I woke up to the familiar ceiling once again. I had seen its gray-black surface everyday for 2 months in the dark space. And today, it was the 91^st time I stared at it in my bed on this planet. To think it had been 3 month since we came to this world. It hadn’t been boring. A deep breath in, a deep breath out. In and out. I hopped out of the bed.

“How was the night, Josse? Anything new?”

One benefit of having an AI buddy that never slept was nothing could sneak up on you easily. If I wanted, or cared enough, I could easily monitor everyone in the village. Not that I would, as I had no interest in knowing what they did, or who cheated on who.

“Morning boss. Nothing much, really. This place is still as dull as ever. Oh, Auda waking up the recruits by setting fire to their barracks was fun. It was not a real one, but the reactions of the recruits were priceless. I’ll show it to you in a second. As for your agenda for the day, you told me to remind you to talk to Brian first, and Silva afterwards. Also, you have to go introduce the weapon to the recruits. And in general, you said you wanted to go to the forest to gather Tier 2 and 3 cores for yourself and Galdwin.”

There wasn’t much to do, but compared to most days, it was busy as hell.

We had frankly iridous amounts of Tier 1 cores, and were getting more than we could use. With weather getting colder, lesser goblins were starting to come out of the western forest in droves. Goblin packs were kicking their weaker members out, to make sure that they could sustain the stronger Tier 2 goblin warriors or Tier 3 Hobgoblins as long as possible. Last time, when the elves tried to build a fortification, goblin attacks had started at the second month of the winter. But they had been far down south, so they had attracted the attention of the entire forest to themselves, and we were at the north, far away from the seasonal traffic route between the 2 forests.

Shit, shower, shave, and eat. First 4 things to do at the start of the day, every day. This had been engraved into me at the Academy, and I had implemented it in the military. Or at least, tried to. At first glance, there wasn’t any differences between humans and elves, but there were some, just hard to notice. Except the ears.

I recalled them as I went through the motions. First, shitting. Elves rarely had to. Whether it was genetics or mana, their digestive system was much more efficient than humans’. They ate the regular amount, but had to shit once every other day. Also, warrior Tiers also strengthened it, making one go to bathroom even less. Next was showering. I had expected them to be crude medieval peasants, taking a bath once a week. I was wrong, as the problem turned out to be other way around. They cleaned themselves 2 times a day, even if they didn’t do any hard work. To them, being a little sweaty was like how a human would feel after taking a swim at sewers. Apparently, most soldiers and hunters had overcome this instinct to stay fresh, but not all of the city guard did so, since they were close to luxury of fresh water. It was nothing crawling in the mud for a week couldn’t fix, for the new rifleman of the village. They had discovered soap too, granted it was crude one made with pot ash. It was brown and irritated the skin if used too often. Lastly, shaving. They didn’t have to. No elf, man or woman grew any facial hair. It made me wonder the situation with pubic hair, but asking it to Reba, from whom I learned this fact while discussing the training procedure, would not have been a good idea. She had thrown me enough glances when she learned that hair would grow out of my face. Weirding her out anymore was unnecessary. At least, their food was nothing unexpected. They ate grains, herbs, and meats like I expected.

First stop was Brian, who was in one of the rooms of my ship. A workshop was being built just outside, at the foot of the hill, but it was low priority compared to other projects. Also, it was taking longer to build it, since it couldn’t be the usual 4 walls and a roof. A workshop needed to have good air circulation and safety measures, and nothing could beat my ship with its automatic fire suppressors and air scrubbers.

“How is it going?”

I found Brian milling an object, with all of his focus on it. I waited until he turned off the mill to speak to him.

“Morning, Lloyd. I am down to last few parts for the loader. I think it’s turned out to be fine. I can now consistently hit tenth of a thou on the mill and the lathe. Teacher, this much is good enough, isn’t it? When are we going to start on the weapon parts? I have already done the wooden housing for them, and only the metal parts remains.”

He was as enthusiastic as ever when it came to machining. He was calm and collected when listening to my classes, but lost it when it came to machining, as if he was a kid in a candy store.

