Chapter 26: 25. Thermal Shock Delamination
1.
Erien was asking where I lived right out of the blue.
"Why does she want to know where I live?"
I had never even seen her face, yet she was suddenly asking for my address?
And she kept calling me a Child of the Forest from the future.
Was opening that document really such an important matter?
[Um... I did a little investigating, though.]
Yeah.
[You know that the number of blacksmiths among the dwarves is practically extinct, right?]
I did.
The demand for blacksmiths was high, but the Heirs of Fire had nearly died out, so they were apparently in quite a bind.
[Among the elves, the equivalent of the Heirs of Fire is the Children of the Forest....]
Ah...?
Hold on.
[Honestly, Yuna thinks not just the elves....]
[The Sun Dwarves are probably looking for you too... 🙄]
Back when I was an ordinary undergraduate.
There had been a day when a lab assignment was going fucking nowhere until dawn, so I wound up clinging to it until the next morning.
Then, the moment I turned my head to leave work, my professor was sitting behind me. I had no idea how long he had been there.
"Let me teach you something useful."
With those words, I was dragged into the professor's office... and ever since that day....
Let's not talk about it.
Anyway.
So that was how essential a talent I was to the group.
Things did get difficult without graduate students.
[It sounds less like they don't have graduate students and more like they don't have professors...?]
That serious...?
Anyway.
I understood why Dolores was so desperately trying to hide me.
"Then should I just ask what I'm curious about?"
In other words, I would only ask questions.
Keep what I gave away to a minimum. Something like that.
[Yuna thinks that's a good idea.]
Okay.
I ignored the DMs for the moment and read the section on gemcrafting.
That incredibly irritating line I had seen earlier.
"Gemcrafting begins with physical labor."
Why? Why the hell would it?
They said elves had developed in a direction that required less strength because of their small frames.
And then came the line that betrayed my expectations.
[Elves, with their small builds and small hands, are capable of delicate work that other races cannot imitate.]
"..."
So because their hands were small, they could do cute, intricate work.
They had troubles of their own here, too.
I kept turning the pages.
No matter what it was, the first step had to be devouring the textbook on theory.
If you thoroughly mastered the theory, you could apply it in any way.
It only took time.
One hour.
Two hours.
I read for hours on end without even noticing time pass.
There was one key point I wanted to extract from this textbook.
"How the hell do I turn something like stocking material into a mineral?"
Tmir's Ice Platforms were supposedly made from woven gems.
I had no idea how one could make gems into something like fabric.
And the conclusion was....
"Fuck, is this for real?"
Along with a shocking process.
Just as I figured I had finished roughly investigating it—
Bang.
The workshop door suddenly swung open.
It was Dolores.
"...Mama?"
I looked at her, wondering what was going on.
Dolores's eyes were glistening.
She strode over and, before I could stop her, tightly pulled me into her arms.
"Ghk."
Wait... wait a second....
I had barely been holding off my fatigue through dopamine and focus, without caffeine or any other aid.
"I can't bear it. It upsets me too much...."
She suddenly enveloped me in her embrace. Her arms locked tightly around me so I could not move at all.
The cool chill against my back from the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, and her soft, plush body....
It was soft and comfortable, like being wrapped in a cool mat. What was this...?
Drowsiness came over me.
Feeling the debt of all the sleep I had kept putting off suddenly being repaid, my eyes closed.
"Wait, th-that...."
With my closing eyes, I pointed at the warming oversocks.
Please just throw those away....
I could not finish saying it.
I simply fell asleep.
2.
I opened my eyes.
"What the..."
My last memory was of an ergonomically designed soft cool mat... no.
It was of passing out in Dolores's arms.
I really had overdone it. I had just blacked out.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a floating message window.
[New Messages] [56]
Whoa. She must be in quite a hurry.
I got up and stepped into the hallway.
Actually, I was in a bit of a hurry myself right now.
Like how the most exciting walk was the one before going to the lab the day after you had fully learned all the theory.
Or how you got excited whenever you heard a rhythm game developer had released a new chart.
Having encountered a new method of crafting, I was extremely excited right now.
I immediately got to my feet.
"How long did I sleep?"
