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In here, only the most talented and most trusted steel workers would be allowed, because it was the experimental area of Saniya’s foundry, where the true progress was made. When the king entered, he was engulfed by the same heat as before, yet he still felt much lighter in here, even though sweat streamed from every pore on his body.

With a spring in his step, he marched past the core of the research facility, a number of smaller furnaces. Within them, the workers would create new ratios and mixtures of various steels and metal alloys every day. Since good materials were vital for the development of new technologies, these furnaces were permanent installations rather than temporary measures.

After all, without a sufficient quality steel, something as advanced as a steam engine or other complex and large machinery with great strain on their parts would never be possible. Thus, his best workers would ceaselessly search for new useful mixtures of metals and fine-tune the ones thy had already discovered. At the end of every day, the workers would document their progress, to be archived in Rapra Castle’s library.

Yet even though these experiments were vital for Saniya’s development and had already begun to yield results, he hadn’t come for them today. Instead, he stepped towards the end of the line of furnaces, where his workers were busy around another furnace and a large number of clay molds. When their king approached them, the men noticed the new arrival and the head worker stepped forward for a greeting.

"King Corco! Welcome!" Asiro the blacksmith said with swagger in his voice and his step.

"Master Asiro. How are you doing?" Their conversations had gotten a lot more casual in the year they had worked together on various projects.

"Much better today. This work has been tricky, held us up for months, so we could not focus much on our other projects."

"But you’re finished now?" Corco got excited. The foundry’s top security project represented a big step froward, even in Saniya, where big steps forward were a daily occurrence.

"Please look for yourself, King Corco." With pride in his voice, Asiro stepped to the side and pointed to the clay mould on the ground. Finally, Corco saw its contents, half unearthed from the clay. He realized that his hopes had come true. Inside the mould’s lower half lay the barrel of a cannon. Yet unlike the usual barrels of Saniya’s or Borna’s current armies, these weren’t made from copper. They also weren’t built from multiple individual part. Instead, the barrel had the dark-gray sheen of iron and had been moulded from a single piece of metal.

"You’ve solved it. You’ve actually made a moulded iron cannon," an excited Corco said as he crouched down to run his hands over the smooth surface. He doubted the cannon had come out of the mould this clean and smooth. The workers must have put in some extra effort to prepare for his visit and present their achievements in the best way possible. It was a commitment to detail and showmanship the king could respect.

"That’s right, no more cracks in this one either," Asiro explained. "Was a right bitch to get it done well, that I tell you."

"How’d you do it?" the king asked. Cracks had been a persistent problem throughout their previous attempts at cannon moulds. When they had first tried, the steel had looked fine when poured, but it had begun to crack and deform every time the metal cooled down and hardened. Yet this barrel was cool enough to touch and still looked impeccable.

"First we had to get the right type of iron, pliable and springy enough so it wouldn’t just break apart with a small temperature change. We’ve played around with the types of iron we made in here and found one that’s soft enough so it wouldn’t just crack form the cold or from shock once we fire it."

Corco looked up to Asiro with a critical glance.

"But the question is: Is it still able to fire without bending out of shape completely when it’s this soft? This fires what, a six kilo cannon ball?"

"It is six kilos, King Corco, or thereabouts," the blacksmith explained. "For now, we were busied enough in our attempts to keep the moulded barrel from bursting. So we didn’t bother with exact, measurements yet."

"That’s fine, you can adjust the details now that you have the production method down. Out of curiosity, how did you keep the barrels from cracking?" Corco asked as he stood back up to face the blacksmith.

"After we managed to find a proper metal to work with, we had already reduced the issues somewhat. Still, only a small crack can cause a catastrophic failure once the cannon is fired, so we came up with some other solutions to build on our first success."

Asiro walked next to the king and took his previous place. Crouched next to the cannon’s mould, he continued his explanation.

"First off, I thought that the reason for the failures may be air trapped in the hot steel as it is being poured. So we came up with a better pouring method out of a wider, shallower spout. That way, we get less splash and less chance of trapped air in the closed mould."

As he talked, he signaled over to the furnace the cannon’s metal had been poured from.

"Then, we used a constant, slow heat treatment to slow down the mould’s cooling process." He pointed over to a large, open bed of coals, large enough to house the clay mould in its entirety.

"Once the steel was poured, we set the entire mould on top of coals. I thought the higher temperatures would be a good way to slow down the cooling process. Slower cooling means less sudden movement from the contracting metal, which in theory should have reduced the chance for cracks, or so I thought. For now we are unsure if it had any positive effects, so we might need to try a few more iterations."

"Good work. And did you already do a test run with this one? I mean, you did do test runs, those were hard to overhear, but it’s kinda tough to distinguish if the noise came from a three kilo or a six kilo cannon." Of course Corco already knew that the factory workers had been testing their finished cannons in the backyard. Even if he hadn’t approved a portion of gunpowder for that express purpose, he would have learned about their tests either way. After all, the persistent bangs of cannon fire had continued to ring from the foundry’s backyard all the way to the castle for the past few weeks.

"Not quite. We have done a few test fires and the barrels held up fine, but we still don’t know if it won’t deform or break after repeated use."

Unlike most of his servants, especially those from Saniya, Asiro didn’t look flustered by Corco’s inquisition, and he didn’t apologize for the noise his team had produced either. Right from the start, the blacksmith had seemed much more casual and personable in his interactions with the king. On top of that, he would also understand the king much better than most due to their repeated interactions. At this point, Asiro would know that Corco simply liked to complain from time to time, but would never mind noise if it had come from hard, honest work in service of the kingdom.

