Eastern part of the island, the newly built testing ground.
Four Banshees gathered around the Steam Engine and, working together, placed it onto the fixed frame in the room.
Looking at the twenty-four hands gripping the Steam Engine, Theus felt an overwhelming sense of absurdity.
This Steam Engine was a newly assembled Type II Engine, put together entirely by the trainees. Theus had not intervened at all.
It weighed... at least three tons.
Three tons, carried over just like that...
Theus had originally designed some equipment for transporting it, but then inspiration struck, and he decided to let the Banshees try it themselves.
The result was surprisingly good. Four Banshees had no problem carrying the three-ton machine. The only issue was that they were not very good at walking backward—their snake tails tended to get tangled—so for a large portion of the journey, it had actually been carried by only three Banshees.
That kind of carrying capacity and strength...
Theus suddenly felt that these Banshees might not be much weaker than Steam Engines once they entered a factory. They even had six hands each.
One person could do the work of six.
He saw the surplus value. He really wanted to exploit them.
"How was it? Heavy?"
"It was alright. Mainly, it was hard to grip. This thing is too slippery. It'd be better with a few more hands," Nini said indifferently.
Theus: ...
After the Banshees set down the Steam Engine, the trainees began assembling and calibrating it. This was Theus's first attempt at applying steam power in a factory.
It could have been used long ago, but the trainees' progress had still been too slow. After all, many of them had only recently graduated from literacy classes and had far too much to catch up on.
Yet he