[From 6 p.m. yesterday until 11 a.m.? About seventeen hours?]
I slept well.
Probably because I had caught up on all the sleep I had missed, my body felt refreshed.
I quickly threw myself into the hallway.
Having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, I headed for the dining room with the intention of grabbing whatever I could find.
There happened to be a ciabatta on the table, so I just grabbed it, stuffed it into my mouth, and walked toward the workshop.
Munch, munch.
On the path to the garden.
What the fuck?
Other than the pleasant path and blooming flowers, this was starting to feel a lot like heading to the lab while sipping coffee.
Hadn't I graduated from grad school?
I put the thought aside and kept moving. I opened the workshop door and went inside.
It seemed Ruby and Mama Dolores had left for the nearby forest to practice magic.
I had overheard it in passing.
Thanks to that, the house was empty.
And I could focus on my work.
The moment I entered, I turned on the water full blast into the huge tub.
Creak.
Cool water filled the tub.
It was a quenching tank. Think of it as where heated minerals take a cool-water shower.
"Whew...."
While the water filled, I swallowed ciabatta and reflected on yesterday's textbook.
The core of gemcrafting I had realized yesterday.
The technique of gemcrafting.
Munch, munch.
I had a rough idea of what I needed to do.
I would make the Sun Dwarves' warming oversocks using a material extracted through elven gemcrafting.
The supplies were simple.
I had to draw thread and cloth from gems and ore.
How? Normally, that would be impossible.
You could draw fibers from ores such as asbestos or basalt, but gems were different.
Even with modern technology, it was close to impossible.
Gems such as diamonds, rubies, and sapphires were hard, but they did not possess the properties needed to be drawn out long like fiber.
However.
This place was different.
I took out a couple pieces of flame ore from my mineral pouch.
The red gems emitted a gentle heat.
That heat was mana.
Raw minerals in this world contained mana. That was why mages and blacksmiths used them as materials.
And that mana was supposedly gathered inside the raw mineral while also wrapping around its surface in layers like a net.
"Peel away that net."
Peeling away the mana membrane held by a gem or mineral and drawing it out as fabric.
With ordinary minerals, you completely melt them down and force them through a nozzle to draw fibers, a process called melt spinning.
But this process was slightly different.
That was the theory underlying all elven gemcrafting.
Mana skinning.
Seeing it once was worth more than hearing about it a hundred times.
I had run the simulation in my head over a hundred times.
As I shut off the now-full water tank, I called Yuna.
"Yuna?"
[Yeah.]
I laid out every step I had conceived and understood through reading.
"...Would this make it possible? Send the High Chieftain a DM and ask her. Oh, and tell her I didn't see her messages because I fell asleep."
I had to be polite.
Now, all I needed was one final cross-check.
Once I had that final confirmation of whether the theory was correct, I could begin.
Ding.
The message arrived immediately.
【Erien】: Child of the Forest, you're awake!!
【Erien】: Looking into gemcrafting as soon as you awaken—truly, you are a Child of the Forest. Our predecessors always did the same. There is a saying passed down through generations that they would open their eyes and set their fingertips moving at once....
Too long.
Eighty percent of the message was emotional rambling, and ten percent was bragging about elven ancestors.
I scrolled all the way down and checked only the conclusion.
【Erien】: The method you described is the orthodox method used by the Children of the Forest before you! There is absolutely no problem with it!!
Okay.
"Can you tell her I said thank you?"
[Okay.]
【Erien】: Thank me?! How could you say that? It is only natural that I do this!!
【Erien】: I would like to send you a gift. Could you tell me your address?
I closed the DM window and focused on my work.
The verification was over.
"...First time lighting a fire."
I picked up the black stone beside the forge.
A firestarter stone. I had vaguely heard about it when the workshop was explained to me before.
They said that if you struck it a few times with a hammer and threw it into the forge with charcoal, it would ignite.
It looked like the kind of black stone that would raise your stamina and skill cooldown reduction for some reason.
I set it in front of the forge and picked up my hammer.
"Earthborn Hammer."
It's been a while.
Sorry. I've only been handling the Enchant Hammer, so I neglected you.
"Don't worry."
I'll use you until I'm sick of you today.
