Fortunately, though, the king had predicted this reaction as well. Zenjirou gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Incidentally, I also have a message from Smith Völundr. There is an ore he wishes you to search for. He is a smith of Capua, and Capua is of course willing to take responsibility for his commission. We are therefore willing to work so you can accept it. More specifically, we are working with His Majesty so you are able to return here as soon as possible after going back to Uppasala. Naturally, the travel between our two nations will be through teleportation.”
The smile on the professor’s face was clearly different from the faux smile he’d had so far. “Very well. I, Petr Rinne, will follow that order and return home.”
Zenjirou felt like he was about to forget the formal setting he was currently in given how easily he agreed. However, that abruptness matched what he had heard from Gustav and Yngvi about the man. Yngvi had said, “Professor Rinne is, at his heart, a creature of his desires. However, those desires are mainly to fulfill his curiosity, so he can appear both more logical and more sociable than anyone at a glance.”
In other words, he was usually the logical and affable professor because behaving like that was convenient for satisfying his desires, or rather his curiosity. However, he could also be unbelievably decisive when it came down to it. Boarding the Glasir’s Leaf by practically stowing away was one of those occasions. Without knowing about Zenjirou’s teleportation, he would have needed to wait over a year to come to the Southern Continent if he’d missed the ship.
It was possible that he would never discover the differences in nature between the two continents if he missed the opportunity. And so, despite knowing the risk of losing his position, he had still done so.
His reason for the practical sophistry he was using to refuse it was because he felt that returning now could well see him never setting foot on the Southern Continent again. Therefore, Zenjirou giving him the assurance of a commission from Völundr that he could only carry out here was a guarantee that he could return, so his behavior had practically shifted with the wind.
“I am glad you understand,” Zenjirou said with a hint of tiredness in his voice.
The professor’s smile remained soft and unchanging, and the ambassador at his side ducked his head in slight embarrassment.
While convincing the professor to return to Uppasala was important, it was far from Zenjirou’s main goal here, which was to see the current state of the ship and discuss the future. Thus, Zenjirou, Freya, Frederick, and Magnus had all come to the ship’s mooring place.
“It looks rather different here,” Zenjirou remarked as he saw the port itself.
The sights had certainly changed significantly since the last time he had been there. The biggest difference that was visible at a glance was the presence of large cranes. They were made of wood, strengthened with metal at the joints. They were powered by physical labor, but they had a distinct sense of foreignness on the Southern Continent.
Even now they were lifting huge pieces of lumber to be fastened to the immobilized ship. Lifting such huge pieces of wood to such heights with man power alone was close to impossible. In fact, Zenjirou didn’t know how they’d repaired and constructed boats without such cranes so far. Perhaps the lack of them was one of the main reasons Capua had yet to build any ships large enough to sail between the continents.
Those working in the area had of course noticed the group, but in Capua, those at work were allowed to continue unless he spoke to them directly. Zenjirou was well aware from personal experience that a superior coming to watch you work was not a welcome thing, so he did his best to stay out of the way of anything they were doing. Then again, he had not come solely to waste time and satisfy his curiosity. He was there in his role as royalty, so he couldn’t just stand around.
“Is that crane something the craftsmen from Uppasala built?” he asked.
Freya nodded at his side. “It is. Our—Uppasala’s—craftsmen did so. The majority of them are shipwrights, but there is also a bare minimum of prerequisites for the field.”
In some respects, that was better than the way labor was divided in the modern world. These days, if you were to ask a car mechanic to build a jack, hydraulic pump, and air pump required for servicing a car from scratch, very few of them would actually be able to do so. However, while the level of technology wasn’t as great as the modern world, this world’s craftsmen hadn’t specialized as much, so a skilled worker could do everything from the beginning.
Being at the pinnacle of smiths, Völundr could, if he wished, create the firebricks needed for a furnace from scratch. While the shipwrights were not on the same level as him, they were all skilled in their craft and together could build anything they needed for the ship’s repair.
“The plans were to create a dry dock for larger ships, but can I assume that those plans will be delayed?”
“Indeed. The men and materials originally planned for it are being diverted to repairing the Glasir’s Leaf, so construction on the dock will inevitably be delayed,” the aging Svean craftsman in charge said.
Zenjirou remembered the report he’d read through on the dock. A dry dock was, as the name implied, a dock for a ship that could be drained of water. Using a dry dock allowed the exterior below the waterline to be inspected and repaired.
Without using one, all that could be done to the ship was simple servicing. Of course, Valentia was one of the largest ports in the country and had several dry docks. However, they were for the ships that Capua used and weren’t suitable for a ship of the four-masted Glasir’s Leaf’s size. It would be like trying to fit a horse into a dog’s kennel.
“I have ordered some water manipulation magic tools from the Twin Kingdoms. Would they be useful for the dry dock?” Zenjirou asked.
The other man’s face hardened at that. “Well, I can say that they would be useful, but I cannot be optimistic about how useful. A dry dock for a ship of this size involves a staggering amount of water.”
With the lack of powered pumps, dry docks in this world relied on the tide. They docked a ship within a gated waterway, waited for the tide to go out, and then sealed the floodgates.
It went without saying that this required a significant amount of engineering. To use the tide to drain water from a dock meant investigating natural phenomena and creating the dock somewhere conditions were suitable. It was possible to create one only to realize the change in seasons meant that it didn’t fully drain or refill and was therefore impossible to use.
Meanwhile, powered pumps made those conditions far looser. All you needed was a passage with enough of a draft for the ships and floodgates. However, it went without saying that those pumps didn’t exist on either the Southern Continent or even the more advanced Northern Continent. Zenjirou had hopes that the magic tools for water manipulation would suffice in place of them, but that was unclear at the moment.
As the older man had said, it was unlikely they would be useless, but it was entirely possible they wouldn’t be enough. They didn’t know how much water would be needed for either the dock or what the tools could control. However, even if they were not useful for the dock itself, they would be a godsend for keeping water out from the hull. Since they wouldn’t go to waste, Zenjirou had already ordered them.
“This is a major construction. We have already accounted for the time it will take, including delays in the schedule. The quality of the work is more important than its speed. Make sure that it is up to long-term use,” he said.
Standing here as a superior, it was frustrating that the work wasn’t being finished, but Zenjirou knew that stressing that to the workers would only worsen their morale and not actually help, so he kept his voice and expression relatively gentle.
“Understood,” the older man replied, bowing as the tension left his shoulders.