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Join the ServerThe day after the symposium, the best-selling item in the Royal Capital was not the latest popular potion, nor was it an enchanted piece of jewelry.
It was the recording crystal of that technical symposium.
The scene of Lia lifting a five-hundred-pound iron ingot with a palm-sized electric motor was watched repeatedly by countless people.
The price of the crystal tripled in a single day.
Konrad’s steel behemoth represented the old industrial era—massive, yet inefficient.
Lia’s electric motor, on the other hand, heralded a brand new era—quiet, exquisite, and filled with infinite possibilities.
Inside the royal palace, King Augustus stayed up all night.
He watched the recording over and over again, the fire in his eyes burning brighter than ever before.
He saw a future free from the constraints of traditional manpower and animal labor.
The next morning, a royal decree shot out from the palace, shaking the entire court bureaucracy.
The “Royal Department of Electrical Applications” was officially established.
This was a brand new department, independent of the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Magic Association, reporting directly to the king himself.
And the chief consultants personally appointed by the king were…
Lia Farrien.
And Klein.
This decree was tantamount to announcing the arrival of a new era to the entire kingdom, as well as the leaders of this new era.
Klein’s mage tower became the liveliest place in the Royal Capital overnight.
Countless nobles and wealthy merchants, riding in magnificent carriages, blocked the roads outside the mage tower.
They waved blank checks, bringing with them wealth that could buy entire provinces.
They had only one goal.
To buy out the exclusive application rights for the electric motor in a certain field.
The textile industry giants hoped to use electric motors to drive their looms.
Mining lords fantasized about using electrically driven winches to pull ore from mines thousands of meters deep.
Even the owner of the largest theater in the Royal Capital came, wanting to use electric motors to create more spectacular and complex stage effects.
Adèle’s father, an earl in charge of a vast commercial empire, also sent his butler.
The butler brought a personal letter from the earl, in which he humbly requested that Lia, for Adèle’s sake, grant their family the exclusive production rights.
The reception room of the mage tower was piled high with all sorts of valuable gifts.
Klein had no interest in these worldly things and simply used magic to pile them in a corner, preparing to dispose of them as trash later.
Lia looked at the endless list of visitors, feeling a bit of a headache.
She knew very well that once she licensed the technology to these representatives of the old powers, they would immediately build high patent walls.
The benefits of electricity would only become a tool for a few to amass wealth, and would not benefit the whole of society.
That was not the future she wanted to see.
“It seems your little invention is more popular than a Ninth-Circle forbidden spell,” Klein said as he skillfully cut a cherry pie that Adèle had someone deliver.
“It’s our invention,” Lia corrected, spearing a piece of pie with her fork and popping it into her mouth.
“So how do you plan to deal with these enthusiastic flies?” Klein sat across from her and asked.
Lia swallowed the dessert in her mouth and picked up a blank sheet of parchment.
“Refuse all cooperation,” she said flatly.
Klein raised an eyebrow, seemingly unsurprised.
“And then? Wait for them to surround your mage tower and proclaim you a criminal hindering the kingdom’s development?”
“No,” Lia’s pen moved quickly across the parchment, lines of formulas and diagrams beginning to appear. “I’m going to make the cake bigger, so big that no single one of them can eat it all.”
What she was writing was a paper titled The Fundamentals of the Alternating Current System.
It detailed a complete technical system, from power generation, transformation, and transmission to electricity consumption.
It included the design principles of three-phase AC generators, the relationship between the turns ratio of transformer coils and voltage, and the advantages of long-distance high-voltage transmission.
This was equivalent to making the entire foundation of the electrical age public without reservation.
Klein looked at the familiar transformer structure on the diagram, silent for a moment.
“You’re trying to make all the alchemy workshops in the kingdom work for you,” he pointed out Lia’s intention.
Once the technology was public, any workshop with sufficient strength could try to manufacture generators and motors.
Market competition would quickly drive down the price of electrical appliances, turning them from luxury items for the nobility into tools that even commoners could afford.
And Lia, as the pioneer of all this, would forever stand at the pinnacle of the technology.
She didn’t need to sell any patents; she only needed to continuously introduce new, more advanced applications to guide the direction of the entire era.
“Aren’t you afraid that after they learn it, they’ll turn around and use it against you?” Klein asked.
“They can imitate, but they cannot surpass,” Lia’s eyes shone with confidence. “Because they don’t know what kind of era lies at the end of electricity’s road.”
Klein looked at her and suddenly smiled.
He reached out, wiped away a speck of cream from the corner of Lia’s mouth, and then put it in his own.
“Alright then. Let the storm rage even more fiercely.”
That afternoon, a paper jointly signed by Lia and Klein was distributed through the channels of the Magic Association to all qualified mages and alchemy workshops in the kingdom.
When King Augustus saw this copy of The Fundamentals of the Alternating Current System in the palace, he was first shocked, then fell into a long period of contemplation.
He had originally thought that by monopolizing this technology, he could firmly hold the economic lifeline of the kingdom in the hands of the royal family.
But Lia’s choice showed him another, grander path.
Rather than a royal monopoly, it would be better for the royal family to lead and let the entire kingdom participate in this revolution.
The royal family could control the upstream resources and standards, making everyone play the game according to the rules set by the royalty.
This would bring the royal family more benefits and a more consolidated rule than a simple monopoly.
