After the work was done, none of the problems envisioned by Lesya had appeared. On top of that, not only did they immediately get their money from the Lord, but the Lord also reacted exceptionally fast. Whenever they had a request, they would always get their answer on the following day. Plus, this was also the place they produced an alchemical product called cement, with it, he could easily bond bricks, allowing the construction process to advance by leaps and bounds, here he could experienced a kind of unprecedented carefree feeling, like never before.
Just within a month, Lesya had already built five blast furnaces, and three additional shaft furnaces for iron smelting.
The shaft furnace was the result of his hard thinking during the years after the disbandment of the mason guild. It was the product made using all of his gathered experience, he had already thought that he could only pass it on as a blueprint, never would he have dared to believe that he would one day see it erected before his very eyes.
The modified shaft furnace was nearly two meters high and had an internal diameter of about 75 cm. The lower parts of the furnace’s body was provided with a number of air nozzles, which could be used for drawing in air by using bellows and ventilation, leaving the bottom for the slag discharging port and the leaving port for the molten iron. Next to the shaft furnace they had erected a ramp made out of sand and gravel, making it convenient for them to feed, and also to observe the situation within the furnace.
Today was the first day where the shaft furnace would be put into use. According to the usual practice, before it was officially opened, it had to undergo a smelting test.
During the trial they had intermittently opened the slag discharging port more than ten times, and had also added new charcoal two times, coming to the conclusion that the furnace had passed its inspection — the molten iron was now flowing into its sink.
The slag mouth opened smoothly, and the temperature had met the high temperature needed for smelting iron, so there was no need to continue wasting charcoal. After all, to reduce loss, during the furnace test they had used the waste ore they had collected in the corner of the yard.
After opening the iron discharging port and letting the molten flow out, Lesya announced the furnace shutdown.
…
Two days later, when the furnace chamber was cleaned up by townsfolk they also excavated several pieces of dark stone. Under the high-temperature baking, the other wastes had been discharged several times, only these pieces of ore were left, after they were thrown in they almost hadn’t changed at all, only their surface had become more bright, just like black ink.
Lesya could also not determine what this black ore was, he only knew that it was a waste product of the mining process. Yet its shape and appearance were really pleasing to the eye, not resembling anything useless. But if it was useful and they were unable to melt it, how should they create artifacts from it? Unable to come to a conclusion of his own, he straightforward picked out a block of the most preserved ore, covered it with a cloth and sent a man to the castle to give it to Roland Wimbledon, the Lord of Border Town.
“What is this?” Nightingale asked while looking at the black, shiny stone on the table.
“Obsidian.” Roland didn’t even raise his head a bit, entirely busy concentrating on drawing the blueprint.
“Ob… what kind of stone?”
“No, I was just speaking nonsense.” He sighed, slightly looking upwards at the shape and color of the stone,
The knowledge he had in his head only told him that most of the ores were a complex composition of compounds; different impurities gave them different colors. For example iron ore could be composed out of: hematite, pyrite, and siderite, which when looking only at by using their outer appearance, seemed to be thousands of miles apart.
Especially pyrite, which would sometimes show a light yellow metallic luster, leading to the situation where it is often identified as gold, giving it the nickname, fool’s gold.
As for their heat-resistant… the compounds themselves didn’t have a fixed melting point, this was related to its impurities and its ingredients, so by using temperature alone, it still wasn’t possible to distinguish between all the different varieties. Furthermore, even if the metal elements existed in their ion state, as long as he didn’t know its purification method, the smelting would be useless.
“There actually exists something you do not know about?” Nightingale asked in astonishment.
