Chapter 35: Archimedes (Part 2)
“Is that all?” Archie asked with a grin.
Theo looked back at him with the same confident smile.
“Of course not,” Theo replied. “That’s just the beginning of something bigger”
“Hm. You sound like Hiero.” Archie rubbed his chin for a second before nodding once. “Alright then. I’ll help.”
Theo looks dumbfounded.
“Uhh, you’re not gonna ask me what I’m planning? or maybe why I'm doing it?” He ask
“For vhat?” Archie scoffed. “Your ‘vhat’ and your ‘vhy’ vill always change anyway. Humans always vant more after they get vhat they vant. That is literally how civilization advances.”
He raised a finger toward Theo.
“But boy, never drag me into politics or other useless distractions. I solve mathematical problems and turn them into practical applications. That is all I care about.”
David let out a grin from the side.
“Heh. Man’s a scholar through ‘n through.”
“Deal!” Theo replied excitedly. “Glad to have you onboard, Archie. Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day for this village.”
The three of them sat around the hearth with matching grins.
A scammer from modern Earth.
A shepherd king from ancient Israel.
And one of history’s greatest mathematicians stuffed into old man Shum’s body.
For a brief moment, the atmosphere inside the tent genuinely felt grand. Like the beginning of something historic.
Then Archie opened his mouth.
“Vhy tomorrow?”
The dramatic atmosphere instantly collapsed.
“Huh?” Theo frowned.
“Vhy tomorrow?” Archie repeated flatly.
“Well…” Theo scratched his cheek. “Because it’s already late night? People sleep?”
“So?”
Theo and David both went silent. Not confused, just trying to figure out Archie’s word.
“Boy.” Archie suddenly pointed straight at Theo. “You said your era is two thousand years ahead of mine, yes? An era vhere mathematics continued advancing all that time?”
“…Yeah?”
“Good.” Archie leaned forward. “Then start talking.”
“Huh? Talking what?” Theo protested.
“Every theorem. Every method. Every mathematical approach your era used.”
Theo stared at him.
“…Why?” he asked carefully. “You’re literally one of the greatest mathematicians in human history.”
“You dummkopf!” Archie’s sudden roar nearly made Theo jump out of his skin.
“There is no such thing as ‘greatest’ in mathematics! Nein!” Archie snapped furiously. “Mathematics constantly evolves! Every generation builds upon ze previous one! New theories! Better methods! Better precision!”
His eyes were practically glowing now.
“To a mathematician, two thousand years of accumulated knowledge is not something you postpone until morning!”
He slammed a finger toward the dirt floor.
“Now stop wasting time and tell me everything you know, boy!”
---
Sunrise
Several hours later, Theo looked like a man being interrogated all night. Which technically is true. His eyes were bloodshot from staying awake the entire night as he sat on the ground surrounded by equations scratched into the dirt with a stick.
Basic algebra, geometry, every mathematics formulas he barely still remembered from school. Anything his exhausted brain could drag back out from years of education.
Meanwhile, Archie sat beside him completely energized.
The old man kept staring intensely at Theo’s equations before immediately scribbling calculations of his own onto nearby leather sheets, muttering to himself nonstop while connecting concepts together at terrifying speed.
“Fascinating…” Archimedes muttered,
He stared at the equations scratched across the dirt floor.
“Zis ‘zero’ number changes everything. More precision. More variables. More possibilities…”
He immediately crouched down again and started rewriting parts of his own calculations beside Theo’s.
Nearby, David slowly sat up from his bedding, rubbing his eyes with a yawn.
“Y’all seriously ain’t slept at all?” he asked.
“Yeah… no,” Theo answered weakly, still holding a stick in his hand like a prisoner forced to do math homework at spearpoint. “Archie’s been interrogating my entire school curriculum.”
Which honestly made sense. To modern people, high-school math and physics were just annoying subjects you most likely won’t use in real life. To Archimedes? It was like handing a bronze-age engineer the steroid to civilization.
And unfortunately for Theo, years of studying economics, statistics, and enough math to understand pyramid and ponzi schemes had suddenly become a nightmare.
“Well,” David said as he stretched his arms, “Reckon I’m gonna wash up by the river ‘n grab somethin’ to eat.”
“God, yes,” Theo immediately pushed himself up from the rug. “I need a break before my brain starts leaking out.”
He barely managed to take one step.
THUD.
Archimedes’ arm slammed across his path like an iron gate.
“Vhat break?” Archie asked flatly. “You still haven’t explained vhat you called decimals properly.”
“...”
“Go get somebody to bring water basin and food here,” Archie ordered David while pointing toward the tent entrance. “Ve are nowhere near finish.”
“...Y-yes, sir,” David scratch his head.
And so, for the next three straight days, Archimedes squeezed every ounce of knowledge Theo remembered from elementary school to high school.
Arithmetic, geometry, physics, ratios, pressure, levers, decimals, basic algebra, and literally anything Theo vaguely remembered from textbooks became fuel for the old Greek menace. He even can tell if Theo remembered something wrong from his own simulation.
