Steel and Mana

Chapter 11 – Starting Out (1)

Waking up on her was surprisingly lovely. I mean, she smelled good, and even though she was flat as a washboard, her aura was… different. I can't really put it into words, but I felt refreshed and fired up! Unlike her.

"You are heavy." She groaned, looking wronged, watching me sit up and stretch, wiping my mouth. "And drool like a dog."

"Somebody forgot to push me off!" I added snarkily, but she simply snorted, sitting up and turning away, changing clothes. "No crying to look away?"

"What? You said it… you already saw everything!" She shot back, looking over her shoulder, her face still turning red.

"Ahaha~ True!"

When I emerged from the tent, I realized Oleg didn't wake us up, and instead, he remained up all night, guarding us. No matter… he had time to nap as I spent the day climbing down the mine, bringing Sasha along as I inspected the rocks and the walls of the open pit mine.

"I don't see anything but stone… what is so interesting about it?" She asked, standing next to me while I took notes and penned drawings, marking them in my notebook.

"Think of it like this!" I explained patiently, "Look at this as a cross-section of the earth and the foot of the mountain! Have you ever seen a birthday cake?"

"Y-yes…" She nodded, licking her lips unconsciously.

"Same thing! The people here cut it up; now we can see the different layers! Like on a slice of a cake! See these?"

"Yeah. Rocks."

"No! Look closer!" I moaned, tapping directly at the differently colored vein visible inside of it.

"Yep. Still rocks."

"The ones that are rattling in your empty head!"

"Wha-?!" She flared up, looking hurt and starting to pout, stomping in place, "You…. YOU!" But no retort came from her, probably because she was still wary of our difference in social standings.

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"Say it clearly; I would not be mad hearing it!" I shrugged, giving her time to gather the courage.

"You… poopyhead!"

"Pft!" I chortled, not expecting a kinder garden-level insult… but it was cute. "Look, little one!"

"Your ding-dong is what little! I am as tall as you!"

"I'm still growing for the next five years! But if you want, I can show you my ding-dong, and you can measure it with your hand!"

"Eek?!"

"Don't flinch! If you can't handle it, don't bring it up!" I added with a grin before waving her to come closer, but instead of my spear, I showed her the vein of iron ore before us. "See this? This is not rock. This is iron. This shows that there is a vein here that can be mined! We need only the manpower to start digging, to be honest… and I could use this mine for many other things!"

"Like? Don't you just need stone for your city?"

"Haaah… look." I shrugged, trying to say it as simply as possible. "I will go step by step. I need stone, yes. We will start cutting here and expand on the mine. While getting the stone blocks I need, we will also create enough raw material to create cement… and I was thinking of making a blast furnace. Nothing fancy, just a smaller one, to make iron and proper tools for ourselves. Then, when we are getting work done, build more and try my hand at steel forging."

"We could do… all that?"

"Yeah. It won't be easy, and at first, it will need a lot of manpower. I can't do shit until we have a proper flow of iron at our hands! I can't order tools from elsewhere; that would raise suspicion in the Empire… so I will have to procure them myself! I will need to train blacksmiths out of some talented people who I can trust. Anyway! When we get the tools, we will be able to equip more workers, get more people to operate at a higher level, and snowball it from there. We can easily set up pulleys around here, so getting the stuff up won't be a problem!"

"What is a pulley?"

"You'll see! It will make things easy! What I wanted I already got from here… a place where we open up our first mine and start extracting the building blocks of my, I mean, our future!" I chuckled, returning to the surface, looking around, now watching the mountains and their snowy tops. "Next is water!"

"Don't tell me you will conjure a river out of nowhere?" She joked, but I just rubbed my chin.

"No… not really. I was observing the mountains. In winter, the snowcaps are spaced much lower than they are now. If you watch it, they are slowly coming down as we speak as winter gets closer and closer. Where do they go when they melt?"

"Um… I don't know. Into the air? Like how puddles disappear?"

"Partially, yes, but not really." I hummed, tilting my head. "When they melt, they don't evaporate fully like that! They have to flow down… and where that is, you ask? Underground!" I pointed below our feet. "I bet there is a subterranean river here!"

"A what river? The only river I know is a bit further away!"

"Which probably originates from somewhere here, from the one that flows underground! So, I will have to trek up the mountains soon enough, find a source we can use, and start building an aqueduct."

"Um…"

"I will explain everything!" I patted her head gently, "Lucky for us, it would be on a slope, so I would not need to set up siphons and whatnot to battle uphill inclines… I can tunnel the water straight into castellums…"

"Caste… what?"

"Distribution tanks. From then on, I can set up secondary and tertiary ones; from there, pressure takes over gravity's role and distributes water to wherever I want it! This is going to be my first and main priority!"

"Why?" She asked, and even if I saw she didn't understand much of it, she was still curious.

