A New Kind Of Grind

"Now, this is beautiful," I said.

"You gotta funny idea of beauty, boss," Rebecca, the Miner on shift, said.

"I'm a funny lady," I said with a shrug. "But, the autominers are all working just fine?"

"Just fine, yeah," Rebecca said, nodding. She was a tiny wisp of a woman, not even reaching a full five feet tall. "They make plenty of iron ore, and I don't even have to lift a finger. Well, except when a bolt works itself loose, and then I gotta tighten it back down with a wrench, but..."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said, nodding back. "How much actual iron do we have stockpiled so far?"

"We've got about... a ton and a half, I think," Rebecca said. "A lot for just us, but not a lot for everyone in Dornhelm."

"Oh, for sure," I said. "But, for right now, I think we can justify using this iron for our own purposes. Like, say, using it to test out some better autominer designs."

And, well. Maaaaybe I'd skim some iron off the top and use it for my own purposes. I didn't need much iron, anyway.

"Anyhow," I continued, turning to address our guests. "What do you ladies think?"

"I like this much better than the prospect of mining by hand," Elendar Tanelye, Nel's familiar, said.

Elendar was an elf, and built along very similar lines as Neloteth, but it was hard to tell how similar; while Nel dressed to show off exactly how uncircumcised and chilly she was, Elendar was dressed in a baggy coverall jumpsuit that I associated with technicians, maintenance workers, and some farm workers. It was patently obvious she was about as tall as Nel, and those baggy coveralls weren't enough to hide the fact she was probably about as stacked as Nel was too, but I couldn't even say with authority if Elendar was a beta at all, let alone how hung she was, or how skinny she was. She definitely wasn't Akane, but...

Y'know what, maybe it didn't actually matter what Elendar's figure was like. I did not have to ogle and fantasize about every attractive woman I met.

"It'd also be a nice enchanting project for me too," Nel mentioned. "In fact... since I've got Mystic Artificer, and El here has Miner, I've got the synergies unlocked that let me make enchanted furnaces that don't need fuel, and just spit out finished iron bars."

"...I don't suppose we can commission a few of those from you, can we?" I asked.

"Not worth it, boss," Rebecca said, shaking her head. "Charcoal is cheaper than magic."

"That calculus can change if we have, say, a farm making the right herbs, and alchemists brewing barrels of magic recharge potions," I said. "Which we'd want to get set up anyways, honestly."

Rebecca just grunted.

I, meanwhile, thought about the fact they were using charcoal to smelt ores. I knew for a fact that, by the time big ol' industrial blast furnaces rolled around, foundries were using mineral coal and coke (roasted and purified coal) to fuel the fires, but then, I suppose I also know why they did that. Trees take a long time to grow, and there's a fuckton of rocks in the ground; as such, Britain had to switch to coal as a fuel source, and then ended up developing a coal-powered steam engine specifically to pump water out of coal mines, which had only gotten deep enough that this was worthwhile because coal was in that high of demand.

But here, the Farmer class let people produce wood way faster and more efficiently, and so charcoal was still plentiful, and also, funnily enough, this world hadn't had an industrial revolution yet. I wasn't really sure if it could have one, honestly; the way things are made is sufficiently different from how stuff was made pre-industrially that it feels like the paradigms can't really be compared in an intellectually honest way.

Oh well. I could worry about that after I'd laid hands on enough steel to make myself a real firearm.

"Now, let's take a look at the farm, next," I continued. After all, if Nel wanted to keep more than a dozen or so monstergirls as a Rancher, she'd need to be able to feed them, and as it so happened, Elendar's second Class was Farmer.

"So, do you think you can do it?" I asked.

"Certainly," Haruna said, nodding as she examined the dart-revolver and its schematics, both courtesy of Veronica.

If I was being honest, I thought Veronica would be kind of a snooty pain in the ass who I simply couldn't get along with, but no, she was Akane's friend for a reason, and she just talked a little weird. Glad I know her.

"I'm a little worried about this new propellant of yours, that's supposedly more powerful than gunpowder," Haruna continued. "Do you have... any information you can share at all on how much more powerful it is?"

