It was good to work with Sasha again. I almost forgot how easily she could manipulate fire and use her bare hands to mold molten metal without being burnt. It was... unbelievable, no matter how many times I witnessed it. While my parents were with the kids, we occupied the main forge for ourselves and began working on making a lightbulb. It was also the moment when I realized that many things I took for granted and trivial in my old life were much more complicated to bring over to this world.

Lightbulbs. Something that I didn't even think about if they broke. I went ahead, bought new ones, or took out working replacements if we were running low on resources in the army and replaced them without thinking about it. They were cheap, produced in bulk, and without any fuss. Right here? We began running into problems at every step. I thought it would be easy because Edison created it centuries before my time, but even then, he had machines suited to his needs that I was sorely missing here.

Like him, I was thinking of creating a carbonized filament from paper, at least for the first prototype. I thought hard about how to achieve that, and in the end, I decided to try encasing the paper in clay and cooking it that way. The clay would harden around it, sealing it from oxygen and helping me create what I wanted. After a few failed attempts, the first one finally succeeded, and I had my first carbonized paper strip.

This was the easy part. The follow-up step was what stumped both of us. We could create the glass, place the wires within, and attach the filament to it; all that part, with Sasha's delicate fingers, was possible and achievable. The problem came from creating a vacuum. We couldn't do it... We tried multiple methods of drawing air out from the bulb, but all of our attempts resulted in the same outcome: failure.

I couldn't tell if it was during the process to suck the air out from within or something else. Maybe the light bulb didn't seal well somewhere, but any time we tried it and connected it to the prototype dynamo, it burnt out in a flash. Instead of glowing, somehow oxygen got in, and the filament went up in flames. My guess was that we just couldn't properly create a vacuum. We were not there yet.

"Another failure..." Sasha whispered, watching the filament break within, sighing with disappointment. It was our ninth failed product in the span of a whole week. "What now?"

"I am thinking of giving up!" I groaned, sitting down on the floor, leaning against the wall of the forge, rubbing my temples. "I am out of ideas. I could use copper, but then, the light wouldn't be bright enough, and it would melt. Replacing those over and over again would be expensive. Honestly speaking... It would be Useless."

"Are we really unable to create one?"

"Right now? I think so. If we could create a proper vacuum, then it would work. Or fill it with special gas, but we are not ready for that and lack many other resources."

"We could use magic to create that vacuum..." she mumbled, and this was not the first time she had mentioned it.

"I wanted to use the dynamo." I answered half-jokingly, "But using magic would beat the purpose of this. I hoped to catch lightning in a bottle, so to speak, and then present it to the people. But... I have to realize when I overreach. We can't do it right now."

"That does not mean we can't in the future!" She tried to lift my mood, sitting down next to me, wearing her blacksmith's apron and dirty clothes, looking like a sweating coalminer. God, she can be beautiful even when covered in smut. "I say we should try again with magic!"

"That is what we will do."

"We will?" She asked, surprised as I just shot down her idea a moment before.

"Yeah, but it means we will replace the whole thing with magic. You see, if we use magic to create it, then why not go all the way? With Elena's deal, we will receive more CC, and we can use them to create little magical devices that give off a bright glow. Unlike building the tractors, where we can do it without magic, or when designing the mech, managing to reduce most of the formations, here is a little thing that will be entirely based on it. How ironic~!"

"I don't see it that way!" she chuckled, kissing me. "Why not use it if you can? It is just another resource. Using both is the best of both worlds, no? Hehehe, I don't see it as a problem!"

"And that is why you are my wife!" I laughed, hugging her before standing back up, "Let's go, we will take a bath and go back! I will shelve this project for now. With what we learned, I will detail our records and findings and put them out for Kraus and his team to study. They can rack their brains over it in their free time if they want. Who knows, maybe they somehow manage it!"

"Or if they don't, then the next Forgemaster may!"

"True enough~!"

...
....
......

A few days after acknowledging when to give up something, I was finishing up our replacement plan. It was a reasonably simple formation that we designed, working together like all those years ago for the first time. The only difference was that we interrupted it almost every two hours or so, lifting our children out of their cribs as they always let us know when they woke up.

"Ah... Leyla! That's not food!" I tried to hold my daughter away from the parchment as she drooled a little while she stretched her tiny fingers toward it. I was about to finish wrapping her up in a new diaper when she looked for snacks while lying on my desk. "She can't be hungry, can she?" I shrugged, watching my wife, who was smiling defeatedly.

