300 Iron Horses (1/2)
*Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!*
It had become quite common to hear sounds of explosions in the streets of Arlo as of late. Young mages would ride mechanical Iron Horses on the streets, chasing and racing each other and leaving nothing but dust and smoke in their wake.
These Iron Horses were equipped with steel wheels, which left behind marks in Arlo's ancient streets. Sounds of excited laughter could be heard as young mages reveled in the thrill of moving at high speeds. Winds, whipped up by these Iron Horses, would flip ladies' skirts as they passed by, resulting in storms of curses everywhere. Public order officials who came investigating would only meet black smoke, leaving them coughing in anger. Unfortunately for them, license plates weren't yet a concept in this world. It was impossible to easily identify the owners of the Iron Horses.
The riders broke the speed records over and over again as they improved their techniques. Iron Horses could be seen chasing after others on the street causing loud disturbances, and soon it became considered both popular and fashionable among the youth.
”They've taken to racing? They caused enough traffic accidents in one week that you typically deal with in one year? Does that have anything to do with me? I'm just a merchant doing perfectly legal business. If someone killed another person with a vegetable knife, are you going to arrest all the merchants that sell vegetable knives?”
Cher, the female mage in charge of public order, was furious. Her veins were bulging as she glared at the young-appearing mage, who had such an uncaring expression. Still, she was helpless. She couldn't do anything about it.
This wasn't her first time dealing with this ”archmage” before her, after all. In just one week, this archmage had come to the police station nine times to bail out his companions ever since their first meeting. Although none of his subordinates would do anything too nefarious, they would constantly break records for how shameless they could get and how creative they could be with their shamelessness.
There was especially a certain dracon who was now basically treating the jail as his home. He arrived at their jail every single day. On top of that, although Cher wasn't sure what he did, all the other imprisoned criminals had furiously begged the police mages to save them and not put them in the same jail cell as him…
”Um, I think it's probably safer for my well-being to stay here in jail.”
When she asked the dracon, that seemingly honest individual actually trembled in fear—he had apparently antagonized an inestimable number of people. But when she checked his records, she discovered to her surprise that he was a Saint-ranked beast tamer/hunter. Did that mean that in just one short week he successfully antagonized Myth-ranked and perhaps even SemiGod-ranked mages?
As for the others, they continued to sell their fake products, go around naked, cause explosions or simply fights—in short, all sorts of other troubles. If it wasn't for this archmage bailing them out every time, Cher would have long since made them rot in jail.
Today, however, was different. Cher could no longer tolerate this anymore. Perhaps it was true that the morals of one's subordinates didn't mean that the boss was the same, and it seemed to her that his feelings of awkwardness and depression at their mayhem were real. However, when he had to come the very next day, or even on the afternoon of the same day to bail out his subordinates yet again, not only did that make people suspect his sincerity in saying ”I'll make sure to manage them properly,” it also made people suspect if his group of subordinates were actually some professional criminal organization or if they were intentionally giving the police mages and public order mages trouble on purpose.
Yet this was all merely a small aside for the waves that Thorn Garden had caused in mage society.
Thanks to the cute wood spirit employees at the newly renovated Thorn Garden, the store had become rapidly popular with female mages. Even those who weren't interested in plant magic would spend an entire day in the forest coffee café attached to the store and watch the cute little wood spirits scurry around for several hours without getting tired… Of course, there were also male mages and even some elderly mages with white hair who tried this as well. However, most of them would soon escape; they would be unable to withstand the numerous glares from the female mages.
While the female mages and acolytes treated the forest coffee café as a holy grounds for relaxation, the male mages had a new toy to play around with as well.
”Iron Horse #7” was the name of my new product and was behind the black smoke, noise pollution, and traffic accidents throughout in the streets of Arlo. Iron Horses were similar to rocket cars built by goblin engineering, but it possessed only two wheels. After all, Yingou demanded additional money for training wheels! And while everyone was still suspecting whether these Iron Horses would even function properly, the goblins that acted as the demonstrators began a fast-paced race in front of everyone.
At first, the mages all thought that this would be another new miraculous but dangerous goblin invention. They all brought snacks and prepared themselves to see some fireworks. However, they were astonished to see that apart from a few goblins that lost control and caused traffic accidents, none of the Iron Horses self-destructed at all… this was utterly unlike what they knew about goblin technology!
