Silence.
Everyone on the pier stood dazed by the bizarre sound that had burst from the imperial princess’s mouth.
Aila whispered in my ear.
“Elpanso… What kind of magic spell is that woman chanting? The pillar is twisting and the rhythm is off—what is she even talking about?”
But I couldn’t answer.
My heart was pounding even more wildly than when I had activated the pendant earlier.
The words she used were crude, everyday language.
But the engineering knowledge in my head was translating the ordinary words the imperial princess had uttered in real time—and shuddering.
‘When the ship tilts, the wheels spin uselessly?’
The asymmetric load placed on both paddle wheels due to the rolling phenomenon of a rough sea!
‘The iron pillar twists and gets shaved away?’
The enormous torsional stress applied to the crankshaft and bearings because of that asymmetric load!
‘The rhythm falls out of sync and the force flows backward?’
Valve timing errors caused by the shaft twisting, and the backflow of high-pressure steam!
In truth, I had built the ship based on data from fixed trial runs at an on-land shipyard, so I had not perfectly calculated the difference in resistance values that occurred when the hull rocked side to side in rough seas.
And yet, in this conservative empire of heretics—
An imperial princess dressed in splendid silk had seen nothing more than the irregular breath and movements of the steam the ship emitted as it docked, and had instantly, intuitively pierced through that minute yet fatal mechanical flaw!
‘Insane. This woman is a real genius.’
I slowly curled up the corners of my mouth.
A monster who had never studied formal academics, yet could grasp the essence of modern engineering mechanisms purely through observation and intuition.
For the first time in this other world, I felt as though I had met a “kindred spirit” who could perfectly tune into Kang Woojin’s knowledge.
“Your Imperial Highness.”
I approached Imperial Princess Aisha and twisted one corner of my lips upward.
“Your words are exactly correct. The iron shaft has reached the limit of what it can endure. I will immediately draw the fire from the furnace and cool the boiling energy.”
As Aisha’s eyes trembled with satisfaction and a strange curiosity at my acknowledgment,
I extended my hand to her with utmost courtesy.
“Truly, it is an exceptionally keen and dazzling insight.”
The instincts of a merchant and the blood of an engineer boiled up at the same time.
After Yun Se-a of Taesan Special Steel, now it was the genius imperial princess of a heretic empire.
There could be no more perfect second business partner to devour the eastern part of the continent.
*
The next morning, in a guest room prepared at the governor’s residence on Kapros Island.
After washing away the black coal dust and oil grime, I changed into a neat navy frock coat befitting the dignity of a chief merchant and adjusted my collar in front of the mirror.
“Are you really going? Are you out of your mind, Elpanso?”
Aila, who had her arms crossed behind me, snapped in extreme displeasure.
“The imperial princess of the Empire suddenly says she wants to show you around the island. Isn’t that way too suspicious? What if she knows we came with a pile of gold coins and plans to stab us in the back? And we’re right in the middle of the heretics!”
“Calm down, Aila. She is, in name and fact, the First Imperial Princess of the Empire. I can’t coldly refuse an invitation disguised as goodwill toward a mere merchant company. If I commit a diplomatic discourtesy, it could interfere with the purchase of cotton.”
I answered calmly, but in truth, my real thoughts were directed somewhere else entirely.
‘Imperial Princess Aisha. That insane intuition and genius of hers.’
My head was packed full of the completed engineering theories of the twenty-first century that Kang Woojin had learned.
But just because the theory was perfect did not mean real machinery could be made in a snap.
Outdated materials, poor machining precision, the unexpected variables of Mother Nature and mana.
To force modern blueprints into the harsh environment of this barren fantasy world, I absolutely needed a “practical genius” who could intuitively twist the limits of reality.
‘I want to scout her. I want to kidnap her to Pellua right now and seat her as chief engineer of the factory.’
But that was impossible.
The other party was the First Imperial Princess of the Osuan Empire.
In that case, there was only one next-best option.
‘Remote technical consultation through continual exchanges of letters—in other words, turn her into a pen pal.’
To do that, today, I had to make that proud and clever imperial princess become completely enchanted by the wellspring of my knowledge.
Click.
When I opened the door of the residence and stepped into the banquet hall, Imperial Princess Aisha, who had been waiting in advance, turned her head.
“……”
Aisha’s golden eyes widened ever so slightly and flashed for an instant.
“Compared to your grimy appearance yesterday, this is far better… I see.”
“Thank you?”
But she soon returned to the elegant and arrogant expression unique to an imperial princess and nodded lightly.
“It seems you are ready. Chief Merchant of Carnoble. Follow me. I shall specially guide you through this Pearl of the East.”
“It is an honor, Your Highness.”
I smiled politely and followed behind her.
With the guards following at a suitable distance, we walked through the splendid bazaar of Kapros Island.
Mountains of colorful spices, red carpets that dazzled the eyes, and the scenery of vast cotton fields stretching endlessly beyond the harbor exuded an exotic atmosphere.
But the conversation passing between the two of us had nothing at all to do with that beautiful scenery—it was nothing but terribly stiff talk.
“So.”
Ignoring the merchants’ hawking cries, Aisha abruptly threw me a sharp question.
“That problem I pointed out yesterday. The phenomenon where the iron shaft twists because of the waves. How exactly do you intend to fix it? Even if you crudely thicken the shaft by plating it with thicker iron, if the imbalance of force continues, it will eventually break.”
She had taken the bait.
It was clear that the structure of the ship she had seen yesterday had not left her mind, and she had lost sleep over it.
With a deliberately relaxed expression, I clasped my hands behind my back like a merchant and answered.
