Chapter 195: The future look of the city (2) (1/2)
”That's why I was silent about it,” Sitra explained her lack of actions earlier as soon as everyone else in the room looked up at her with varying degrees of surprise on their faces. ”I hoped to use this as a favor I could trade to enlist your cooperation...” she said, only to cut her sentence short and shake her shoulders. ”Now it's not all that valuable, isn't it?” she asked the rhetorical question.
”Wait a second...” Markus stopped anyone else from making any decisive claims, taking a closer look at the map. ”Did the people who drew this attached some notes to this thing?” he asked, raising his eyes at the girl.
”They did, but Castor was the one carrying them,” Sitra replied. Her face darkened due to the unpleasant memory. ”I remember a few things, but I can't promise to be able to explain every last detail,” she added after a moment.
'She's acting... No, she looks strange,' Layn thought, keenly observing the girl. As the one who knew her the longest out of the three men in the room, he could notice the lack of the usual fires in the girl's eyes.
She turned from the cheeky and overconfident individual to a simple soldier without any real thought in her head. While that could be explained by Castor's death's impact on her, Layn couldn't really believe something like that would be enough to completely break the girl like that.
”Still, this thing is done in way greater detail than my piece,” Markus said, lowering his face even further over the wooden sheet. ”But we need to add some changes. This map implies using the six-block structure, something that won't really work out with the solutions I have in mind,” Markus said, pointing his finger at one of the smaller details.
”Six-block structure?” Layn asked, ignorant about the topic as much as a living human being could be. ”You mean that there are six housing units per block?” he asked, noticing the group of eight squares below Markus' finger.
”Yeah,” Layn's old friend nodded his head in response. ”When I was traveling from the Warcamp to this place, I thought about several ways to improve the standard of living for everyone,” Markus said, reaching to the back and pulling another sheet of paper from there. ”Here, take a look a this,” he said, unrolling it directly at Sitra's map.
”The hell is... Wait a second...” Layn stared at the schematic presented by his old friend for a moment when his eyes suddenly opened up wide. ”Is this something like... an engine room?” he asked, raising his eyes at Markus.
”More or less,” Markus confirmed Layn's guess with yet another nod of his head. ”I planned to install it in every industrial area. By placing one steam engine inside and feeding it with a sufficient amount of fuel, we could forcefully enter the steam age without all the necessary yet costly requirements one would fulfill to do it in the more natural way,” Markus explained his idea. ”I originally aimed to build a similar structure in the housing areas, just that instead of the engine, we would put a boiler inside,” Markus said, pointing to the parts that would have to be changed on his picture.
”You thought about it so far already,” Layn muttered, full of awe for his friend's achievement. ”How are we going to get the engines without coal and iron, though?” the archmage asked.