"Father, the Researcher Bees have failed you. And I am one of them," Researchina reported, approaching me.
"Failed?"
I looked at the prototype, built at a free place on the bottom of Hive Supremo—close to the forges. Things-Things and a couple dozen Craftsmen and Researchers have surrounded the cart, doing last-minute improvements or just poking it out of curiosity.
"The prototype is very basic, but I’m sure you could scale it up and make rails from other materials. And this thing—it rolls, doesn’t it?"
"It does, Father!" Things-Things shouted.
She leaned on the back of the cart and pushed it; a moment later, several bees joined her, while others moved away.
With a screech of wheels that needed some oiling, the cart rolled three meters down the length of the railway prototype, hit the dirt ground, and stopped.
"Yeah!" Things-Things flew on the cart and pumped her fists in the air. "Shakes, but works!"
Researchina pressed her lips together. I had a feeling that she was rolling her eyes, even if for bees it was physically impossible.
"The wooden railway works, yes. But we will need metal rails for bigger trains—iron ones. The iron fragments brought from Camp Rich are much more durable than bronze—even without tests, I was told that they took a lot of effort to separate from the main mass of metal. However, Father—all our attempts to make iron rails have failed. Our furnaces aren’t hot enough."
I frowned.
’Now to think about this, the system still didn’t give me the technology to smelt and forge iron.’
Iron required higher temperatures to work with than brass or gold. To be properly smelted from ore or fragments, it required at least 1500 degree Celsius. The fragments we had definitely required smelting.
"I gave you instructions on how to increase the temperature in our furnaces. You got bellows, and coal as a fuel. And this is *still* not enough?"
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Researchina nodded grimly.
"Right now, my subordinates are experimenting with furnace designs. However, our path to knowledge is not clear, and I can’t say how much it will take to achieve any results, Father. I hope you have another wisdom to point us in the right direction."
Did I?
I scoured my memory.
There were words about furnaces which could create heat high enough to melt iron—blast furnaces. Despite their name, there were no explosions involved in their work.
Sadly, although I could recall every furnace-related sentence I glanced at, I had no idea what half of them meant!
The words were familiar—at least vaguely—but they didn’t combine into anything coherent to me. Even though *now* I remembered every lecture I had before I was kicked out of college.
I was studying journalism, anyway.
At some point, when I still had 100 intelligence (or more like 80), it felt like a great degree to have.
"In a blast furnace, fuel, ores, and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material falls downward," I quoted. "Researchina, does that say a lot to you?"
She frowned.
"I can feel the depth of knowledge in these words, but I’m not proficient enough to understand it. For now." Researchina stood straighter, and an expression of astonishing determination appeared on her face. "Father, I request extra resources for experimentation on furnaces! Thousands of minds and hands will work on this mystery until we find the answer!"
Things-Things paused in her examination of the cart and turned to us in alarm.
"More resources? You already took a dozen forges for yourself and disassembled half of their furnaces, Researchina!"
"It’s just a dozen. You have dozens, hundreds more, Things-Things, and half of them don’t have metal and coal to work with, anyway."
Things-Things pouted, because Researchina was right.
With the amount of forces thrown on taking apart clothes and bodies of the giants, coal and gold delivery suffered.
Yes, delivery. Production was still going fine, but delivery had to focus on perishables first—I ordered bees to bring over meat, even preserved ones, first of all.
"Researchina, do you have many other research projects at the moment?" I asked.
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"We are still working on designs for a better, bigger railway cart. There’s been some pottery improvement in the pottery squad, and the armor squad almost finished a design of a segmented armor like Forever Great from chitin instead of dragon scales. There are a dozen more projects… I can request a list if you want, Father."
I shook my head.
"Make the iron your first priority, Researchina, and the railway your second priority! Take as much resources as you need. All the other technologies can wait. They don’t even make our numbers grow."
"Numbers—the system, right?" Things-Things asked, hovering to land between me and Researchina. "But Father, even if Researchina’s works don’t give numbers, they still make things better! Like pots—new clay pots are smoother, nicer, easier to carry around. They have handles!"
I smiled and gave Things-Things a headpat.
"Of course. But they aren’t vital, my dear. The numbers, though…"
I winced.
〔Remaining lifespan〕: 225 d
"The numbers are definitely vital."
And I was at 〔237/2000〕 development points just to development level 7, while the lifespan upgrade was at 8th.
However, with the railway and iron tools, I had a good feeling that I could get those points quickly.
Plus, the next wave of our expansion had almost finished its preparation phase. The lands were cleansed from ants, a few more hornet and wasp nests were burned, and soon, 29 new hives were going to be built. 30, if you counted transition from Camp Rich to Hive Rich.
"I understand, Father. I will throw all Researchers’ efforts and dig the knowledge out with our teeth and claws if necessary." Researchina said, looking like she really was about to bite.
I gave her a headpat, too. It didn’t calm her down at all.
"Anyway… We won’t waste time until the research is finished. Even without the rails and the cart designs, the bees can make the foundation for the road. Send a message to Workharder—there’s a project where she’s needed more than in Camp Rich!"