Chapter 549: Good News

"Boss Lucas doesn’t look very happy," Adam whispered quietly to his colleague.

"En," Marco nodded, "The only times Boss gets really quiet like this is when he’s planning something outrageous, or he’s trying to hold in his anger."

"But... why?" Adam wondered aloud, "Is he... disappointed? Torren Ridge is one of the most productive and best run mines in the kingdom, what’s there to be upset about?"

Stroking the stubble on his chin, Marco thought about it for a moment before hypothesizing, "The first thing Boss Lucas did when he arrived at the forges was implement a lot of new safety procedures. He even got into a big fight with Master Braxton who thought he was worrying too much. Maybe he wants to do something similar here?"

"Hmm... maybe," Adam thought about it seriously, "That would be a good thing. Only 14 people might have died last year, but I’m sure many more got hurt, and if we were to try using LBM 1s’ here..."

"Ya," Marco agreed, "Steam engines are incredibly useful, but as we’ve all found out over the past 6 months, they’re also quite dangerous. If someone doesn’t follow strict procedures and carefully monitor the machine at all times, accidents can happen surprisingly easily."

"And that’s before we even taking explosions into account," Adam, who had experienced several such events during the steam engine’s development process, couldn’t help shuddering slightly.

The young man wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about explosions as his bosses were. He did like testing limits and seeing things blow up, like any ’normal’ member of The Lab did, but Adam preferred doing so from a safe distance and in a controlled environment, rather than Lucas or Braxton who preferred being up-close when things happened so they could ’see things in more detail’.

Although she could have joined in the conversation, adding her own opinions to the mix, Allina contented herself to just listen to the two young blacksmiths theorize.

As someone much higher up the food chain than Marco or Adam, Allina understood that Lucas’ influence when it came to improving workplace safety standards and living conditions extended well beyond just the forge.

Even in the Raging River Legion, over the past 6 months, hygiene and food quality standards had risen noticeably as a direct result of Lucas’ lobbying.

Many administrators and even some of the officers had objected to these new measures, dismissing them as unnecessary luxuries and openly questioning whether there was any point other than to waste resources, but anytime efforts appeared to block these reforms, Celestina would step in and sweep away any and all resistance.

This had led to a bit of discontent amongst the bureaucratic wing of the Balfour Family and other established institutions in the Balfour March, with some even grumbling that the Marquess was indulging her First Disciple too much, but neither Lucas nor his Master seemed to care.

If anything, it only made Lucas more determined to ram these reforms through. He had even gone so far as to hire people with a talent for public-speaking to specifically visit various workplaces under the Balfour Family’s jurisdiction to explain the benefits of following these new rules.

This kind of propaganda, along with the tangible improvements these reforms almost universally brought about, made Lucas extremely popular amongst the low-level workers and labourers.

Celestina, as the proverbial muscle behind these reforms, also saw a boost in her reputation, with many taverns and restaurants across the Balfour Family’s territory now being filled with talk of how wise and benevolent a ruler she was, not that she wasn’t already well liked among the populous for her mostly benevolent rule.

Allina had even heard similar chatter amongst the young soldiers of the army, not that she disagreed with them in this regard.

With broad public sentiment on his side, along with demonstrable improvements in both the health and productivity in many workplaces where these reforms were implemented, Lucas had gradually become a bit bolder in his approach.

Feeling the heat on her skin, smelling the foul odour in the air, and breathing in the dust and dirt which was constantly swirling around her, Allina didn’t doubt that Lucas was furious right now and would soon be demanding major changes be made.

Oh well, that’s someone else’s headache to deal with, Allina eventually shrugged to herself.

Her job here today was to assist Lucas with logistical matters and to ensure he didn’t get into any physical danger. Stopping him from turning whole industries upside down, breaking them apart into tiny little pieces, then putting them back together again in a completely unrecognizable configuration wasn’t something she needed to concern herself with.

.....

Arriving at the iron refineries, Lucas was greeted by a somewhat unexpected sight.

Given the simplistic, nearly primitive level of development he had witnessed at the mines, he had been expecting something similar from the smelters which processed raw iron ore into the most commonly produced brittle, high-carbon content iron, known in the other universe as pig iron.

Why was it called ’pig’ iron? That wasn’t included in the inherited memories Lucas had unlocked so far.

However, down by the river which flowed to the south of Torren Ridge, inside one of the largest non-palace-related buildings Lucas had ever seen in the Rockwell Kingdom, he found some 50 large furnaces being tended to by a team of hundreds of workers.

Each of these furnaces was a couple metres tall and made from some kind of hardened brick. He also assumed there was a metal lining inside each of these furnaces, but he couldn’t tell from where he was currently standing.

Smoke and ash billowed out of these furnaces and was being vented outside via massive chimneys, creating a kind of black haze around the building.

This smoke and ash was definitely not human or environmentally friendly, which probably explained why this refinery was built a fair distance from the rest of the city or even the mines themselves.

Scanning the inside of the refinery, Lucas spotted several sets of giant bellows that looked like they were being driven by large waterwheels. The bellows were clearly there to pump fresh air into these furnaces in order to stoke flames and speed up the refining process.

It was a far more organized and advanced image than the young boy had been anticipating.

Of course, it was still incomparable to the giant solar forges that literally drew heat from stars to refine millions of tons of metal every single day in the other universe, but by Rockwell Kingdom standards, Lucas could confidently say this was the most impressive and advanced industrial process he had seen outside the upgraded Balfour Family forge in Misty City.