Thud, thud.
After striking the firestarter stone a couple of times, I threw it into the forge with the charcoal.
Before long.
Whoosh!!
The red stone split apart in a red glow, and flames spread through the mound of charcoal.
I looked down at the flame ore in my hand. A gentle warmth seeped into my fingers.
Up until now, the warming gloves and warming oversocks had primarily provided a warming effect, with a slight heating effect from the Sun Dwarves' inscription.
But this was a direct heating material.
A mineral that looked like translucent red glass, too ambiguous to call a gem.
I would use this.
Once the fire had burned for a while, I used tongs to stir the charcoal and buried a piece of ore inside.
Then I covered it with charcoal again.
"Whew...."
It started now.
Screeeech....
I pressed the pedal.
The bellows pushed out air, the charcoal drank in oxygen, and the fire grew.
It was still grueling labor, even if the lubricant had made it somewhat easier.
Creak... creak....
Drip... drip....
Sweat rolling down from my forehead fell onto the pedal.
The heat pouring from the forge rapidly heated the workshop.
I had opened every window, but it was useless.
Screeeech....
I kept working the pedal in a trance.
By the time sweat soaked my entire body and kept obscuring my vision, forcing me to wipe it away—
"...How many minutes?"
[Twenty minutes.]
Flame ore began to melt after thirty minutes.
"That's enough."
I immediately stirred aside the charcoal with the tongs and pulled out the glowing-hot flame ore.
And then.
Ssssssssss!!!
I submerged it directly into the quenching tank I had filled earlier.
Gurgle....
The water began boiling at once, steam clouding my vision.
Bubble.
Bubble.
Bubble.
Bubububble.
I followed the rhythm of the water boiling....
"Now?"
Thud....
I raised the Earthborn Hammer and struck the side of the quenching tank.
Thud, thud, thud....
I struck it repeatedly in a steady rhythm.
They said to strike it as precisely on beat as possible.
I was confident. This was my specialty.
It felt like playing a rhythm game at work. It worked even better if I imagined hit circles in front of me.
The vibrations spread through the water....
And soon.
A red aura rose on the water's surface like heat haze.
Something unmixed, floating to the surface like oil poured into water.
That was it.
I immediately grabbed the sieve beside me.
Before the membrane scattered—not too early and not too late.
In that instant.
Swish!
I pushed in the sieve and carefully scooped up the membrane floating on the water's surface.
Because of the drastic temperature difference, the mana held on the surface of the mineral separated off together with that surface, floating up in the form of a thin membrane.
The elves' insane theory of gemcrafting.
"Thermal shock delamination."
I immediately spread the limp membrane I had scooped up with the sieve over the wooden frame propped nearby.
Before it cooled and hardened, I needed to give this fabric its form.
I smoothed out its limp, hot texture with my fingertips.
Swish....
I hung it under the sunlight to dry.
The warm sunlight and the heat held within the fabric itself worked together.
The moisture in the damp membrane dried in an instant.
"..."
When wet, it had been like a limp transparent skin.
But now, with the inside faintly visible through it....
"Silk."
It had become red silk.
I collapsed where I stood, still clutching the finished product in my hand.
A palm-sized piece of silk.
"Ha...."
I felt like I had poured two liters of water out of my body just to make this one piece.
The repeated process itself was simple.
I just had to keep doing this until I had enough fabric to make warming oversocks with room to spare.
"Is this water hot?"
[No. It isn't hot.]
"What about the stone?"
[That isn't hot either.]
I put my hand into the quenching tank and took out the flame ore.
It had gotten subtly smaller.
"So I just have to repeat this."
Peel away, layer by layer, the mana wrapped around its exterior as fabric.
Until the concentrated mana inside was exposed.
"..."
I brushed back my sweat-soaked bangs.
As I sat there blankly—
[Um... hey? Yuna thinks this turned out incredibly well. Really, really well.]
[You know Yuna doesn't praise you much.]
I knew.
I did, but I was too exhausted to say anything right now.
"Could you take a picture and send it to her first, to see if it's done properly?"
Let's get the High Chieftain's approval.
Click.
【Anonymous】: (Photo)
【Anonymous】: Did this turn out right?
