Noah personally oversaw the excavation of a new heading in the mine. He watched the exhausted laborers in silence, his senses catching every murmur of the subterranean world.
Suddenly, a sharp, unnaturally resonant strike echoed from the far dead end. A shower of bright yellow sparks briefly lit up the gray walls, and one of the miners tumbled back with a curse, barely holding onto a pickaxe with a bent tip.
"What is it now?" Noah was instantly at the worker's side.
"We hit something, Master Noah..." the man muttered, breathing heavily and pointing at the rock face. "The steel won't bite. Sparks fly, but there's not a scratch on the rock."
Noah pushed the miner aside and brought his torch closer to the exposed vein. Inside the rock, at the junction of tectonic plates, two materials intertwined.
The first ore had a rich, deep blue hue.
The second ore looked even stranger. As Noah shifted the torch slightly, the mineral smoothly changed shades, iridescent with crimson, emerald, azure, and deep violet all at once.
Noah reached out, touching the exposed rock with his fingers, trying to pry at the edge.
"Halt all work in this sector," Noah commanded in an icy tone, drawing his heavy combat knife to carefully chisel out pieces of the stone.
Fifteen minutes later, the heavy door of the workshop swung open with a bang. Noah walked in and tossed two hefty chunks of rock onto the workbench. The metal struck with a dull thud, nearly crushing a couple of empty vials.
Iron reached forward, picking up the dark blue fragment. Heavy. Incredibly dense. Iron tried pressing a steel chisel against the edge—the tool slipped, leaving only a barely visible gray streak from the blade itself.
"Interesting..." he muttered. "Lumon, run a deep structural scan."
Lines of data flashed before the engineer's eyes. A holographic beam slowly scanned the blue mineral, building a three-dimensional model of the crystal lattice.
[Analysis of Object No. 1]
Structure: Ultra-dense crystal lattice of an unknown type.
Physical Strength: Exceeds carbon steel by 12 times. Extreme armor-piercing resistance.
Melting Point: Critically low (approximately 320°C).
Iron frowned.
"Let's call it 'Ocean,'" he said softly, turning the blue stone over in his fingers. "If the emitter tower is struck by powerful fire magic, or if a common fire breaks out inside, this metal will simply go soft. I need to figure out how to artificially raise its thermal threshold while preserving this strength."
The engineer set "Ocean" aside and picked up the second sample, which shifted from emerald to crimson right in his palm under the angle of the oil lamp.
"Lumon, object number two."
[Analysis of Object No. 2]
Structure: Chaotic, light-refracting crystalline matrix.
Physical Strength: High.
Melting Point: Extremely high (over 3000°C). Immune to thermal shock.
"And you will be 'Rainbow' ore," Iron offered a faint smile, watching the shifting colors.
The engineer laid both stones side by side. Integrating them in their pure form into the tower would be foolish. But what if he tried to cross their properties? Use the "Rainbow" ore as an external thermal insulation jacket for the tower to absorb the brunt of any heat strike, and use "Ocean" as the internal, monolithic structural frame to hold the colossal vibrations of the ultrasound?
"Thanks, Noah. Great find. Go get some rest," Iron said, reaching for his charcoal pencil once more.
After a while, the heavy door of the workshop creaked open again, but this time Darwin's figure appeared on the threshold. He silently set to work: stoking the dying forge, preparing refractory crucibles, laying out heavy tongs, and clearing the workbench for metallurgical tests.
Watching how smoothly and confidently Darwin operated, Iron caught himself with an unexpected thought. How fortunate I am to have people like this.
This team autonomy opened up massive engineering advantages for him, he thought. If Dornheim relied solely on my personal efforts, I would have to solve every problem at once. Designing the stationary tower not just as a defense complex, but as a giant residential bunker to simultaneously protect and house all the residents under one roof.
But combining housing and a high-power military emitter would mean committing technical suicide. A residential tower, by definition, could never be heavily armored. People need hundreds of windows for light, massive ventilation shafts for airflow, vast amounts of empty internal space, and thin partitions instead of a solid monolith. In short, an absolute nightmare.
“Is this what you wanted… Zeno?” Iron mused.
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