Chapter 37 - The Furnace

The long scan will be finished tomorrow.

Good. I’m kinda curious about the rest of the world

As am I. How did the world change? What stayed the same, what was destroyed? Is there remnant from our time?

So many good questions.

Today’s breakfast was light, to avoid last time’s mishap, and Dad made a bigger food packaged for me and Vi, asking my sister to feed me tiny parts of it regularly to not hit my stomach too hard, the same way I had been fed those two last days.

“...and if she shows any sign of illness, you come back here running, understood?” Mom was such a worrywart sometimes, but I could understand her.

“Not that the chances are very high, since she’s been well for two days, but you never know. Better be a bit too cautious than a bit not enough.” Added Dad, pushing Vi’s nose like a button in an affectionate gesture.

“And that’s something you can keep in mind when you hunt monsters too.”

Mom looked at Dad, eyebrows raised at his comment and; looking back at her, he shrugged.

“What? They’ll fight monsters at some point, better prepare them.”

Mom’s mouth distorted a bit, I think she was still not completely okay with this idea, but she was making some huge efforts to not crush her children under what was, after all, her own worries.

Being crushed is being crushed, be it by the outside world or by your Mom.

It was still relatively early in the morning, the Sun not over the rampart yet and, by this virtue, not many people were already outside.

Seeing this as an opportunity, Vi enjoyed the journey to the warehouse, walking slower than usual as she wasn’t scared by people looking at her. She only used her Shi slowly, taking it easy for now, as our parents had asked us, hammering it in our head for the duration of the vacation.

If you try to go too fast, you’ll only hurt yourself, and I was a prime example of it.

Today’s guard posted in front of the warehouse was a man older than Dad, a bit gruff but still polite toward Vi. She was, after all, still a Shi user under Ophelia, even if only a child in training.

We quickly entered and I saw the Mana Reactor where I had left it, over the table, completed.

I never thought this would have been so difficult.

Neither I. We’re more limited than we thought. This body has a bad impact on our soul and, with the recents overuses, this will take time to change.

Indeed. Urgh, what a pitiable state.

Yes, but it’s… a bit more human. I think. I mean between you and me, what did you prefer? A world torn by war, where you had no family and your friends died one after the other, but you could blow a continent up if you were going all out, or this life?

Ah. Ahahah, yeah. We haven’t been here for too long, but apart from some specific times we had before, it’s the most joy and happiness I’ve ever had.

See?

Yeah, but this doesn’t stop me from grumbling about my weak Magic Ability.

That’s true too.

During our internal di(mono?)logue, Vi had taken the lone chair from under the table and was now sitting, my head against her chest and my body over her thighs, supporting my side with her good arm.

I made the Incomplete Reactor, float and started the part I was the most at ease to do: Spell Engraving.

Basically, all I had done till now was working the metal to make it able to hold the necessary spells for it to work.

I started using the somewhat crystalline structure of the metal to place Mana particles and build the shape of each of the three minor spells needed, one for each part.

This was easy for me because this stage needed finesse, not raw power and, if I was sorely lacking the second, I had abundance of the first.

Slowly, steadily, I was placing particle after particle, the mana acting tame under my hand or, should I say, under my soul.

Time lost its meaning as Psaï and I dived into the strange trance on spell engraving, like machines doing their job without any superfluous thoughts about it.

From time to time Vi fed me something, milk or mashed potatoes with some vegetables, water, too, to supplement my intake.

Done. We said.

Good, the structure is poor but the spell has been engraved properly.

Yes. I’m happy about this, I wasn’t sure we would have been able to properly pull it off.

Yeah, me too. I checked my clock. 1pm.

Okay, we’ve the time to make the steel.

I cleared my mind and touched Vi’s soul.

Vi.

“Yes?” She moved me to look at me in the eyes.

Stand.

Since I started talking to her, I used all downtimes possible to feed her soul words after words and, slowly, she was getting used to it, which translated right now into a shortened waiting time between words, down to around twenty seconds now.

“Okay.” She did as asked and waited for what came next.

I moved the table and stored it on one of the biggest shelves the warehouse had, alongside the two heaps of wood that I stacked properly, and took the two heaps of metal, the cast and pig iron.

Dangerous.

“Uuuh? What is dangerous?”

Process.

“So the process is dangerous…? The process you will do now?”

One nod.

“Okay. why?”

Hot.

“It’s hot.” She looked at the metal, then at the Reactor.

“You’ve finished what you were doing?”

One nod.

“Okay.”

Stay…

…

clear…

...

Furnace.

“O-kay?” She couldn’t understand right now, as I hadn’t built the blast furnace.

Well, ‘Blast Furnace’ was a misnomer. Technically, it was two different furnaces, a blast one, and an oxygen steelmaker furnace.

I lacked the basic elements to purify the metal by creating slag, which was a shame. Without them, the produced steel would still be impure, but I just did not have the right chemicals on hand.

I was going to try and purge as much impurity as I could by hand, but this was going to be long and difficult.

I quickly created a stand for the Mana Reactor, using the parts of the Extractor made specifically for this purpose

Okay, let’s test this thing.

