Sea introduced me in an indifferent voice.
“This is my classmate, Gang Ujin. He’s the main designer of the experiment we’ll be testing today. That ‘web novel verification data’ I mentioned before—that’s his project.”
“Web… novel?”
The expressions of Chief Kim and the other researchers twisted for an instant.
“Are you kidding me? We got called in on a weekend morning without even overtime pay, and the reason is some undergrad brat’s fantasy novel worldbuilding game?!”
The look of dejection on their faces clearly said, “This has crossed the line.”
But since it was an order from above, they couldn’t openly lose their tempers.
Chief Kim forced the corners of his mouth to twitch upward and gave me a strained smile.
“Ah, haha. A novel. That’s nice. Young people these days have such remarkable creativity. So, student, what kind of grand novel are you writing that you need Taesan’s vacuum induction melting furnace, our VIM?”
His tone was gentle, but beneath it lay the prickly pride of a specialist saying, “Just try spouting nonsense without even knowing the basics of engineering.”
Seeing right through them, I chuckled inwardly.
As a merchant, the best way to break a business partner’s momentum is to strike at the heart of the field they’re most confident in with expert knowledge.
I took a notebook packed with equations out of my bag and spread it open on the table.
“Pleased to meet you, Chief. I won’t waste your time. I’ll get straight to the point.”
My gaze instantly sank into coldness.
“The setting of my novel is a fantasy world with metallurgy at the level of the sixteenth century. However, the water there contains an energy called mana, and when it turns to steam, it generates explosive expansion pressure at least four times greater than Earth’s water vapor.”
“…What? Four times?”
“Yes. I’m looking for a material for a massive ‘land battleship boiler’ that can withstand that insane pressure. By design, the internal pressure of the boiler will be at least 150 atmospheres, and the temperature will exceed 400 degrees Celsius.”
“150 atmospheres?! 400 degrees Celsius?!”
Chief Kim’s forced smile vanished completely.
His eyes grew wide, and the engineer’s instincts within him sprang out.
“Student, are you joking right now? You’re saying cast iron from a sixteenth-century-level open-hearth or reverberatory furnace can withstand 150 atmospheres? Iron that hasn’t had its impurities removed suffers red-shortness from sulfur once it goes over 400 degrees and tears apart like sorghum stalks! The premise doesn’t make sense to begin with!”
“Correct. That’s why I plan to add manganese at a ratio of 1.2% to isolate sulfur in the form of manganese sulfide. At the same time, the carbon content must be reduced drastically to below 0.15% to secure weldability and toughness.”
“…!”
At the professional chemical formulas and solutions flowing smoothly from my mouth, Chief Kim’s jaw fell half-open.
“In addition.”
I pointed at the notebook with my finger and drove in the wedge.
“I’m thinking of adding 1.0% chromium and 0.5% molybdenum, which can be mined in small quantities in the fantasy world. Since there’s the limitation of a giant boiler barrel where modern quenching or precise heat treatment is impossible, I want to find the minimum composition that raises high-temperature creep resistance and yield strength to the extreme solely through the alloy’s ‘ratio.’”
Silence.
Inside the lab, only the whirring sound of the machinery’s ventilators lingered.
A novel worldbuilding game? A joke?
No. This was an extremely hardcore “materials engineering optimization puzzle” to derive the optimal alloy formula under perfectly controlled constraints.
“Ch-chromium 1 percent and molybdenum 0.5 percent… with carbon at an ultra-low carbon steel base of 0.15, and heat treatment omitted?”
The eyes of Chief Kim and the other middle-aged researchers changed.
From the eyes of office workers dragged in for an annoying weekend shift, to the gleaming eyes of “engineering perverts” facing a difficult problem they simply couldn’t leave unsolved.
“Hey, Chief Choi! Preheat the vacuum induction furnace right now! Bring molybdenum and chromium specimens! We’re boiling molten steel on a 0.15 percent carbon base!”
“Yes, Chief! I’ll add limestone in a classical ratio for slag formation as well!”
Any thoughts of flattery to look good in front of Sea had long since evaporated from their minds.
They fluttered their white coats and dashed madly toward the equipment.
Sea poked me in the side and whispered softly.
“You really hit the old guys right in their sweet spot. It’s been ages since I’ve seen them this excited.”
“A merchant knows exactly what the other party wants.”
“A merchant?”
“There’s such a thing.”
I grinned and plunged into the crowd of researchers in earnest.
Zing—woooong!
As an ultra-high-frequency magnetic field formed, the metals inside the vacuum melting furnace began melting into crimson molten steel.
