The first rays of the morning sun had barely grazed the tops of the pines, scattering the pre-dawn mist, but Dornheim already resembled a disturbed anthill. Night's tranquility had given way to coordinated chaos. Marek, barking orders across the entire square and waving his arms wildly, was rallying every available worker to the very center of the camp.
This was where the foundation lay. Marek's builders had prepared it well in advance, reinforcing and leveling it over the last week and a half. Thanks to their foresight and hard labor, we didn't have to waste precious hours on messy earthworks. The base stood rock-solid, ready to bear a colossal load.
I rolled out onto the workshop porch, holding tightly rolled blueprints on my lap. Darwin and Marek approached immediately, wiping sweat from their faces with their sleeves, looking at the schematics with clear awe.
I unfurled the thick paper directly on a wide wooden workbench set up outside. The blueprint displayed a titanic spire reaching high into the sky.
Marek stared at the layout and exclaimed:
"Are you serious? Is this tower really supposed to be that high?"
Darwin nodded grimly, examining the intricate weaving of the structure's internal elements.
"That's going to swallow a mountain of metal, engineer. Why build it so high?"
I tapped my finger lightly against the central power node on the blueprint. "In engineering, Marek, nothing is done just for looks. This colossal height is necessary for two fundamental reasons."
I curled one finger on my metallic prosthetic arm. "First, the coverage radius. Our Tower isn't just a decorative pole; it's a frequency modulator. The higher we raise the main emitter above the ground, the further the resonance wave will travel. This elevated position allows the signal to cleanly bypass the terrain, hills, and treetops, creating a protective dome of maximum radius around Dornheim."
I curled a second finger. "Second, acoustic comfort. Once we spin up the frequency generator, the device at the apex will continuously emit a high-frequency protective hum. At close range, this ultrasound can drive a human insane in a matter of hours—bringing on blinding migraines, nausea, and panic. But if we hoist the emitter high into the heavens, that aggressive soundscape will remain far above us. On the ground, the camp's residents won't hear a thing. You'll be able to sleep, work, and build in peace, without a constant ringing in your ears."
"Well, if you put it that way... fair enough."
At the foremen's command, the workers streamed toward the blacksmith awnings. One by one, they began carefully hauling heavy metal beams over to the stone ring of the foundation—the Ocean and Prism alloys I had been casting all through the previous night. The metal glinted in the morning sun, responding with a crisp, barely audible crystal chime whenever they touched.
Preparation of the load-bearing framework began. The first massive pylons were laid at the base, ready to serve as a reliable skeleton.
Meanwhile, streams of text rushed across my field of vision in a continuous flow. Lumon was calculating stress on the nodes, thermal deformation, and tension vectors by the second.
Managing the process had to be done in real time, seamlessly blending Lumon's complex technical jargon with commands the ordinary men could easily grasp. A non-stop din filled the square, cut through time and again by my commanding voice:
"Marek, stop! Back it up half a finger! Align those left corner pylons with a phase coaxiality of exactly three degrees!" I chopped my hand through the air, swapping the technical terms for concepts the carpenters knew by heart. "In plain English—keep it dead vertical, don't let the angle lean toward the forest! The slightest warp in the structure, and the emitter's resonance grid will snap the moment we switch it on! Darwin, put some muscle into it! Press those joints tighter against the anchors, clamp them down, I'm about to weld!"
Drenched in sweat, Darwin threw his entire weight onto a massive lever, locking a huge purple beam onto the stone foundation.
I pulled the upgraded manual smelter from behind my back, which I had reconfigured into a portable welding rig the night before. The amber "Sun" crystal extracted from the cavern now served as the heart of the device. The moment I squeezed the trigger, the distribution busbars hummed quietly, and a slender, white beam of concentrated thermal energy erupted from the focusing nozzle.
I rolled my chair right up to the first seam and directed the beam at the metal.
Psh-sh-sh-shhh!
Under the targeted impact of the "Sun," the alloy gave way instantly. I carefully guided the beam along the joint, fusing the load-bearing supports and massive steel pylons together at a deep molecular level.
When I pulled the smelter away, the seam cooled in seconds, hardening into a monolithic, perfectly smooth welded joint. There wasn't a single crack, nor a single gap.
The higher the framework rose, the harder the work became. Standard log scaffolding groaned and creaked under the weight of our specialized alloy.
Elyria, despite her grumpy morning mood, was pushing herself to the absolute limit. The tiny spirit hovered high in the air, her wings fluttering furiously as tight, whistling currents of wind whipped around her miniature hands. Utilizing a powerful, focused telekinesis, she snatched multi-ton metal crossbeams right off the ground and effortlessly hoisted them skyward, holding them suspended in the air exactly where I indicated.
"Iron, hurry up, these are heavy!" her shrill squeak drifted down from above.
"Don't lose focus, maintain the stream!" I called back, moving along the perimeter.
While the upper tiers were held aloft by Elyria's air currents, I simultaneously initiated the installation of the internal walkways. Out of the leftover alloy, the workers cut even metallic flights. I personally welded these stairs directly into the steel skeleton of the Tower.
Slowly, step by step, a rigid spiral staircase grew inside the hollow purple behemoth. It locked the load-bearing beams together in a death grip, creating an additional reinforcing cage and, most importantly, ensuring a safe and rapid ascent for the future operator to the main distribution core at the apex.
By the end of the first half of the day, the grueling, non-stop marathon reached its halfway mark. The workers, panting heavily, were practically dropping from exhaustion. Miners and carpenters sat right on the ground at the foot of the structure, greedily gulping water from wooden buckets and wiping sweat-soaked faces. But the moment they looked up, their fatigue instantly vanished, replaced by sheer awe.
In the middle of Dornheim's square, anchored immovably to the stone foundation, towered a mighty steel skeleton. The purple-and-gold pylons, interwoven with structural ribs, reached confidently into the sky, already matching the height of a standard house.
I locked my chair at the base of the Tower and pulled up the diagnostic panel. Streams of data blinked across my vision, compiling final readings from the strain gauges.
[LUMON ENGINEERING MONITORING]
Total Assembly Progress: 30% of projected capacity.
Static Base Resistance: Perfect (420% safety margin).
Axial Geometry Alignment: 0.00% (zero deviation).
Internal Staircase Flights: Rigidly integrated into the structural circuit.
The structure stood rock-solid. The first thirty percent of the build, which comprised the most difficult, ground-level phase, had been executed flawlessly. The foundational base was ready to shoulder the immense weight of the upper tiers and the distribution core itself.
Before calling a break, I needed to test the most crucial element—the conductivity of the alloy itself. Without the proper resonance, this mountain of metal would remain nothing more than an expensive decoration.
I rolled closer to the lower distribution node and hooked up a portable power cable from my manual smelter. Pressing a button on the control panel, I sent a trial, low-frequency pulse surging through the metallic skeleton.
WUUUUUUNNNN...
A barely perceptible, pulsating azure wave instantly shot up the purple beams from bottom to top. The metal resonated with a deep, vibrating hum. The matrix worked flawlessly, channeling the energy flow with zero resistance and distributing it evenly across the entire height of the newly erected framework.
"Well," I said, turning to Marek's exhausted but smiling crew. "Round one goes to us. The Tower's skeleton is rock-solid and ready for the load. Let's take a break for lunch and some rest. That's enough heavy welding for today; let the seams fully crystallize. Tomorrow at dawn, we begin the high-altitude assembly."
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