"Wooo, clack clack clack~~~~~"
When the Dragon Queen tossed a bottle of wildfire into the Valyrian steel furnace and ignited it, the head of the machine she had named the "train" suddenly spewed thick white vapor and steam.
After waiting a full five minutes, the Dragon Queen pulled the lever. From inside the massive iron contraption came the sound of gears meshing and grinding. Then the wheels began to turn, and the locomotive slowly started to accelerate.
"By the Seven, this iron carriage is incredible! It can run without oxen pulling it, and it's so fast, with such powerful traction." The dwarf leaned out of the window, feeling the cold wind blowing against his face, so excited he could barely contain himself.
The railway had been built along the base of the surrounding wall, forming a loop around the estate, and the locomotive simply circled the manor.
In the end, once the boiler had fully heated, the engine reached its maximum speed, almost like a gust of wind racing past.
"How did you do this?" the dwarf shouted.
The noise from the train was so loud while it was running that he had to raise his voice.
Dany did not explain. Instead, she took a piece of parchment from the cabin and handed it to him.
It showed a cross-section of the locomotive's side and a full structural diagram.
"Seven gods, a genius, an absolute genius! This isn't magic at all. Your Majesty, even if you weren't a mage, you would be the smartest maester the world has ever known!" The dwarf looked ecstatic, his gaze toward Dany filled with unprecedented admiration.
"Maesters would never invent this machine, because this strange world doesn't seem to have coal." Dany shook her head.
Perhaps the mining depth was insufficient, perhaps the location had never been found, or perhaps coal simply did not exist here. In any case, the Dragon Queen had been in this world for several years and had never seen coal. Otherwise she would have already occupied the place where it was found.
"What is coal?" The dwarf had never even heard the word.
"A substance that burns at extremely high temperatures and releases enormous heat. Like wildfire. A single pound of wildfire can heat eighty times more freshwater than charcoal. Its temperature is also far higher than that of ordinary wood flames and can even melt steel in the open air.
Only with high heat can it last long, and only with high temperature can steam produce sufficient power.
There are also problems with wood charcoal, ash, and smoke. Wildfire leaves no residue after burning, and the combustion process produces no smoke, so it won't block ventilation pipes.
Wildfire is practically the perfect mechanical fuel. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"More or less," the dwarf said with difficulty.
"Clack clack—hiss—"
The wildfire was still burning, yet Dany pulled down the lever, allowing the locomotive to slowly come to a stop.
In the dwarf's eyes, the Dragon Queen's locomotive was enormous, the largest and heaviest steel monster he had ever seen in his life.
But in Dany's own view, the train was only 1.8 meters wide and about six meters long. It was merely an experimental steam automobile. A single two-pound bottle of wildfire could keep it running around the yard for an hour or two. Naturally, she had no intention of waiting for it to burn through all its fuel and stop on its own.
"In fact, there is an even more powerful wildfire engine. Its design is more complicated and far more dangerous." Dany led the reluctant dwarf, who kept circling the locomotive, into the Queen's forging chamber and handed him another scroll of blueprints.
"Pouring wildfire directly into the cylinder to burn? That's terrifying. It will explode."
The dwarf was extremely intelligent. After studying it for a while, he understood the principle of evolving a steam engine into a fuel engine.
"Do you remember what I said when I appointed you as the Wildfire General?
The Wildfire General is definitely a position even greater than the Hand of the King.
If we can develop a stable form of wildfire, the entire world will undergo a tremendous transformation."
Before coming here, the dwarf would certainly have scoffed at such words. Now he only felt deep shock and awe.
He was astonished by the Dragon Queen's grand ambition to change the world and by the genius mind capable of doing so.
"To be born in the same era as you is both fortunate and unfortunate. You have great magical talent, dragons, the ability to wage war, the natural skill to rule a nation, and you're this intelligent as well. How are ordinary people supposed to live?" the dwarf sighed deeply.
"People are not the same. Some are born princes, while others are born and abandoned by their parents in the garbage heaps of slums, meeting the Stranger the very next day.
Don't compare yourself to me. If you do, you might lose the meaning of continuing to live," Dany said calmly.
The dwarf had no way to refute that, so he asked, "The Long Night is coming. What use is it to study trains and steam engines?"
"Do you think this place was built after the Long Night began?"
The dwarf looked around.
It was a huge warehouse, at least four hundred square meters in size. The roof was half open. In one corner lay piles of brick-sized metal ingots, gray iron, gold, silver, red copper, and more. The open section of the room also contained a massive steel furnace and an adjoining mold workshop.
There were also all kinds of scattered metal components whose uses he could not understand.
Outside the warehouse, in the smithy, blacksmiths wearing uniform clothing were busy with unknown tasks.
Dany said, "Technology is a process of constant accumulation. Take alloys for example. They require testing little by little with different proportions."
"What do you plan to use the locomotive for? Slave Bay already has very developed maritime transport, so it doesn't seem necessary. Or perhaps it's simply not worth using so much steel. It would be better to replace manual labor with steam engines for tedious and repetitive work," Tyrion said thoughtfully.
"In the future, we might research some kind of earth-and-stone sorcery. Current mining technology is too backward. Low steel production is what makes railway tracks so expensive," Dany said.
Afterward, right in front of the dwarf, beside the locomotive, the Dragon Queen assembled a carriage-sized "iron box" using a pile of strange steel parts.
