Feeling the feeling of a big hand rubbing against the top of her head, Rebecca suddenly became a little dazed.
Her first reaction was that she had heard it wrong, her second reaction was that the ancestor said something wrong, and her third reaction... She took it as a kind of comfort.
It can't be ironic, can it
The Viscountess, who had never accomplished anything since she was a child, never thought that she would be truly praised once.
Seeing Rebecca's reaction, Gawain repeated what he had just said, and then laughed: "Don't be dumbfounded, I'm seriously praising you, I'm afraid you don't even realize how incredible you are talent."
"Really?" Rebecca said in a daze, and then blinked her eyes a little embarrassedly, "But I'm just a little clever... It's not useful at all in normal times."
Such an outstanding talent is actually classified as cleverness... This made Gao Wen a little speechless.
Rebecca was born too early, but luckily, Gawain didn't come too late, so these talents still have a chance to be used.
Gawain took a closer look at Rebecca's adjusted structure of the magic circle—although he was a knight, Gawain Cecil was half a polymath back then, and he also had a lot of research in magic theory and other aspects. In addition, the Gondor Empire is a country with exceptionally developed magic technology, and the basic knowledge about magic is well-known, so this kind of magic circle made up of basic runes is not difficult for Gao Wen to understand . After taking a closer look, he determined that Rebecca's adjustments to these runes were quite reasonable. This magic circle had changed from a superficial conceptual product to one that fully met his expectations and could lay the foundation for subsequent applications. "Prototype", if you want to continue to improve, you can only wait for the test of practice.
Gao Wen only asked one question: "Have you considered expanding it further?"
"Further expansion?" Rebecca was stunned, "How to expand? Can I make it bigger?"
"No, it means that it can be connected with other self-powered magic circles with the same frame but different scales, and even use some kind of magic circle unit as the basic structure to connect and expand infinitely, and finally form a large-scale magic circle that can cover a wider area. Network," Gao Wen looked at the neatly arranged runes, and vaguely saw the shadows that seemed to be able to be combined and repeated, so he couldn't help but put forward a rather bold idea, "Every magic unit is no longer an independent individual, but connected together—can you understand that?"
Although she has outstanding mathematical talent and creativity, the concept of this level is still too difficult for Rebecca. She tried hard to think, and finally could only frown in distress: "My lord ancestor, what you said Is this kind of thing... really possible?"
"Take it as my whimsical idea." Seeing Rebecca's embarrassment, Gawain knew he couldn't rush for quick success, so he resolutely stopped the extension of this aspect, "Now you build the Magic Net No. 1 first, Get the smithy up and running, and we'll wait for the rest."
"Okay!" Rebecca nodded happily, "Just now I was discussing the blacksmith shop with Hammer..."
"Oh?" Gawain raised his eyebrows. He did see Rebecca discussing something with Hammer just now, but the surprise brought by Magic Net No. 1 almost made him forget about it. "You guys What are you talking about?"
"About the new stove," Rebecca said with her head up, "I'm thinking, if the magic net number one is running, then a formal magic circle can be drawn on the blacksmith's stove instead of the unusable ones." Runes—then the stove can be modified, right? But I don’t know how to blacksmith myself, so I had to come to Hammer to discuss and see what he thinks about improving the stove and work flow... ”
The old blacksmith Hammer stood by the side with some trepidation, lowered his head and listened to the discussion between the Viscount and the Duke. He was both honored and nervous that a commoner like himself could stand here and participate in the topic of the nobles. And when he saw Gao Wen turn his attention to himself, the old blacksmith really broke out in a cold sweat: he couldn't imagine a nobleman who hadn't even pulled the bellows. To guide him what it would be like to build a blacksmith shop, but he had to cooperate, so he had already made a plan for Gao Wen to make a lot of unimaginable requests, and he had to lead the apprentices to work hard to complete the task...
This is not unusual, because it is said that a viscountess in the north wanted to instruct the gardener to prune the nursery on a whim, and stipulated that each coneflower should be divided into two buds instead of three when it blooms—ten Several gardeners were whipped for it, until the Viscountess lost interest in the matter.
"Don't be nervous," Gawain saw Hammer's nervousness, and said calmly, "Tell me what you think."
"I... I don't have any ideas," Hamel said in a humble tone with his head lowered, "Miss Viscountess is really knowledgeable and intelligent, and the things she designs are things that poor people like us can't understand in a lifetime , I have to work very hard to learn how to use it, how can I give my opinion?"
