Alchemy Workshop

The North, Sea Dragon Point Peninsula, House Flint's castle.

When the first ray of morning sunlight shone through the window, "Housecat" Bran suddenly woke in his bed in the guest room. After sitting up, he rubbed his somewhat swollen-feeling head.

Then Bran got up, put on his boots, and walked over to a washstand beside his bed. After washing his face, he looked at the thin, small man with strange green eyes reflected in the wooden basin. For a moment, he actually felt a sense of unreality.

In the Dream World, "Housecat" Bran always felt as though he were touching the real world. Sometimes, this left him unable to tell whether he was in the Real World or the Dream World.

The White Holy Tree had taught Bran a method: distinguish the real world from the Real World through reflections. As long as his reflection was not covered in wooden skin, it meant he had returned to the Real World.

After briefly washing up, "Housecat" Bran left his bedroom. As he passed his father's and brother's rooms, they were just coming out as well. The three greeted one another, then headed together toward the dining room on the ground floor.

"Bran? Why haven't Father and I experienced what you described? Are we going to stay ordinary forever?"

"Big Bear" Brandon said to his younger brother Bran. He was blunt by nature. Their father, "Scar" Rickard, said nothing, but he also looked at Bran expectantly, as though hoping to learn some crucial factor from him.

The fact that "Eel" Ralf and "Housecat" Bran had gained mysterious powers from Eddard had not stayed hidden for long. The people in the castle had soon discovered it. After noticing the changes in the two, many had begun entertaining other thoughts, and "Big Bear" Brandon and "Scar" Rickard were among them.

"Lord Eddard said he would consider a new method of modifying your bodies. Although you won't be able to wield that strange power then, your physical capabilities will improve a great deal."

"Physical capabilities? What does that mean?"

Whenever that term was used to describe people, "Scar" Rickard felt something was off. Still, to avoid being left out of Eddard's circle, Rickard hoped to acquire an unusual power of his own.

"Scar" Rickard found Eddard increasingly difficult to understand. Without a word, he had produced two enormous iron objects. Yesterday, when Rickard saw Magic Energy Number One move, he felt as though he were looking at some ancient beast.

"I'm not sure how to describe it either. What Lord Eddard means is that he wants to turn people with little talent into beings like the Mountain of the Westerlands."

Gregor Clegane, nicknamed "the Mountain," was the knight of Clegane's Keep and head of House Clegane. He served House Lannister, the Wardens of the West. The royal guard Sandor Clegane, "The Hound," was his younger brother, while Gregor was renowned far and wide for his enormous size and unmatched ferocity.

"The Mountain? That damned mongrel?"

"Scar" Rickard had heard of the Mountain. Indeed, that man's wickedness was notorious throughout the Seven Kingdoms: rapist, demon, kinslayer, scourger, sadist-every word that described human evil could be applied to him.

Many wanted to kill him, but everyone knew the Mountain was the largest and strongest knight in the Seven Kingdoms. No one wanted to encounter him on the battlefield. Just imagine how terrifying the pressure and suffocation would be when a monster like an iron Giant charged at you on a warhorse.

Yet now, "Scar" Rickard felt as though he were hearing a myth from the Age of Heroes, because that nephew of his who wielded miraculous powers had actually said he intended to turn people into beings like the Mountain.

In the past, "Scar" Rickard would certainly have mocked him. But after seeing "Eel" Ralf's miraculous ability to "ignite" Dragonglass, Rickard believed his younger son's claim deep down.

Throughout the Seven Kingdoms, common folk and noble knights alike had always believed magic existed. House Targaryen, the former royal house, was a family that wielded magical power-the family that had conquered the Seven Kingdoms astride dragons, the family with silver hair and purple eyes who seemed like gods descended to earth.

Although the Faith and the Citadel had always been hostile toward magic, the common folk of the Seven Kingdoms held a considerably more favorable attitude toward it than people on medieval Blue Star. This was especially true of northerners. Because of certain legends about the First Men and the Children of the Forest, "Scar" Rickard was not afraid of the magic Eddard wielded.