"When building my city, I will need to flatten the land. When doing the groundwork, I intend to lay down the pipings. Which means many things! First, I will have to integrate a sewer system… Connect it to that said river. Then, we will get fresh water from the source, which will not just make it so that every building in my city will have drinking water at the ready, whenever we want, but also that it will wash the waste away! I counted the number of wells in the city! We have ample groundwater here, which gets renewed constantly… Whatever is under our feet is plenty!"

"I don't get it…"

"You will, in time! Or when we start executing it! It sounds more complex than it is in reality! What I am doing here is ancient… khm, I mean, bare bones! Something that can be done by sheer hard work and by hand! It is a start… If I can, I will upgrade it later on, like… adding some kind of magical filter to it so we can recycle it without wasting it… Oh well, I will focus on what I can do for now! If I am creating Rome here, I must heed the saying… Rome wasn't built in a day!"

"What is Rome? Is it something to do with Prometheus?"

"Um… yes?" I answered, jolting back to reality, lying a little. It was best to include the city in myth as… this world had no Rome of its own.

…
….
……

Winter was coming in faster than usual this year. Luckily, when we returned to the castle, I located what I wanted. Taking a trip to the mountains and climbing up high, I recorded multiple cave entrances that were probably part of an interconnected system. I say probably because Oleg was adamant about not letting me in and investigating deeper. It was the same with Sasha, who was highly superstitious, saying there had to be monsters living in the dark. If they did, then why was my family guarding the only corridor into the valley? The beasts could have gone through the holes any time then!

Anyway… The clues on the walls were clear; they were eroded by water. The snow and ice, when melting, had to flow downwards, and I had the proof I needed that it seeped into the mountain and was going under our feet! It was the perfect filtering process! This was good and bad news at the same time. On the flip side, we could start digging, finding a source, and building my upcoming city's water system. But this also meant when I open up mines, I must be extra careful of flooding. This was not only a boon but also a hazard.

"Mhm! I will deal with this in due time!" I stretched, leaning back in my chair after putting down my quill.

"Mh?" Sasha moaned, waking up in her chair, sitting before the fire, balled up in multiple blankets, looking like a burrito. Ah… I really would eat one now… haaah… "Did something happen?" She grumbled, trying to open her eyes with difficulty.

"Nope, I just finished my planning!" I laughed, standing up and opening the door to my balcony.

"Close it! It's cooooold!" She cried again, wiggling around like a cocooned animal, only her head being visible.

"I know! But I need some fresh air!" I said, standing there, letting the night's cold air blow past me. I don't know what the time was, but it was probably around midnight, and the sky was covered with dark, grey clouds. Snow was falling heavily, and it was… beautiful. "How did you survive the winters?" After a few minutes, I asked, closing the door and walking to the fire, sitting on the adjacent armchair.

"It was hard… I don't want to talk about it! Now it is much better…" She murmured, avoiding my eyes, watching the fire instead.

"I see. Well, I'm glad you have let up a little! See? I am not that bad, and I was true to my words! The rest of your people are coming along nicely! Come spring, we will start working!"

"On the city?" She asked, turning towards me, happy that I didn't press on and try to make her relieve painful memories.

"Yep! I have chosen the spot! Starting tomorrow, I will spread a notice through the region of hiring able bodies! I will also take some of Father's men and start cutting down the forest, flattening the land! We will use the wood and everything else we dig up; nothing will go to waste!"

"I don't know how many people will show up… I read your draft! Paying with the opportunity of a better life? That sounds… extremely vague!"

"I know. But want the first batch of people who will come to be part of the building process! I want them to be proud of what we will build and look at it as their own! You know… I believe if people think they made it by their own hands, they will protect it to their last breath! This city will be for those who are living in it! I want to create a unity that will center around the people! The individual! You will own your own home, your own property! Something that nobody can take away from you!"

"We will?" She asked, still a bit foreign to the idea.

"Yes. Don't be mistaken! This castle is not mine. Not my family's! The same is true for the people in our towns! We own nothing… it is the Empire's! We are just being allowed to live here… If they ever want to come down on us? Move us? Replace us? They can do it! Not in my city!"

"Owning your own home… where it can be warm when you want it…" She murmured, imagining it, and I saw a happy light dance in her eyes.

"Hehe… of course we will need rules and laws! So, when the construction starts, I will start working on that! So by the time it is finished, we will have rules set down. But that is for me to worry about!"

"What about the tools? Did you solve it?"

"Yes and no." I shrugged. "I will select a few people and start opening up the mine that the church used. For now, I have to work with the tools we have at hand. I will be mostly present there, helping them get started. The others can cut down the forest and flatten the earth by themselves. That should be easy."

"Have you ever thought about resting?"

"I will rest when I'm dead!" I grinned, leaning back my head and watching the ceiling. To be honest… I was way too fired up, and I couldn't wait more for spring to come.