Chapter 81 — Monster, Monster

The ancient crystals of Gondor had ensured safety in this regard by relying on a function of almost black-box technology—"friend-or-foe identification"—and the crystals also contained a highly complex detonation mechanism that operated automatically once they left their master's control. But in the eyes of today's mages, that portion of the rune set was practically an alien creation; it was hard enough just to draw it on paper, let alone reproduce it.

A great mass of runes and magic arrays welled up in Hedy's mind, and she tried to use them to meet the Xuanmai Sect's requirement of "delayed detonation." It occurred to her to add a slow-charging structure to those rune sets: when the rune trigger was pressed, it would begin to charge; only when the energy was full would it trip the next-level detonation array. But plainly, the instant magic supplied by the rune trigger was far from sufficient for that.

Rebecca's mind was racing too, but what welled up in her head was not only runes and magic arrays but a great pile of springs and linkages...

She was trying to meet the Xuanmai Sect's requirement through means other than magic.

This was the difference in thinking between a mage who knew a great many spells and a mage who knew only one fireball.

The two many-times-great-granddaughters, their heads full of ideas, took their leave with the tasks Gao Yang had given them, while Gao Yang stood where he was, gazing at the magic laboratory still trailing wisps of blue smoke, and sighed with feeling.

A world with... magic.

Sure enough, even the first ringing note of art was utterly different from Earth's.

As an explosive that required a specific magic array to detonate, the power and safety of "Rebecca crystals" were no problem at all—yet in the matter of delayed detonation they had run into considerable trouble.

Had it been gunpowder on Earth, all it would have taken was a fuse.

In the blink of an eye, the Cecil pioneering camp had already taken root in this land for a month. The men and supplies promised by King Francis II had not yet arrived, but there was definite word that they were on the way; this year the flood season of the Dolgon River had come nearly half a month later than usual, and so the aid from the heart of the kingdom had been delayed on the road.

Gao Yang could be said to have been prepared for such delays: in a world where everything was slow and backward, one could not expect others to live up to the precise and efficient standards of Earth's society, so his camp construction plans were not affected in the least and proceeded at their established pace.

The camp's many tents had already become sturdier plank houses fit for long-term use, and with cement out of the question for the present, Gao Yang's next step was to have the craftsmen open up a new area on the west side of the camp and build brick kilns to fire earthen bricks. Cement had failed in this world, but bricks could be fired well enough—this was a technology that already existed here.

Only, traditional brick-firing depended on manual labor and was extremely inefficient, and the finished product was correspondingly expensive; in places like Tanzan Town, only the burgher class could afford to live in brick-and-tile houses.

Yet before his plan could be carried out, a sudden turn of events disrupted the rhythm of the camp's construction.

Several serfs who had gone into the mountains to look for quartz sand came fleeing back in terror; two of them were badly hurt, and another had been left in the mountains forever.

They had been attacked by "the Aberrants."