Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 517 - 516: More Powerful Tools

At the edge of the industrial zone in the eastern part of Cecil Castle, within a research lab at the Cecil Mechanical Manufacturing Facility, Gawain was gathered with Rebecca and Nicholas Egg.

The round, floating metal-ball alien hovered in the center of the room. Beside him, a complex and exquisite metal model floated alongside, evidently the chassis of a vehicle. Under Nicholas Egg’s high-precision processing capabilities, each gear and connecting rod had been restored to the most accurate form, while various operations were demonstrated following magnetic field guidance.

"This is the finalized version of the Universal Traction Chassis—of course, it’s just a model. How it will be realized depends on the efforts of the technical staff," said a voice with a hint of metallic resonance coming from within the metal-ball alien. As he spoke, he rotated the model to allow Gawain to see its internal details, "Based on the last design sketch, we have readjusted the connection method between the Magic Web Unit and the power spine, and added a layer of shock absorption. This enables the chassis to adapt to more complex and adverse roads, and this shock absorption structure can be removed, allowing additional Magic Web Units to be installed instead, increasing the chassis power output. Thus, it can be used as a towing vehicle for engineering machinery in relatively flat areas."

Gawain looked at the model displayed by Nicholas Egg, listened to the explanation, and lightly nodded: "...Not bad."

The Magic-guided Vehicle was born, and the first issue it faced was the harsh road conditions and maintenance difficulties of this era.

This era lacked smooth, solid highways, and between cities across vast wilderness, there were no service areas or repair shops. Although construction of roads in Cecil had not stopped since Rebecca devised cement, even with the convenience of magic, the road infrastructure in the southern borders remains seriously undeveloped at present—currently, only three roads in Cecil have been "modernized," among which a broad cement avenue stretches from Cecil Castle to Kant, another road similar runs to Tanzan, and the one leading to the Gran Region was just completed a few days ago. Beyond these, there are only the haphazard roads originally built by southern aristocrats left.

Among these disorderly roads, the best condition is the "temporary highway" from Tanzan to Hosman City, but it was merely leveled and reinforced using the "Stone to Mud" and "Mud to Stone" spells as an emergency measure by Mages and engineers wielding Magic Transmission Terminals. It’s sufficient for temporarily transporting personnel and materials, but in the long run, its durability and scale are inadequate from Gawain’s perspective.

As a remnant of feudal fragmentation, "roads" present a major obstacle for Gawain. The aristocrats previously governed their domains independently and built roads of various kinds, resulting in chaotic quality and scale, as well as entangled planning. Sometimes, to prevent pillage from neighboring aristocrats, they even deliberately damaged road connections between territories, using magic to create numerous artificial pits, sandy ground, and swamps. Now that the southern borders have unified and the former leaders have exited the stage, these annoying remnants have all been left to Cecil’s builders.

Fortunately, this world has incredible magic skills. Magic Transmission Terminals specifically tailored for ordinary engineering personnel have also been popularized. With the support of various spells like "Stone to Mud," "Mud to Stone," and "Weight-Reduction," road construction in the southern borders is progressing smoothly. However, considering the actual conditions of most remote areas and regions beyond the southern borders, the early Magic-guided Vehicle chassis must still prepare for dealing with harsh road conditions.

"The Universal Chassis emphasizes maximum applicability, so we’ve redesigned its dimensions according to the average width of most roads in the southern borders—essentially narrowed it slightly," Rebecca followed Nicholas Egg, speaking while gesturing, "the widest part is no more than 1.8 meters..."

Gawain thought, as expected—1.8 meters, that’s the width of the largest double-cart horse carriage in this world, strictly speaking, the ultimate width of two horses plus a set of harnesses. The roads built by the aristocrats may be varied, but their widths are roughly similar. Except for paths and country roads, the narrowest "official" roads wouldn’t be less than this number—otherwise, large double-cart horse carriages wouldn’t be able to pass.

Cecil’s road construction is based on existing roads, and the personnel and materials necessary for road construction also rely on horse carriages for transport. Therefore, the newly built cement roads in each lane are affected by this number, generally the width of a large double-cart horse carriage plus about one meter of "safety margin," and based on this, the Magic-guided Vehicle size must also fit the requirement to safely travel on such lanes.

As far as Gawain knows, a similar situation occurred on planet Earth—the primitive horse carriage width influenced road standards, which in turn influenced the dimensions of early automobiles and trains, and the dimensions of automobiles and trains influenced all transportation vehicles, cargo containers, and other items built on early road and rail traffic infrastructure...

Two completely different worlds ultimately converge on this point.

Suddenly, reminiscing about his long-lost home planet, Gawain could only silently lament, and amidst his lament, his thoughts began to disperse.

The Magic-guided Vehicle has appeared, a revolutionary mode of transportation, and they are certainly far superior to current horse carriages. With these powerful and tireless vehicles, the development of the southern borders will certainly progress a step further, but if that’s all there is, it is still far from sufficient.

