Chapter 78 — The Rune Trigger and Amber's Slacking-Off Time
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Rebecca was clearly rather pleased with Gao Song's praise—so pleased she all but wagged a tail and asked for another round of compliments. Gao Yang, meanwhile, after finishing his praise, began seriously studying the structure of this new furnace. He had already noticed that many things on it had not been part of his original design, and that some of these additional structures were likely Hammer's modifications based on his blacksmithing experience, while the rest were certainly Rebecca's handiwork.
Hammer, after all, had no idea how to make changes to runes and magic arrays.
"What's this structure for?" Gao Yang pointed at the linked pedals, rods, and iron plate beneath the furnace. The assembly looked quite ingenious—probably forged piece by piece with Hammer's hammer. Part of it was flush against the flagstones on the ground, while the other part seemed connected to the furnace's array structure, which stirred some vague associations in Gao Yang's mind.
"Oh, oh! Didn't you say, Ancestor, that an ordinary blacksmith ought to be able to control the array's activation and shutdown? So I designed this structure," Rebecca said smugly. "The new furnace can run continuously, but it still needs an off switch, so look—this pedal controls the movement of this iron plate. There's a rune on the plate, and another on the obsidian slab of the furnace body. Separated, this pair of runes does nothing, but combined, they become part of the whole array..."
As she spoke, Rebecca demonstrated for Gao Yang. She stomped hard on the pedal, and the connected iron plate flipped over and fitted into a groove beneath the furnace. Only then did Gao Yang see that its reverse side was carved with basic elemental runes—precisely the part missing from the furnace body's magic array.
This was a switch—an extremely simple yet highly creative structure.
Before this thing existed, mages had essentially controlled array operation directly with their own mana.
But blacksmiths had no idea how to control mana, so they obviously needed this.
Once the iron plate flipped up, the entire furnace's magical circuit was connected. Gao Yang felt a faint current of air stir around him, and then shimmering, faintly glowing patterns surfaced on the flagstones underfoot. The magic arrays on the furnace's sides began to activate as well, their runes lighting up one by one. Firewood had long since been placed in the furnace chamber, and now, as the arrays activated, the wood directly caught fire, sending up a roaring blaze—far more vigorous and searing than ordinary burning firewood!
Rebecca had already lifted her foot, but the iron plate was held in the furnace's groove by the mechanism's catch teeth. Though the precision of this whole structure could not remotely compare with industrial products, since all it took to activate was pushing that rough rune up, it was clearly working perfectly.
"Step on it again and it goes back!" Rebecca pointed proudly at the catch teeth between the rods. "I named the whole thing 'Rune Trigger'—a lever-operated mechanism that uses runes as its conduit! And let me tell you, don't go thinking that just splitting a few runes apart and recombining them is simple. I tested for ages before I confirmed this pair of runes was the most stable and most universal combination..."
Girl, you gave this thing an incredibly cool name!
Seeing Gao Yang's slightly dazed expression, Rebecca finally stopped the nonstop babbling brought on by excessive excitement, and said with a touch of hope and nervousness, "Um... Ancestor, what do you think of this thing? Oh, right—apart from this Rune Trigger, all the other parts of the furnace were modified by Hammer."
"Very good, very good. You two did well," Gao Yang said from the bottom of his heart. Then, noticing that the old blacksmith was not present, he asked curiously, "Where's Hammer?"