It was the crystallization of modern science, controlling impurities down to 0.001%, on a completely different level from a crude fantasy-world blast furnace.
“Student Gang Ujin! Manganese has been added! Current temperature, 1,600 degrees! Pouring the molten steel!”
Crimson molten steel flowed into a dog-bone-shaped mold.
Avoiding rapid cooling and letting it slowly cool at room temperature, we simulated the exact environment in which a massive boiler would be naturally cooled after being cast in the fantasy world.
“Next, I’ve set up the gasket sealing test.”
Sea handed me heat-resistant gloves as she spoke.
I fastened the composite gasket I had personally designed—layers of graphite powder and thin copper plates compressed together—to the pipe joint of the high-pressure steam simulator.
“Opening steam valve! 50 atmospheres… breaking through 100 atmospheres!”
Pshhhhh—!
The pressure gauge on the gasket tester climbed like mad.
150 atmospheres, surpassing the common sense of Earth.
A figure at which ordinary rubber or leather packing would have long since melted beyond recognition and sent steam spraying out like blades.
“160 atmospheres! Reached 180 atmospheres! No leaks! Perfect seal!”
Chief Choi cheered as he checked the monitor.
The heat resistance of graphite and the ductility of copper had been crushed by the pressure, perfectly filling even the microscopic gaps instead.
“Good. The sealing is solved. Now what’s left is the strength of the actual hunk of steel.”
At last, the slowly cooled alloy steel specimen was clamped between the massive grips of the universal testing machine, the UTM.
This test was the core of the experiment.
Pull the specimen madly from both sides and draw out the extreme value of how much pressure this metal could withstand before snapping.
“Beginning tensile test!”
Wooooong—!
The hydraulic motor started running, pulling the specimen from both ends.
Along with Chief Kim and Sea, I couldn’t take my eyes off the stress-strain curve being drawn on the monitor.
“Hold… hold out a little longer.”
The line on the graph rose steeply.
The point where the boiler would begin permanent deformation—in other words, the “yield strength”—appeared on the monitor in real time.
“Breaking through 300 megapascals! Still maintaining the elastic region!”
“Breaking through 400! No, breaking through 450! My God!”
Chief Kim stepped so close he looked like he was about to bury his face in the monitor, stunned.
“Yield strength, 480 MPa! Tensile strength is just about to reach 650 MPa! This is insane. With sixteenth-century smelting methods and terrible heat treatment, just mixing in 1% chromium and 0.5% molybdenum produces tensile strength like this?!”
Craaaack—!
At last, unable to exceed the limit stress, the specimen split in two with a rupturing sound, but no one in the lab felt disappointed.
“We did it.”
I swung my tightly clenched fist through the air.
Yield strength of 480 MPa.
If a steel plate of this strength was cast to just 1.5 inches thick, it could easily repel the 150-atmosphere mana steam that had nearly exploded in Pellua!
“Amazing! Student Gang Ujin! That composition ratio of yours is truly insane intuition! You could patent this as-is!”
Chief Kim, his face drenched in sweat, cheered as he pounded my shoulder.
The researchers also jumped around, hugging each other as if they had scored a goal in the World Cup final.
“Haa, that was really fun.”
Sea, too, had turned the brim of her cap backward and was smiling lightly as she wiped the sweat from her forehead.
It was a lively, refreshing smile I had never seen before on her usually indifferent face.
She approached me and held out a black USB drive packed with the experimental data.
“Here. Your novel’s setting values. Good work, Author.”
I took the small USB drive in my hand.
Inside this tiny lump of plastic was the perfect heart of a steel beast that would devour trade routes and change the map of Pellua.
“Sea. And Chief Kim. Thank you, truly.”
I bowed my head to them in earnest.
“I will definitely repay this debt once my business hits it big.”
“What business? If your novel hits it big, just treat us to a meal. Ah, and about that chromium composition from earlier—if you reduce the carbon a little more and mix in vanadium…”
Chief Kim, his engineering pervert switch flipped on, tried to grab me again and launch into an impassioned speech, but I subtly stepped backward.
Everything I needed to do in the modern world was over.
I had stolen the perfect formula for steel.
“Haha, I’ll think about that when I write my next novel! I have a manuscript deadline to meet, so I’ll be going!”
Clutching the USB drive tightly, I left Taesan Special Steel Research Institute without looking back.
My heart was pounding like mad.
Now, it’s time to return.
To that despairing workshop on the verge of explosion, to the place where my partner Ayla must be suffocating within the net of capital Valerius had cast.