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Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 28: The Return (2)

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On the outskirts of Sternberg's domain, beside the Sázava River.

The place had already become a vast construction site resembling a battlefield.

Amid clouds of dust, hundreds of laborers swarmed like ants, digging a Water channel to draw in river water.

Elsewhere, workers shouted as they pulled ropes to raise the axle of an enormous Waterwheel.

"Over there! Pull harder! The axle is tilting!"

"One, two, three! Heave!"

At the center of it all stood several bizarre structures, rising like the Tower of Babel.

Great chimney-shaped towers, built high with Refractory brick and clay.

They were Sternberg Nos. 1 through 3, the first modern Blast furnaces of the Middle Ages.

I led the honored guests I had brought from Prague toward them.

"Your Majesty, what in the world is this?"

Hanuš, master of Prague's blacksmiths' guild, frowned as he covered his nose.

"You said you were building a smithy, didn't you? But I see no forge or anvil, only these grotesque chimneys. Are you planning to bake bread here?"

The other craftsmen and apprentices behind him murmured among themselves. Their eyes held more scorn and doubt than curiosity.

"I suppose smithies are built differently out in the countryside."

"With towers that tall, won't all the heat escape upward? How is the iron supposed to heat up?"

"His Majesty must have been swindled. How could anyone make iron in such strange towers?"

The smithies they knew were workshops filled with the ringing of hammers and the pumping of bellows.

What I intended to build, though, was not a medieval workshop. It was a modern steelworks.

"Master Hanuš."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"You've spent your entire life hammering iron. Then you must know its properties well."

Hanuš lifted his chin proudly.

"Of course! There isn't a famous blade in all Prague that hasn't passed beneath my hammer."

"Then have you ever made iron flow like water?"

Hanuš stared blankly at my question.

"Pardon? Iron... flows?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. Molten iron. Iron boiling and flowing like water or oil."

Hanuš and the craftsmen looked at one another, then burst out laughing as though they could no longer hold it in.

"Pfft... Puhahaha! Your Majesty, that joke goes too far. Iron turns red and soft when heated. It doesn't flow like water. That's nonsense alchemists spout."

"That's right. If there were flames hot enough to melt iron, they could only be the fires of Hell."

The craftsmen of Prague were certain of themselves. Naturally, the medieval bloomery method could not completely melt iron.

At best, it produced a half-molten wrought-iron bloom, which blacksmiths would sweat over and hammer to remove impurities.

To them, melting iron completely into liquid was physically impossible, something that belonged in the realm of gods.

But not for me, someone from the twenty-first century.

"Oh? Are you sure?"

"Yes! Absolutely!"

"Then I'll show you those fires of Hell."

I pointed up at the tower with my chin.

"Tomáš!"

"Yes, my lord! No, Your Majesty! Sternberg No. 1 is finally beginning its first operation! I've waited so long for this day!"

Tomáš had also been one of the people who shook his head when he first saw my blueprints.

After several prototype tests, he had become the blacksmith who poured more devotion into building these furnaces than anyone else.

"Prepare the charge! Heat the bottom with charcoal, then pour in the fuel!"

At Tomáš's shout, the laborers began moving across the wooden platforms connected to the top of the tower.

"Fuel going in!"

Rumble!

As the workers overturned their sacks, irregular grayish lumps poured into the mouth of the Blast furnace.

Master Hanuš, who had been watching, furrowed his brow.

"What is that?"

He sniffed the air.

"It's not charcoal, but the color is strange for coal. It's full of holes, like volcanic rock. Don't tell me you're putting stones in as fuel?"

"Something like that. It's called Coke."

"Coke...?"

"It's coal that has been baked down until only its essence remains."

People in the Middle Ages knew about coal. They called it black stone and sometimes used it for fuel.

Yet they could not melt iron with it, because the sulfur in coal made iron brittle.

That was why I had built a Refractory brick kiln in advance and baked coal at high temperatures while keeping out the air.

The impurities and tar were driven away, leaving only lumps of pure carbon. That was Coke.

Its heat was incomparably stronger than charcoal's.

"Baking stones to use them..."

Hanuš looked utterly baffled.

"Your Majesty, stones don't burn. No matter how hot a stone gets, it can't possibly burn better than firewood."

"Just watch."

Tomáš continued shouting orders.

"Ore in! Bring the limestone!"

Rumble!

Red iron ore and white limestone powder poured over the Coke.

This time, Hanuš was truly horrified.

"Now you're putting stone powder into a perfectly good furnace? It won't burn hotter. It'll go cold!"

"Will it?"

Hanuš had no idea that this insignificant-looking limestone was the magic powder that would melt iron.

Silicon dioxide (SiO₂), an impurity in iron ore, had too high a melting point. If left as it was, the iron would not melt and would instead clump together like dough.

But what happened when calcium oxide (CaO), the main component of limestone, was added?

It caused a chemical reaction that sharply lowered the melting point, turning the impurities into waste called slag and making them float to the surface.

Of course, to people who knew nothing of chemistry, it would only look like madness.

"Start the blower!"

At my signal, the enormous Waterwheel by the river began to turn with a creak.

Screech, thud!

As the Waterwheel's axle spun, dozens of leather bellows as large as a man's torso inhaled at once, then blasted compressed air through the air vents connected to the belly of the Blast furnace.

In that instant, a deafening roar shook the area.

It was not the familiar hiss of wind from an ordinary smithy's forge.

Kwooooooo!

It was the thunderous bellow of a dragon awakened deep beneath the earth, venting its rage.

