Of those applying for the managing positions, Sen Feng, Chao Kho, and Lu Hong made the final cut.

Sen Feng would have been a scribe and librarian if he had managed to awaken his spirit root. He had that studious type of personality that went well with those professions. Chao Kho was relatively young in comparison and had a youthful energy and vitality that he brought that added a layer of excitement and adventure that would work well to keep people motivated.

Lu Hong was a force to be reckoned with and would be the driving force to maintain order and establish an effective and efficient organization. She shared the same personality and work ethic I found in Gwen, focused, motivated, and no-nonsense.

I wasn’t sure why female Elves tended to be the gender that leaned toward efficiency, maybe I was just biased, but that had been my experience. Gwen, Zui, Alpha, Patriarch Umbra, Mao, Bao, Na, Pling, Ploy, Lin Li, Aki, my mother. All strong Elven women.

“Softwoods work best,” Xinxe informed those gathered, including the new managers of this world's first newspaper, Elven Times. She had found a solution to our paper problem. A young Alchemist, her decision to focus on creating a process to create paper and add ink to allow photo quality pictures allowed her to advance from apprentice to journeyman level.

“The tree is debarked with the remainder pulverized into chips. The chips are steamed until softened and then mixed with water forming a pulp. The pulp is extruded across a wire mesh that allows most of the water to drain away and the fibers from the pulp to join together as paper.

“It is then passed through a series of rollers that compact the pulp fibers together and squeeze the remaining water out. It is passed through a machine that cuts the paper to width. This becomes the final product. It is finally collected into rolls with enough gathered that allows for thousands of pages of newsprint to be generated.”

“What machinery, arrays, or enchantments did you use during the process?” Sen Feng asked.

“I had to work with Xui and Pa,” Xinxe admitted straight away, sharing her accomplishments with the Blacksmith and Arrayist. “Pa was able to expand one of the workshops in the Dojo to fit the machinery that was required, and once Xui built the wire mesh, drums, cauldrons, and conveyor belts to help automate the process, Gemini was enchanted each section.

“The machinery created is proprietary. I couldn’t find anything that would work, so Xui helped to invent the components we would need. Pa used spatial arrays, water gathering arrays, heating arrays, and storage arrays to give us the room we needed and a method to create and store the pulp. Gemini provided enchantments that powered the process, gave direction to the movable parts, and allowed for uniform cutting and rolling of the final product.

“Once the paper issue was solved, we moved on to the actual printing process and added different ink colors to the newsprint to create realistic images.”

“The sample you produced is impressive,” I said, turning the four folded pages of what might have passed as a child’s reading primer. One with pictures. “I’m guessing you found a way to blend red, blue, and green to create the images?”

“Close,” Xinxe replied. “You need to use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black in order to get realistic images. I had to have a few discussions with some of the cities' more skilled artists to figure that out.

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“I had assumed that blending the three primary colors would be the starting point, but I learned that cyan, magenta, and yellow are in their own right primary colors. They are considered primary pigments, with each color combining two equal parts of red, green, or blue to form the entire pallet of colors.

“By blending those three colors and black, you can create crisp, lifelike images. More importantly, those colors can be blended and printed into enchantment patterns allowing holographic and three-dimensional effects.

“The actual printing process requires four liquid metal sheets to be etched with words and the pigments to be applied to blend colors. The paper is passed across these sheets, passed through a press, and depending on the depth of etching, an amount of pigment is transferred and blended across the newsprint to arrive at the final product.

“The hardest part was coming up with a way to separate the pigments out, to figure out how to apply the pigments so that they would blend to create a cohesive whole. Gemini came up with the solution, creating an enchantment that worked like a prism.

“It was able to take a snapshot of the image we wanted to produce and separate that image into the primary pigments. This snapshot was used as the model to figure out what to etch on each metal sheet, the depth required for each color to get the optimum saturation and a way to simplify the transfer of articles and stories to the appropriate metal plate.”

“How is the prism created?” Chao Kho wondered. “And can the process to create paper, the printing press, and the prism be used by non-cultivators?”

“The prism combines the quartz token that was recently introduced with an illusion enchantment. The token has been inscribed to separate the colors of an image, determine what colors need to be blended from the primary pigments, and the depth of etching needed in the metal plates to provide the best saturation.

“Cores power each process, and anyone with enough Qi control to enable the runes and enchantments in household devices would be able to be trained to operate and run the process for each stage.

“I will admit that allowing someone trained as an artist or designer seems to make a difference. Their understanding or nuance, shade, pigment, refractive and reflective aspects of imagery somehow translates into better, crisper pictures.”

“The bottom line,” Lu Hong interjected, “how soon can we go from a working model to a production model? And how many people will we need to staff a production facility?”

“The model we have created just needs a building to become a production model. We created it so that it can be broken down and reassembled. The blueprints to build additional facilities are available to build more production facilities.

“As for staff.

“The number of scribes, image capturers, page layout design, sales staff, and people needed to deliver is something you will need to figure out.

“For production, you will need a cord of wood is enough for twenty-four hundred copies of newsprint for an edition of thirty-five pages. You would need a dozen people that were focused on harvesting, debarking, and turning the wood into chips. Another couple to oversee the steaming process to create pulp, another couple to process the pulp across the wire mesh, and finally, a few people to monitor the paper as it is pressed and rolled.

“Once the paper is ready, you will need a few people to run the press. A few that can focus the quartz imager and create the metal sheets, place the sheets on the drums, keep the ink filled, make sure the paper rolls are aligned properly as it is folded and aligned, and bundle the finished product so that it can be delivered.”

“I will have a building constructed that will be multipurpose. The front half can be used for meetings, assignments, writing, layout design, and editorial oversight. The back half will be configured to run the printing process,” I said.

“It will also have a spatial addition created where the trees needed for production can be grown, harvested, and refined into paper.

“Sen, Chao, and Lu, I’ll leave it to you to begin the hiring process. I will have whomever you hire vetted using the Gestalt solution. I do not want saboteurs or spies disrupting or stealing this process.”