Chapter 275: The Problem Is in the Crucible
A heavy gloom filled King Andres's spacious study. In the center of the room stood a massive table of dark carved wood, covered with a thick red-and-yellow desk pad. The entire surface of the table was cluttered with reports, maps, and dispatches from the borders.
Andres sat in his armchair, his head propped on his hand. He nervously tapped the tip of his pencil against the tabletop.
A loud knock sounded at the door.
The door opened slightly, and a subordinate knight stepped into the study. Lingering at the entrance for a second, he spoke briefly with one of the guards standing in the corridor, and then headed for the royal table.
The closer he got, the more clearly he felt Andres's heavy gaze upon him. The tapping of the pencil against the wood didn't slow down.
Noticing his sovereign's expression, the servant involuntarily hesitated and faltered. He nervously swallowed, trembling slightly under the pressure, then exhaled, forced himself to straighten up, and said evenly:
"Your Majesty... A place called Rii doesn't exist. We've traveled the whole world, but never..."
Mid-sentence, the pencil in Andres's fingers snapped in half with a crack. A sharp piece of lead bounced off and rolled quietly across the desk pad.
The servant instantly fell silent and froze in place.
Andres unclenched his fingers. The broken pieces of wood fell onto the table.
"Damn Iron..." the king said quietly. After a couple of seconds of silence, he added, "Find him at any cost."
The servant swallowed nervously and forced out:
"Your Majesty... uh... um... do we really need to search for him? After all, we have our own problems..."
Andres slowly raised his heavy gaze to his subordinate.
"No, you misunderstood me," he said coldly. "I said: kill him."
"But!..." the servant blurted out.
"His technology stopped working after one damn day," Andres interrupted him quietly. "He named a non-existent region, claiming to be its ruler. He isn't even contacting me..."
The king leaned forward slightly, never taking his eyes off the servant's face:
"And that is why there are no 'buts'."
The servant slowly exhaled and bent in a deep bow:
"It will be done, Your Majesty."
The servant backed away to the door, bowed low once more, and hastily slipped out of the study. Outside the doors, he frantically relayed the order to the guards on duty. They instantly sprang into action. A subdued hum of footsteps arose in the corridor, and the king's decree rapidly made its way down the chain of command.
Silence fell over the study once again.
Andres leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Olgerd popped into his thoughts again — how he had cold-bloodedly betrayed him just as they were finalizing a crucial treaty. And Valdes, who had gone against him in that same moment, defecting to Olgerd's side.
Andres slowly opened his eyes and stared at the carved cabinet against the wall.
"I won't let anyone emotionally manipulate me ever again," he said quietly.
Meanwhile, total silence reigned in Iron's office. Perfect order was maintained in the room: everything was strictly laid out in its place, and the "Copier" itself sat off to the side on the desk.
Iron was simply lying on the sofa, his right hand tucked behind his head, eyes closed.
Suddenly, right in the air above the tabletop, a box materialized and crashed down onto the desk with a clatter.
Iron instantly opened his eyes and shot a glance at the source of the noise. Noticing the crate packed to the brim with ruined clothes and crooked scraps, he slowly got up from the sofa and walked to the desk.
"Meditation is postponed..." he muttered quietly.
The engineer approached the desk, leaned his left hand on the edge of the tabletop, and lightly touched the crumpled fabric with the fingers of his right hand.
Then Iron moved his hand slightly out and back. All the ruined clothes and crooked scraps smoothly floated up from the box and hovered right in front of him. For a couple of seconds, he carefully examined the seams, looking at the stitches:
"She's actually getting better and better every time..." Iron said quietly.
He swept the fingers of his right hand through the air from left to right. In that very instant, all the sewn fabric began to neatly fall apart right in mid-air: the crooked threads pulled out of the seams, the fibers untangled without being damaged, and turned into clean, even skeins of yarn, completely ready to be used again.
Iron lowered his hand, and the neatly wound skeins of yarn floated smoothly back down into the wooden crate.