I took a look at the bullet loader. It was just as I designed, showing Brian’s ever increasing capabilities. There were no obvious mistakes or dents in any part as far as I could see, and he had followed the blueprint to the t. The 2 meter tall, 3 meter wide device in itself, was simply a glorified 3 step press. With a pull of a lever, it would line up and push a primer cartridge to a bullet casing, while pouring a pre-measured amount of smokeless gunpowder. Next 2 steps, which were also powered by the same lever, would hold the projectile, the bullet, to the neck of the case and crimp it shut. Sure, it wasn’t much faster than a worker doing it all manually, after all, someone had to measure the powder and place the primer and bullet to their respective feeding lines, but it was not the point of it.

This machine wasn’t made to work alone, but with many other machines of different kinds. Not even 100 workers could be as fast as a semi automated factory, which it would be, after coupling it with a case drawing machine and a primer machine.

“Alright, I get it. You can start with them, but first you need to design and make testing equipments for them. Tell me when you are done with it, so I can check it. After I give it a go, only then you can start to mill them.”

Testing equipments were mostly simple things, as they didn’t have to do anything complicated. They just had to apply pre-determined force to a part, a couple of times. With that, I excused myself from the room. Anymore, and he would start to ask million questions. Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal to let him have a go at the weapons earlier, but I was running short of steel. The situation with metals was complicated. For steel, we had an iron and a coke deposit that I inspected last week. Coke deposit was an open air mine, like the limestone pit. Coke had excessive amount of sulfur, but it was still usable. As for the iron deposit, it was lying at the foot of a mountain, and it was deep enough to last us long time. Problem was extracting them, as they were in the western forest. Next was brass, which was made from copper and zinc. We simply didn’t have any. None at all. There was no copper or zinc mines to be spotted. I had some copper, as it was used in the ship for non-critical electrical wiring, but no zinc. Even the bullet casings that I made for today to show the weapon to the recruits was made out of ductile steel, instead of brass.

Next was lead, which we had plenty. Northern part of the hills that housed the village had soil rich in lead. Since lead had much lower melting point than most other metals or silicates, all we had to do was heat the soil to 400 Celsius for the lead to melt away. A ton of dirt gave us 2-3 kilograms of lead. At this concentration, it was toxic to plant matter, at least back on earth. And the lack of vegetation at the location was proof of that.

And lastly, aluminum. As Josse had said, there was a mine, but just like most of the chemicals I needed, while easy to produce in small quantities in labs, it was very hard to refine it in a semi-industrial scale.

Now it was time for my next appointment, which was with Silva. Thankfully, I didn’t have to search for her.

I got out of my ship, an descended the hill. Right next to the half-built workshop, there was a small, one room cabin. I knocked on the door, and waited for it to open. This building was made for my new assistant. She would welcome the guests and notify me of their presence. Also, thanks to her, I didn’t have to hunt down anyone to talk with them. Silva made sure to give her a copy of the everyone’s schedule. Everyone that was working under her that is. She had managed to make some sort of government with the smarter elves of the village. She had a small gang of assistants and pseudo ministers under her. For example, Milan had been put in charge of the defense production. He was monitoring the village wall, ammunition production facility and the limestone quarry.

The door opened less than 5 seconds after I knocked on it. The one to come out was a small girl, barely meter and a half, with long yellow hair tied to a bun. She, Gala, had been chosen by Silva, which had been a brilliant move from her.  Gala’s both parents had been guards in the newcomer’s old village, and had passed away during the attack. As an orphan, she had to find work, but she was too young to join the military or work as a laborer yet she didn’t know much else besides swinging a sword. By making her my assistant, the shy girl had a decent paying cushy job. Even though she answered directly to me, the one to put her here was Silva, so her gratitude would be to her. Now, she could monitor me peacefully without raising my suspicion. After all, she was just a shy little girl, wasn’t she? Of course, Silva had one more thing to gain from this single move. She had earned the respect of the village as someone who looked out for everyone, even it was a small orphan.

“Good morning, Gala. Tell me, do you know where Silva is? I have couple of thing to talk to her.”

I had some things that I wanted of her, something to notify her of, and also, give her a small punishment for the assistant incident. I had told her not to play games with me, and she hadn’t listened.

“Eerm, umm, she is a-at the grand opening of the Inn. She will be going to limestone quarry after that for the whole day. D-do you want me to n-notify her?”

“No, I’ll talk with her tomorrow. Since I have more time now, I am going to inspect the niter mine before visiting the boot camp.”

Monk_Origins

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