On the contrary, Rickard thought it might well offer hope for House Flint's rise. Thus, after learning that his younger son had gained mysterious powers, his thoughts had begun to stir as well.

"So what is Lord Eddard doing now?"

"Big Bear" Brandon asked his younger brother with some excitement. As a strong warrior, Brandon had always hoped to defeat the famous knights of the south, just as Eddard Stark of Winterfell had, and show those southerners that the warriors of the North were the strongest of all.

Meanwhile, in the Alchemy Workshop in the outer town, Eddard was configuring and planning the cement production line. Because materials were limited, this Alchemy Workshop could only be built from wooden sheds for the time being. It currently occupied an area roughly half the size of a football field.

The Magic Energy Number One machine had been installed here at noon yesterday. A wooden shed surrounded it, with thatch and earth covering the roof to keep out water. Since the earlier lime kiln project had used up all the crude cement and gypsum Eddard had on hand, wooden structures would have to serve for now.

Eddard's lime kiln stood outside the wooden shed. Because he lacked refractory materials-or rather, had not yet had time to develop them-he could only build the kiln by increasing the thickness of its bricks and leaving gaps.

The main structure of the lime kiln consisted of three sections: the support level, the main kiln, and the insulating kiln. The support level used cylindrical iron pillars, which were also coated with a layer of Valyrian steel.

The main kiln was built from irregular rubble stone and crude cement and looked extremely rough. With no refractory materials, Eddard could only make do with this for now.

The insulating kiln was an outer structure set a sufficient distance away. It was slightly thinner than the rubble-stone layer of the main kiln, with a gap left between them to reduce heat loss.

With the construction schedule so tight, Eddard could only build it this way for now. The priority was to get the concrete workshop built first; better kilns could come later. He had seen the structural plans for this lime kiln while working at a private kiln in the past. Since he did not fully understand its construction, he could only give it a try.

With Fire Dragonglass available, Eddard did not need to build a dedicated heating layer. He only needed an iron base to hold it. On the left side of the kiln's top was the inlet for raw materials and charcoal, while the chimney stood on the right. The entire lime kiln looked like the Chinese character "其," with a dedicated discharge outlet above the heating layer at its base.

Once the temperature inside the lime kiln reached 900 to 1,000 degrees Celsius, loading could begin in advance. Eddard generally loaded coarse material, which produced mostly large lumps of lime. Any surplus could also be used to disinfect drinking water.

The subsequent grinding could be left to Magic Energy Number One. For this purpose, Eddard had also taught "Eel" Ralf how to use the Summoning Magic Array, allowing him to control the kiln temperature and reduce wear on the main kiln. Through constant practice in the Dream World, Ralf had already learned how to use this magic array that Eddard had modified.

The current Alchemy Workshop was merely a simple little workshop. Once Eddard established his own unique magical system, this place would become somewhat more magical. Perhaps later on, tasks such as steelmaking and lime burning might require only people like Ralf, who had just gained magical powers.

For now, however, Eddard, Ralf, and Bran were the only three people in the entire territory who possessed mysterious powers. Fortunately, Eddard's research into the demons' Summoning Magic Array had already begun to yield some insights.

During his research, Eddard discovered that a magic array was actually something like a magical "perpetual motion machine." If magic worked through a discharge mechanism similar to guns and cannons, then a magic array was a mechanism that reduced consumption while allowing a particular spell to operate through continuous expenditure.

Take the demons' Seven-Pointed Star Magic Array, for instance. The array itself was a continuously operating module. Seven different sinful and filthy emotional energies served as its power sources, anchored to the central heptagon in stable triangular configurations.

The seven emotional energies influenced, connected with, and reacted to one another, ultimately producing an extremely powerful energy-generating reaction within the central heptagon. The outer ring served to constrain and collect. The interaction between the seven emotional energies represented the flow of time, while the outer ring represented the constraints of space.

