When we returned to Sundell, my heart burned with newfound determination. If I couldn't secure an economic alliance that would allow me to back out of their relationship outright, I'd have to find a way to get out of the arrangement or negotiate it—on my own terms.
The first thing I did when I went home was spend ten days with Thea, locked in my room, drawing as she brought me tea and snacks, and lying on my bed, kicking her legs around. Staying in one place for so long would drive me crazy. However, she looked satisfied, holding her chin up in her hands with a dreamy smile the whole time.
It was the type of smile that was one step away from being legitimately illegal on Earth.
I loved it.
Every time I opened my eyes after reading through schematics and patching together different parts, I saw it, and it made me feel so happy. After all, with a look as crazed as that, I'd never need to worry about faithfulness or betrayal.
It was also super cute.
After those ten days, I walked into Carter's shop. Learning from my mistakes, I gave him months of lighter workloads, letting him spend most of his time repairing broken pipes. Therefore, he was in much better spirits.
That's also why he dreaded the look on my face.
"What is it?" Carter asked, leading me to his office, away from the steam-powered hammers clanging in the background. "I've never seen that face on ya—even durin' war times."
"I need a favor from you," I announced, sitting down.
"And I've definitely never heard that come out of your mouth," he chuckled, his discomfort serious.
I pulled out a textbook worth of drawings that made his eyes bulge. "I'm hiring three hundred people and buying all the steel companies and their workers, putting them under your direction, allowing the current owners to do all the work and share equipment with you. I want 100% of your efforts devoted to this project and nothing else for the next six months. However, you have four months to build the prototype, as it'll take at least two months and multiple attempts to make it work."
Carter took a sharp breath and looked inside, his mind going numb as he saw the images inside. "Are you sure that this is even possible?" he asked.
I took out a tiny model and some equipment from my spatial bag and demonstrated it to him, letting him play with the model.
"I can't believe this is made of steel," Carter said, looking at the small model. "But you've made your point. Why is this so important?"
I looked him in the eye. "It can prevent a war."
His expression sharpened. "Is that a fact?"
"You should treat it that way," I said, turning around. "One million gold. Figure it out."
---
Carter sighed when Boss walked out of the door with a complex expression. "I never thought I'd say this, but…." He studied the 327 pages of drawings, numbers, and schematics with a strained expression. "I wish I could turn down that money."
Following a deep breath, he grinned. "But I've already created all the smaller parts for this behemoth, and the tools to make it."
Carter left his office and went to the main floor. "Stop what you're doing!" he yelled. "The boss has given us some shit that'll save lives somehow. And you're gonna get stupid rich buildin’ it. So come over here so I can explain—we got some serious work to do!"
---
Flowers and minerals began flowing into Sundell from Valeria on kingdom-provided transportation wagons, cannons, and gunpowder left on them.
I spent most of my time experimenting with plants and minerals, boiling them in water, distilling their gases, using solvents with them, and changing their pH with sulfuric acid and potassium hydroxide. Whenever I found suitable compounds, I mixed them with lime and other minerals with known effects to see if I could make sealants and rubber substitutes.
I achieved success with many things. For example, the Elm Sap Tree in the Crimsonwood Forest produces a similar sap to latex. Once mixed with lime, the sap coagulates, creating a substance similar to rubber.
After coagulation, I had people separate the serum—the residual liquid—by hand and then wash it to remove dirt and impurities. After drying it in modified pottery drying chambers to remove moisture content, we used a standard mill to break it down into smaller particles that people can use later.
Once we had rubber, I sent it to teams to create valves and gaskets and then test them with modern research and development standards, which are extremely stringent. If a gasket breaks, it can destroy an entire engine because the cost of dismantling the engine to fix it is often less than the cost of replacing it—and my project was very complex. If it didn't work as a solid prototype and exploded, it would cause more problems than it solved.
The other miracle plant we found was called Silkenslide Moss, a strange plant that serves a modern purpose in a very different way.
