"A barrel, I can do," the nomadic blacksmith grunted. "But that won't withstand the pressures you're talking about. Not even meaning the seams, though that'd be an issue, too, but—"
"Oh, the imperfections in the iron would turn that thing into a bomb," the kid added.
It was one of the former child slaves Konrad freed a while back, now apprenticing at the smithy. He was like, what, thirteen? But already knew more about metallurgy than he ever did.
"See, there's only so hot a fire we can make," he said. "The iron would be impure and uneven."
"Hmm. That does sound like a catastrophe to happen," Dmitry pondered, too. "They can't make large enough pieces. And can't exactly spot-weld the small parts together, either."
Konrad translated the gist of it for him, and—
Yeah. Turns out, even the military Captain knew more about iron than the Prodigy of Haiten.
"I could make the fire hotter," Konrad muttered. "Or sort out the welding, but—"
At that point, he could have shaped the entire thing himself using his magic.
As in, if he knew exactly how to make a boiler.
But everything that seemed like an amazing future tech he could bring from another world—
Turned out to be incomprehensible to him in its actual details, too.
That said, if he offered his magic to improve their smithing technology—
'Is this still part of the I don't want to make them too dependent on my mana thing?' Paula scoffed before he could talk. Ugh. 'Yeah, thought so.'
"If you're using your magic anyway," Dmitry noted. "Why not make a stone that turns by itself?"
Wait. Could he do that?!
'Kinetic magic?' the parallel brain pondered, too. 'There were some runes that suggested they exist in your memory, but—you never actually learned it.'
Well, that he could fix.
Extending his magic repertoire was important, anyway.
But would such a turning-stone be costly to make?
He knew those millstones were huge and heavy, but—
Could he make them turn forever with a few simple runes? Or would they need a constant supply of mana from him? No. Zoltan used magic stones to power his big illusion, so—
He could learn and etch that spell into a stone, then let the people handle the charging.
'Magic stones cost a lot, though,' Paula pointed out. 'Dungeon crawling is a dangerous business. Creating a boiler with magic once, then feeding it with wood would be better in the long run.'
Yeah. If he could justify his original idea with the steam mill, that would have been even better.
At least in his mind, it was. But once he dug deeper again—
"Why not build watermills, though?" Maou Midori asked when he visited his new tower.
Well, if you could even call it that.
It was small, cramped, and only three stories tall. Compared to the ruins in Ejtyangard, it was more like a little hut. But this was where he held the magic lessons people told him about.
In fact, Zoltan and the Silver Mage were already there when they arrived.
"The rivers are not strong enough to drive them," Konrad claimed. "Or so I'm told."
"By whom?!" the schoolboy-sized wizard grunted, grabbing a parchment. "There's no such thing as a river too small. Not if you build the mill like this."
He sketched up a waterwheel but—
Unlike what Konrad expected—a big, vertical wheel driven by a stream—it had a tiny paddle, parallel to the ground.
"You narrow the flow and give it a little drop, and you don't even need a gearing system."
"Huh?" he scowled. "Never heard of this type."
"Oh, I've seen these on my travels to the Nordic Tribes," the Silver Mage noted. "They had these dotted all over their scarce arable lands."
"Hmm. Makes me wonder why I never saw one here, though," Konrad muttered.
"Because they're small," Maou Midori pointed out, finishing the sketch. "You need a lot of 'em, and feudal lords prefer larger, more central mills that are easier to tax."
Ah. That made sense.
He didn't even think about taxing the damned thing.
As the duke of these lands, he only wanted to prevent starvation by the next year.
And as a logistician—
"Building mills like these along the creeks we already plan to use to irrigate would be ideal."
And that realisation came with quite the heartache.
It meant no steam mills and breakthrough technologies from another world.
"That said," the former Demon Lord grunted, as if he was reading his mind. "While we run on imports, we would need one big central mill in Halaima proper that can handle things."
"What's wrong with the old mill?" Zoltan asked, entering from an adjacent room.
Konrad hadn't even seen him since their duel, but thank the spirits, he looked fine.
"The one pulled by donkeys?" his master scoffed, raising an eyebrow. "That thing might have been enough when the town had twenty thousand mouths to feed. But now?"
Yeah. With the nomads' arrival, the duchy's population exploded.
He still wasn't convinced they could afford feeding them all via imports alone, but—
"Does that mean you do support the steam mill idea?" Konrad asked, his voice hopeful.
"What steam mill?" Maou Midori scowled. "You were asking about how to create a permanent turning stone. But a steam mill—a steam mill, huh? That'd need no magic to run, I guess."
"What's that?" the Silver Mage asked, perking up. "How can you build a mill out of steam?"
Right. Maou must have learned about steam engines in Tokyo, but for the rest—
"It's not made out of steam," Konrad explained. "It's driven by it."
"I still don't see how that would work, but—"
"It's our new invention," the former Demon Lord lied without batting an eye. "We, together, coined it with Konrad. Right, my Lord? And we could build a prototype right here in this town."
Hold on. Now he was up to something.
But—it's not like Konrad would be against the idea.
"It uses the energy you gain when turning water into steam," Midori-kun said, drawing a new sketch. "It is, in fact, powerful enough to drive a mill or anything, but—"
"To harvest that energy, you need strong materials, precision, and the know-how," he joined in.
And now that he thought about it—no wonder that Midori-kun seemed so enthusiastic.
Building such a revolutionary machine in the middle of Halaima would have put them on the world map. Both the benefits and the prestige would have been a huge boon for his duchy.
Well, if they could pull it off, but—
By the looks of it, Midori-kun's understanding of steam engines was more in-depth than his.
He drew a detailed boiler, a piston, and many alternative methods to make them work.
From wood via charcoal to electric and magical—he thought of everything.
"Wrought iron won't cut it," the old-young wizard scowled. "We'd have to create a homogeneous, high-hardness steel tank, but—that's great. Means nobody could copy us, either."
Yeah. Not without a level of understanding he had, for sure.
Not even with mana—
Konrad has been scowling already at how many things he got wrong before.
But now, it no longer mattered.
He had sown the seeds, and his crazy steam mill idea was about to bear fruit.