Here's the first bonus chapter of the week brought to you by Daniel B. from the USA as well. This one was a much longer than a usual chapter so it took a while.
BTW, there was a mistake in the last chapter tha stated Lorist's age as 20. Lorist is 28 years old as of the current chapter. Also, I just read a review of TRL on NovelUpdates by afaerytale that summed up all my feelings about the novel in a neat little essay! Thank you so much for the review and it really gladdens me that you like the novel as much as I do!
Black-colored powder could be seen gathered in a clump around which an oil-soaked rope circled. The rope stretched meters away like a long snake with Lorist near its other end holding a lit torch and looking at the black powder clump as if he was deep in thought.
This was his final attempt at that experiment. Lorist lit the oil-soaked rope with his torch and the flame traveled down the rope, quickly surrounding the clump of black powder.
Pssshhh! After letting out a sound and a flash of light, the black powder vanished altogether.
The result remained the same, causing Lorist to sigh in resignation. If he was back on Earth, that clump of black-colored gunpowder should explode. The danger of the explosion was what caused him to stand so far away in the first place. However, Lorist really couldn't understand why the gunpowder mixture from Earth based on sulfur, nitrate and coal, didn't react as intended on Grindia.
Lorist had collected the nitrate off the corners of the walls. As for sulfur, it was obtained by refining a herbal plant on Grindia which the herbalists use to make snake repellant to be sold to adventurers. The plant could be commonly found at places with volcanic activity and it was priced rather cheaply. As for coal, they were even easier to obtain. After getting the ingredients he recalled from his past life's experience, Lorist mixed a huge bucket of black powder and began experimenting with smaller portions before deciding to use them all up to carry out his final experiment. The results were still the same with the powder emitting a flash along with a hissing sound without anything else happening.
There was no explosion or loud noise. The air around the ignited powder didn't even heat up and expand.
That shouldn't be the case, Lorist thought as he scratched his head. Back when he was studying at Morante City, he had heard that the dwarven kingdom soldiers' main weapon was a firearm. Even though the power of those firearms were only slightly stronger than that of ballistas, they were still firearms nevertheless and Lorist felt that as long as he could synthesize some gunpowder, he would be able to shake up the era of cold arms and usher in a new age of domination of the Norton Family.
What he didn't expect was that actually making functioning gunpowder was more complicated than he had imagined. The recipe he remembered from his past life was of no use whatsoever, causing Lorist much frustration. Are those weapons used by the dwarves really firearms? What do they rely on to propel the projectile?
This wasn't Lorist's first attempt. Two months back, Lorist's attempts to make glass, porcelain, paper and cement, had all failed without exception. That caused him to realize that on Grindia, the chemical interactions between the particles were different than that of Earth.
Originally, he thought that making glass would be the simplest to achieve. As the owner of a crafts workshop back in his past life, Lorist was extremely well-versed working glass. He could fashion all sorts of shapes to make animals or other artistic pieces with glassblowing. On the Grindia Continent, the Teribo Kingdom is famed for their production of green glass, so Lorist felt rather confident that glass would be the first thing he would be able to replicate as the materials were simple, requiring mainly quartz.
But the results were like a strike on the head for Lorist. On Earth, after the quartz was melted, it would take a colloid form. After that, it would be relatively simple to use glassblowing techniques to split off a part of the molten glass and press it flat to make glass panes. That was the simplest method of making glass. However, in Grindia, Lorist discovered that the melted quartz turned into liquid form instead without any viscosity whatsoever and it would cool easily into droplet-shaped pieces. Even though they were hard, they were too fragile and there was no way to apply glassblowing to shape the material.
Not knowing why that was the case at all, Lorist went to seek out Charade as he felt that it was probably an issue with his materials. Perhaps, there was another material that he needed aside from quartz to make glass. Charade on the other hand was far too busy as he had been assigned by Lorist the daunting task of settling down the 200000 plus commoners that had just entered the dominion and couldn't be bothered to listen to Lorist's ramblings.
Seeing Lorist trouble him for such a trivial matter, Charade was enraged. Even though he was so busy that he was almost at the brink of death, Lorist had so much free time that he even tried his hand at glass making. Additionally, glass making is a highly protected secret of the Teribo Kingdom and Charade was merely born there and wouldn't know that method anyway. In the Teribo Kingdom, if one were to be found to be snooping around for the method of production and recipe for glass, one would no doubt be hanged.