Silkenslide Moss is a transparent substance that looks like slime and has an extremely sticky bottom, latching onto things and not letting go for any reason. However, it's hydrophobic, meaning water bounces off it, and it prevents impurities from mixing in. It just sticks to substances and then remains clear and untouched year-round.
If that wasn't enough, it's extremely slippery on the top to a truly absurd degree, reducing friction on everything that touches it. The combination of factors ensures that nothing can touch it again once it latches onto something.
That made it perfect for one thing—as a lubricant.
It wouldn’t normally be one, as it’s far too expensive. The moss is a miracle substance because it creates breathable wound dressings, preventing dirt and bacteria from infecting wounds.
Luckily for me, I'm a scientist that works with various mediums. Therefore, I set to work immediately, isolated a dozen plants we could use as a growth medium, and built an entire factory devoted to growing the moss like a mushroom farm.
With Silkenslide Moss, we create lubrication systems without oil-based lubricants. Oil was quickly becoming a limitation far worse than electricity. Crude oil provides the base compound for wax candles, coolants, ink, lubricants, insulators, gasoline, kerosene, lighters, fireworks, sealants, cosmetics, and even fertilizers. The modern world and its equipment are built upon oil to the point that wars are fought over it.
Therefore, to get something so valuable, eliminating the need for splash lubricant systems greatly improved modern machinery without the need for complex parts.
Now, it was a matter of learning how to grow it commercially.
Frostfern, a silver plant that latches onto everything in the Silverbark Forest, the source of its name, was a powerful insulant that greatly increased our homes' heating and cooling systems, allowing our plumbing system to thrive.
I still rely on modern technology because the things in my head work. There’s no need for testing things under heating, cooling, mixing them with various substances, dunking them in mud, hitting them with hammers, stretching them, applying shearing forces, or other factors for inorganic substances. There’s also no need to test if it causes cancer, gives certain people allergic reactions, causes mutations, results in birth defects, or reacts negatively with medicines and other factors. We’ll have to do that, but we’ll make do for now.
During this period, I increased our education program and started mass-producing books to sell for absurd amounts of gold. These included books on medicines, small machinery parts, and other things that I needed NOW but couldn’t produce in time. Therefore, I sold these smaller parts to anyone who would drop 50k for them and then planned to spend 45k on them once someone completed them.
Put another way—I was turning Novena into my factory, creating all the parts and items that solved small problems for them but provided massive gains for me. In this way, I was revolutionizing the world.
Using the other companies under Carter’s Steelworks, we ramped up piping and conventional weapons production, forging quality steel swords and axes in bulk, in addition to cooking knives, hatchets, and wood-cutting axes.
Slowly but surely, we got every country besides Goldenspire addicted to our products, even worming our way into the Green Sea through trade routes with Seraphin.
People got used to it, eventually using our products for critical infrastructure like buildings and water storing vessels, brewing equipment, and distilling. Before long, they’d completely depend on us since all of their steel suppliers were going out of business.
Excellent.
My strategy was working. Unless countries banded together to attack me with thousands of avian mounts simultaneously to kill me and seize our machinery, they’d have no choice but to maintain relationships with me—regardless of their beliefs.
Still, the short-term gains I made by revolutionizing products and lowering their prices wouldn’t last forever. It would take at least a decade to make me too big to fail. Therefore, I still had to play my cards correctly.
Thea and I spent 70% of our waking hours together, and now we spend 70% of our nights before bed talking and relaxing.
While it was pleasant, every day gave me anxiety as we drew nearer to my birthday—and the Suitor’s Tournament.
In the blink of an eye, four months came around, and we took a trip to Nightshade Forest for the first time in over a year. However, we flew far past Elderthorn until we reached Scarborn Cove, a cove on the far east side of the Nightshade Forest, connected to the Romba Strait, the part of the Yikkamar Sea separating Novena from the demon continent Eudoria.
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“It’s… pretty serene,” Carter frowned from the bow of our skywhale. The beach below us was golden and clear, reminiscent of those found in California, with crystal clear waters. “That’s unexpected, given the amount of killin’ necessary to get here.”