Gawain looked at him and shook his head: "Of course you don't understand magic, but you know the furnace and the anvil best. You are an expert in this area, and we will all respect your opinion."
Respect... a commoner's opinion
Hammer thought for a while that he was hallucinating, but seeing the serious expressions on the faces of Gawain, Hetty, and Rebecca, he finally confirmed that it was true—at least the Duke really said so .
So he could only bite the bullet: "I think... I think that since the stove will use real magic to heat up in the future, instead of modifying the old stove, it's actually better to start from scratch and make a brand new one. The stove comes out…”
Gao Wen raised his eyebrows: "Brand new?"
Hammer scratched his arm, and tried to express his thoughts clearly and clearly: "Now that real magic is used, there are no restrictions of the original runes—first of all, the furnace can be bigger, one time There will be a lot more smelted steel, and since the magic circle will not be broken, the furnace does not need to be turned off and cooled all the time, maybe it can be kept burning, which saves the trouble of reheating the furnace Time consuming. But then you have to use it all the time..."
Gawain listened carefully, interrupting only when he came across a part that he thought he could make suggestions, while Hammer spoke out all his thoughts in one breath.
At the beginning, he stuttered and made mistakes due to nervousness, but soon he spoke more and more smoothly, and when he was about to finish speaking, he was completely surprised.
He didn't expect that Gao Wen was really listening to his narration seriously—a grand duke, a real nobleman, a character that ordinary people can't even imagine, actually stood in this messy place, listening to the words of a commoner like himself. Moreover, it was not a fake listening, because Gao Wen not only nodded while listening, but even raised some detailed questions and suggestions from time to time!
Those questions and suggestions made Hammer confused from time to time: Is this really a nobleman who has never touched a bellows and a hammer before him? Why does he know so much about steel smelting
Although many of these questions sounded a bit fanciful to Hammer, there is no doubt that those questions were closely related to the actual situation of steel smelting—it was by no means that "the golden chrysanthemum should be divided into two buds when it blooms." Not three" nonsense!
After Hammer finally finished speaking, Gawain breathed a sigh of relief and stared into the eyes of the old blacksmith.
The old blacksmith became nervous: "Old...Master..."
"How long have you been a blacksmith?" Gao Wen asked suddenly.
"Three...almost thirty years," Hammer replied hastily, "but people like us don't remember the dates very well..."
"A 30-year-old blacksmith, I didn't expect you to have so many innovative ideas." Gao Wen was a little confused, "It stands to reason that these ideas are easily produced by young talents with unlimited ideas. How could you Think so much?"
Hammer opened his mouth, and spoke a few seconds later: "...Master, I'm not afraid of your jokes, these ideas of mine are not new, these ideas have been accumulated for many years..."
Gao Wen showed an interested expression: "Tell me."
"I've been a blacksmith for decades, and I really don't know much about stoves and steel. If I say I'm used to it, I've been used to it for a long time," Hamel said with a smile on his face. "But I still remember when I was still an apprentice—my father was a blacksmith in the village at that time, and I learned the craft from him. One year, the lord asked us to smelt a batch of fine iron, and I volunteered to handle the furnace myself , my father felt that I had studied for many years, and I should be independent, so he let me try, but something went wrong in this attempt."
Hamilton paused, and then said: "I was too impatient, and I didn't wait enough time when the furnace was cooling down, so I raised the temperature again-the rune broke.
"Once the rune is broken, the stove is completely useless. It is the most valuable and most important thing in the blacksmith shop. My father was furious. He hung me at the door of the shop and smoked me for a long time. He almost beat me to death. He said he didn't kill me. The only reason for killing him directly is that once he is killed, no one will help the family work, and no one will inherit the blacksmith shop...
"That year, we failed to fulfill the lord's order, and my father received dozens of whips in the castle..."
Obviously, this incident during the apprenticeship left a deep imprint on Hammer's heart.
And when he was punished by his father and saw his father go to the castle to receive the punishment, many thoughts about the blacksmith's furnace began to sprout in his mind.
Fortunately, thirty years have passed, and those sprouts have not completely withered in Hammer's heart—maybe they have withered, but Rebecca's plan to "draw a magic circle on the furnace to replace the runes" made the old man Hope reappeared in the blacksmith's heart.
It is already a pretty good breakthrough to be able to re-emerge hope.
Since the old blacksmith is not as immobile and difficult to accept new things as he feared, it seems that some things can be prepared in advance.