6 - I Suspected God Was Unreliable Before; Now, I’m Sure!
EVEN after the period of mourning ended, the emperor remained busy.
And, seemingly having heard I had nothing to do, Louis and Marie’s father started reaching out to me. For some reason, they wanted my opinions about the plan to brand-ify local, regional products and Project Roslan.
On one such day, I happened to be with Daux and Marie when Marie’s father, Towen, requested a moment of my time. I responded that I was available now if it was okay for all three of us to come together, and he easily agreed.
It’s a perfect chance to let Marie spend even more time with her father, so I want to make the most of it!
Towen said he would come to us, and we could talk in the room where Daux, Marie, and I had been playing.
“It’s about the construction of the tower. The carpenters’ guild is saying they simply cannot build it according to these specifications.”
Oh, right. They were stuck on the issue of fortifying the walls to hold up the tower’s weight. Heh, good thing I came prepared!
I’d had nothing but time on my hands lately, so I’d made use of it by having Paul procure the necessary materials for me. With those materials, Daux, Marie, and I worked together to build something.
Such perfect timing!
“Paul, could you bring it in for me?”
The “materials” I’d asked Paul to procure included a large amount of clay.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to find the kind of modeling clay I had in mind. What he brought back was a reddish-brown clay of the type commonly used for making pottery.
There was a tradition of pottery-making on this continent as well, but only a small portion of the products produced were “luxury items” made of white porcelain. Of course, that drove up the price and desirability of the pieces that were produced. Louis had been the one to tell me all about that, but the pottery industry intrigued me, and I would like to tour an artisan’s workshop in person at some point if possible.
Clay wasn’t the only thing I’d asked Paul to find for me.
It turned out there were several materials stronger than iron available in this world, so I had him procure the most abundant and inexpensive option. It was a material unique to this world that was made by mixing common metals such as iron and copper.
I guess the technical term is an “alloy?”
In case you were wondering, the strongest and most durable material in this world was an exceedingly rare material named “gaidite,” which was made from refined minerals. The legendary sword Gandal, which had been wielded by the first king of the Kingdom of Gaché, was said to have been made of gaidite.
In any case, I’d asked the blacksmiths’ guild to form the alloy Paul had procured for me into indented rods shaped like the letter H.
Now, this is what I call steel-reinforced concrete! Or, at least, metal-reinforced clay?
I’d been planning to assemble these alloy rods together and cover them with clay to build a model of the tower. However, I ran into a problem immediately when I realized I didn’t have any tools capable of cutting the alloy rods to the size I needed. Luckily, a savior came to my rescue, quickly remedying this issue!
The one to lend me a hand in my darkest hour was Kaideetay.
Well, I guess, to be more accurate, he lent me his tail.
I just had to tell Kaideetay how long I wanted it and he would quickly and efficiently sever the rods in the correct place. Luckily, Kaideetay wasn’t a sky tiger like Lars; it turned out that as an earth tiger, he could also manipulate metal.
Thank God for that!
Thanks to Kaideetay’s assistance and Daux’s aptitude for detailed crafting, the tower turned out great! Marie and I focused on helping with the parts that wouldn’t be noticeable…
Hey, the foundation is important, too!
When Paul carried it in, the model of the tower was just a bit shorter than me.
Towen let out a noise somewhere between amazement and surprise when he saw it. “This is incredible. The three of you made it by yourselves?”
“Yes. Daux is really good at doing detailed work like this, so it turned out to be a masterpiece!” Marie responded, shamelessly praising Daux’s considerable contribution to the project and earning a shy smile from him.
I thought that Towen had started being more fatherly lately. Apparently, that encouraged Marie because she, too, was doing her best to draw out their previously brief and formal interactions into actual conversations. The fact that the content of these attempts at conversation tended towards extolling Daux’s virtues as if they were her own probably just reflected the fact that she was a girl in love.
That must fill her father with some rather complicated feelings, huh?
“We fashioned this model so that it won’t collapse just from being shaken a little.” I instructed Paul to shake the foundation, and without a flicker of change to his expression, he shook the heavy model.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Paul is ridiculously strong from all the training he does.
The clay making up the foundation was hardened like concrete, so despite Paul’s best attempt at shaking the tower, it didn’t fall.
“May I ask what kind of structure you used to achieve this?” Towen asked.
“We first built a framework using these, then covered it over with a layer of clay,” I explained, showing him one of the alloy rods.
Clearly intrigued, Towen took the alloy rod from me and examined it closely. “Is this suntate? What is the meaning of this particular shape?” Towen asked, peppering me with one question after another.
Suntate was the Larshian word for “alloy”—a generic term used to refer to any type of mixed-metal compound.
“It’s a harder type than the more common varieties of suntate. As for the shape, I think that making the sides thicker and the center thinner makes it almost as strong as a solid rectangular beam, but much lighter.”
I didn’t have any kind of engineering background, so I wasn’t sure of the reasoning behind the shape either. But given how frequently I’d seen beams of this shape used in steel-reinforced concrete buildings in my past life, I figured there must be a good reason for it.
I had absolutely no aptitude for physics or any of that in my past life, so I never learned much about engineering. Now I wish I’d tried a little harder!
“…I don’t know if this technique will work, but it’s certainly worth looking into. Could I have a few of these pieces of suntate?”
“Of course. If there aren’t enough here, you can ask the blacksmith’s guild in the imperial city to make you more of them.”
I’d given a rather shoddy drawing to a servant and had them place the order with the blacksmiths’ guild to create the alloy rods based on that.
I bet the blacksmiths were stumped by such an odd request!
And yet, they’d created exactly what I was looking for. This only went to show what highly skilled professionals they were.