"I am not entirely convinced. Arthur has also been groping me, but I'm out! Were you like this? Eating this much?"

"No, I wasn't." I thought back, remembering those moments making me chuckle and wince at the same time. Back then, Louise was just a woman to me, but now, she was my mother, through and through. So remembering it was a bit conflicting, ehehe...

"Pervert."

"Whaaaat?" I moaned with surprise, turning towards her. I could swear I saw my son giggling at me when I did, but it was probably my imagination only.

"Your face told me everything. Hmph. What now? It is already close to midnight; should we call Mikan?"

"None of you can be THAT hungry, hm?" I asked, raising Leyla, who was wiggling around and showing her discontent with my question. As if her brother understood the assignment, he broke out in a valiant cry, beginning to trash the same way, leaving us with their duet of ear-destroying agony. Damn... they have a powerful voice already.

They, once again, triumphed as we called Mikan over, who wasn't angry to be woken up in the middle of the night. Coming to our study, she sat down happily, letting her massive breasts come free from her gown and take our children from us. The little devils were like hungry leeches, grabbing onto her at once, sucking with bliss spreading through their tiny faces.

"You got comfortable around us quickly, huh?" I asked, watching her do it. She blushed, and I received a kick to my shin... a fair trade. Luckily, I was expecting it, so I didn't flinch.

"It is not a shameful act..." Mikan whispered, watching the already half-asleep babies. "It is such a bliss..."

"It is!" Sasha agreed, sitting down next to her and leaning against Mikan while I returned to my desk, continuing the work on the formation. "I bet you would have no problems pushing two little ones out! Your hips are wider than mine!"

"..." Damn it, wife! I am trying to work here... you kick me when I ogle at those massive milk jugs but start talking about this?! Unfair.

"Hehe, probably!" Mikan giggled, not refuting the claim, talking so freely with Sasha as if I wasn't there. "Although I can't tell. You see, I was never with any men in my life. As a priestess, I couldn't be because they say if a priest or priestess does that, they can no longer work for the people... because they would start working to satisfy their own desires and seeking bodily pleasures and nothing else."

"Bullshit."

It was not just me but also Sasha who echoed the same sentiment, making her blush.

"That is a stupid rule. The church is wrong on so many levels, hmph!"

"I know you dislike them, Sasha," she continued, trying to placate her. "But they did a lot of good in the world, too. Not everyone in there is like how you experienced it."

"Maybe..." she mumbled, knowing that it was right as Mikan was the proof of that, "Anyway! That rule is stupid, and now you are no longer part of THAT church but OUR church! Hmph! So you don't need to follow those stupid rules and make your own instead."

"I... I can't lie... since feeding these two beautiful little gems and speaking with Yuri a lot, I also feel something stirring within me. I am... I am a bit jealous of you. Sorry..."

"It's okay!" Sasha leaned in, kissing her face and hugging her close, "You know what? Now that I am no longer bound to Louise and the palace, we can go out and have a girls' day again!"

"But-" She spoke up, but I interjected from my table.

"Good idea. Worry not; Mom is going to be ecstatic to take care of the kids, and I will also be there. You can have time for yourself; it is healthy for both of you! Also, at least the two imps won't overeat themselves!"

While they were giggling, my focus finally returned to the formation before me. It should be ready soon, and if I coded it right when a piece of CC is placed in the middle of it, it would light up with a warm, bright light. What I will have to test is its strength, as I don't want to create flashbangs or disco lights for my workers but a stable, fixed light source—something that would be turned on at night and keep the factory open every hour.

I showed it to Merlin before, asking if it was the same as what he saw in the mines, but he was unsure of it. It could be, but those felt connected. These items, however many we install, will be all disconnected, individual formations. So, they would have to be manually activated for the time being. I already sent word for the builders to make a catwalk high up where we will place them, and every night shift would start with workers going around, putting the CC in place to activate them. A primitive method, but if it works, it works. Thinking about it, I couldn't help but chuckle because it felt like I was asking my people to turn in a lightbulb whenever they wanted to turn the lights on.

After finishing the last strokes, I leaned back and looked at Sasha and Mikan, who were whispering because the kids had already fallen asleep. I watched them while I let my thoughts wander about what to do with our mines. If this works, I think I will also place them within the mines and help our people work. Who knows, with Merlin's invention coming together, we may even find more ores, not just CC...