Inside the first-floor workshop of the West Tower, the originally spacious stone hall was now packed full of various parts.
The air was filled with the smell of boiling bone glue, the scent of tanning leather, and the scorched aroma of raw iron being forged in the furnace fire.
Irene was squatting beside a semi-finished carriage chassis. Her pink hair was messily tied into twin tails, a few strands wet with sweat stuck to her forehead, and due to excessive focus, the tip of her nose was smudged with a streak of pitch-black lubricating grease.
Meanwhile, on a specially made rattan chair in the corner of the workshop, Sophia was sitting with an elegant posture, holding a cup of freshly brewed black tea in her hand, steam rising in curling wisps amidst the rich milky white color.
This was Irene's suggestion: half black tea mixed with half fresh milk.
Although she had wanted to do this for a long time, with Irene's proposal, doing so became much more reasonable and justifiable.
Sophia took a sip expressionlessly.
Irene had already been tormenting that pile of cowhide and scrap iron for three hours.
Although watching her hammer and beat things was quite stress-relieving, could this kind of pure manual labor really solve that soul-ejecting bumpiness?
Please, my lumbar spine really doesn't want to experience the torture of going to Kree Village again.
Sophia put down the porcelain cup, her pale golden pupils gazing at Irene without a ripple.
Falling into the eyes of others, this became Her Majesty the Queen personally supervising the development of a top-secret strategic weapon.
"Damn it, the toughness of the raw iron is still not enough!"
Irene cursed, throwing a snapped iron strip into the scrap pile; these would all be recycled later.
She was attempting to manufacture a type of laminated leaf spring.
Using the raw iron ingots exchanged from Leighton, she repeatedly forged them into reeds of uniform thickness, then stacked them together, attempting to absorb impact force through the deformation of the metal.
However, the Kingdom of Mason's smelting technology was still too backward.
Although the purity of those iron ingots was passable, impurities caused them to easily suffer metal fatigue under intense pressure. That crisp crack just now was already the twelfth spring leaf Irene had broken.
"Your Majesty, these irons are too stubborn; they don't understand what flexibility is."
Irene turned her head, looking at Sophia somewhat aggrievedly, her mind frantically thinking if there were any other methods.
Sophia did not speak, only staring quietly at that pile of cured leather exchanged from Leighton.
"Since iron won't work, why not try adding some leather pads?" Sophia said.
Didn't those old-fashioned sofas in my past life rely on springs and leather for support?
Irene was very smart most of the time, but occasionally she would get stuck in a dead end.
Since she couldn't open her mouth to give direct technical guidance, Sophia simply used that slender, fair finger to casually point at the roll of thick cured leather nearby, her voice so cold it held not a single trace of fluctuation:
"Materials are dead, people are alive."
This standard Tyrant-style riddle instantly triggered a nuclear explosion in Irene's brain.
Your Majesty means... composite materials?!
That's right! Why didn't I think of that!
Irene's eyes instantly brightened astonishingly.
She was really an idiot.
To think she hadn't even thought of such a simple thing; fortunately, the Tyrant was smarter.
Irene pounced on that pile of leather like a madwoman.
She began to use a sharp blade to cut those thickest, toughest cured cowhides into uniform long strips.
This time, she no longer relied solely on raw iron.
She sandwiched the raw iron reed between two layers of cured leather, and even brushed a layer of highly elastic, high-strength bone glue boiled from animal fascia in the middle.
Then, she used those treated dried fascia to wrap the leather and iron strips tightly together, like bandaging a wound.
With this structure, when subjected to impact, the leather would first absorb part of the pressure, the fascia would provide rebound force, while the raw iron strip served as the core support.
Irene didn't weld this shock-absorbing block directly to the axle. Instead, she cleverly borrowed from a certain basket principle, using leather and fascia to create a leather belt suspension chassis.
Sophia just drank her milk tea like that, watching Irene drill in and out from under the chassis, sometimes wielding an iron hammer, sometimes using a specially made awl to stitch leather.
This clinking and clanking sound was surprisingly reassuring.
Sophia put down the tea cup that was already visible at the bottom, feeling a wave of drowsiness attack her.
In the dullness of waiting, she almost fell asleep sitting up because of this somewhat sleep-inducing sound.
"It's done! Your Majesty!
"Look! It's really done!"
Irene's extremely penetrating scream startled Sophia awake, but her powerful ability to keep a straight face allowed her to maintain that frosty depth the moment she opened her eyes.
Inside the laboratory, that simple carriage cabin equipped with the Irene-style composite shock-absorbing system was sitting steadily on the supports.
"Your Majesty, please, you must try it personally!"
Irene's face was flushed red, her palms sweating with anticipation.
Supported by Willow, Sophia slowly boarded the carriage.
Willow and several burly soldiers stood on both sides of the carriage.
Chancellor Valery also rushed over upon hearing the news. He was standing to the side, looking at this oddly structured carriage with some worry.
Miss Irene really is... multi-talented.
"Ready—shake!"
Irene ordered.
The soldiers began to shake the carriage body with force.
If it were a carriage of the past, Sophia would have already been shaken dizzy like a potato in a wooden bucket by now.
But at this moment, Sophia felt an unprecedented strangeness.
The carriage was indeed shaking, but that hard collision that originally poked straight at the spine had disappeared.
Replacing it was a gentle, rhythmic undulation.
The toughness of the leather and the tension of the fascia converted all the bumps into a swaying motion like boating on a calm lake.
Oh!
Sophia sat on the soft cushion inside the carriage; this was newly paved by Irene using wool and scrap leather, very soft.
What is this?
Is this the air suspension of a high-end sedan?
Although it's still lacking a bit, this simply evolved directly from a rickety cart to a luxury sedan chair!
That comfort, like walking on clouds, made Sophia unable to resist closing her eyes, enjoying this hard-won technological result.
"Your Majesty, she closed her eyes."
Victor lowered his voice, his tone filled with shock.
"Under such violent simulated shaking, Your Majesty is actually so stable, even showing a kind of... enjoyment?"
"That is not enjoyment."
Willow added with a solemn expression from the side.
"That is the highest recognition of Miss Irene's masterpiece.
"Look at Her Majesty's hand; she isn't even holding the handrail!
"This means that this alchemy system named 'shock absorption' has completely smoothed out the obstacles of terrain to the exercise of Royal Power!"
In their interpretation, this carriage was no longer a means of transport, but a divine weapon with which Sophia could kill people steadily on any rugged terrain at any time.
Irene looked at Sophia's quiet side profile, her heart filled with immense happiness.
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