fire once they hit the firing pin?"
Subaru: "Needless to say this is a top secret so don't tell anyone. The rounds have two sets of firestones inside them. One is powdered and is at the bottom close to the fins, and the other is just an unaltered firestone in the head or top."
Emilia: "So that's why it explodes so violently. But how does it fly?"
Subaru: "The powdered firestone is different in that it burns slowly instead of going off all at once unlike a regular firestone. Once the round hits the firing pin, the powdered firestones are so unstable that it ignites. Once the round hits the ground even with a moderate force, the firestone in the head just blows up."
Emilia: "It seems simple, yet I thought you were going to only make machines that make products. I don't like to know that you are making weapons."
Subaru: "Don't worry Emilia-tan, this was an exception, for now we won't make more mortars or develop them further."
Emilia: "Then why make them in the first place?"
Subaru: "I just wanted to make sure we can have something to hold off Vollachia if the time ever comes or to deal with the witch cult."
Emilia: "So now you are going to only focus on making more factories?"
Subaru: "Yes, now we even have a factory of factories."
Emilia: "What?"
Subaru: "It's a machining factory, that machine that spins and cuts metal makes the process of making other machines a lot faster and is the heart of this new type of factory."
Emilia: "So that's what that is, and what are your plans for expansion. Paper? Tools? Toys?"
Subaru: "All of them, eventually I want to have everything made in large numbers, but for now we will focus on making and selling new tools to increase the agricultural output of the land."
Emilia: "The relocation of manpower you called it?"
Subaru: "Yes. Do you remember what it is?"
Emilia: "Of course. Basically, the machines and improved agricultural processes will make the land produce more food with less people. Meaning that now people that previously worked in farms can now do something else. Like study and advance technology faster or be absorbed into a new industry."
Subaru: "Yup, I am making the new industries to absorb manpower, but education institutions don't accept commoners."
Emilia: "So we have to start expanding industry very fast now."
Subaru: "Yes, by the way we are going to run out of manpower in the town soon at the current rate, so could I ask you to make a propaganda campaign to sell people on moving here?"
Emilia: "The slums seem like a very good place to start, many people are in absolute poverty, surely many of them would like to come here if we guaranty them work and a way out."
Subaru: "Mmmm…I hadn't thought about getting more manpower from there. Truly EMT!"
The couple keeps on chatting enjoying the time together, at the end of the date Subaru gives Emilia the book he translated about Victorian era politics and society. The next morning all the visits depart from the town.
Expect for Russell, Subaru finishes to tie up all the details regarding the grants and starts to plan on where to lay the railway. He and Beatrice can't decide if its best to make the railway parallel to existing roads or in strait lines between the locations but requiring new barriers to be laid down. Russell intervenes to state a new condition on the grants, the railways will now have to be built parallel to existing roads to give better mobility to all towns and villages in the way.
(I hope you enjoy this, but now I have a question: Do any of the readers play HoI4 (Hearts of Iron 4) and would you be interested in a Re: Zero mod? Because seeing that there are none, I am planning on making a proper total conversion Re: Zero mod once I am done with this fanfic, don't worry we still have lots more to cover in this fic so it won't end soon.)