"I could make normal clothes out of this myself..." he muttered under his breath.
Iron snapped his fingers, and the box of threads instantly vanished from the desk, heading back to Eliza.
"...but it'll be better if others learn how to do it," he finished his thought.
Iron walked around the desk, sat down in the deep armchair, and pulled the "Copier" toward himself.
Lumon, you really don't know what the problem is? he asked mentally.
A calm voice instantly echoed in his mind:
Correct.
Iron laid out a wide blueprint sheet in front of him. On it, aside from the drawing of the device itself, dozens of additional lines, notes, and mathematical calculations were already sketched out.
"The problem is the dynamics... That much is clear, but..." Iron muttered, poring over the schematics, and then gave a command, "Lumon, copy."
At that exact second, a brief flash flickered across his retinas — Lumon instantly scanned the blueprint.
Iron shifted his gaze from the paper to the "Copier" itself and blinked once. Right over the real basalt base and tungsten bowl, a faint, glowing AR projection appeared — perfect translucent lines, vectors, and formulas overlaid precisely onto the body of the device.
"...but it still doesn't make any sense," he finished his thought aloud.
Iron scooted closer, his face practically buried in the device. Time after time, he compared the shape of the crucible against the projection: a look at the real tungsten bowl — at the projection lines — back to the crucible — back to the lines.
Having repeated this about a dozen times, he exhaled heavily and leaned back against his chair.
"I don't get it... Why is the problem specifically in the crucible...?"
He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, shaking off the fatigue, and then opened them again and muttered quietly:
"Or maybe the problem isn't the crucible at all? But... if it's not that, then what else is it?"
Iron scooted closer to the desk again and blinked once. The projection glowing in the air instantly vanished, leaving only the device itself before his eyes.
He took two gold coins. He placed one in the left cell and dropped the second right into the central bowl of the tungsten crucible.
"That's it, trying it one last time," Iron said quietly, connecting the internal channels. "Absolutely the last time."
He activated the "Copier." The device responded with a deep, vibrating hum coming from the heavy basalt base.
Iron immediately turned the scan on at full power. In full detail, he saw how rapidly the temperature inside the crucible was rising, how the gold melted and ionized under the induction, and how the directed magnetic fields aligned the atoms, recreating the exact same new coin layer by layer.
"A-a-a-a-a-and..." Iron drew out, never taking his eyes off the process.
The temperature reached its maximum, but in that very instant, a sharp interference occurred right in the center of the crucible. The temperature inside the bowl instantly crashed down with a glitch.
"...stop," Iron finished.
He instantly cut the power to the device and used his magic to restore the atoms. Having completely shut the system down, Iron sighed heavily.
He picked up his pencil from the desk and shifted his gaze to the bottom of the blueprint. There, right beneath the notes, where the exact same thing had already been written a dozen times, Iron wrote the words again:
The problem is in the crucible.
He forcefully circled these words several times and tapped his pencil lead right in the center of the writing:
"That's it. It's finalized. The problem is in the crucible."
At that exact moment, Elyria wove into existence out of thin air right in front of Iron's face, flailing her little arms and legs in all directions:
"Come on Iron, come on Iron, please! Build me a fountain!"
Iron pulled his head back slightly and frowned:
"Why?"
"Well... it's really pretty!" Elyria whined, hovering in the air. "And it gives you a lot of energy!"
"You haven’t asked for that in a long time..." Iron gave her a calm look. "Do you have nothing to do?"
Elyria immediately flinched, flying half a meter back, and said:
"No, that's not true!"
"Go make me a couple of large houses instead," Iron said in an even tone. "I'll be needing them soon."
Elyria hung silently in the air for a few seconds, her little arms dangling sadly and her shoulders drooped in sorrow.
"Alright..." she dragged out quietly, and in that same second, dissolved without a trace.
Iron, left in the silence of his office, pulled the blueprints toward him once more and set about finding a way to solve the problem with the crucible.