As expected, the High Chieftain read it immediately this time too.
But this time, there was no answer for quite a while.
"...What is with this person...?"
She didn't answer when it actually mattered.
"..."
Well, leaving my judgment to someone else was not exactly an excellent method, either.
It looked similar to the result of mana skinning shown in the textbook, so there probably wasn't a major problem.
I stood and picked up the tongs.
"...Again. Again."
Rustle.
I moved aside the charcoal and threw the flame ore into it.
Screeeech....
It was time to work the bellows again.
I stopped counting how many times I had done it.
A considerable pile of translucent red silk had accumulated on the workbench.
But just as much something must have drained out of my body.
I could guarantee it. You know, like relics forming inside a monk's body.
I kept receiving messages, but I did not look at them.
Creak.
Then the workshop door opened.
It was Dolores.
When I looked outside, the moon was already up.
"...Dolores."
"...Lionel."
"Some bread, please...."
I'm hungry....
But once again, before I could finish speaking—
Dolores pulled me into her arms.
"Ah...?"
My head went straight into her chest.
Bread...? No, not this kind of bread.
Bread... breaaad....
"Your body is hot, Lionel...."
"I need to work...."
I couldn't resist this....
From the moment she held me, the strength slowly drained from my body.
The coolness and softness were not sensations I should be feeling right now.
"Lionel? Even now, I respect you very, very much."
"Ah...."
"Because I don't want to interfere when you're absorbed in something, I try my best to only watch, even when you stay up all night or skip meals."
Dolores's voice gradually trembled.
"And yet I came to find you like this because...."
"..."
Dolores's arms pulled me a little deeper into her embrace.
"Because I think you'll ruin your health."
"..."
"Whenever you seem like you're about to cross that line, I will come like this again and again."
Dolores's eyes, looking down at me, trembled faintly.
They seemed to be brimming with tears.
She had apparently endured watching me stay in front of the forge all day.
"Don't overdo it, Lionel. More than me... your body matters more."
"...Yes."
She smiled softly.
Stroke, stroke.
Along with the cool sensation of her brushing my bangs back.
I melted into her soft embrace.
As my eyes closed, I took in Dolores's face one last time....
I fell asleep.
**
A single photograph before her eyes.
How was she supposed to interpret this?
"Wh-what is this?"
High Chieftain Erien's mouth fell open as she stared at the photograph.
With trembling fingers, she zoomed in on the screen.
Red fabric.
Mana skinning.
Thermal shock delamination.
She understood it all. She could understand every part of it.
These were techniques the Children of the Forest before him had refined over the course of their entire lives.
But what shocked Erien was not the technique itself.
"...How the hell is the yield this high?"
How had such a large, broad sheet of fabric come out?
Thermal shock delamination.
The membrane that could be extracted from a single ore was, at best, only the size of a little fingernail.
You had to heat and cool enormous ores countless times.
Strike them and strike them again just to get a single scrap of fabric.
But the fabric in the photograph was nearly palm-sized.
There was no explaining this unless he had worked with ore the size of a house.
Of course, yields varied depending on one's gemcrafting skill.
But in all her XXX years of life, she had never seen a difference this extreme.
Was this the same shock the dwarves had felt when they first encountered the Company?
What was it called again? The Industrial Revolution... that thing.
"...Does this even make sense?"
Tap tap tap.
Erien hurriedly hammered at the keyboard.
[Dea,,,r Child,,, I simply cannot,,, contain my admiration ^^, Might you perhaps,,, bestow upon me some instruction...^^?]
Tap.
The young elf standing beside her quietly took over the keyboard.
Tap tap tap.
[No, Child of the Forest!! How in the world did you do this?! Could you please tell us how?]
They corrected it to an appropriate response.
Tap tap tap....
[This. too. is. fate~~~^^ Dear,,, Child,,, time for a gift~~~!!!!!]
Erien, who had stubbornly continued typing, sighed and shook her head.
"Ha... Messaging is too difficult. Ask for his address too, his address."
[I would like to send a gift to the Child of the Forest who achieved such a miraculous result!! Please tell me where you live!!]
She did not forget to pursue his residence, either.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register