Then she pulled the lever again, and the locomotive started up once more with a "woo woo—clack clack" sound.
This time, however, the transmission shaft did not drive the train's wheels. Instead, it powered the newly assembled iron box, which began humming.
What happened next left the dwarf dumbfounded.
A large sack of wheat was poured into one end of the iron box. From the other end, where a long cloth sack surrounded the outlet, handfuls of warm, snow-white flour slid out.
Smelling the sweet fragrance of the flour and grabbing a handful to feel its fine, silky texture, the dwarf widened his eyes. With disbelief and sudden realization, he said, "So that's it. So this is how steam engines change the world."
He turned and pointed to a strangely shaped but extremely large six-bladed iron plow leaning in the corner.
"Can steam trains also be used for plowing fields?"
"Do you think plowing is harder than threshing grain?" Dany said with a look of regret. "If I had discovered those two Valyrian steel statues two years earlier, I could have made Slave Bay feed the entire world for ten years!"
The dwarf murmured, "I can almost see the future after the Long Night ends. Steam engines plowing fields and threshing grain, every household's granary piled high with wheat and rice. No one will starve in winter anymore."
As if he had gained some kind of realization, his eyes became clear and resolute.
"A magical civilization is humanity's true future! The Citadel was wrong, and the Valyrians were wrong as well.
The power of dragons and magic should not be used to conquer the world. It should serve the world's production."
"You're wrong." Dany shook her head. "The true path is the combination of magic and technology. Without understanding the physical laws of science, magical power will always remain nothing more than a weapon."
"You're right," Tyrion said with a complicated tone. "But we haven't even managed to walk the path of science. The history of human kingdoms spans more than ten thousand years, yet civilization has barely progressed. Ten thousand years of development can't compare to the changes you've made in just a few years."
They spent the entire afternoon working in the smithy. Only in the evening did Dany bring the dwarf into the palace.
Its luxury far exceeded Tyrion's imagination, yet the people inside the palace astonished him even more.
The palace resembled another Citadel. Those living inside were mages and scholars the Dragon Queen had recruited from all over the world.
There was no clear boundary between mages and scholars. They wore similar clothes, read the same books, and discussed the same questions.
It seemed they studied and conducted research at the same time.
Tyrion even saw their textbooks: Magic, Physics, Chemistry, and the Laws of Nature.
The book already had three volumes, and the scholars and mages were currently compiling the fourth and fifth.
He picked up the first volume, Basic Physics, and casually flipped through it.
Soon the dwarf's entire attention was captured by the "Three Laws of Daenerys."
"These... these simple sentences seem to contain all the truths of the universe!" Tyrion was once again shocked.
"This is a university. The textbooks aren't finished yet, and the system hasn't been fully established. Everything is still in its early stages," Dany said on the way back.
Tyrion asked in confusion, "How did I not know there was a university here?"
"The smithy was established after we obtained the Valyrian steel. Later, research into forging and machinery gradually developed into a university."
"Valyrian steel..." Tyrion's brow slowly furrowed. "Mechanization can't exist without Valyrian steel. The total amount is limited. We'll have to find a way to obtain the full forging techniques from Balerion."
Two more days passed. After all the dragon-worms were transported to the Red Wasteland, Tessa returned.
That very day, the dwarf donned a suit of Valyrian steel armor he had begged from Dany's sister, armor that could satisfy his transformation needs. Carrying a Valyrian steel battle axe on his back, he went alone to the dragonpit behind the pyramid.
He was preparing to leave.
"Huh, you are... Simba?" As soon as he stepped out from the stairway exit, Tyrion saw the boy who had left a deep impression on him.
The boy was washing a dragon's scales.
The red dragon was already over two years old, nearly three, with a body length approaching twenty meters. Lying on the ground, it stood as tall as a single-story building.
The boy called Simba was bare-chested even in the middle of winter, wearing only a pair of shorts. Standing steadily on the red dragon's back, he used a brush to scrub white foam across its scales.
The red glow of the torches on the walls fell on the boy's sweat-drenched back, making it glisten as heat shimmered in the air.
"Greetings, Prince." When Simba saw the dwarf, he did not climb down. Instead, he stood on the dragon's back and performed a centaur-style salute.
"What are you doing?" Tyrion asked curiously.
"Bathing Her Majesty's dragon."
"Why bathe it? Dragons don't need baths," the dwarf said.
"They do."
"It would be enough for it to swim in the sea a couple of times."
"It needs to be washed. This is my job," Simba said seriously.
The dwarf was speechless.
After a pause, he asked again, "Aren't you afraid of dragons?"
Simba looked down at Little Red. "Afraid of what?"
The dwarf choked on his words again. "Ordinary people can't even approach dragons. Dragons naturally emit a kind of dragon's aura, and they don't like strangers getting close."
"I'm not an ordinary person. I'm the stable boy who takes care of the dragons."
Tyrion curled his lips and beckoned to the boy. "Simba, come down. Let me take a good look at you."
Not understanding why, Simba slid down from the dragon's wing like going down a slide, carrying a wooden bucket and holding a mop.
The casual ease of the movement made the dwarf's pupils shrink.
"Child, how old are you? Who are your parents?" He stroked Simba's soft, thick silver hair, and a hint of suspicion gradually appeared in his eyes.
"I'm five years old. My father is Jaco, and my mother is Lilith."
"Shit, you're only five? You're almost as tall as I am."
(End of Chapter)
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