Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 508 - 507: The Vehicle

The various affairs in the territory seemed to have entered an orderly phase, and Gawain finally got a brief break.

In the study of the feudal lord’s mansion, after handling the accumulated official duties from previous days, he leaned back in his spacious chair, relaxing while listening to Aunt Heidi’s report on daily affairs.

"...In summary, the storage and statistical work for all autumn grain has been completed, and the winter rations for remote areas have also been distributed. This winter, there should be no large-scale famine outbreaks in the main regions of the southern borders...

"The Magic Web project is still expanding along the Cross Axis Line and has currently covered the Perry region...

"The business messenger dispatched to the Duke of the East has already set off..."

Gawain exhaled slightly: "Days without bad news are really nice."

"We can’t have bad news every day; we finally managed to settle down," Aunt Heidi showed a slight smile, but midway through the smile, her expression became somewhat subtle, "However, although there’s no bad news, something is quite concerning—Rebecca seems to be tinkering with something recently..."

Gawain’s relaxed expression immediately tensed: "Rebecca? What has she been doing recently?"

"She built a large pool in the Magic Guide Technology Research Institute..." Aunt Heidi said, almost bewildered, "and she’s breeding slimes in it."

Gawain: "...What is she breeding slimes for?!"

"The report submitted says it’s to research the industrial value of slimes. But since it’s an internal project of the Magic Guide Technology Research Institute, only she knows the project details."

Gawain listened, his head full of questions, but just as he wanted to continue asking, the Magic Web Terminal installed next to the desk suddenly lit up and emitted a loud buzzing sound.

Gawain casually activated the terminal, but to his surprise, the holographic projection above the machine showed the figure of Rebecca.

"Rebecca? Just in time, I was about to..."

However, Gawain’s words were cut off halfway as the girl wore a researcher’s white coat over her dress, her face and hands dirty with grease, bouncing excitedly in the image: "Ancestor, ancestor!! Car! There’s a car!!"

Gawain was momentarily stunned by these abrupt words: "What did you say?"

Aunt Heidi watched Rebecca’s un-aristocratic behavior and couldn’t help but frown: "Rebecca—have you forgotten your manners again?"

"Ah! Aunt!" Rebecca only then realized that Aunt Heidi was also on the other side of the communicator, her expression and actions instantly turned stiff, "You are here too..."

"Are you at the Cecil Mechanical Manufacturing Facility?" Gawain noticed the scene behind the girl after Rebecca stopped hopping. Upon seeing the lathes and the wide assembly platform, his heart surged, "Is it a magic-guided vehicle?!"

"Yes! Saint Nicholas Egg and I finally resolved the last few issues! We built a usable chassis!!" Rebecca excitedly rushed to the front of the communicator, nearly overwhelming Gawain’s vision with her grease-smudged face on the holographic projection, "Come take a look! Come see!"

The background noise of the communicator echoed with Saint Nicholas Egg’s voice: "Why am I called egg egg again—wasn’t I called Nicholas last time?"

After Rebecca seemed to say something else, Gawain had already lost interest in listening further. He suddenly stood up, casually turned off the communicator, and, walking towards the door, said to Aunt Heidi: "Come with me!"

Aunt Heidi was still pondering "Why would Rebecca breed slimes," but from Gawain’s reaction, she realized—Rebecca might have made another astonishing achievement, one significant enough for the old ancestor to toss any thought of slimes aside.

She quickly agreed, hastening to follow Gawain’s pace.

At the mechanical research station, next to the "mechanical platform" of the first workshop, over a hundred technical personnel in work clothes or researcher uniforms gathered together, looking with eager and proud expressions at the hard-won achievement on the platform. Rebecca and a few of her assistants stood at the center of the crowd, enthusiastically discussing the potential uses of this epoch-making creation. Meanwhile, the silver-white, cheerful-faced Saint Nicholas Egg silently floated closest to the mechanical platform, savoring each exquisite detail within that complex machinery, every tightly interlocked gear and lever, every poised-for-action repulsion mechanism and pump. An unprecedented sense of satisfaction filled his one-point-three-meter-diameter, one-and-a-half-ton body.

From the workshop’s large door came a series of heavy and hurried footsteps. Rebecca immediately lifted her head, and upon seeing who had arrived, she excitedly waved her hand in greeting: "Ancestor! Aunt! You’re here!!"

Gawain crossed through the group of researchers saluting him, looking with eagerness at the mechanical creation on the circular platform: "Is this it?"

"As you can see..." Rebecca raised her hand, mimicking the butler or a high-ranking attendant’s gesture when introducing guests, pointing towards the creation, "Isn’t it beautiful?"

Frankly speaking, in the aesthetic sense of many people of this era, that thing might not be considered beautiful. But in the eyes of those who had already embraced the Cecil Clan’s magical machinery style, it could indeed be associated with ’aesthetics’.

It was a complex machine made of black steel, somewhat reminiscent of the automobile chassis Gawain remembered, yet vastly different. Being a test piece, it lacked an outer shell, with nearly all mechanical structures exposed. The gears, levers, and wheel axles assembled together looked like a monster stripped of flesh and blood, making it quite intimidating—yet it possessed a certain peculiar beauty.