Skywhales are massive creatures the size of a pirate ship and have the space on top of their flat heads to store 10 tons of goods while flying. This skywhale, combined with the other ten flying next to it, had ballistas and mages on the bow at all times, mowing down dinosaur-like avians that attacked. Considering how busy the fighters were, seeing a clear cove without creatures mauling each other to death for clean water rights was suspicious.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said, pulling out an impact-triggered mortar and casually lobbing it off the side of the skywhale’s head, the narrow part that we could see over without its large flapping appendages getting in the way.
The moment the impact mortar triggered, the beach exploded around the small explosion, and the beach came alive with twisting worm-like appendages with red lumps on them. When it didn’t take another attack, the worms retracted in unison.
Despite the reaction, it was eerily quiet.
“Well, that’s disturbing,” I frowned, turning and seeing Carter’s face pale as a sheet. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I hate worms, man,” Carter said, gripping the steel railing with superhuman strength and bending it with his fingers.
“Well, lucky for you, those aren’t worms,” I shrugged. “Probably.”
His eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”
I pulled out a gold piece and threw it somewhere else on the beach. The same explosive reaction occurred when it hit, reinforcing my suspicion.
“W-Why the hell did it do the same thing for a gold piece?” he asked. “That’s overkill.”
“It’s because that’s not a beast or or group of worms,” I said, taking out more coins and throwing them in different directions onto the beach. Each time one landed, it exploded with more tendrils with red balls on them before retracting. “Probably.”
“Stop saying ‘probably!'” Carter demanded but then turned whiter when he saw Thea giving him a murderous glance that warned him to be careful about raising his voice with me.
I rolled my eyes and threw more coins to different parts of the beach, testing them out. “It appears to be a carnivorous plant,” I turned to him. “They’re pressure sensitive; it releases those tentacle-like appendages once something touches them. Those red balls are probably sticky.”
While Venus flytraps are the most famous carnivorous plant, there are multiple types. The most fascinating is the sundews, which have tiny clear sticky balls that look like morning dew. Once a fly or other bug lands on it, they stick, and the plant wraps around them, digesting them with digestive enzymes.
Analogously, bugs get stuck to the plant, and the plant spits out acid that dissolves their bodies, and then the plant absorbs the oozing, liquefied body of its prey.
It’s wicked cool.
That’s disturbing, but the true horror is that sundews are small plants that lure in small, harmless flies and other bugs—and nothing in this forest was small or harmless. So if there weren’t any large beasts using the cove as a watering hole, it was a horrifying plant.
Assuming it was a plant.
“Take us here, 20 feet above the cove!” I yelled to the pilot, who immediately had a panic attack with Carter.
“A-Are you crazy?!” A man with a long blonde ponytail at the front of the skywhale’s head exclaimed. “Are we looking at the same beast?!”
“We are. That’s why you should know those tendrils have a range of about eight feet,” I replied calmly, studying the creature.
After an excruciating twenty minutes, I pretended to grab something from my spatial bag and palmed it, turning away. The convenient thing about a spatial bag is that it only increases the size of an object once it’s far enough away from the bag to materialize. That way, picking up a large object doesn’t crush the user.
Once I extended my hand, I silent-casted a spell, ‘Omnipotent tool, 20-foot hollow, lightweight aluminum pole.’ A massive pole appeared in my hand, surprising everyone but Thea. “Get closer, we’re not getting near it.”
The pilot reluctantly agreed and took us toward the beach until we got 19 feet away. 20 feet was the largest range that molecular separation would reach in any direction. That was transferred between the different points. For example, if I touched the plant from 19 feet in the air with the aluminum, it would only affect the area the pole touches in a one-foot radius.
However, that’s all I needed.
The second my pole touched the beach, eight-foot tendrils with sand-covered balls latched onto the pole with surreal strength, making me lurch forward, getting caught by Thea. The sand on the balls instantly dissolved with acid, burning through the ball and the pole in seconds.
‘ATP, glucose, cellulose, chlorophyll,’ I thought. ‘Separate on contact with aluminum.’
