Promising Progress

"This thing is used like this..."

"No, you can't use it like that, or the machine will break."

Kahn, somewhat resigned, explained the simple lathe on the ground to a worker; his task was to teach the worker how to use it.

By this time, there were no longer just one of these simple machine tools. Fran spent a little over an hour replicating three for teaching purposes, though the accuracy would be slightly lower.

After Fran built the first of these simple lathes, she manufactured them at an increasingly faster pace.

As she became more and more skilled at hand-crafting a large number of machines these days, her hand movements and Mental Power improved by more than one level.

Even in the process of manufacturing these machines, she gained a significant increase in her proficiency in Foundry Studies.

[You have built a complex machine. Foundry Studies proficiency +300]

When Fran first saw this prompt, she didn't pay much attention to it because the proficiency requirement of 100,000 was too high, and she had no intention of slowly increasing her proficiency in Foundry Studies.

However, only now did Fran realize that her Foundry Studies proficiency had reached over 60,000. If she continued at her current pace, she might be able to reach another Peak Level Arts in half a month.

Fran wasn't overly excited about this, because for her at this point, a Peak Level Arts improvement was really too little, and she just needed to continue creating them slowly.

Returning to Kahn's perspective, as an apprentice of the Forge School, Kahn was naturally very familiar with parts processing.

So after getting to know this new gadget, he quickly mastered it in just half a day and was able to use it to manufacture many complex parts.

Kahn himself greatly admired Fran for developing such a tool, even though in many cases, this tool was not as efficient as their long-trained apprentices.

But for those mediocre Magic Artisan, this thing is enough to kill them.

Moreover, this thing doesn't consume his precious Mental Power at all, so he doesn't have to calculate his remaining Mental Power every day to process the parts.

The lathe only needed to start the Steam Engine next to it to provide power, which made him realize once again the capabilities of the Steam Engine; he had no idea it could be used in this way.

Back in the City of Apprentices, Kahn had only considered this thing as a structure for activating spells, never imagining that after its complex design, it could produce such powerful uses.

"This is the correct way to use Steam Engine; it can replace Mental Power..."

However, this was also because their time in the City of Apprentices was too short; they only had time to make extensive innovations in firearms.

They have developed a Repeating Machine Gun equipped with an automatic reloading mechanism, capable of firing one hundred rounds per minute.

However, such a weapon is extremely costly for these apprentices; each time they use the [Steam Jet], they need to expend a certain amount of Mental Power.

Therefore, in the end, they had to operate the machine gun together as a group of three, and they also made a miniaturization of the machine gun. With their joint efforts, they achieved a good result of being in the top ten.

The other apprentices, however, did not focus their energy on improving firepower like they did. Some increased the caliber of their bullets and enhanced the effects of their spells, making a single shot enough to penetrate two layers of Shield Spell.

However, you can only use a few shots before your Mental Power is completely depleted, so you'll unfortunately be eliminated in the end.

Others copied their ideas, but unlike them, the other side had the Mental Power of three people as a backup energy source, and also prepared many potions to restore Mental Power and temporary spell scrolls.

So in the end, only the three of them made it into the top ten, passing one of the tests for mage advancement.

Kahn snapped out of his daze and looked at the workers in front of him who couldn't remember anything no matter how he was taught. He felt like crying.

After their first day of exploring the lathe, Fran was about to give these apprentices their real tasks.

That was to teach the workers how to use the lathe. When they heard this task, they were completely stunned.

After all, it was only then that they suddenly realized that this thing could be driven without any Mental Power, and the parts it produced did not require any magical knowledge.

It was only then that Kahn truly understood Fran's purpose in gathering so many workers, and why she had deliberately chosen to live in such a chaotic place.

He had originally thought that the place where a First Order Mage lived would at least be like the small villas of the nobles in the city.

But it was clear that Fran had shattered his stereotypes; the other woman really did live in that small room filled with machinery and never slept.

Fran gathered these workers and personally took charge, building a large number of huge and efficient machines so that these ordinary people could also contribute their help.

It was the lathe incident that made Kahn realize just how much help these ordinary people could provide.

