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Join the ServerKlein was a man of action, especially when it came to the mentally and physically gratifying activity of putting someone in their place.
The laboratory on the ground floor of the mage tower was cleared out within ten minutes, leaving only a massive alchemy bench.
To ensure nothing went wrong, Samuel had packed up and sent over the Royal Alchemy Workshop’s prized treasure overnight—Chief Craftsman Master Grey.
Grey was a quintessential tech geek, with white hair, deep bags under his eyes, and ten fingers covered in old calluses and marks from acid corrosion.
As a Fifth-Circle Mage, he hadn’t spent much time in his life studying fireballs, instead focusing on how to forge mithril thinner than a strand of hair.
When he first entered, the old man’s reluctance was written all over his face.
In his eyes, these Archmages who dealt in theory were the epitome of being all talk and no action.
They were invincible when it came to drawing blueprints, but if you actually asked them to use a file, they probably couldn’t even file a right angle.
“Master Klein,” Grey set his heavy toolbox on the ground with a thud.
“Let’s get the ugly business out of the way first. Precision machining is slow and meticulous work. If you want to build something delicate in three days, you’ll have to bring over the high-pressure magitech press from the alchemy workshop.”
Klein was in the middle of rolling up his sleeves. Hearing this, he just gave him a faint glance.
“A press won’t be necessary.”
He pointed to a materials crate in the corner. “I need a copper wire.”
“Four-nines purity, 0.5 millimeters in diameter, insulated surface, two hundred meters long.”
Grey chuckled at the request; the purification alone would take half a day of furnace time. He turned to start the laboratory’s built-in furnace.
“Alright, I’ll preheat the furnace then. I’ll need to prepare the acid wash solution as well.”
“Too slow.”
Klein raised his right hand.
The lid of the materials crate popped open on its own, and a fist-sized piece of natural chalcopyrite flew into his palm.
Before Grey could even begin to explain the tedious steps of purification, he saw a blue light flash in Klein’s eyes.
There were no incantations, no magic arrays appeared.
But the hard piece of ore suddenly seemed to be kneaded by a huge, invisible hand. The grayish-black rock impurities disintegrated into powder in an instant, then directly vaporized and disappeared.
In the blink of an eye, a ball of crimson liquid metal levitated in mid-air, its surface tension holding it in a perfect sphere, as pure as a ruby teardrop.
The tongs in Grey’s hand clattered to the floor, landing on his foot, but he felt nothing.
‘What in the world was that?’
‘Directly stripping impurities at the molecular level? Is this even alchemy? This has to be divine magic!’
Before the old man could close his jaw, Klein’s fingers moved slightly.
The ball of molten copper instantly elongated, slithering through the air like a living red snake. In just two seconds, a perfectly uniform copper wire was coiled in mid-air.
Immediately after, dust particles in the air were repelled, and a transparent resinous material liquefied, coated, and solidified at Klein’s will, dressing the copper wire in an insulating coat thinner than a cicada’s wing.
“Master Grey,” Klein’s voice pulled him back to reality.
“The calipers.”
“Ah? Oh! Coming!”
Grey fumbled to pick up the vernier calipers and measured the wire with trembling hands.
0.50 millimeters.
Not a fraction more, not a hair less.
The old craftsman silently kicked his toolbox into a corner.
He felt like his sixty-year career as a craftsman was a complete joke.
This wasn’t a request for an assistant; it was clearly a summons for an audience.
Lia sat on a high stool nearby, holding a cup of hot tea, completely unfazed by such scenes. She flipped through the blueprint in her hand and began to act as the ruthless client.
“The stator core needs to be made of laminated silicon steel sheets, not a solid block of iron. The eddy current losses will burn through the insulation.”
“The rotor conductors should be pure aluminum, cast directly into the slots. The shorting rings at both ends must be welded shut.”
“The air gap… that is, the space between the stator and the rotor, I want it controlled to within 0.2 millimeters.”
Each of Lia’s requests made Master Grey’s eyelid twitch. These were all details that were ridiculously difficult to achieve with conventional craftsmanship.
But for Klein, these were not problems at all.
For the next two days, the ground floor of the mage tower became Klein’s personal workshop.
The Eighth-Circle Archmage’s terrifying control over matter was on full display.
He didn’t need any molds; the shape of the components was directly determined by his will. He didn’t need any measuring tools; his spatial perception was the most precise ruler in the world.
Under Lia’s endless stream of demanding requests, a device that was completely out of step with this era was rapidly taking shape.
Three days later, when the last screw was tightened by telekinesis, an induction motor, looking like a work of art from the future, sat quietly on the alchemy bench.
It was quiet, cold, yet exuded a heart-pounding industrial beauty.
“It’s done.”
Klein withdrew his hand, his breathing rate not even slightly disturbed.
Lia leaned over to take a look. She reached out a finger and gently nudged the rotor.
There was no friction sound; the rotor spun smoothly for a full minute before slowly coming to a stop.
“Perfect dynamic balance,” Lia’s eyes shone. “Compared to this, Konrad’s big, black-smoke-belching machine is like a primitive man’s stone axe.”
“A stone axe has its uses, like dropping it on one’s foot,” Klein made a cold joke, then turned to look at the petrified old man in the corner.
“Master Grey.”
“Sir! At your command, Master!” Grey shot to his feet, his posture as ramrod straight as a new recruit’s.
“I’m not skilled in carpentry,” Klein pointed to the motor. “Please make a sturdy base for it, and install a set of reduction gears and a pulley.”
“No problem! Leave it to me!” Grey felt as if he had been granted a great amnesty. He finally had something to do. Even though it was just making a base, he swore to carve it out of redbud wood with ornate patterns.
“Oh, right,” Lia added. “The load-bearing capacity of the pulley system needs to be a bit high.”
Grey, while taking out his plane, asked casually, “How high is ‘a bit high’? How strong can this thing be? Can it pull a bucket of water?”
Klein didn’t answer directly.
He walked to the window and looked at the thick black smoke rising from the envoy’s residence in the distance. That was Konrad testing his giant generator.
“I’m not sure if it can pull a bucket of water.”
Klein turned around, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather.
“But I plan to use it to lift that three-ton Royal Treasury door for them to see.”
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