The burning Coke unleashed heat that charcoal could not begin to match.

Even the skin of spectators standing far away began to sting from the radiant heat.

"Gah!"

Hanuš and the craftsmen from Prague stumbled backward in alarm.

"W-what is that sound? Isn't it exploding inside?"

"Get back! It's going to burst! That thing's going to burst!"

Stone was burning, blazing as fiercely as the fires of Hell.

It was a terror their common sense could not comprehend.

The craftsmen of Prague panicked in fear.

But Sternberg's technicians were different.

"Temperature rising! Internal pressure is normal!"

"Keep the air going! Don't stop!"

Jakub and Tomáš, their faces covered in charcoal soot and sweat, clung even closer to the Blast furnace as they adjusted the pressure at the air vents.

As time passed, the furnace's roar grew harsher, and the tower's outer walls glowed red-hot.

Blinding light and searing heat.

Within it, solid iron ore was melting in the heat of the Coke, turning into liquid.

The reduction reaction was perfect.

It was time to cut open the monster's belly.

"Prepare to tap the iron!"

At my order, Tomáš took a long iron bar and approached the tap hole at the bottom of the Blast furnace.

A small opening sealed with clay.

"Break it open!"

Clang! Clang! Crack!

Tomáš mercilessly struck the clay plug with the iron bar.

The instant the hardened clay shattered.

Flash!

A burst of light erupted, as if the sun had fallen to the earth.

"Ah! My eyes!"

The spectators screamed and shut their eyes.

Then, beyond that flash, an unbelievable sight unfolded.

Whoosh!

It was water, yet not water.

Molten iron, flowing in a perfectly liquid state.

The hardest metal had yielded to the greatest heat and flowed like water.

The red-hot molten iron rushed along the sand channels dug beforehand, filling the broad casting molds.

"Ah... ah..."

Master Hanuš collapsed to the ground as if his legs had lost all strength. Even Prague's most renowned craftsmen could not close their mouths.

"It's molten iron... Molten iron is really flowing...!"

Instead of hammering iron into shape, it could be poured like water? The common sense of craftsmen who had wielded hammers for decades was melting away before their eyes.

With the glow of molten iron streaming behind me, I looked down at Hanuš, who sat there in a daze.

"Do you see it, Hanuš? This is what you called impossible."

"Y-Your Majesty... What in the world is this...?"

"The result of the Coke and limestone, those stones you mocked."

Hanuš asked blankly.

"...What is this, truly? Is it magic? Did Your Majesty really borrow Hellfire from the Devil?"

I lightly shook my head.

"This isn't magic. It's chemistry."

"Chemistry...?"

"Yes. The science of change, for those who seek to understand the truths of this world."

I pointed at the flowing molten iron.

"Even if you hammered away for an entire year with that hammer of yours, it would be hard to make a single suit of armor. But look at that."

The molten iron from the Blast furnace had already filled dozens of sand molds and was beginning to cool.

In a single tap, it had produced as much iron as a hundred blacksmiths would need a month to make.

"I can turn out several tons of iron like this every day."

Hanuš's eyes wavered wildly.

His face was full of awe and helplessness before a wall he could never overcome as a craftsman.

As if possessed, he rose to his feet and staggered toward the channel carrying the molten iron, enduring the scorching heat.

"Beautiful..."

He murmured like a man lost in a dream.

"So... beautiful..."

At Hanuš's entranced murmur, the eyes of Prague's craftsmen changed.

The arrogance of proud guild masters had vanished. In its place burned only the primal hunger of craftsmen longing for an unknown technology.

Still unable to look away from the white-hot molten iron, Hanuš asked,

"Your Majesty, what should we do? What should we make with this miraculous molten iron?"

I struck a cooled lump of iron in a mold.

"Unfortunately, this thing is useless trash as it is."

"Pardon? Trash?"

I lifted a hammer and brought it down hard on a sample lump of pig iron I had prepared beforehand.

Clang! Crack!

Instead of breaking normally, the hardened lump of iron shattered into fragments like glass, scattering in every direction.

"Gasp!"

The craftsmen recoiled in shock.

Iron shattering like glass instead of simply breaking?

It was impossible by their standards.

"Do you see? If something is too hard, it breaks instead."

I picked up one of the fragments and tossed it to Hanuš.

"This is pig iron. Iron in this state contains too much carbon, in other words, too many impurities. Like a greedy pig, it's bloated and hard, but it has no toughness. It won't scratch easily, but when struck, it shatters like this."

It was the same principle as a diamond. The hardest material of all, yet it would break if struck with a hammer.

It might be useful for making cauldrons or farming tools, but it could never be used for weapons such as swords, armor, or cannons.

"So we have to melt and beat this pig-like iron until it loses weight."

"Loses... weight?"

"That's right. We need to make it spit out the impurities it holds inside. Only then will it become true steel, strong and tough."

"Steel..."

Hanuš turned the broken piece of iron over in his hand and swallowed hard. Slowly, he nodded.

"Then we must hammer this molten iron into the shapes we need."

"Yes. That's why I need your hands. My Technical Officers (Meisters) are excellent at operating Blast furnaces, but they lack the delicate skill needed to work iron."

I placed a hand on Hanuš's shoulder.

"I'm not making swords or armor. I'm making plates. Can you use your hands to hammer this pig iron into steel plates of perfectly even thickness?"

Hanuš nodded.

"Leave it to us, Your Majesty. We will present you with mountains of steel plates, enough to cover even Prague's city walls."

Footnotes:

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