Without an outer shell, Gawain could clearly see many structures of the chassis: four steel-made wheels were installed on the sides of a similarly steel frame, and a miniaturized, second-generation Magic Powered Engine, specially designed for mobile vehicles, was installed at the rear to provide power. Numerous magic symbols covered the entire chassis structure, forming a complete Magic Web structure. In the center of the chassis, there was a conspicuous ’beam’—it was not just a beam providing structural strength, but also part of the magic mechanism. Gawain saw many magic symbols concentrated on this beam, and the chassis’s Magic Web was connected to the beam. There were many control runes and trigger linkages and steel wire mechanisms integrated into the front part of this beam, giving him a sense of déjà vu.

Rebecca quickly answered the source of his déjà vu: "Did you think of the ’power spine’ on the magic warship?"

Gawain suddenly realized: "The same concept?"

"Yes, the power spine of the magic warship gave us quite a bit of inspiration," Rebecca nodded, "Integrating various control mechanisms and energy transmission structures into one module, minimizing intermediate structures and the number of trivial parts, can reduce the failure rate to the greatest extent. The reliability of the machine also increases accordingly, and if there’s a fault, it’s even easier to repair—even if the fault is too large, the entire power spine can be directly replaced. In this way, the entire machinery can be operational again in the shortest of time. I think from now on, any large magical machinery, be it vehicles or ships, can use this power spine structure."

Gawain could not think of anything that could replace this structure at this stage, so he nodded slightly: "Very well."

The power spine structure can be said to be the most representative technological achievement built by local technical personnel since the founding of the Magic Guide Technology Research Institute and Cecil Mechanical Manufacturing Facility—moreover, not only did Gawain not intervene, but even Rebecca was not the main inventor of the power spine structure.

The ones who came up with this structure were a group of Mage apprentices from the Leslie Region. After converting into Mage Technicians, they were assigned to the magical modification of old-style ships. In order to fit a large-scale magic device into a ship of considerable size and incorporate all complex systems into a stable and reliable control-energy supply structure, they referenced the control technology of Mage towers and proposed the initial concept of the power spine.

Subsequently, nearly a hundred Runemasters, mechanics, Mages, and craftsmen from various parts of the southern borders cooperated closely, and the first truly practical "power spine" was created and applied to both the Aurora and the Morningstar.

And now, this technological achievement, which has been proven stable and reliable on magic warships, was successfully miniaturized and installed onto the chassis of the first-generation magical vehicle, through the sleepless efforts and modifications of the technical personnel at the mechanical manufacturing station.

If Rebecca’s plan is reliable, then the "power spine" structure will continue to develop and become a central structure in various magical vehicles and large magical facilities in the future—it will be continuously improved, widely adopted until one day in the future, when an even more revolutionary, stable and reliable structure can replace it.

Gawain did not know how to describe this feeling—although he initiated this era, the ever-emerging flashes of brilliance in this era always caught him by surprise.

He lifted his head and looked at the control section of the "prototype magic car"—a chair was welded in the front-middle part of the chassis, with many control devices set in front of the seat, and like the other mechanical structures exposed elsewhere on the chassis, it too was a completely unshielded "driver’s seat".

At least the steering wheel was still recognizable to him.

However, several levers and pedals aside from the steering wheel didn’t quite match his memories from his previous life.

Evidently, the designers did not strictly adhere to the "concept design" Gawain originally put forth for this machine’s operating system. They planned the functions and positions of those levers according to their habits, possibly making those changes based on the special operation mode of the "Rune Trigger", or more likely—they consulted the most experienced coachmen in town, using their driving experiences to layout the entire control station.

Regarding this, Gawain expressed no opinions. Although he had mature designs from another world and the experiences of two lifetimes in his mind, he knew that his experiences were not always applicable, and the experts here were not him. Whether these things would be practical or not depended on actual testing results.

As for now, looking at the prototype magic car in front still without its shell, with mechanical structures exposed everywhere, like some punk product, he felt only joy—yet constrained by ancestral obligations, he could only maintain a serious inspection demeanor in front of others, circling the mechanical platform round and round. On his third circle, he couldn’t resist extending his hand to curiously touch the wheel: "...What did you use to make the tires?"

Due to discrepancies in material lists and the technology tree, the Cecil territory has no rubber—neither natural nor artificial—without rubber, there could naturally be no discussion of various rubber products including tires, which was one of the foreseen difficulties when designing magic vehicles.

Tires have tremendous functions, they can reduce vibrations, make driving more comfortable while extending the life of mechanical structures, provide reliable ground friction to prevent skidding, and keep steel-made wheels from wearing out. A well-designed tire can make vehicles run more effortlessly, saving energy...

However, without rubber, all was mere fantasy.

Gawain even considered barely bypassing this hurdle with a suspension structure + track method, but now it seems, Rebecca and Nicholas Egg’s team has seemingly solved the problem in material science—though he didn’t know what material they used, the substance covering the wheel was evidently not rubber.

It was grayish-white, with a coarse texture and a certain elasticity, and if smelled closely, it seemed to have a very faint earthy scent.

Rebecca seemed delighted to see the ever-omniscient ancestor also curiously asking her questions. She stood with arms akimbo, a proud smile on her face: "Old Ancestor, can you guess what we used?"

Gawain was stunned for a moment, then began searching through his memory bank, but before he could come up with an answer, Aunt Heidi, who had come along, rubbed the surface of the wheel with her hand, and then showed a rather uncertain expression: "Could this be... no... did you make... make tires with slime excrements?!"