If ordinary people could also use machines and create parts according to their own ideas, a great deal of time could be saved.

Now, Kahn truly understood Fran... What exactly made Lai, as Formal Mage, stronger than them? Why was she able to become Formal Mage, and why was she able to develop those two spells?

This wasn't the first time Kahn had come to understand the intricacies of magic, but it was definitely the most shocking one for him.

He had never imagined that magic could be improved in this way...

But at this moment, Kahn's face was full of distress, because the worker in front of him, although he had carefully selected him, seemed to be the kind of person who was relatively clever.

Even so, he still couldn't learn the basic operations. Let alone making a simple button, he didn't even know how to make the opponent attack.

After one teaching process, you might forget half of it, and if you go through it again, the forgotten parts will be refreshed...

Kahn was considering quitting, but Fran seemed to have considered this, knowing that training these workers would be too difficult, and that the apprentices might just give up.

Therefore, Fran specifically set a rule that a worker must be taught within five days, and the worker must be able to produce a certain amount of products.

If the apprentices fail to teach the worker, then the worker's output will be attributed to the apprentices.

After that, a worker had to be trained every five days. If a worker couldn't be trained, the production quota would be passed on to the apprentice.

Therefore, if an apprentice doesn't teach diligently, their share of the production will eventually increase until they can't produce anything at all.

Fran set a low quota for each worker; if the apprentice could truly teach them, they could complete the task no matter how low their work efficiency was.

If an apprentice fails to meet their quota, Fran assumes that the apprentice is aware of the consequences.

With the help of these apprentices and Elan, Fran was almost freed from spending half a day on some very tedious things.

The entire Base Camp is currently unable to produce any decent finished products; it's all parts and semi-finished products.

This was all part of Fran's groundwork for future production, so instead of creating a single production line, she broke down the various components and gradually transformed them into finished products.

"The progress across the entire territory is almost complete; it seems we can begin to achieve my initial goals."

Fran's initial short-term goal for this Base Camp was to establish a musket production line. The current progress is a little faster than Fran had anticipated, but not by much.

However, this was not bad. After the apprentices began teaching the workers how to use the lathes, the most difficult step of building the entire Base Camp from scratch was completed.

Although the Base Camp still faces various problems, such as a lack of proper disposal sites for industrial waste and warehouses that are always full, requiring the construction of one additional warehouse after another.

However, Fran was already certain that the entire Base Camp had reached the most basic level of industrialization and could begin preparing for the initial goal—to build a production line for muskets.

Fran did this to strengthen the Base Camp's fighting power. Afterwards Fran would need a force that could help her conquer the entire Antir, and muskets were obviously a very convenient method.

Once armed with a musket, even a Knight Attendant would be defeated under the continuous attack of five muskets.

After all, Profession at this Order are not yet capable of withstanding firearms, even relatively primitive ones.

Now that the production line for muskets is on the agenda, another matter needs to be addressed simultaneously: the propellant issue.

The muskets currently in service with the believers are basically the same in construction as those from Fran's previous life, only the firing principle is different. Here, Fran uses a method similar to Magic Scroll technology to fire bullets.

The advantage is that these weapons are basically in Fran's own hands; without her, these guns are practically useless.

However, there is also a downside: no matter how fast she is, or how advanced her Foundry Studies are, she can't make many 'propellants' in a day.

Therefore, the methods Fran in her previous life, such as gunpowder, must be put on the agenda.

Fran looked down on black powder and planned to directly produce smokeless powder; she also had the ability and time to set up a production line.

"The acid production problem is easy to solve. All the Ore processing has byproducts, and we can collect them by slightly adjusting the production line."

However, Fran faced a more difficult situation regarding cotton, another crucial ingredient in the production of smokeless gunpowder.

She had not seen this plant in the Antir Region or in the Alliance environment, but she had seen it in the Alliance's records.

Based on the above description, this plant is located approximately 500 kilometers outside the Alliance, and there are no records of its transplantation.

Seeing this distance gave Fran a headache. A round trip would take at least half a month. Traveling in another world was difficult, not to mention having to be careful not to get lost at any time.

However, Fran has another solution: the Spirit Realm.