Chapter 870 — Northport
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
A bitter cold wind blew in from the sea, setting the Imperial banners on the coastline snapping and streaming. Beneath the blue field and golden grain-and-sword emblem, soldiers and technical artisans were welding the third anchor pile of the day to the steel frame—the as-yet-unsealed magic-net runes nearby gave off a faint glow from the ground, and sparks flew as the thermal beam swept across the steel, landing on ground that had only recently finished hardening. Inside the metal frame, more than ten meters tall, some of the copper piping and heat-conducting fins had already been fixed in place, waiting only to be joined to the rest of the heat pipes.
This enormous apparatus was part of the "Waste Heat Recovery Center." Through an alchemical solution circulating inside the pipes, it would collect the waste heat released by several neighboring facilities—an alchemical reaction tower, a rune-casting foundry, and an incineration center for slime-monster refuse—and distribute it through high-efficiency heat exchangers into the camp's heating system, warming a portion of the area on the western side of the coast.
To survive long-term in a cold northern region, technology of this sort was indispensable. It was far cleaner and more efficient than felling the slow-growing boreal trees at the foot of the mountains for firewood, and it reduced interference with the local inhabitants' lives to the greatest possible extent. One day in the future, these facilities might even be used to heat the nearby settlements as well—though of course, that was a matter for a much later time.
Further off, on the open, level ground near the Northport coast, a scattering of simple huts, military tents, towers, and a number of newly built brick-and-tile houses had already been laid out at irregular intervals. Materials were piled mountain-high in the storage yards, and the heavy construction machinery that had been arriving at the site in recent days was busy at work. A temporary trestle bridge extending out toward the sea had already been erected, and near it lay the large tract of land slated for the future construction of dry docks.
The temporary trestle did not rely on anchor piles or the like to fix it to the seabed near the shore, nor did it use a pontoon bridge; instead it was built upon several enormous ice piles. These ice piles were as thick as bell towers, frozen up from the ocean floor and extending all the way to the surface, with a host of branching ice columns driven deep into the seabed—altogether extraordinarily solid.
Byron stood on a large boulder near the temporary trestle, laughing happily into the sea breeze. He could not help turning to the Grand Consul Victoria beside him. "Your ice magic really is astonishing—I'd long heard that House Wilde had refined the art of frost magic to its utmost extreme, but I never imagined it could be this formidable... When you raised those twelve icy 'pillars' out of the sea, that scene was almost a work of art."
"You flatter me. It was nothing but a crude use of mana," Victoria said with a calm shake of her head. In the bitter wind, the "Queen of the North" still wore a long gown, and the drifting fragments of ice and snow swirled about her like a barrier. "And I never imagined I would one day put these magical arts to use... building things. It's a very novel experience. I'm glad I didn't make a mess of it on my first attempt."
"Magic is a convenient thing. Using it to improve life or advance technology is far more worthwhile than wasting mages' strength on the battlefield—and those aren't my words, they're His Majesty's," Byron said with a smile. "I don't understand much about the field of magic, but I've always wholeheartedly endorsed what His Majesty says, because at least after Princess Rebecca started putting her strength to use in the laboratory, there's been a good deal less of those inexplicable explosions and fires breaking out elsewhere..."