The writing plant stopped moving, and the green worm-like tendrils turned to dust and water, leaving only a half-dissolved aluminum pole dripping in acid.
“Che.” I clicked my tongue, the opposite reaction of the ecstatic crew who would be working on the beach. That made everyone nervous.
“W-What was that about, boss?” Carter asked, still weak after looking at the worm-like creatures, exposing that his fear might be a phobia.
“This pole is a specialized weapon that harms plants,” I lied. “And that acid on it is real acid, meaning I can separate it. However, if it’s sulfuric acid, like the kind you’re using in your shop to clean and etch metal, and breaking it apart would create a horrifying result.”
Say I separated hydrogen from sulfuric acid. It would instantly create sulfur trioxide [H₂SO₄ → SO₃].
Sulfur trioxide is extremely reactive and would instantly react with the water in the atmosphere, creating sulfuric acid again—this time in its most concentrated form and releasing a lot of heat in the process.
In short, it would turn the liquid sulfuric acid into a bomb that sprayed 100% sulfuric acid everywhere.
Needless to say, that would be fucking terrible.
If I removed oxygen from it, it would instantly decompose into hydrogen sulfide, which is extremely toxic and flammable.
So what’s the problem with separating hydrogen and oxygen simultaneously?
Nothing—if it’s sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. If it’s something else unworldly and I remove substances, it might do something far worse! There’s a reason I haven’t just started dissolving random plants and minerals into their building blocks—it might kill me!
“Okay, plan B—let’s blow it to hell,” I said apathetically, pulling out a crate of dynamite from a large spatial bag. “Light a torch. We’re going to be doing this for an hour at least.”
***
BOOM!
“No wonder beasts avoid this thing—we’ve gone through a crate of dynamite and it’s still alive… somehow.” I groaned. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. I bet whatever’s on the other shores will be far worse. At least we know what we’re dealing with here.”
Everyone exchanged wry smiles when I pulled out more dynamite.
I only needed to kill it to get close without getting eaten. Then I could start dusting this godless creature to hell.
***
BOOM! Boom, boom, boom-boom-boom! BOOM!
A fireworks show went off in one area, creating a bowl of acid soup that smelled terrible. When the plant started dying, it created a bowl of acid. Now, it was another problem entirely.
“Okay, there’s no getting around it,” I groaned. “Let’s go on a hunt for the Diatroma Tree. It has potassium.”
The pilot paled when I said we were landing on a nearby mountain and dismounting. However, we needed a strong base to neutralize the acid. After that, we could just cover it with dirt. It would be a lot of work, but it needed to be done.
It took half an hour to get the skywhales perched on the mountain and go into the forest. Inside, we encountered beasts as usual. While the people with me were terrified, I just released killing intent to terrify the beasts and get them to leave. The only beasts that would affect us were guardians, and I doubted there would be one this close to the ocean.
I hoped.
Regardless, we spent an hour going through the forest, chopping down trees, dissolving them into potassium piles, and then dumping them into drinking water barrels we brought. The result was potassium hydroxide.
The moment I did it, my eyes widened in disbelief. “Wait….”
“What is it?” Thea asked, seeing me grin with insanity in my eyes.
“I can use my power in a 20-foot radius now.” I turned to her. “That means I can finally create sodium hydroxide with salt water and not die.”
“Did you just say the word ‘die'?” Carter frowned, looking around to ensure others were shivering at my mad scientist reaction.
***
To everyone’s horror, I got on a thunderstag and started dumping impact-triggered mortars into the sea, creating a bridge connecting the acidic beach to the water. Once the water touched, it started sizzling, which wasn’t a positive sign.
Once the saltwater mixed with the acid, I returned to the shore and looked at the pool of acidic water. ‘Omnipotent tool—20-foot, hollow platinum pole,’ I thought, creating the same pole made out of a wildly inert substance, making it highly resistant to acid corrosion.
Then I touched the water with the tip of the platinum and gulped. ‘Sodium,’ I thought, gritting my teeth. ‘Separate.’