"I don't know exactly," I admitted. "We'll have to run some tests. And... we'll probably want to get Usagi to enchant it for durability, too. I'm not a good enough Alchemist to make metal even stronger than steel, yet."

Haruna simply nodded, and set the dart gun down.

"Is there a reason why normal gunpowder is insufficient?" Haruna asked.

"It produces a godawful gunk in the barrel of the gun," I said. "After a few dozen shots, you have to clean out the barrel, which is bad if you have to do that in the middle of combat. With smokeless powder, however, you can put hundreds of rounds downrange without fouling, which is very nice." I shrugged. "I'm honestly pretty ambivalent about smokeless powder being stronger than black powder. It's the fact you can sustain a higher rate of fire that matters the most to me."

Haruna nodded, looking over the schematics.

"Do you think this mechanism could be used for a bigger gun?" Haruna asked.

"It can, but it shouldn't be," I said. "A revolver can never achieve a perfect gas seal, and there's always going to be leakage spray around the cylinder. In a pistol, that doesn't matter since you're holding it at arm's length. In a rifle or a carbine, anything with a stock that you're holding against your shoulder? Well, then the cylinder is very close to your face, and it's still spraying hot gas." I shook my head. "No, there are better ways to do guns that can shoot more than one bullet before needing to reload. They're just... more complicated than this."

"More complicated?" Haruna asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"As complicated as that revolver looks, it is easy mode compared to the more advanced firearms of my time. Some of them used excess hot gas from firing the bullet to cycle the action and load another cartridge into the firing chamber, enabling them to shoot multiple bullets with a single long pull of the trigger."

Haruna blinked.

"I see," she said, faintly bemused.

"However," I continued, "in between me not having the time or inclination to figure out how to actually build the damn things, the fact that automatic firearms chew through bullets at an insane rate, and the fact that I'm just gearing up for a Level 4 Dungeon Gate, I am quite happy to settle for a revolver, to complement the very nice sword and shield pair that Veronica made for me last month." I tilted my head to the side. "Although, thinking about it, I should probably get some armor made as well. Chainmail may be effectively impossible to cut through, but thrusting through it is quite possible, and I'd probably feel better if I had some proper plate armor."

"Aren't you a Wizard?" Haruna asked.

"Allegedly," I said. "But, that doesn't mean I'm not physically stronger than you are at this point, or that I can't wear armor and use swords. I just don't have class features that explicitly encourage it."

"Well, far be it from me to stop you from putting more commissions on my plate," Haruna said with a shrug. "Where did you get this steel, anyhow? Your new delver friend, Neloteth?"

"No, that's from the Purpleheart Collective," I said.

"...The what?"

"Remember how, the other day, I walked in looking beat to shit, said I was now in the Delver's Guild, and went to my room to crash?"

"And then banged my daughter, which she has been bragging about at every opportunity," Haruna said.

"...Okay, well, the important part of what happened that day is actually that I picked a fight with a gang of forty bandits and won, and successfully convinced law enforcement to let me set up a community service program instead of just throwing them into prison," I said. "And that community service program is called the Purpleheart Collective, and the first thing I've done with forty people who are now obliged to do what I say is construct a big, mostly-automated mining facility that's made a literal ton of iron bars in the first day or so of operation."

Haruna blinked a few times.

"...Go back to the part where you won a fight against forty bandits," Haruna said.

"Ask Akane about it, she was there, despite my best efforts," I said. "Me, I'd rather not talk about the time I got stabbed and concussed." I carefully worked my left arm, grimacing at the twinge of pain. Nel, as a Ranger, had some capacity for healing magic as well, and had checked my wounds; I was assured that I'd be fully healed in a few more days, and that 'fully healed' did in fact mean that my left arm would no longer be somewhat disabled, but in the meantime, the healing process would be unpleasant. Good thing I was an Alchemist and could make painkiller potions. "Mmph. Anyway, if you need more steel, let me know and I'll get it for you. In the meantime, I'm still pretty fucked up from that fight, so... I'm gonna go lay down and drink a knockout potion."

"Please take better care of yourself, Roxy," Haruna said.

"That's what the armor is for," I said dryly. "Goodnight."