Two weeks before the Months of Darkness.

Time passed uneventfully.

For an entire week, the only things going on were construction. Everything had been laid out. All plans were being acted on. They just needed to finish.

And now that my biggest development had finally passed in regards to the flintlock rifle, I only had one more matter to take care of.

I spent a few days preparing for this moment, and it had finally come.

I was standing at the gates to the manor, my gaze forward with the Baron and Grace by my side.

There was a carriage approaching us. It was adorned modestly, but there was no mistaking the fine craftsmanship that had gone into it. I could imagine the comfortable interior.

The driver stopped the horses before the gates, and the side door was opened.

A man stepped out.

He was tall, valiant, with a cleanly shaven face, brown hair, and bright green eyes. He wasn’t sharp like many business men, but carried an air of leadership and respect.

He wore the standard business attire of this world, which resembled a suit, and had a leather coat draped over it. The leather was worn, but it clearly displayed experience.

He was a wildly influential and rich man that I didn’t think I would meet anytime soon with my status. The fact that he was standing here was a miracle, and I could only think of one reason why he would even bother wasting his time in this place.

The Iron Horse.

Gordian Bollun.

“Sir Bollun, I welcome you to Northtown.”

I had inherited my father’s height, so I stood at around 6 feet tall. Yet I was still shorter than this man. That wasn’t a factor though as I carried myself as I always did.

I stuck out a hand in greeting, which he took promptly and shook with a smile.

“Audius Fawkes. It’s a pleasure to meet the third son of The Gilded General. Likewise, to the second daughter.”

“A pleasure, Sir Bollun.”

Grace curtsied in greeting.

Bollun also greeted the Baron before we all headed to the manor.

The place was spotless, having been prepared for Bollun’s arrival. We headed to a meeting room that was already prepped with a small table of snacks and tea.

We all took a seat, and pleasantries were exchanged. These kinds of things were normal for meetings between nobles, but Bollun wasn’t a noble. That fact was one that made him popular with the merchants who divided themselves against the nobles of the Empire.

So I didn’t allow these meaningless conversations to carry long. After talking about the Fawkes family a bit, as well as the state of Baron Hviral, Grace took the Baron and left the room.

I was left with the Iron Horse, sitting across from each other in silence as the door clicked shut.

There were a few moments of tense silence until I took the initiative.

“What do you think about the Fawkes Heir Wars?”

I asked, causing Bollun to smile.

“I think its something that will shift the Empire’s dynamic in a bigger way than most think it will.”

“Right. I don’t know much, being the fourth child of my father, but I know its become a catalyst for several other machinations of the royal family.”

Audius Fawkes didn’t know much about the Heir Wars because he wasn’t directly involved. But he had heard many things within his father’s household, and he had been to no small amount of events that the Fawkes family had been invited to.

Balls, meetings, tea time, and annual holiday events. There were dozens of small and big affairs that he had gone to, and there was no small amount of eavesdropping.

He had heard much, and knew that these Heir Wars to take his father’s throne weren’t as simple as just that.

They represented a dynamic change in the Empire’s power structure. The Emperor was getting old, the royal children wanted power, there were many nobles who wanted a slice of the pie, and countless resources were invested into these silent changes.

These were all recipes for either revolution or disaster.

To say that I was a bit behind was a monumental understatement. It was definitively impossible to squeeze my way into this whirlpool. No amount of money or otherwise could change that. Too many alliances had been cemented, and nobody would invest into a lost cause, the fourth child of General Charles Fawkes.

I knew this long ago, and back then I had decided on what I would do.

I didn’t need to squeeze into the small cracks of a crumbling castle.

I would just build my own.

My visage turned neutral as I continued.

“Sir Bollun, I can take a guess as to why you’ve decided to grace Northtown with your presence. But does my name carry that much weight?”

“...It didn’t.”

He took a moment to respond, and I could see his gaze turned a bit colder.

This reaffirmed something in my mind.

Gordian Bollun, at his core, was a business man. Beyond the valiant exterior lay a calculative and purpose driven mind.

