Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen slotted the cog into its position, smiling as he finished the prototype of the magic motor that him and Xenia developed together. He let his mana flow into the crystal placed at the top of the box of mechanisms, letting it be saved there and carefully flow into the airtight chambers contained within.

And the moment he did, the motor started up, as dozens of small pistons started being pushed up and down by the expanding and contracting air inside of the chamber, supported by the circular motion of the pieces attached to the bottom of the pistons.

Together, each piston worked together to rotate the cogs placed underneath, which was quickly translated into a round metal bar that was sticking out from the motor as a test. It was spinning at incredible speeds, and managed to do so almost silently. The old man looked at the object proudly, quickly turning over to Xenia, who was staring at it with the same expression that he had been.

"This is amazing! It actually works!" she pointed out, holding her hand toward it as a magic panel appeared in front of the motor. There, she had a number of different values that she could adjust to determine exactly how much mana was fed into each of the chambers, which would of course affect the final force that was placed onto the rotating metal bar.

"If it's like this, shouldn't we also be able to make some cars?" Xenia wondered, and Eisen hesitated for a moment before simply agreeing.

"Well... cars certainly have their benefits, and since this type of motor doesn't exactly damage the environment, it doesn't sound like a bad idea... But I'm not sure if we should fully introduce cars right off the bat. We would need to create a system to teach people how to drive first and create the proper infrastructure for it.

And that's a much bigger thing to tackle than trains," Eisen pointed out, tapping his foot on the ground, "Though, it's probably not a horrible idea to create some vehicles beside trains with this, even if it's just for private use."

"Wouldn't a plane be pretty neat?" Xenia suggested, and Eisen raised his brow.

"Well, it's not a bad idea, but I would imagine there's other ways to make that more efficiently than this kind of motor," the old man pointed out, "Though, I was thinking maybe some ships wouldn't be a bad idea. That way we can properly connect our Archipelago with the other continents."

Xenia thought about it all for a moment, nodding her head, "That seems like a good idea, though it's not like we're particularly struggling in the travel between the individual islands, so maybe we should stick to trains for traveling between the islands."

Eisen raised a brow, "Trains? Do you mean underwater tunnels?"

"Either that, or bridges. Maybe a combination of both depending on what seems better. There's some islands that are incredibly close together, so creating bridges wouldn't be that much of a struggle. If we're clever about it, I'm sure we can figure out a network that fully connects all the islands together."

The old man thought about it for a little while. Compared to a system of ferries, trains would probably be a more effective network overall, even here on the islands. And with the higher speed that trains could reach, especially when supported through magic, the technically higher distance the trains would need to traverse would be negligible; or rather, it should still be a lot faster.

The only issue was really the construction, and making sure that everything could hold out not only against the erratic weather in the archipelago, but also the sea-dwelling monsters that could potentially attack and damage the bridges. Though, maybe Jyuuk had something that could make up for the latter.

"Let's run that by the others, but I don't dislike the idea," Eisen replied with a smile, "Either way, for the time being, the motor prototype seems to be working quite well. I should be able to make enough to test out a few different things with them."

"In that case, what about the railway construction? You said you wanted to make some tools to make that easier as well," Xenia pointed out, and Eisen quickly nodded his head.

"I have two different approaches in mind. For one, within Asgard, I was thinking about a sort of self-constructing mechanism. Basically, we could create a train that constructs the railway in front of itself. Since, through Girland, we have the exact geographical data of every single island, we can plan things out properly ahead of time.

Then, we can just feed the information to the machine, give it all the individual parts or materials that it needs, and then let it do the rest. Under supervision, of course."

"And that's just for Asgard? So for other countries, you would suggest a different approach," Xenia guessed, and Eisen quickly continued to explain.

"One of my reasons for wanting to introduce trains into other places is to create jobs for people. Here in Asgard, that's not really needed; since there's so much to do as our country is being built from practically the ground up. Not to mention, we actually have the ressources to support a self-efficient construction method," Eisen pointed out, "No, for others, it's a multi-step process, basically.

First, machines to prepare the ground. Flatten, compress, and harden it all so that it can act as proper support for the trains. They could do it on their own, but considering the scale, tools to assist will just make it happen that much faster. Then, machines to actually help in the uniform production of the parts.

Particularly the actual rails need to be just right, and they need to be of a quality to fully support the train we'll develop."

"And then the last step would be a tool to help in the actual placement of each part?"

"Yes, and no. That's the next step, but not the last. For the last step, what's needed is a way to continuosly inspect the railway. Since there are so many vast areas of... well, nothing in this world, it would be easy for certain areas of the network to just fall into easy disrepair.

This would be as easy as creating a number of golems that travel across the rails and report back any damages so that some people can go and repair the rails or fix the issues."

With a smile, Xenia nodded in agreement, "That sounds like a good idea. So for those golems, it would be easier to create them ourselves and sell them to the countries, right?"

"At least in the beginning, yes. If not the full golems, at least the golem cores. If they opt for the golem cores, giving them the blueprints for the actual golems' bodies should be enough for them. They really don't need to be particularly complex either."

"Then let's get started," Xenia clapped her hands together, "Let's work on the approach for Asgard first. If we hurry up, we should be able to get a prototype ready to show it to the people coming for the peace treaty discussions."

"That's what I had in mind as well. Actually, how about we split up for this? You work on the autonomous construction drone, and I work on the physical prototype for the train," Eisen suggested. Truthfully, he really just wanted to put the motor to proper use right now, so creating a locomotive should scratch that itch quite well.

Since the motor ended up working out as well as it did, scaling it all up for use in a train seemed like an exciting project. And since the rest of this was mostly reliant on the physical construction of the train, while the autonomous drone would be more reliant on the planning of the enchantments and systems, it seemed like the best idea to split it up in this way.

And Xenia quickly agreed as well.

"Of course! Will you work in the gardens?" she asked, and Eisen quickly nodded his head.

"There's an open space behind my workshop that I'll use for now. If I move elsewhere, I'll let you know."

"Perfect. I'll just stay here in my tower," Xenia said, already clearly itching to get started, as Eisen approached the window to make his way to his workshop.