“Thickening the shaft is something only amateurs do. It merely makes the ship heavier.”
“Then?”
“There are two methods.”
“Two methods?”
“First, instead of connecting both wheels with one long shaft, you cut the shaft in the middle and have each side move independently.”
If made that way, even if one side took a load, the other side would act separately.
“…Cut the shaft and mesh it with gears? In order to disperse the force?”
“You mesh gears in the form of a ‘differential gear’ so that even if one wheel spins in the air, the twisting won’t be transmitted to the shaft of the other wheel.”
Aisha’s eyes sparkled with interest.
“However, Your Highness, that makes the structure complicated and difficult to manufacture. So I used the second method.”
“What is the second method?”
I drew a large circle in the air with my finger.
“Inside the engine room, at the very center of the shaft, I installed an extremely heavy and large cast-iron wheel.”
“A heavy iron wheel? A ship should be made light, yet you deliberately attach a heavy lump of iron?”
She was right.
When building a ship, making it light was common sense.
However—
“That wheel does not touch the water and only rotates along with the shaft. Once a heavy lump of iron begins to spin fiercely, it gains the property of wanting to keep spinning without stopping because of inertia.”
What if it had a greater use?
Even if it made the ship heavier, if its utility became higher, then it was an element that had to be included.
Aisha paused in her steps.
Inside her brilliant mind, the concept I had thrown out was being assembled at a furious pace.
“Ah…!”
Soon, an exclamation burst from between her lips.
“At the fleeting moment when one wheel spins uselessly because of the waves and the rhythm of force dies… the ‘rotating force’ contained in that heavy iron wheel spinning inside the ship forcibly pushes the shaft and maintains the rhythm! You mean it’s like a rotating reservoir that fills the gap in force?!”
“Precisely, Your Highness. In technical terms, it is called torque smoothing using a ‘flywheel.’”
As though shocked, Aisha stared blankly at me with her lips slightly parted beyond her silk veil.
It was an exceedingly refined and fundamental mechanical solution, one she had never heard from any scholar or blacksmith of the Osuan Empire.
Her gaze now burned beyond curiosity, with a terrible thirst for knowledge.
“Then let me ask just one more thing.”
Aisha came close to me.
The dense scent of roses from her ebony hair brushed the tip of my nose, but her gaze was that of a predator, as if she would devour the inside of my head at any moment.
“That large iron barrel.”
Iron barrel?
Ah, she meant the boiler.
“How do you boil water in an instant with only the flames from that narrow hearth, enough to unleash such tremendous power? If you pour water into a huge cauldron and light a fire underneath, it takes an age to boil!”
I cheered inwardly.
‘Knowledge is the bait, and she is the fish. Get hooked, get hooked!’
As if revealing a tremendous secret, I lowered my voice and whispered.
“It is a change in perspective, Your Highness. You do not light a fire beneath the water tank.”
“Then?”
“You run dozens of thin iron pipes through the inside of the water tank. Then you make the flames and hot smoke from the hearth pass through the ‘inside’ of those pipes and escape through the chimney.”
“…!!”
“By doing so, the area where the flames come into contact with the water increases exponentially. You are not boiling one large cauldron; all the water surrounding the iron pipes boils simultaneously and explosively. This is the principle of the so-called fire-tube boiler.”
Silence.
Aisha froze completely on the spot.
Not heating water with fire, but opening paths for the flames through the water to explosively increase thermal efficiency dozens of times over—that devilish idea!
With a trembling hand, she touched her forehead.
Her engineering imagination, which had been suppressed because she was a woman, was meeting the knowledge of modern Earth pouring from Elpanso’s mouth and undergoing a Big Bang.
“Chief Merchant… of Carnoble.”
Aisha raised her head and looked at me.
In her golden eyes, there was no longer any arrogance of an imperial princess of the Osuan Empire, nor any political calculation.
Only fierce longing and respect toward a pioneer who had climbed a tower of knowledge far higher than herself dripped from them.
“That knowledge of yours… where on earth did you obtain it? Has the scholarship of the West truly reached such a wondrous level?”
I smiled gently and clasped my hands behind my back.
“It is a merchant’s trade secret. But I had no idea Your Highness possessed such deep insight into technology. And this is only an ‘extremely small portion’ of the knowledge I possess.”
At the words “extremely small portion,” Aisha’s shoulders flinched.
He had a head full of knowledge even more remarkable than this?
Certain that her gaze had been perfectly hooked, I drove in the decisive wedge.
“Your Highness, when I return to Pellua, I intend to scatter far larger and more elaborate monsters than this steamship across the continent. However, I suspect there will be times when I, too, will miss a ‘genius intuition’ like yours—someone who can point out blind spots in the blueprints I design before I notice them.”
From my breast, I took out the letter case I had prepared in advance, stamped with the finest parchment and wax seal of the Carnoble Merchant Company, and held it out.
“It may be difficult to meet in person, as there are many eyes… but when you send out merchant ships from time to time, would you become my ‘academic comrade,’ one who exchanges these fragments of knowledge by letter?”
The First Imperial Princess of the Osuan Empire.
A person from an enemy nation whom I could never scout,
and a proud flower no one could approach carelessly.
But at this very moment, she had fallen into the position of a perfect engineering partner who had swallowed the hook of knowledge I had cast.
As if enchanted, Aisha accepted the letter case I offered and smiled, seductive yet fierce, beyond her veil.
“Gladly. Chief Merchant. No, Elpanso Carnoble. I shall become your comrade.”
Within her provocative gaze, the most secret and greatest technological alliance connecting the eastern and western continent was forged.