He continued.

“You, the fourth child of Duke Fawkes, have no chance at the Heir Wars. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity to be found. And already, I have realized a valuable piece of information.”

He leaned forward, looking me in the eye.

“You’re not the nobody that the rumors say you are. I can see it. You hide very deep ambition. Not that you’re hiding it either. After all, walls aren’t built around a city in order to keep people inside. And large groups of strong young men aren’t trained just to keep order in a small city.”

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“You’re well informed. As expected of the head of the most massive monetary network in the Empire. Which merchant told you? There are only a few here.”

“It would be more appropriate to ask which merchant didn’t. The merchants who don’t have a hand in my Guild are the minority.”

We both smiled, a few of our cards having been played.

I moved on.

“So, I was told about your pending visit by the brothers of the Rock and Stone Foundation.”

“Yes. I had correspondence with them, intending to enlist their help. You see, I plan to build a port here in Northtown, and they are the most convenient people I can hire.”

“You plan to take over the Ridge River for good. Are you looking for the wood from the forests here for ships? After all, the water flows down from this place. It would make a good production center.”

“That, among other things. Anyway, I also heard about you not long after our talks, and then I heard of some curious movements you were making. This all piqued my interest.”

“I’m glad. I can say with certainty that your trip here will not be wasted. And so, I offer you the first piece of our deal.”

I reached toward the table.

Beside the snacks and tea, there was a bundle of paper stacked to the side.

It remained untouched and unquestioned until I moved it in between us, taking the top sheet and handing it to Bollun.

On it was the recipe for my cement, which the man quickly understood.

“The value of a versatile building material is incalculable. It’s the foundation on which kingdoms are built. The stronger the material, the stronger the foundation. And this cement and concrete is more than capable of changing the landscape of construction as we know it. More than that, it will persist well into the future. That piece of paper in your hand is nothing short of the recipe for eternal revenue.”

“And you’ve allowed me to lay an eye on it. Is there a reason you’ve given this away for free?”

“Why do you think?”

I leaned back and smiled, waiting for him to ponder.

“...You obviously don’t intend to take advantage of your monopoly on this. It certainly is very similar to existing recipes, besides a few key differences. Nothing that couldn’t be developed given more time. More importantly though, you don’t have the ability to take advantage of this. While others do.”

“Indeed.”

I nodded, his thought process heading down the right track. He smiled as he figured the rest out.

“And yet you want to use it. So you’ll just let others develop it for you. Let everyone else’s capital build the market for you, at which time you can just buy it for cheap.”

“Correct. Except for one small detail. I don’t necessarily have the time to wait years for the market to mature. I’m already producing some. My wall will be the first monument to my cement’s strength. In an ideal situation, I’d become the center of this cement’s production and take advantage of this knowledge. But then I’d have to devote all of my resources to it, which I don’t want to do.”

“You’ve other goals. But what could possibly trump, by your own words, eternal revenue?”

“Plenty of things, actually. Question is, will you help me control it?”

“...”

He sat back, smiling at me. We were coming to an understanding.

……

The Baron’s manor was filling up, so Sir Bollun chose to stay on his ship in the nearby river.

It was quite impressive when I got a look at it. 150 meters long with sails and two long rows of oar openings on the sides. The river was certainly wide enough to accommodate it, but going against the current was impressive with such manual labor, even if the current was slow.

When I developed steam engines, Sir Bollun would likely be my first customer. His personal boat would be a form of advertising for my machinations.

For now though, I had to focus on other things.

My nights hadn’t been spent merely scribing. Although I had received more paper and book bindings, my top priority had always been on mounting a defense.

And although many functions were limited, light energy operations were still capable of being carried out on my Matter Tool.

I used this, almost every night, to perfect the imperfections in my fortifications. Tonight was another of these nights.

I told nobody when I snuck out, and even then I treated my trip to the front walls as a workout.

Once at the walls I’d run a verity of operations. One of the most important was hardening the concrete and perfecting the mixture.