The Seven-Pointed Star Magic Array embodied the demons' insights into the workings of the universe and their understanding of time and space. For now, Eddard had only barely figured out how it operated. His modifications to the Summoning Magic Array merely allowed Ralf to maintain its basic spatial containment function. Without "Eel" Ralf's control, the kiln would still risk burning out over time.

Bang... clatter... crack...

After the iron gate at the lime kiln's discharge outlet was opened, lumps of quicklime of various sizes rolled out. This batch had been firing since last night. With no way to measure the temperature, Eddard had simply set the Fire Dragonglass to its low-level release mode the night before and left it giving off heat all night.

Although Eddard could not know the approximate temperature inside the lime kiln, he did know its upper limit. Iron's melting point was roughly over 1,200 degrees Celsius, while that of Valyrian steel was much higher. The most suitable temperature for burning lime was around 800 to 1,000 degrees Celsius. To extend the kiln's service life, Eddard could only choose this mode.

Because Dragonglass at full output could completely melt an iron ingot, Eddard had divided the Fire Dragonglass's output duration and sustained heat intensity into three levels.

At the low level, Fire Dragonglass could release energy continuously for about a day. If the heat was retained well, it could soften silver. At the intermediate level, it could melt silver and barely reach the point of softening iron ingots, lasting about half a day.

At the high level, with Eddard controlling it and blood and Twisted Souls added, it could turn Valyrian steel into molten metal. The duration varied with the purity of the souls involved, lasting around three hours at most, but Eddard's control was essential.

Neither "Eel" Ralf nor "Housecat" Bran could reach that level. At most, they could activate Fire Dragonglass to the intermediate level. Still, that was already enough for Eddard, since all he needed for now was the bare ability to smelt iron and manufacture crude cement.

Both processes required enormous investments of manpower and materials, and they could only improve through continuous experimentation. This world was not Blue Star; many of its rules might be different. He could only feel his way forward little by little, and his store of knowledge was truly too limited.

Still, things were already going quite well, because Eddard had found his own path. As long as he combined magic with certain knowledge from Blue Star, he would surely be able to forge his own path of magical industry.

"Hahaha, good, good! This batch turned out pretty well. It should just about be good enough to make cement!"

Eddard picked up a lump of quicklime with iron tongs and, after looking back through it with the Golden Eye, spoke with some delight, for he had already sensed how thoroughly the lump had been fired.

Although a third of this lump of quicklime had not been successfully fired, this was already very good as far as Eddard was concerned. Achieving such a result with large-scale firing far exceeded his expectations. More importantly, this lump of quicklime had come from the top layer.

"Lord Eddard, our materials are nearly ready. We can begin the grinding process today. It's just..."

Ralf spoke to Eddard. Seeing him hesitate, Eddard looked thoughtfully at the rotary kiln beside them.

This rotary kiln was necessary for Eddard's cement-processing procedure. Since there was no way to manufacture the kind of rotary furnace found on Blue Star here, Eddard had let his thinking branch out a little.

He had redesigned this new rotary furnace into something like a mixer. It was a spherical iron furnace about a meter in diameter, with a spiral-bladed shaft inside. Its center had a partially hollow structure for holding Fire Dragonglass, while gears and a slot for a connecting rod on top allowed it to connect to Magic Energy Number One.

Ralf was extremely reluctant to operate this machine Eddard had made. This was not because he was only pretending to obey Eddard, but because he felt the machinery had consumed so much iron that, if he broke it, he would no longer have any standing in House Flint.

"Don't worry. Be bold and give it a try! We'll have more things like this in the future, and they'll become easier and easier to use. You need to trust your own abilities, just as I trust you!"

After hearing Eddard's words, "Eel" Ralf immediately felt a rush of warmth welling up toward his eyes. Eddard's trust and affirmation further strengthened his resolve to remain loyal to House Flint.

"Lord Eddard, I'll do my best. Whatever you ask of me, I'll see it done!"