Chapter 14: Chapter 12: Shiny rocks and political chaos

-Alan POV-

There is both good and bad news. The bad one is that because this is not Earth, I had no clue of the materials we were going to search for, given they even existed, to begin with. There was the possibility, the properties of the materials were different, for some unknown environmental change, just as it happened to the water and apples.

Leaving aside this fear, the good news is that, after searching around every corner inside a 10-kilometer radius from our cave with Hikari we managed to find a wide range of 'rocks'.

It appears they were hiding in caves covered by leaves and fallen trees all around us, that's why I couldn't spot any mineral... While I confusedly looked at the narrow despite deep holes, Hikari seemed relatively calm. She also was the one who found the openings... I was dazed, and enlightened you could even say, this world formation was completely different from the one I used to remember.

Besides that, I am very conflicted about what emotions should I go with it. Because although confirming my theory on the similarity between this world's and Earth's chemistry principles, given that I found common Earth minerals: iron (mainly magnetite which contains 72% of it), copper (in the form of Chalcopyrite), and even some traces of gold, and those are just some of the most flashy ones, there were also tin and aluminum within the discoveries.

There were also some unknown materials, they were all shiny and crystalline. For the moment I decided to leave them aside, given they were unknown, and if they were radioactive or explosive in hand or water contact I would be in trouble.

But why do I even want these metal materials?

Glad you asked!

They will be crucial to building solid infrastructures with their alloys (I will soon start with bronze for the first weapons, but continue with steel and brass), and in the long term, they will also be useful for electricity transport. If we want weapons, we cannot have only gunpowder without its gun case, can we?

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As I mentioned, I want to process bronze, as it is the first relatively durable and resistant material to create things from.

I would like to end up with a steam engine, but this will require molds and a ton of practice, so I would like to get experience crafting metal weapons. I will also need time to create an upgraded version of the furnace, capable of resisting the higher temperatures required to melt copper and tin.

So these weapons will be made out of iron.

To process the iron, first, you need to pulverize the iron ore rocks, to split up the iron-concentrated part from the actual rock. Then, melt them not to their liquid state, just so they get bland enough to give them shape. And that's how it works.

I looked at Hikari right into her eyes.

This time knowing the hardships I was about to go through.

*Mreow?*

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-Certain kingdom princess POV-

There were people that when I got to know them said something along the lines: "Life must be easy for the first princess isn't it?".

And there was a part of truth in their words.

You are reading story The modern engineer who didn’t believe in magic at novel35.com

When our human empire was settled down, or even if there was a conflict at the borders, my life was like having a golden ticket. There are times I have to take care of the princess royalty responsibilities and take conduct and politics lessons, but that's about it.

Let's take the situation we were in some time ago, the humans were fighting the demons, in an equal-strength match, that seemed to have no end. Despite being a constant loss for everyone involved in it, there was not a direct impact on both of the upper echelons and the citizens just began accepting reality and dealt with it as the new normality.

Then the human empire uses his trump card and summons a hero!

I want to make this point clear because it is very important: he is the one who is supposed to fight with humanity, not against humanity.

But that failure of a hero, as soon as he gets out of the magic circle, and comes to understand the situation, decides to ask my father a favor.

The favor was not related to a wise instructor, trustful companions, or even a legendary weapon, but to legislative and administrative power!

My father and I as well thought it was a shame he wasn't the fighting hero type, but we had faith he would then be the greatest governor this empire had ever come across.

So we let him do what he wanted.

He had strange ideas... 'Catipalism', 'Demoflacy'... Strange words I couldn't comprehend, there was just one sentence I was able to understand: 'Separation of powers' even then, I couldn't figure out what he meant by that.

We just thought it was a part of his infinite knowledge, but we were oh so wrong.

This fool started giving his power away to inexperienced managers, and even started to hold some kind of ceremony where people could state their opinion about the empire's affairs!

When we tried to stop him, he just said he was doing it for freedom, but he was just dumb, he didn't think of the consequences his actions would bring.

If the people were well-educated in politics, that would indeed be great! Still, the human empire was already having trouble making citizens go to public schools, and he was making them decide our whole future!

If he invested the empire funds in education and waited some years to reap its benefits, it would make sense, but even then it would also come with its troubles!

He was also tearing apart the power monopoly, our empire carefully built with countless effort and pain. Sharing the legislative, judicial, and administrative powers independently.

So there I was, writing with broken arms, countless letters to try to stop an inevitable revolution...

I wasn't expecting my life to go down to misery this early...

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