Although the Tool couldn’t yet synthesize any element I wanted from mere hydrogen, it could still analyze chemical concentrations. It took no more than observations utilizing the variety of bands from the electromagnetic spectrum, penetrating every micrometer of space, mapping out the atomic configuration of the material, and giving me a report on its chemical makeup.

Things like too much or too little water added to the mixture of concrete could ruin its properties, more often than not ruining it and reducing its ability to adhere to the other parts of the wall, like the rebar within.

So what I did was remove any excess. If there was too much water I would atomize some of it. There being too little water was very rare, and often times nothing to worry about anyway.

Then, after the concrete mixture was perfected, I’d accelerate the hardening. This took a lot of time because there was a slight amount of roundabout atomic synthesis to be carried out, which required more power that the Tool didn’t have a lot of. But it could be done, on a shallow level, bit by bit at a time. It would take hours just to do one small section of the wall, which is why I had to come out here and work frequently.

Tonight, I was finishing up the last of the wall. Only the edges had yet to be completely formed. The rest was finished. Technically it was battle worthy right now.

The wall was 40 meters tall and 10 meters thick. It also sunk about 10 meters into the ground. It had two gates as well as towers dispersed across its length. It was perfect for a siege of ground based demon beasts. While I’d prefer to have two or even three layers for the wall, this would have to do.

Financially, we were not doing well. I had dug into my loan as well as the Baron’s savings to get it up and make sure those working for me were paid. Thankfully I owned both the iron company and a part of the Rock and Stone Foundation. That eased costs rough to get by.

Now, the only issue was the weapons, which I was about to solve tonight.

I had told anybody concerned that the other batches of flintlock rifles were being worked on. By who they didn’t know, and thus couldn’t know that it was me.

If I wanted things like rifling and precision barrels, then I needed my Tool. Thankfully atomizing some iron wasn’t difficult.

Once I was done with the wall for the night I ran my way over to a storage warehouse near the Rock and Stone Foundation that was used for black powder mixing and cement storage.

There, I found stacks of barrels and trigger assemblies. About half had been formed to my specifications, while the other half had yet to be touched and still sat around as iron rods.

First, I picked up one of the mostly-formed barrels. Then I lifted my left hand.

“Scan for life forms within this warehouse.”

[Scanning…]

Different wavelengths of radiation shot through the area. I couldn't be too cautious, so I had started to scan around for other people before operating my Tool in any significant or noticeable capacity.

It quickly finished scanning.

[No lifeforms detected within the structure. No lifeforms detected within line of sight.]

“Thank you. Now…”

The Tool manifested and sparked with power when I brought it up to the barrel assembly in my hand.

“Atomize.”

Light beamed across the barrel, sliding across it from back to front. In my head I could see the blueprint that it was following. Rifling was being added while the internals were perfected in shape. Anything that wasn’t needed was atomized into dust.

In only 5 minutes, the barrel and trigger assembly was perfect. All it needed was to be mounted to a wooden stock, which was being made by a local carpenter.

I moved on to the others, even the iron rods, and formed them all into working rifles.

After another few hours, I gazed upon 50 flintlock assemblies.

I could arm a quarter of my small army with this. Even with just that many, and perhaps a bit of magic on my part, I could successfully defend this city so long as I armed the rest with spears. But my plans went beyond that. I’d be having the blacksmiths with overtime to make more barrels. They would be crude, but so long as I perfected them, there would be no issues.

For now I still had to put on the airs of an ordinary man, making it seem like I was attaining everything through legitimate work. And for the most part I was, but things would be better off with my personal touch, so I didn’t spare the effort. I wouldn’t take any chances with this new foothold in this new world.

With that, I went back to the manor. I arrived drenched in sweat, and just as the sun started to rise.

Well, I wouldn’t be getting any sleep today. I still had to monitor the soldiers and construction on both the wall and our iron facilities. Training with the rifles would come soon too. There were only two weeks left until the Months of Darkness started. While the monsters wouldn’t necessarily come right then, I still had to prepare as if they would.

I washed up before going back to my study, starting another page and scribing some educational content within.

Things were coming together nicely.