But for the first time across both of his lives, Theo genuinely regretted being a decent student.
---
3 Days Later
Outside Theo’s tent, Tara stood beside David with her arms folded.
“They really haven’t come out for three days?” she asked.
“Not once, ma’am,” David replied casually. “Them two been doin’ everythin’ inside.”
Right on cue, a village teenager stumbled out from the tent carrying a pot full of human waste while pinching his nose with the other hand. The boy looked traumatized.
“And I mean everythin’,” David repeated with emphasis.
“Tch.” Tara rubbed her forehead. “The other chiefs are arriving in a month and we still haven’t prepared anything.”
Then she lifted the tent flap and stepped inside, David followed behind her.
As Tara and David stepped inside the tent, both of them froze. The tent no longer looked like a place where people lived.
Every surface was covered in charcoal scribbles. Numbers, equations, geometric sketches, strange symbols, physics formulas, anything related to mathematics had been written everywhere with near-manic intensity.
The table was covered in calculations. The chairs were covered. The leather rugs were covered. Even the canvas walls of the tent had become giant blackboards filled with diagrams and formulas.
Meanwhile, Theo was lying face-down on the floor beside a half-finished equation, one hand still clutching a charcoal stick. The position was awkward enough that Tara genuinely couldn’t tell whether he was sleeping or had simply collapsed mid-calculation.
While Archimedes, looked completely fine.
The old man stood near the tent wall, calmly sketching a large mechanical diagram directly onto the canvas. A half-finished tripod crane had already taken shape beside rows of calculations and measurements.
“…What the fuck happened here?” Tara muttered.
“Haha… beats me,” David said with a helpless grin. “Told ya, ma’am. I moved myself to another tent three days ago.”
Archie finally noticed they had entered. He gave them a brief side glance before immediately returning to his drawing.
“You there, chief woman,” Archie muttered while continuing to scribble. “Check ze leather skins on top of ze bed.”
No greeting. No courtesy. Just a command.
Tara looked mildly offended for a second, though she still walked over to the bed. Several rolled leather sheets filled with writing had already been stacked neatly there.
“Which one?” she asked.
“Third from ze top.”
Tara unfolded the leather sheet Archie mentioned, and the moment she read it, her expression changed.
The sheet contained detailed manpower assignments, work rotations, construction schedules, material requirements, livestock allocation, tool distribution, and even demon hound labor usage. Every task had already been divided with absurd precision.
“That’s ze personnel and material requirement for tomorrow’s construction project,” Archie explained without stopping his work. “I already have enough information to begin construction while continuing my studies. Oh, and include ze so-called druid woman too. I need her.”
Tara slowly lowered the leather sheet.
“W-what exactly are we constructing?” she asked.
“Many things,” Archie replied casually. “But for now, ve start vith that.”
He pointed toward the opposite wall of the tent.
Tara and David turned toward it.
Drawn across the canvas wall was the unmistakable design of a smithy. Furnaces, workstations, tool racks, bellows systems, watermill, everything that already been planned.
David stared at it for a moment before a grin slowly spread across his face.
“Heh,” he muttered. “’Bout damn time.”
---
One Week Later
Archie stood beside a newly built stone furnace, carefully measuring part of the structure with a wooden measuring stick.
A simple tool. But to Blackstone, it was revolutionary.
Theo had made the original reference by using his own height, then dividing it down into an exact one-meter standard and below for Archie to replicate. Thankfully, Archimedes adapted to new measurement systems frighteningly fast. After one day, the old man was already correcting villagers whenever their cuts were off by a few centimeters.
Near the furnace, one villager waited beside the fire pit, ready for instructions.
“Very vell,” Archie said while lowering the measuring stick. “Turn it on.”
The villager immediately raised a hand signal.
Farther away near the river, another worker spotted it and nodded back before pulling open a wooden sluice gate. Water immediately rushed through the narrow channel.
A large waterwheel beside the river began turning under the current with a heavy creaking sound. The rotating axle connected directly to a massive leather bellow positioned beside the furnace.
THUMP THUMP THUMP
The bellow started compressing automatically, forcing steady streams of air into the fire. The flames instantly grew larger, hotter, brighter.
Archie’s eyes widened with excitement as he watched the furnace stabilize, and after several minutes, the fire stopped flickering entirely. It roared steadily now. Controlled, consistent, and certainly powerful.
“EUREKA!” Archie suddenly threw both arms upward and laughed. “Ze so called PV = nRT equation and thermodynamics really vork! HAHAHAHA!”
He pointed dramatically toward the furnace.
“Vith fire this stable and powerful, forget bronze! Ve can go directly into iron production!”
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
Dozens of Blackstone villagers had gathered nearby began to applaud as they saw Archie excitement even though not understanding most of the words he used.
And standing before them was not just a furnace. Its a semi-open workshop built from stone and heavy timber, complete with blast furnace, work tables, anvils, tool racks, movable wind partitions, and most importantly, a hydro-powered automatic bellow system.
Or in simpler terms:
Blackstone had just built its first advance smithy.