Chapter 137 The Brilliant Otherworlders and the Foolish Man
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
”Finally… it’s starting to look like a proper town instead of a slum.”
Ayumu muttered the words aloud, gazing over the streets of Keldan. Where once the landscape had been barren and lifeless, a pulse of energy was returning, color seeping back into stone and timber.
And no wonder—because, to his shock, the otherworlders were far more capable than he had ever imagined.
At first, his plan had been simple: have the kingdom’s engineers tinker with boilers, then step-by-step introduce the principles of steam engines, internal combustion, maybe work their way toward diesel and gasoline engines. Hand-holding, lecture-style, slow progression. But their comprehension far outstripped his expectations.
Not only had they mastered the theory of two-cycle and four-cycle engines from his old world, they’d gone further—blending that knowledge with this world’s own golemcraft, they had created something wholly new: the Golem Engine.
It ran on costly Lukurusa Theocracy magic stones, but the thing was astonishing. Unlike gasoline engines, it emitted no carbon dioxide, purred with the quiet hum of an electric motor, and never overheated. It was, in short, a miracle. “Genius! Absolute geniuses, the lot of you!” Ayumu had cried when he first saw it.
Of course, the flaws were real: its torque was immense, but its top speed sluggish. It guzzled magic stones far faster than was economical. But still—he had expected far less, and what they delivered exceeded imagination. All Ayumu had done was gather funds and issue instructions; they had spun his half-formed visions into steel and reality.
Nor was that all. From their steam boiler work, they branched into chemical synthesis, pushing an ammonia generation furnace all the way to trial stage. With Yugan’s scholars pointing them to a Lukurusa resin, akin to the rubber trees of Ayumu’s world, they had avoided the ludicrous labor of milking dandelions for latex. Slice the bark, and out came a milky-white latex gel. Mix it with sulfuric acid—derived from petroleum byproducts and sulfur recovery—and heat it, and they had ebonite, a silicon-rubber-like substance.
With that, they could use magnetite as a catalyst, drive hydrogen and nitrogen to react under high heat and pressure, and achieve the Haber–Bosch method of ammonia synthesis. No more fumbling with risky compost heaps or fermenting dung just to feed the fields.
And thanks to the sheer competence of the otherworlders, even the petroleum refinery exceeded Ayumu’s dreams. It opened the way not just for ammonia refrigeration, but for isobutane-cooled refrigerators and air conditioners. Ayumu was giddy.
Recently, he had even launched a lottery. At first, the people eyed it with suspicion. But when winners actually received their prizes—real money in their hands—the Keldan lottery’s popularity exploded. Imitators appeared across Yugan, but greed ruined them. They skimmed the winnings, rigged the odds, or ran with the money, ending in prison or graves. In contrast, Ayumu’s system gained trust, drawing crowds eager to buy tickets.
After all, a lottery was nothing but a public fundraising system disguised with prizes: 15% for operating costs, 40% funneled to Keldan for public works, the rest to lucky winners. With backing from the State Capital of Livonia, the scheme poured money into construction.
And so the suburbs filled with prefab apartment blocks—simple, efficient, built in advance at factories, then assembled like toys. They weren’t the only project funded, but they were the most visible. Ironically, Yugan already had a vaguely Russian or Eastern European atmosphere; now, with these Khrushchyovka and Brezhnevka-style housing blocks, Keldan looked even more like a Soviet town.
He had made sure they were structurally safe, consulting architects, but the architects had still grumbled. “We wanted to design something more creative, not just throw up cheap apartments.” Their complaints stabbed straight through Ayumu’s delicate heart. I’m fragile, you know! That really hurt!
Still, the apartments came equipped with Franklin stoves—Benjamin Franklin’s invention, a high-efficiency fireplace known as the Pennsylvania stove. Every unit had one. It was, Ayumu thought, a triumph.
Now that things were finally in place, he had arranged to bring Sashima here. He couldn’t bear to let her live uncomfortably, so she had been kept at the Imperial Court until Keldan stabilized. Each time he visited, she asked, softly, “Sanai… can’t I leave yet?” and each time he faltered.
The Imperial Court had been constricting for her, but at least there she had access to surplus white bread, and heated water for washing—a luxury when firewood itself was precious. Back then, Keldan couldn’t even guarantee daily meals, let alone warm baths. Crime was rampant enough that abduction was a real threat. Even Ayumu himself, as lord, had gone hungry on his first day. Compared to scraping by on weed-laced gruel, the nobles’ leftovers at the Court seemed like feasts.
Only very recently had the situation improved enough. Now Keldan had black bread, meat scraps simmered into broth, even beginnings of showers and baths thanks to silicon-sealed desalination membranes. Neodymium magnets, painstakingly crafted with the otherworlders’ help, allowed the creation of motors for power plants. With rubber in hand, water treatment became viable. At last, he could offer Sashima more than survival.
The neodymium project had been nightmarish—fragile, flammable, corroding at a touch. But inside CO₂-filled chambers, with plating against rust, the engineers had pulled it off. Why such effort? Because only with strong permanent magnets could their generators be compact and powerful enough.
The generators, in turn, would power the city through wireless transmission: Tesla coils broadcasting microwaves weak enough not to harm humans, received by small receivers scattered through facilities. In the future, every household might have one.
”Cityscape matters too, you know!” Ayumu declared proudly.
Wow. I’m amazing. Even thinking about town aesthetics on top of everything else. He congratulated himself silently. Of course, it never occurred to him why his old world had relied so heavily on power lines.
Ayumu was, as ever, a careless man.
Later, even after carefully designing his system to be “safe for human bodies,” the truth became clear: wireless power had massive transmission losses. The signal would never reach farther than two kilometers. In the end, they had to erect wired high-voltage lines every two kilometers anyway.
That was when his scream echoed through Keldan:
”Noooo! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! I should’ve just strung up power lines from the start!”
Yes. For all his brilliance, Ayumu was a man who always left the last piece unfinished.
Notes:
• Sashima – Family name of Hiyori. A quiet, caring girl from the library committee, empathetic toward Sanai. She followed as a Barrier Technique Adept.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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