Soon, a young, relatively rich mage was unable to resist the temptation of his curiosity. He purchased an Iron Horse despite its expensive price with the intent to take it apart for research, not to ride it. And when he took it apart in public in front of everyone, the entire Cloud Tower was shaken by the news.
”A mega-small energy battery! And it's actually so stable! How is it possible!?”
”No—no—it's probably just a rechargeable cycle!”
”Who cares about how it works? It's fine as long as it does what it's supposed to do.”
”It would seem that archmage Hesta and archmage Dia researched in the wrong direction on how to develop smaller batteries. They didn't need to create new energy sources for small batteries. Only storage capacity and rechargeability were necessary.”
”Olivia's Magic Box” was indeed an invention that would change the times. From the very start, the biggest drawback of goblin engineering wasn't even the inconsistent explosions—it was the lack of consistent and long-term energy. If one used a special, powerful magic creature's magic core as the energy source, not only would that incur incredibly high costs, but the magic core would eventually run out of energy. Whatever it powered would become nothing more than scrap metal until the owner obtained another magic core with similar properties.
Once the issue of a reliable source of long-term energy was taken care of and mass-produced under my design and direction, I naturally decided to create metallic motorcycles for people to ride.
It was also within my expectations that the mages would soon notice the critical new technology within the Iron Horses. After all, the research project of inventing a smaller portable battery already had two Emblem of Truth-level archmages, Hesta and Dia, competing against each other. However, neither of them had made much progress—from the very start, both of them were researching in the wrong direction.
Mages were quite familiar with the concept of batteries; every mage tower had its own large-scale batteries to back up the mana reserves. There were many different types of batteries that all worked differently, and some were even capable of magically receiving energy from different dimensions. With the support of these batteries, a high-level mage could practically have limitless mana within his or her own mage tower. It would be a conservative estimate to say that the mage would have their power multiplied threefold.
”Never attack a mage when they're in their mage tower.” This was one of the most common sayings among adventurers. Any who dared to break this common sense had already died off.
Mages had always researched how to make their batteries much smaller and portable as this would obviously help increase a mage's strength when they traveled outside. However, they had kept researching about batteries through the soul, or from natural phenomenon, or from alchemy. It was evident that no mage had ever thought about researching batteries through the field of engineering that had absolutely nothing to do with magic.
With mages' current techniques, even their smallest battery was the size of an average room in a house. For quite a long time now, making batteries any smaller than that was basically viewed as impossible. After all, ”opening up a stable portal to another dimension” or ”absorbing energy from a powerful energy-producing creature” would all require a significant amount of space.
From a certain standpoint, although they were all academic seekers of the truth, magicians, alchemists, and ”scientists” would look at the same issue from different angles. Well, in truth, nobody was right or wrong about it. Even the most basic magic spells used by mages would violate what engineers knew about the most basic laws of energy and conservation and so on. They were direct opposites from the very start. It would be like trying to make a chicken communicate with a duck.
Based on the logic that batteries needed to be medium-sized or huge, mages only considered how to obtain more energy from the same size, trying to create a ”perpetual motion machine.” However, they didn't consider that it would be enough to store sufficient energy to create a self-sustaining cycle that would only need occasional recharging. Since the mages were never researching the right topic to improve batteries in the first place, and they lacked the theoretical scientific knowledge about batteries, for them to actually produce results would be no different from winning the lottery.
Now, however, this famous research topic that everyone had thought was impossible actually produced results. Top-level mages who had made this their lifetime goal lost to goblin engineering technology as evidenced by the indisputable fact before everyone's eyes. Even the calmest mage would be unable to handle this.
”Take it apart!”
”Yes, take it apart!”
With the passionate observers egging him on, the Iron Horse owner who showed everyone what was inside excitedly prepared to take the battery apart so that everyone could research it together. However, he discovered that there was a complex magical seal on it that was even labeled with the goblins' ”Safety Brand.” Of course, this was merely a small issue that wouldn't be difficult for the mages to deal with at all. And so, with the help of some onlooking archmages, this small magical seal was forcefully broken through.
And then… well, there was no more ”then.”