Cthulhu Gonfalon

“The mage thing is not worth mentioning.” The short young man was Palin. With his excellent hearing, he could even hear whispers.

“Being a scholar is the thing that I am most proud of, but forget the ‘outstanding’ part. I am not qualified enough,” he said, after turning his head with a smile.

Reif was taken aback, both astonished by Palin’s identity and by his amazing hearing. He hurriedly saluted but did not know how to greet him.

“No restrictions,” Palin said, smiling. “You are visiting here? Please continue. I have something to talk about with Uncle Wrought Iron.”

After that, he took Wrought Iron into the study room next to him, and they talked about something in detail.

This time, Palin came to visit for two things: The first one was naturally to invite Wrought Iron to the Void Mask Land to attend the retirement ceremony.

Palin’s uncle, Old Soth, had passed away a few years ago. Only two people were still alive among the partners who had ventured and done business with Old Soth in the past—Wrought Iron and Rhyme. The former one was a dwarf with an average life expectancy was about 150 years old; the latter one was a suburb fairy with an average life expectancy of around 180 years old.

Now, Wrought Iron was almost 70 years old, and that was equivalent to the early 30’s of mankind. He was still in the prime of his life. After attending the funeral of his old friend, he had come to Gold-Panning Town and had become a blacksmith.

Rhythm’s race was rather strange; his rate of aging was similar to that of human beings. However, they could still live quite a long time after getting old. He was already gray-haired and basically lost his ability to work in his sixties. Currently, he was living in the Void Mask Land, working as a librarian in Palin’s library.

When Palin had been an accountant in Uncle Soth’s trade caravan, he had a good relationship with Uncle Wrought Iron. Therefore, when Palin had an event this time, he personally came to invite Wrought Iron, both as a show of respect for the elder and to help for Uncle Wrought Iron keep up his appearances in Gold-Panning Town.

In his current status, personal invitations to his house were enough to dispel many people’s greed for Uncle Wrought Iron’s blacksmith shop, thus avoiding a lot of unnecessary troubles.

The second reason for Palin’s visit was to learn more about the principles of the “magic furnace” and to inquire about the skills of smelting ores from the dwarven forging technique.

During this time, Sui Xiong’s blast furnace experiment had not been going well, and he had failed countless times. After pondering carefully, Sui Xiong thought that he might have a lack of some theories, so he planned to make up the basic skills first.

The easiest way to make up the basics had been to ask Morani. However, Sui Xiong thought that this was his own business. It wouldn’t be worthwhile to trouble others for that. After thinking again and again, he finally went to find Palin.

Palin had stayed in the library almost all these years, going out only a few times. He could be simply called an experienced nerd. Sui Xiong believed that after studying hard for so many years, Palin must have accumulated a lot of knowledge. Moreover, nerds seemed to have technical talents. Sui Xiong had had a college classmate whose game skills were average, but his technical skill had been very good. He had made a keyboard with many function keys, and he had no rivals in the whole department. Maybe Palin was like this.

It turned out that although Palin was a nerd, he was not a technical nerd. He had known very little about metal smelting technology. He only knew what minerals could be extracted, and he could recognize some common or precious ores at most.

However, Palin’s brain was much more flexible than Sui Xiong’s. When he had learned that Sui Xiong’s experiments had been unsuccessful, he had suggested that Sui Xiong copy several common furnaces and study them slowly.

Sui Xiong thought about it and then followed it.

However, after a period of research, Sui Xiong still had had no clue.

He had been able to copy those furnaces without any differences and expand them to amazing scales. However, it couldn’t solve the problems inherent in the furnaces; either the cost had been too high, or the efficiency had been too low, all without promotion values.

The crux of the problem had been that Sui Xiong hadn’t really understood the design principles of those furnaces.

