Chapter 504: Upgraded Washroom Facilities
"Is that why you say you’re wary of that brat named Lucas?" One of the more impulsive youths in the carriage snapped, clearly still disgruntled about Landon’s earlier implication that he, along with the others juniors from the Darr Kingdom, were somehow inferior to those from the Rockwell Kingdom.
"Just because he made a lucky guess and interfered with your plans, you suddenly think an 11-year-old boy in the Body Tempering Realm is a threat?"
Shaking his head, Landon didn’t get upset with the thinly-veiled insult thrown at him and instead replied in his usual, serious tone, "If that was all, I might have just written it off as a coincidence, but after listening to all the stories everyone at that party seemed so eager to share about him, I realized that there was far more to that boy Lucas than meets the eye."
"I agree," Talia nodded, drawing more than a few curious looks from the others in the carriage.
Glancing around, the crown princess snickered and addressed the girls, "I’m sure you all must have found out that Lucas was the one who designed those dresses, right?"
Talia didn’t need to explain which dresses she was talking about as everyone understood she was referring to the ones Celestina, Eris, and Christina had been wearing.
They also knew that Lucas owned the shop which had made those dresses as that was public knowledge.
Although they would deny the charge if they were accused, a few of the girls from the Darr Kingdom had even quietly ordered dresses for themselves when they thought no one else was looking.
The fashion style in the Darr Kingdom was a bit different from that of the Rockwell Kingdom, but none of the young girls and women felt the slightest bit of shame when they through about showing up at a party of banquet in one of those fancy new dresses.
How exactly they were going to get the dresses they ordered wasn’t clear yet, but that was a rather minor concern. If nothing else, they could just have one of the servants from their family discretely pick it up for them from Lucas’ shop; after all, while the Rockwell and Darr Kingdoms were in a somewhat hostile relationship, trade did exist between them.
"That’s not the only thing that boy is responsible for," Talia continued, "As far as I can tell, Marquess Balfour’s First Disciple is involved in over a dozen different projects in Misty City. He also has a huge hand in Princess Christina’s bakery business and Eris’ Rising Phoenix Guild."
"And those are just the things they don’t mind us knowing about," Landon added, "Like I said earlier, that Marco Levitt is definitely a genius blacksmith, but although he was trying very hard to hide it, I got the sense that a lot of the projects he’s working on are also being directed by Lucas, like those... toilets and sinks, I think they’re called?"
"Yes! Those were amazing!" Zara said enthusiastically, "being able to just... flush? Yes, that’s what Olivia said it was called. In any case, being able to just flush... ’everything’ away, including that soft disposable paper, then wash your hands with as much hot and cold water as you want by simply turning a knob..."
"En, the... soap, was it? That soap that was available for free in the bathrooms was also so nice," another girl in the group commented happily, "it made my skin feel so soft and clean... haa... was all of that really invented by Lucas? If so, he really is amazing..."
Clearly, the women in the group had been charmed not just by Lucas’ dresses, but by the various quality-of-life improvements he had introduced to the Balfour Family.
After managing to supply most of the Manor with hot and cold running water, the boy had naturally moved on from just having showers to also installing sinks and even flushable toilets.
Fortunately, the manufacturing of ceramics and even some rudimentary forms of porcelain were quite common in the Rockwell Kingdom, so while firing something as large and complicated as a toilet had taken a lot of time, money, and failures to figure out, eventually, the craftsmen of Misty City produced a few models that Lucas found acceptable.
The same went for sinks, which were thankfully much simpler to produce.
Quickly and efficiently producing large mounts of piping was something Lucas was still working on with Braxton, with limited success so far, but for non-pressurized applications, like drainage, square ’pipes’ were perfectly usable, saving the boy a lot of headache and time.
As for the toilet paper the Darr Kingdom girls were referring to, it hadn’t exactly been cheap, but Lucas had actually signed a deal with the Ford Family from the Western Province to specially produce it in exchange for a set amount of both bar and liquid soap every month.
Needless to say, everyone in the Balfour Manor was again very happy with the ’improvements’ Lucas’ had made to the bathhouses and bathrooms, making all the loud and disruptive renovations it had taken to install such facilities worth it in the end.
Even Talia secretly admitted that she wasn’t looking forward to having to use the washrooms back in the Darr Kingdom again after having experienced the ones in the Balfour Manor.
"Even my match with him was unusual," Landon remarked with a wry grin, trying to get the conversation back on track.
"But... he only won because he used a cheap trick," one of the other youths argued.
"There are no cheap tricks on the battlefield," Talia said flatly, "Only winners and losers, the living and the dead. Remember that."
Having been chastised, the young girl who had spoken up to try to defend their prince’s honour could only meekly lower her head and nod.
Shaking his head, Landon disagreed, "It might have seemed like a cheap trick made out of desperation from an outsider’s perspective, but he definitely planned the whole thing out, down to the exact position he needed to be in in order to flip me out of bounds while not also falling out of the ring himself."
"I was stronger than him by a wide margin, yet I still took the match very seriously. Because of that, I felt like I was in control the whole time... right up until I lost," Landon explained, then paused, seemingly looking for the right words to describe his experience, "It was like... like I was being led around by the nose by an old battlefield veteran, one who knew he had already won before the fight even started."
If it was anyone else saying such words, the others from the Darr Kingdom would have thought the prince was looking for an excuse, or that he was making up stories to cover for his loss, but everyone present knew how seriously Landon took fights and competitions like this.
He wouldn’t be saying this unless it was what he really felt.