The southern borders may not be large, but they’re definitely not small, and the elongated territory shape makes east-west transportation especially challenging. Currently, to construct the four new industrial cities along the "Cross Axis Line," Gawain needs to allocate massive resources and personnel across the southern borders, including ore from the Tanzan-Cecil territory, timber from the Gran Region, stone and magic-conducting material from Peibo Region, and the enormous immigration brought about by the population migration project. Most of this currently relies on several river transport routes centered around the White River, but river transport ultimately has natural limitations. As several cities grow larger, especially as the "Cross Axis Line" begins extending eastwards and westwards, some raw material production sites far from river transport routes will inevitably come into operation, and Gawain must find more efficient transportation means.

The advantage of Magic-guided Vehicles lies in their flexibility and convenience, making them very suitable for short-distance and small-volume cargo transportation, but in facing the southern borders’ development demands, their power is sure to appear stretched thin.

Of course, people of this world’s era probably wouldn’t think so, since Magic-guided Vehicles are already the most advanced and powerful transportation tools they’ve encountered. However, Gawain has seen better things than Magic-guided Vehicles—those which run on rails, capable of transporting thousands of tons of cargo at once, like the strong veins of an industrial society, known as the kings of land transportation.

Train.

Compared to that, the Magic-guided Vehicle in front of us naturally pales in terms of transportation capacity.

After all, the Magic-guided Vehicle wasn’t entirely born to solve the transportation problems of the southern borders—it serves merely as a supplement in this respect. Its true significance lies in initiating a subsequent revolution in transportation tools, in replacing traditional horse-drawn carriages, in creating agricultural machinery, engineering machinery, and even in preparing for military combat vehicles.

Gawain knows that on planet Earth, the birth of trains came long before the practical cars powered primarily by internal combustion engines (not counting the early experimental locomotives powered by steam engines). This is because the "big, clunky, brute" steam engines used in trains had a much lower technical starting point than the precise, compact, and efficient internal combustion engines. At the same time, cars employed various prerequisite technologies (like tires, batteries, and spark plugs) that went through relatively long development periods. All of this was determined by objective historical facts. However, in this world, many development patterns are destined to differ from those on Earth, and the order of many things is naturally different as well.

The steam engine couldn’t be realized, but the rotor-type Magic-Powered Engine unexpectedly appeared, and this world leapfrogged to an efficient power source akin to an "internal combustion engine" or "electric motor." Meanwhile, due to the technical accumulation of this world and Gawain’s intentional guidance, the "Magic-guided Vehicle," a sophisticated and complex vehicle, appeared earlier here than trains. But this doesn’t mean that trains are not needed in this world.

In fact, now is exactly the time that the southern borders need it, and moreover, they have the technical foundation to develop it.

Having lived here for so long, Gawain has already learned to discard some old viewpoints and has realized the true situation hidden beneath the dark and ignorant surface of this special era—this world’s technological reserves are far more abundant than he imagined, and the technical starting point is far higher than he has seen. It’s just that these technologies are concentrated in the hands of a few people, or dispersed in fragments among sporadic intellectual individuals (this phenomenon of "over-concentration of technology" and "fragmented technology" is a result of the Gondor Empire’s collapse), which leads the society here to appear far more backward than its actual technological level.

After comprehending this point, it’s naturally not difficult to understand Cecil’s pace of technological development. Many times, those technologies were never developed from scratch; instead, they were mass-produced from already existing "upper layer" technologies, or reconstructed and transformed from fragmented technologies. To put it quite frankly, if a copy of Gawain’s "scientific thought" were thrown into a place like Typhon, a country with profound foundations and abundant talent, their development speed would only be faster than Cecil’s.

But even so, Gawain still recognizes and respects the talents and efforts of those researchers, maintaining the highest level of trust in his research departments. He knows that science is a gradual process—as the fragmented pieces of technology are continuously reconstructed, as various theories in the field of magic skills become more refined, sooner or later, this land will break free from the shadow of the Gondor Empire and step into realms not even touched by the Master Mages of the Meteoric Era.

"Ancestor, ancestor?"

Rebecca’s voice suddenly came from the side, pulling Gawain out of his thoughts.

"What are you thinking about?"

Rebecca approached Gawain, her face showing concern and curiosity.

Gawain realized he had been thinking too much and too far, and had already become a bit distracted. So he quickly coughed twice to adjust his expression, then said thoughtfully, "Rebecca, do you know that the Magic-guided Vehicle is not the most powerful land transportation tool..."

Rebecca blinked her eyes: "Are you talking about... a larger Magic-guided Vehicle?! With multi-row linked engines dragging an even larger carriage?"

"...Not quite, that is indeed a larger vehicle, but its operating mechanism is completely different from the Magic-guided Vehicle," Gawain organized some straightforward words to describe the entity that had never appeared in this world, "You can imagine a vehicle like this: it has a ’Magic-Powered Engine’ with power ten times, dozens of times, or even possibly hundreds of times greater than that of a Magic-guided Vehicle, and this Magic-Powered Engine pulls a dozen or so carriages running across the land..."

Rebecca’s eyes widened: "That’s impossible! The ground would collapse! And what about turning? What about bumps?"

"So it needs to run on tracks—the so-called tracks are channels or rails made of steel laid on the ground. They can disperse the pressure from the heavy carriages, reduce wear on the metal wheels, and improve the train’s stability..."