"As I have said before, we still need to make some long-term tests," Asiro continued. "Also, as you have suggested, King Corco, we’ve submerged the finished cannons in water to check for small holes and leaks in the finished cannons and couldn’t find anything. That work’s done before we bore the lute’s opening at the back. All in all, any changes we need to make from here would be minor and are only a matter of time and hustle, so I would consider the job as good as done. Congratulations, King Corco. Saniya’s armies will now have an infinite supply of cannons."

"Well, it’s hardly infinite, is it? In the first place, how much of this steel can we produce?" Although Corco disagreed with the bold claim, it still made him smile.

"Over the last months, production has gone up a lot, but we are still limited by our coal supplies," Asiro answered as he stood up. "Now that we have established the connections to the mountains of Cashan, we get constant shipments of iron ore, more than enough to keep the foundry running without breaks. Still, the lack of coal is what prevents us. So there are off-days when the forges go out due to a lack of materials. Worse, reheating the master furnace every single time after it’s gone cold is a massive waste of time and resources. That wastes even more of what little coal we have."

"There’s no need for your to worry about resources, I have plans to solve your issues. Chutwa has some cheap coal, so once we have our trade routes established there, we should be able to buy more than enough for our purposes, at least for a while. For now, I want you to focus on cannon production. We’ll be needing a lot of them, and soon."

Although Corco still felt boxed in by the deficiencies of their production chain, the new cannons were a huge leap forward nevertheless. With the new single-mould method worked out by Asiro, they would be able to mass-produce cheap and reliable iron cannons rather than the much more expensive bronze ones they had been using before. There also wasn’t any complex assembly necessary any more, which would further speed up their process.

Not only would they produce many more cannons than before, they would also be able to produce much larger calibers. Not even the Bornish cannons would be able to compete with theirs at that point. It was a shame that he had just slowed down their production of battleships in favor of merchant and fishing vessels, but these cannons were still needed to protect the shores and fortresses of the southern kingdom from any would-be invaders. Once they were installed in the towers along his roads and shores as well as inside his castles, the southern kingdom would be practically impossible to attack by outside forces.

"Very well done," a satisfied Corco concluded the demonstration. "Tell your team that they can take the next three days off. Everyone here will be getting a huge bonus to party with."

As shouts of celebrations broke out among the workers, the king took Asiro to the side for some additional instructions.

"As a security measure, I want you to cover all the cannons with a thin layer of copper before any of them leave this facility, do you understand?"

"Of course, King Corco," the blacksmith answered. Whether he understood the importance of counterintelligence or not, Corco had no doubt that he would fulfill his commands.

"And I’ll be sending you our old copper cannons over as they get replaced by your new iron ones. I want you to smelt them down into bars and send them to the treasury in the castle. We’ll be needing a whole lot of it soon, so every little bit helps."

Once Asiro had agreed and joined his men for the celebrations inside the foundry, Corco made his way back to his castle. Although he wouldn’t be able to participate in the fun, the men would be much more relaxed without their monarch around, and he still had to deal with many more issues anyways. With the copper from Cashan’s mines and the additional material from their old cannons, they may just have enough to start his biggest short-term plans as soon as Brym arrived in the city. Lost in thought, the king stepped foot out of the foundry, yet a new arrival ruined his chipper mood.

"King Corco, there are troublesome news." Tama had waited right outside the door and spoke in a stern tone as soon as the king appeared.

"Ah Tama, weren’t you playing invisible in the castle for a while. What could be so important that you left the castle to meet me yourself?" An inquisitive Corco asked. Although Tama had become invisible to the public, the rumors around her evil persona had never ceased. In fact, they became even more embellished the more time passed, no doubt stoked by Tama herself. Meanwhile, the girl had spent most of her time inside the castle, either with tailors to create some fashion items for her or immersed in her work as the head of Corco’s young intelligence agency.

"The ghosts managed to trace back the source of the rumors." Though her statement was simple, Corco understood her perfectly well.

"Who? Who’s trying to ruin us?" As soon as he heard the news, the king’s voice lowered, both in volume and in pitch. He wasn’t in a fanciful mood anymore. Now he was dead serious.

Not long ago, a rumor had started to spread among the noble circles of the southern kingdom. According to whispers, Corco’s goal was to abolish the warrior class, and maybe the entire cast system right after. As proof, the lords and ladies at the banquets insisted that Corco’s soldiers weren’t cultivators, and thus they couldn’t be called proper warriors. Such a diffusion of class lines was unacceptable to some of the lords.

While the rumor was certainly not false and accurately described Corco’s future plans of a classless Medala, its spread would make all of Corco’s political dealings a lot more difficult from now on. Not to mention that the proof was more than flimsy. Whoever had spread the rumors wouldn’t know about Corco’s true goals, but only tried to discredit Corco and reduce his influence within the noble circles. He had done his best to deny the claims in front of the other lords, but the rumors would still leave a nasty aftertaste and would force him to slow down some of his future plans.

"It seems like the rumor first spread during one of Lord Ogulno’s banquets," Tama said with the same impassive voice as before. Although she didn’t look upset, her voice was as cold as ice.

"My uncle again." Corco narrowed his eyes. "Looks like we’ve been too nice to him and now he thinks we can do whatever he wants. It’s high time we act, this will be the last time Ogulno, or anyone, tries to play political games like this. As soon as Brym comes back, we’ll make sure he’s too busy to bother with us anymore, ever."