BOOOOOM!
My eyes widened in horror as a tidal wave of sodium hydroxide started raining down on us from the sky—it was far worse than I imagined.
“Protege nos!” Thea yelled, finishing her silent cast spell and creating a massive blue barrier over us just in time to stop the sodium hydroxide rain, threatening to burn us on contact.
There's a variety of normal ways to make sodium hydroxide. Mixing specific minerals with water. Using electrolysis to fuse the salt and water in saltwater. You know, normal science stuff.
Or, you could take a brick of elemental sodium and throw it into water. If you do that, well, it violently explodes because the high heat is intense enough to ignite the hydrogen gas it creates. It’s a wild reaction.
“What the hell just happened?” Carter asked, taking shallow breaths.
“We got lucky that I didn’t touch the ocean,” I muttered in a haze. If that was an ocean and I stuck the whole pole in it, it would probably create a massive crater and kill all the trees with a base that could liquify a human body. I should’ve just separated on contact; I severely underestimated it.
“I know this is hard to believe, but I just removed all the acid from that area,” I said, patting the man on the shoulder. “Probably.”
Mixing the sodium hydroxide with concentrated sulfuric acid in the right quantities balances out to nearly neutral, approaching water.
However, the acid that can liquify aluminum in 30 seconds is probably -10 on the acid scale or something else ridiculous by Earthian standards. The solution to the problem? Add A LOT of sodium hydroxide. If you keep adding more of a lesser base, it’ll eventually neutralize the acid.
Brute force for the win.
Once we waited a few hours to ensure the reaction goes through, I can separate the remaining sodium hydroxide from the water and fill it with sand.
More importantly, I can now make sodium hydroxide—in low quantities—without dying. It’s kind of a big deal.
“Okay, well, now that we’ve survived….” I said after I separated the sodium hydroxide from the water and placed it on the beach with my magic, leaving everyone slack-jawed. “Let’s fill this up with sand again and get to work.”
***
We spent half a day filling the explosion-riddled cove and then returned to the skywhales, unloading multiple tons of crates one by one in addition to massive metal pieces and putting them on the beach.
“Tell everyone to bring the most competent people back,” I ordered the pilot. “We can’t miss a single crate on the way here.”
“Y-Yes, sir,” he stammered, probably terrified of me after everything he saw. With a firm salute, he signaled to the fleet of skywhales perched on the mountain, and they took off.
When I returned to the beach, Carter walked up to me. “Alright, where are we going to start?”
I pulled out a hammock I ordered from the textiles guild before I left and started setting up. “I’m not sure,” I replied. “These drawings come to me in visions. I don’t know jack about how they actually work. So I’ll be right here.”
Carter furrowed his brow indignantly. “You’re just going to lounge around?”
“No, we’re going to be lounging around,” I corrected, reminding him of Thea.
His eyebrow twitched. “Seriously?”
“Well, we’re also going to periodically kill massive beasts while you assemble that thing,” I shrugged. “Unless you want to do that.”
Carter’s face paled. “On second thought, I think I’m okay.”
“Good man,” I smiled. “Well, off you go. That steamship isn’t going to assemble itself.”
The minor gratitude he had for me instantly dissipated when he remembered what they were about to do: assemble a British-style steamship with nothing but scaffolding, ladders, gravity stone, magic, and superhuman strength. Well, and hydraulic jacks and any other temporary tools that I could make with the second stage of the omnipotent tool. So they’d make it work. Probably.
Either way, it was time for me to relax, so I used my two omnipotent tools to create sunglasses for Thea and me as we crawled into a hammock together.
“What story are you going to tell me this trip?” Thea asked with a bright smile, snuggling up to me.
My eyes glided to the left and developed a strange glint. “How about… The Odyssey?” I smiled. “Trust me, you’ll love it.”
—
[A/N: Spoiler: They fail to do it without heavy machinery. XD Ch.32 Steamships, Cranes, and Hydraulic Systems. Also, yes, they can build a steamship with their current tools and technology.]