“Send my command!” King Augustus’s voice rang out once more. “Fully support the promotion of The Fundamentals of the Alternating Current System! Any noble who dares to privately set up technical barriers will be tried for treason!”
A top-down electrical revolution that swept the entire kingdom had officially begun.
***
However, the new technology did not bring only cheers and praises.
When the first batch of “electrically driven cargo platforms” produced by the Royal Alchemy Workshop appeared at the Royal Capital’s docks, panic began to spread.
These simple platforms, driven by electric motors, required only one operator to easily lift cargo that used to require more than a dozen porters, and even eliminated the need to hire mages for help.
The largest carriage guild in the Royal Capital, “The Galloping Road,” lost more than half of its freight orders within a week.
The carriages that once supported thousands of families now sat quietly in their stables, untouched.
At the docks, the porters who relied on their strength for a living watched blankly as the tireless electric motors worked, feeling an unprecedented crisis of unemployment.
Fear and anger spread like a plague through the lower echelons of the Royal Capital’s society.
“It’s that woman! She took our jobs!”
“She used her evil theories to create man-eating monsters!”
It’s unknown when, but similar remarks began to circulate in taverns, on street corners, and in every place where the unemployed gathered.
The way people referred to Lia quietly changed from “the genius Professor Lia” to “the witch who brought unemployment.”
They didn’t understand alternating current, nor did they understand rotating magnetic fields.
They only knew that their rice bowls had been smashed by something called “electricity.”
And the main culprit who had smashed it all was the young woman who was being treated as an honored guest by the king.
In an inconspicuous marquis’s residence on Silvermoon Avenue in the Royal Capital.
An old noble with a wrinkled face was listening to his butler’s report.
He was Marquis Philip, the leader of the conservative nobles in the Royal Capital.
His family’s industries were deeply tied to traditional carriage transport and manual labor.
The wave of the electrical revolution was hitting them, the vested interests of the old era, first.
“Well done,” Marquis Philip pushed a bag of gold coins towards the shifty-eyed man in front of him.
“Keep inciting them. I want all the plebeians in the Royal Capital to believe that it was that woman and the king behind her who stole their bread.”
“Rest assured, my lord Marquis. Those fools are the easiest to incite,” the man said with a fawning smile.
“I’ve already contacted the president of ‘The Galloping Road’ and the head of the dockworkers’ guild. They will organize people to go to the Royal Academy of Sciences tomorrow to ‘demand an explanation’.”
Marquis Philip nodded in satisfaction.
He didn’t want an explanation.
He wanted chaos.
Only by creating enough chaos to overwhelm the king would he have the opportunity to unite with other old nobles and force the king to abolish the “Royal Department of Electrical Applications” and repeal those damned “electrical theories.”
He wanted this nascent new era to be stillborn.
The next morning, before the sky was light.
Thousands of unemployed coachmen, porters, and their families, holding crude banners, poured out from the various slums of the Royal Capital.
They converged into an angry torrent, heading towards the Royal Academy of Sciences.
“Boycott magic electricity! Give us back our jobs!”
“Death to the witch Lia!”
“The king has been deceived! We want to see the king!”
The crowd’s emotions grew more and more agitated, and their slogans became more and more extreme.
Someone even drew a portrait of Lia, crossed it out, and set it on fire.
When this human tide reached the Royal Academy of Sciences, the City Guard, who had long been waiting, immediately formed a human wall to try and stop them.
But the angry crowd had lost their reason.
They began to throw stones and rotten vegetables at the City Guard.
Conflict was imminent.
At the Magic Association headquarters, Samuel watched the chaotic scene in the crystal ball, sweating profusely.
He immediately contacted Klein.
“Klein! A mob has surrounded the Royal Academy of Sciences, demanding to see Lia by name!”
On the other end of the crystal ball, Klein’s mage tower was peaceful.
Lia was enjoying her breakfast, a pancake drenched in maple syrup.
Klein was beside her, slowly and methodically cutting fruit for her.
“Got it,” Klein’s reply was concise.
“Got it? Just ‘got it’?” Samuel was about to go crazy. “They want to burn Lia as a witch! Aren’t you worried at all?”
“Just a bunch of ordinary people with no magic,” Klein’s tone was calm, without a ripple. “They aren’t even qualified to make me act.”
He put down the fruit knife and wiped his hands with a napkin.
“However, they are disturbing Lia’s breakfast.”
This sentence made Samuel feel colder than any threat.
“What… what are you planning to do? Klein, don’t do anything reckless! That’s thousands of lives!”
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill anyone,” Klein stood up and walked towards the direction of the Royal Academy of Sciences. “I’m just going to clean up some trash.”
With that, he directly cut off the communication.
Inside the mage tower, Lia put down her knife and fork.
She looked at the rising black smoke in the distance outside the window, which was from the miscellaneous items set on fire by the mob.
Her feelings were a bit complicated.
She knew that technological innovation would inevitably bring growing pains, but when these pains were presented before her in such a violent way, she still felt a little shaken.
“Are you full?” Klein walked up behind her and asked.
“I’ve lost my appetite,” Lia said softly.
“Then let’s consider it a walk after a meal.”
Klein reached out and gently put his arm around her shoulder.
In the next second, the space at their feet distorted slightly.
Their figures vanished from the dining room of the mage tower.
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