Chapter 122: The Beginning of Industry (2)

Rather than saying that Bruno exchanged knowledge on steel production, it would be more accurate to say that he acquired an entire industrial system from producing pig iron to wrought iron and, finally, to steel.

This included not only the principles and material ratios for refining steel but also blueprints for common ironmaking facilities from his previous life, such as blast furnaces.

Of course, alongside these were blueprints for auxiliary equipment like blast blowers and puddling furnaces.

However, these facilities couldn't simply be replicated as they were. Some technological requirements exceeded the current capabilities of the Idar Territory.

Overcoming these challenges would require the efforts of the mage apprentices in Idar.

Since the Idar Territory belonged to Bruno and the mage apprentices were his students, it was only natural for him, as their teacher, to assign them tasks not for his own benefit, but to enhance their skills, improve their practical abilities, and foster teamwork. This would help them grow into well-rounded mages.

No problem at all! Completely reasonable!

Thus, after completing their research on the magic crystal bomb, the mage apprentices were assigned a new mission assisting craftsmen in constructing Idar's iron industry.

However, the magic arrays required for ironworks were much simpler than those used in the magic crystal bombs.

After all, the compression arrays for the bombs were intricate and ingenious, with strict requirements for functionality, shape, and size due to the limited space within the magic crystal itself.

In contrast, when drawing arrays on blast furnaces and blowers, there was no such restriction.

After all, these ironmaking structures were massive, so instead of minimizing the array's size, the focus shifted to optimizing the combination of different arrays.

Properly coordinating magic arrays was crucial for efficient iron production.

For instance, blowers used in smelting required a combination of heating arrays and wind generating arrays to ensure a steady supply of preheated air into the blast furnace.

Without blowers providing ample oxygen, the furnace temperature wouldn't reach the necessary level for smelting iron.

Moreover, it was crucial that the air be preheated!

If regular air were introduced, it would need to be heated inside the furnace itself. By the time it reached the required temperature, it would have already risen to the top of the furnace and been expelled into the atmosphere.

This would make it difficult to maintain the high temperatures necessary for smelting.

Therefore, preheating the air before it entered the furnace ensured that it reached the optimal temperature instantly or in the shortest possible time.

Even in Bruno's past world, where steelmaking technology was highly advanced, air preheating was indispensable.

Thus, the mage apprentices had to design multiple magic arrays for the blowers while ensuring that they did not interfere with each other.

However, for the prodigious Arnel, this was hardly a challenge.

Bruno sometimes thought that if his world were a fantasy novel, Arnel would be its true protagonist.

Oppressed and forced to leave home, he later received guidance and made rapid progress. His extraordinary mental strength allowed him to devise magic arrays that broke the limits of conventional thinking a perfect protagonist template!

As a result, within the Idar mage apprentices, a team structure had naturally formed: Arnel handled the designs, while the apprentices executed them.

Thanks to Arnel's remarkable mental acuity and logical thinking, progress on drawing magic arrays for the blowers and blast furnaces advanced rapidly.

Thus, by the time construction on the ironworks was nearly complete, the influx of refugees into Idar was perfectly timed they were all sent to Grand Highlands to mine iron.

Most of the residents in Grand Highlands were there to support the iron industry.

These workers were mostly refugees from outside Idar who, after being registered and inspected by the Idar Immigration Bureau, were granted temporary residency.

Bruno implemented a work point system similar to that of production teams for these temporary residents.

Only after accumulating a certain number of work points and residing in Idar for over a year could they apply for official residency and enjoy the same rights as Idar's commoners.

Their primary responsibility was to mine the rich mineral deposits of Grand Highlands and provide sufficient labor for Idar's ironworks.

The ironworks in Grand Highlands had officially begun operations three days ago.

As production ramped up, emissions from the blast furnaces started forming a faint smoke layer above the plant.

However, since the facility was still relatively small, the emissions dispersed into the air rather than forming a thick smog.

Standing outside the ironworks, Bruno gazed at the light haze hovering over the factory, momentarily lost in thought.

Although smog had been an annoyance in his previous life, it also signified that Idar had finally, albeit clumsily, stepped into the industrial era!

This was actually the first time Bruno had personally visited the ironworks in Grand Highlands. Seeing the towering blast furnaces, he felt as if Idar's technological advancements were thriving under his careful guidance.

The preheated air was channeled into the blast furnace by the blowers, where charcoal and iron ore burned intensely. Combined with the preheated air, the furnace temperature rapidly increased thanks to the magic arrays and fuel.

Although heating arrays had already been developed in Idar, they weren't widely used in the ironworks only in the blowers to reduce fuel consumption and lower costs.

After all, in this world, magic was the most inexpensive energy source.

Even if it was invisible, it was always present in the air.

However, magic had a major limitation:

The natural concentration of magic elements in the air was too low to sustain the large-scale magic consumption required for blast furnaces. It was impossible to heat the furnaces using magic alone, so traditional fuels like coal remained the primary heat source.

This was why, for the first time, the mage apprentices played only a supporting role in the ironworks' construction.

Until a method for mass gathering and storing magic was discovered, the main function of the arrays in the blast furnaces was simply to maintain a stable temperature and minimize heat loss.

Inside the furnace, the intense heat melted the ore into molten iron. Workers carefully opened the furnace's lower valve, allowing the glowing, molten metal to flow through pre-laid channels.

Once the slag was removed and the molten iron cooled, it solidified into pig iron ingots.

Some of the molten iron was transferred to the puddling furnace.

There, water-powered rotating mechanisms continuously stirred the molten iron, accelerating its reaction with oxygen to remove carbon, silicon, manganese, and other impurities.

After undergoing subsequent forging and refining processes, high quality steel was produced.

The key difference between steel and iron was the carbon content.

Pig iron contained more than 2.0% carbon, making it hard but brittle, with almost no malleability.

In contrast, steel contained less than 2.0% carbon, granting it good plasticity, high strength, toughness, heat resistance, corrosion resistance, and impact resistance.

Although the steel produced using this method couldn't compare to modern industrial steel, it was undoubtedly revolutionary in this era.

At present, Idar was likely the only place capable of producing such high quality steel.

With steel, both Idar's military equipment and infrastructure would undergo a qualitative transformation!

This meant that Idar's soldiers would no longer have to rely on their weak, soft short swords.

In fact, Bruno had long been dissatisfied with the short swords used by Idar's soldiers.

The standard issue Norman Empire short sword had double edges and was effective in combat, but it was only useful for slashing and required significant force to wield.

Instead, Bruno planned to introduce blades.

Unlike short swords, single-edged blades were more flexible, capable of slashing, slicing, thrusting, and stabbing, all while requiring much less effort. They were also easier to carry.

Most importantly, equipping soldiers with lighter blades aligned perfectly with Bruno's future weapon reformation plan!