Lorist laughed bitterly and told Charade that the green glass that cost only ten coppers in Morante City would be sold at 1 large silver each after the Kenmays Family shipped it from over there, with the price hiking up to almost ten times the original amount. Each gold Forde could then only be used to purchase 20 pieces of green glass within the Northlands. Upon mention of money and cost, Charade started to treat the matter seriously and he quickly wrote a letter to his father who was a merchant operating in the Teribo Kingdom and requested him to pay attention to what the glass factories usually purchased. As it doesn't directly involve seeking out the formula for glass production, it wasn't that risky. Additionally, once the materials were known, the mysteries of glass production could then slowly be researched.
Thus, the progress on glass research was put to a halt. After that, Lorist tried to begin making porcelain, only to fail again. In his past life, he had made replicas of various antique porcelain vases and Lorist was pretty sure he remembered the method for that quite clearly. As there has yet to be any porcelain products in Grindia, Lorist figured that he would try his hand at it and possibly come up with a new industry for his dominion.
At first, the porcelain vases and tiles he fashioned seemed fine. But after 7 days of drying, the results disappointed Lorist greatly. Take for instance a porcelain bowl. It should've been smooth and rounded. However, the surface of the bowl he made had a rugged surface and would crumble on touch, completely different from how porcelain should be. Lorist continued the experiments for one whole month and had no choice but to give up in the end to acknowledge his failure.
The same was the case with the attempt at reproducing paper. Two years ago right after the northbound convoy arrived at the dominion, Lorist gave Old Man Balk some instructions on paper production based on the information he remembered from his past life. But throughout these two years, the most they could come up with was borderline useless paper that was only good for use in the toilet. That kind of 'toilet paper' was already being produced at Morante City with the main ingredients being reed and rice stalks, which is priced at 1 copper coin per stack.
Lorist on the other hand tried using many other different materials, but the result was still the same soft and mushy paper with the only benefit being that it was slightly whiter and finer than the paper produced at Morante City, but cost way more to make with a far more complicated method of production. Even if that paper could sustain the demand of toilet paper within the dominion, causing the commoners to no longer have to use wooden rods to scrub their bottom clean after using the latrine, it didn't solve Lorist's need for the white writing paper at all.
And lastly there was concrete. In most fantasy stories, transmigrators like Lorist usually brought with them three of the greatest inventions, namely, glass, cement, and gunpowder. After the failing at glass production, Lorist figured he should give cement making a try. As the dominion was still in development, there was a great need for green vine glue and the 100000 buckets produced yearly at the Bladedge Mountains was not enough, causing Lorist to have to order 100000 more from the Kenmays Family. This year alone, the demand for it was 180000 buckets and that was no small burden for the family to bear. That's why Lorist wanted to see what he could do to decrease the reliance on green vine glue for construction.
The production of cement was actually rather easy. Lime and clay were first to be calcined before being powdered and mixed with sand and water. After the cement set, it would become concrete. Lorist had a few of his subordinates experiment around and managed to make a pile of cement. The problem was, the cement made was unable to harden. Even though it was mixed with water, it still didn't harden after three days passed and would crumble into pieces upon being kicked at lightly.
But one of his subordinates brought a bucket of green vine glue and added it to the cement mix before moulding it into a few sculptures. After only half a day, the sculptures did harden and were as sturdy as iron, being also far sturdier than green clay structures. But the reason Lorist wanted to reproduce cement in the first place was to replace green vine glue, not green clay.
And now, his latest research venture into gunpowder had failed as well. Was it because the chemical reactions of this world was markedly different from those of Earth? Lorist stroked his cheek as he began to sink into deep thought.
"Milord, what is it that you want to do?" Howard asked.
"Oh, nothing. I was just trying to make an explosive," Lorist replied.
"Explosive? What's an explosive?" Howard asked, confused.
It was at that moment when Lorist realized that there wasn't a term for explosion in the lexicon of the Grindian Language. While there were similar terms like eruption or bursting open, they didn't quite describe the phenomenon of explosion.
"Hmmm, how do I describe it... An explosive is a thing that explodes and an explosion describes a phenomenon in which an object bursts outwards in all directions from the inside when it expands too suddenly, releasing a huge burst of energy and damaging the surroundings in the process," Lorist defined.
"Oh, there's that sort of thing?" While Howard couldn't quite imagine it, he didn't forget to carry out his duty and reminded, "Milord, we should be heading to the ballista workshop of Grandmaster Fellin soon. We are scheduled to meet with him today."
"Alright then, let's go," Lorist said as he suppressed his frustration for now and got on his mount.
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