I switched the Reactor on and, reacting to my input, all the tiny needles started glowing, creating the Mana Void and drawing mana to the first half of the extractor, the one embedded inside the iron circle.

The Matrices around the second half of the Extractor were put in motion, drawing the mana needed from me at first. Once the Reactor in itself would have started, the Extractor would draw from it to create a semi-sustainable motion.

Finally, as the Extractor started to inject raw mana in the Reactor, the concentric circle I had built inside of it started spinning faster and faster, purifying mana in the process and reinjecting it into the extractor, closing the loop.

I took a look at Vi and, unsurprisingly, she was looking at it, mouth agape.

“Wow.” She finally said, gathering her wits. “So this is a Reactor?”

One nod.

“It’s so… beautiful.”

I smiled.

Can…

…

Teach…

…

You…

…

Later.

I promised her.

Her gaze was drawn back at me.

“What? S-seriously?”

One nod.

“...YEEEEEEEEEES!” She was so happy she started jumping in excitement.

Calm.

“Oh! Sorry.” She stopped jumping but her grin did not leave her face.

Ready?

“Ah? For what?”

Furnace.

“Oh! Of course! sorry, I forgot…”

Using the Reactor as a power source, I started channeling its purified mana into the building of the first furnace, the blast one.

The structure was simple. It was a vertical tube whose base was surrounded by a Feeder, a spell made to inject the massive amount of coke that was sitting in one corner of the warehouse into the furnace. Along the Feeder, six Oxygen Purifiers and six Turbopumps had been created using compressed air as the material.

Ah, Wanderer would kill us for doing that.

‘Never use air walls, you idiot! What if the mana is suddenly cut, the whole thing would explode’ He would say. And he was technically right but…

...Meh. it’s not like an explosion here would be a big deal. There’s not enough power put into it for the explosion to be dangerous for us.

To be fair, last time we did it the Furnace Tower was nearly fifty metres tall. That would have made a hole.

True true.

Once the spell had stabilised, I created a channel to make the molten iron flow from the blast furnace to the ladle of the oxygen steelmaker.

I scrapped around 30% of the pig and cast iron and put it cold into a storage unit of the ladle, ready to be dumped into it once the process had been started, and with the help of the Reactor, I started heating the 70% left of cast iron.

The 70% left of soft iron was going into the blast furnace all at once, to be melted and enriched with carbon, carbon that would be burned in the second stage of the refining process.

Nearly everything was in place, I just needed to create the cast for the steel and the oxygen lance used to refine the iron into steel in the ladle.

Just like with the blast furnace, I created an Oxygen Purifier and turbopump, ten of each this time, and connected them all to the oxygen lance.

Go! I said to Vi, my sister acknowledging my word with a nod, now tense on her legs.

I started feeding coke into the blast furnace, creating a big flame that entirely filled the tube when the turbopump started injecting oxygen en masse.

I dumped the pig iron into it, slowing it’s fall with magic as the furnace was doing its work, the Mana Reactor shaking from slight overuse.

At one point I created a heat shield in front of us to stop the furnace from burning us.

Fuck, I forgot how hot this was.

2100 Kelvin is just a number until you feel it in your bones.

Ahahah indeed!

As this was nearly 400 Kelvin higher than its melting point, the metal quickly melted and I made it flow into the ladle.

Just as the liquid metal was entering, I dumped the red-hot cast iron, then the mass of scrap and, turning the blast furnace off, I made the lance work at full throttle

The mass of oxygen started burning through the carbon that had melted in the pig iron, heating the whole ladle and making the hot cast iron start to melt, followed by the scrap metal.

This precise quantity had been balanced for thermal control, as the act of burning carbon was exogenic but a heat of more than 1900 Kelvin would ruin the steelmaking.

Without any lime or dolomite, I couldn’t refine it more than that, as a base was needed to make the acid in the metal react, yet the process was still worth it.

Mom, the Mana Reactor is about to explode.

Okay, cast the steel.

I started sustaining the physical structure of the Reactor, all battered by the usage, to keep it from exploding just now.

As soon as Psaï started casting, I turned the reactor off and most of the spells it sustained disappeared, like the turbopump. It wasn’t a problem, however, as the process was finished, and I just had to sustain the base of the ladle and the cast we used for the steel to finish it all.

Five long minutes later, tens of tiny steel ingots were floating, bright red, in front of us.

Vi had taken most of her clothes off and, even now, was still sweating from the heat. Of course, she had also taken the blanket surrounding me off, to avoid my death by overheating, and was actively making the two of us drink water.

What was fun was the fact that she did not seem to care about the heat at all. She had been, and was still extremely entranced, by the refining process.

Like?

“...Yes!” She snapped out of her amazement. “It’s so cool! You’re the best Ayna!”

I let Vi look at the ingots a bit more, cooling them down and, when the time was right for us to go home, I charged and tied a spell to make them slowly float on a specific, hardened place of the ground.

It was around 4:30 pm but I was tired, and I had asked Vi to go back home.

And one good day of work, one!

Yes. Tomorrow we’ll be able to finally start the main course~~