Road to the Crown 168 First stage finished

"Did he finally go to sleep?"

Looking up at my wife, I didn't even bother hiding a content smirk from my face. While putting this idiot to sleep took half of the entire barrel of my beer, it was still worth the price as I could finally check whether everything in the carpentry plant was working.

"Yeah. I wonder how we will fare when going to Tarnow."

Even if the journey on the steam paddler would be way shorter than one on the boat powered by nothing but oars, it would still take us about a single day from the moment we would board the ship all the way to reaching the Pilznian river port on the Vistulian river, one of the Vistula subsidiaries that directly connected the city to the extensive network of this water highway of the country.

"Let's stop thinking about him. How did it go at the cement factory?"

Since rather than producing concrete right away which required not only sand but also quite a bit of crushed rocks, the entire plant originally aimed to make it turned to just cement production. With the addition of a single belt and switch, whenever the intake for the set of now four furnaces working around the clock was stopped due to the filling of the furnaces, rather than stalling the production stone aggregate, everything was dumped at a newly designated area, allowing the local production of the concrete for all the local projects that kept on expanding.

"Rather nicely. While I don't want to state things for sure when speaking about someone as dumb as this magistrate, he seemed to be fairly impressed."

In fact, calling him impressed was quite an understatement. Seeing on his own eyes how huge iron claws were mercilessly crushing the rocks thrown into their processing chamber while powered by a set of eight mark two steam horses at once could baffle anyone daring to get aquatinted with the steam technology through the machines present in mines.

While I could give him a trip through the wood plant first in order to let him get used to the sight of various stuff moving seemingly by itself, it would be counterproductive in terms of making a huge impression.

"Okay then, let's stop speaking about him. How do you feel about the carpentry finally opening up?"

With my thoughts derailed by Elia's suggestion, I followed her request and ditched this annoying man from my mind. As we were slowly walking towards still busy plant beside the river, I couldn't help but feel excited at the prospect of the greatest project of mine finally completing.

Yet rather than reaching its full production capability, the current stage that was finally finished would only allow doubling the input of the first plant, now fully turned into firewood for the steam engines. It was how efficient it was in terms of using all parts of the logs that it consumed that made it a stepping stone in my mind.

"I would love if it would be really finished, but that will take a long time, especially with how we will have to start moving nearly a half of the output of this entire place to Tarnow. But heck, as long as we will have our funding, it doesn't matter if this place will be capable of paying for itself!"

While I said that, due to how great insane amounts of cement were produced ever since the first smelter started working, there was simply no way to make use of it all in Tarnow, especially with how the production rate of my paddlers was still in its infancy. That's way, not only most of the expansion was done through pouring the wet concrete between two thick, wooden walls, the grand project of building the entire city that would house all of the workers of this place finally started moving forward!

Even though the progress was rather laughable as only the future town centre was nearing its finish with some of the carpenters moving there to continue building the administration building they promised to deliver, it was still a step in the right direction, especially with how the political situation of the country would soon force me to think about the means to protect this place form raiders.

"Okay then, it's time for a great moment!"

As we neared the opening frame where at some point in the future, thick wooden doors would be mounted, we could finally see a huge crowd of workers who for the last few weeks were sweating buckets day by day in order to finish this place.

Yet there was no sign of exhaustion or desperation on their face. From what I heard from the manager before, the last two days were fully directed at testing every machine one by one, to make sure that when launched all at once, everything would work properly. That's why despite how I could already put this place in use a while ago, only this late afternoon the celebration of the opening of the plant would finally take place.

"Sir, I would like to report the completion of the first stage of the task you have given to us!"

With how everyone was clearly waiting for the two of us, this man took only a few steps forward, bowed deeply before pointing his arm at a huge lever, protruding from the ground almost entirely surrounded by scaffolding, indicating that it would be soon sealed off from the rest of the factory.

"What is this place?"

While creating the blueprint for this entire place, I never intended for such addition to appear, so it was given that I was quite surprised by this invention of the manager or one of his workers. And just as such, I couldn't help but be curious what was its purpose!

"Sir, we all remember how you reacted when this tragic accident happened. If only we had a way to stop everything at once, then maybe those two poor souls and those three that lost their limbs could be saved. That's why, we added this leaver, that will be capable of stopping everything in the entire factory. And to give you the honours, my lord, we would like you to be the first one who will set it on!"

Chapter end