Sui Xiong was truly superb. As long as he took a look at something, he could copy even the most complicated magic furnaces completely. However, that didn’t mean that he really understood the design principles of those furnaces. Just like playing with scientific models, a person with good operational ability could use various parts to assemble a variety of interesting models. There were those who could fly in the sky and who could swim in the water. However, they might not actually understand the aerodynamics or even the law of buoyancy.

This had been the case with Sui Xiong.

When he had understood his shortcomings, he fell into distress.

In this world, there were no perfect education or scientific research systems like there were on earth. The craftsmen inherited their experience only from generation to generation. There were not many theories which had been formed through deep studies. Even if Sui Xiong was willing to learn, he wouldn’t know where to start.

The mages had done a lot of research. However, unless Sui Xiong asked the Master of Mystery or the God of Spellcaster to discuss it, there would be no way to find the theories he wanted. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

In this case, Palin had recommended himself, claiming that he had been under the care of His Majesty for many years. He had been quietly studying all the time, and now it was time to apply what he had learned.

He first went to Sui Xiong’s experimental site, observing several failed experiments. Then Palin thought about it and set off to find Uncle Wrought Iron who was good at forging. Palin expressed to him that he would learn from the dwarven forging technique.

Knowing his intentions, Uncle Wrought Iron couldn’t help but laugh. “Little Palin, I am afraid you will be disappointed!”

“Oh?” Palin was stunned. “Why?”

“Our dwarven forging technique is of course very good, but it is not worth mentioning compared to the infinite power of gods,” Wrought Iron said. “Even the Void Mask’s Majesty can’t do that, so neither can our forging technique.”

“Not always,” Palin said. “My lord has endless power, but what he wants to do is develop the skills that are suitable for mortals. This is not something that can be done by relying on the power of a god. Perhaps after gaining inspirations from the dwarven forging technique, he will succeed.”

In this case, Wrought Iron naturally had no more doubts, so he carefully told Palin his own techniques.

Palin was not interested in the subtle techniques that an ordinary blacksmith was particularly concerned about. He paid more attention to the large frame of the dwarven forging technique. After spending most of the day, he listened to the whole set of the technique at once. Then he asked about some details of the smelting part, and he had the confidence that he had basically mastered it. After that, he inquired about the experience of the use of the magic furnace.

The magic furnace was certainly not dwarven technology. It was a type of technology left over from the era of the Kingdom of Fairies. With a complex magical array, they could extract the energy of the magical crystals as fuel to melt the ores. Then they would use magic power to separate the molten metal from the slags. It was poured out twice to form an ingot and some waste slags.

Its cost had been very expensive, and one would need nearly 10,000 gold coins. When it was used, the cost was also very high. Every time it started, magical crystals worth thousands of gold coins needed to be consumed. Therefore, human spellcasters had carried out subsequent research into improvement and launched a low-end version—that was the one Wrought Iron was now using.

Wrought Iron’s magic furnace was priced at 4,000 gold coins, and it needed to be filled with a lot of magic power every time to use. However, fortunately, he didn’t need to put in all the magic power all at once. He could fill it slowly several times. When the furnace had enough magic, he could start it again. Wrought Iron himself knew a few spells. Although his magic power was not strong enough, he could start it almost once a month if he filled it slowly.

To be honest, with once a month, this thing was a bit disappointing. Wrought Iron had long felt that he might have been deceived by the salesman to buy something that was not suitable for him. However, he had already bought and installed it, so it would be a waste to lay it aside and ignore it. So every day, he poured magic power inside the furnace and guaranteed that it would be opened every month, never ignoring it.

In the past few years, he had felt that his magic power had increased quite a bit. It seemed that the act of pouring magic power in every day was actually a good exercise.

The two chatted for the whole afternoon, and the furnace had already cooled down. Therefore, Palin personally added the selected high-quality iron ores into the furnace and then closed it to pour magic power inside.

Words were always not powerful enough. He wanted to understand and master the knowledge of using the magic furnace through his own practice. He also wanted to see whether he could get some inspirations from it in order to help the Void Mask’s Majesty to research on the blast furnace.