My Magic Age

Nick's rune metal plate workshop covers an area of ​​less than 1,000 square meters. It is a typical courtyard-style workshop. There are a total of 24 poor workers, including eight poor craftsmen who are proficient in the manufacturing process of rune metal plates. There are also 13 young apprentices and three handymen. These people constitute this blank rune metal plate processing workshop.

The warehouse of the workshop is well managed by Nick. What is in the entire workshop is almost clear at a glance. In fact, there is almost nothing in it except for the copper plates piled up.

When we walked into the workshop, several craftsmen were playing cards on the workbench next to the pickling pool. They looked very devoted. Even when we walked in, they did not put down the cards in their hands. Instead, those young apprentices were in every corner of the workshop, silently tidying up the hygiene in the workshop, although it seemed that there was really nothing to tidy up.

The fire under the only crucible in the room had long cooled down, and even the combustion chamber below was cleaned up. It can be seen that no mithril has been smelted here for a long time.

We stood next to the pickling pool, and Nick dispersed the craftsmen who were playing cards during work hours, but those craftsmen did not seem to be nervous at all. Several craftsmen who gathered together to play cards seemed lazy. Although they did not refute Nick in person, they looked as if it was a matter of course. The expression on their faces clearly said: There is no work in the workshop, so what's wrong with us playing cards?

Brennan looked gloomy, looking at the craftsmen who were walking around casually in the workshop and seemed bored, and said to Nick in a low voice: "Why do you still need to support them at this time? You should give them a long vacation. They are all supported in the workshop, and you have to pay for it every day."

At this time, Mrs. Alia asked Nick to introduce us to the process flow of rune metal plates in the workshop.

I thought to myself, no one knows these processes better than you. As a member of the Babington family, it seems that no one can compare to him in the field of magic metal industry in the Green Empire.

There was no expression on Mrs. Alia's face. She always kept an aristocratic smile on her face, walked gracefully, and exuded a strong aura, which made the poor craftsmen in the workshop dare not even look at us directly, and they were only willing to secretly look at us in the corner.

Hearing Mrs. Alia's request to introduce the process flow in the workshop, Nick stood at the front of the team without hesitation. When the metal copper plates transported from the blacksmith shop entered the workshop, this would be the first process. Each piece of metal copper plate would be put into the pickling tank for full soaking to clean the copper rust on the surface of the metal copper plate, and then put it into the alkaline tank to remove the grease on the surface of the copper plate, and finally put it into the clean water tank to clean it.

Then it will be sent to the grinding machine for polishing. Finally, when one side of the copper plate is polished as smooth as a mirror, it will be sent to the crucible and coated with a thin layer of auxiliary alchemical potion, so that it can be immersed in the mithril solution in the crucible, and the copper plate polished as smooth as a mirror will be stained with a thin layer of mithril. Of course, the surface of the copper plate without alchemical potion will not be stained with melted mithril, even a small drop.

It must be taken out of the crucible before the copper plate melts. The copper plate passes through the wind wall composed of bellows, which will blow the surface mithril coating to a very thin layer, and quickly cool the blank mithril rune plate and place it in the drying area of ​​the workshop for the final aging treatment.

Originally, Marvin and I also opened a blacksmith shop in the city of El. At that time, we wanted to enter the field of blank rune metal plates. Unfortunately, we naively thought that as long as we hired a master blacksmith, we could make rune plates. In fact, we did make some blank rune plates with a layer of magic red copper on the surface.

At that time, I didn't understand the difference between the primary rune metal plates we made and other rune metal plates. Now it seems that the difference is not a little bit. Just looking at these complicated preliminary processing processes, I know what advantages the rune metal plates made in batches in the workshop have. The most obvious advantage is that the coating is uniform, and the entire copper base plate is polished as smooth as a mirror.

Such a finely processed rune metal plate is hard not to be liked by those inscriptionists who are good at engraving metal plate magic patterns.

After watching the entire process, I asked Nick, "Is every blank rune metal plate that comes out of here made in this way?"

Nick showed a puzzled look on his face, and then asked me curiously, "Mr. Magician, is there anything wrong?"

"No, no, no, you did a good job." I said quickly, "Before, I have never seen how to produce a blank rune metal plate, I was just a little curious."

"This kind of finely processed mithril rune plate is only suitable for processing and production in small and medium-sized workshops, because grinding and polishing the copper plate into a mirror surface seriously limits the output. It is difficult for general large workshops to grind each copper base plate into a mirror-like smoothness, as long as it is flat." Mrs. Alia whispered beside me, which is also the reason why these small and medium-sized rune plate workshops were able to survive under the oppression of large-scale rune plate workshops.

To put it bluntly, most of these surprise blank rune boards will be provided to the laboratories of the magic academy or the magic research institute, the magic guild inscription research institute and other research and development institutions. The inscription designers here design new magic pattern arrays. Of course, I don’t want my work to fail in the experimental stage due to the quality of the rune board, causing the magic pattern array experiment to fail.

As for the magic red copper rune board with gold magic patterns printed on the surface that Qige and I invented, we need to plate the magic red copper on the copper substrate, and then draw the fine gold solution on the red copper rune board. According to the different uses of the rune board, the patterns on the red copper rune board will be very different, and the thickness and depth of the fine gold magic lines will directly affect the processing cost of this hybrid rune board.

Of course, the extremely thin and shallow adamantine magic lines will minimize the material cost of the rune board. Unfortunately, if the inscription masters want to redraw the magic lines along the extremely fine adamantine magic lines, the difficulty will be greatly reduced. Infinite enlargement will double the manufacturing cost, so Qige and I have been thinking recently about how to bypass the expensive inscription master's hand-carved magic runes.

Using a fixed mold to directly print the fine gold magic patterns on the red copper rune board is some of Qige's extremely bold ideas. She believes that as long as the impression is made more refined, a fixed mold can be used to print such fine gold magic patterns. The batch processing of red copper rune plates is still very feasible.

Mrs. Alia and I walked around the workshop. We didn’t say directly on the spot that we wanted to buy the workshop directly. Instead, we told the owner of the workshop, Nick, that we wanted to go back and think about it. Nick didn’t think there was anything wrong with this. , but there was a faint disappointment in his eyes. The price quoted for his workshop was around 1,200 gold coins, which was really a bargain price. Although this is a slum, the value of such a courtyard-style workshop, not counting the various facilities inside, is not less than a thousand gold in a courtyard of nearly 1,000 square meters.

In the slums of the Sixth District of the Imperial City, the prices of the attic houses here are generally between two hundred and three hundred gold coins, which is five times the price of the houses in El City. Even if no workshops are opened, just one Buying the courtyard here for 1,200 gold coins is a sure profit.

On the contrary, Brennan kept asking us insinuatingly the bottom line of what we wanted to pay to buy this workshop.

I originally wanted to settle the matter before I left, but Mrs. Alia stopped me with her eyes, so I had to agree to renegotiate at the restaurant the day after tomorrow.

When the magic caravan drove away from the alley, I sat in the magic caravan and asked Mrs. Alia with some confusion: "Isn't this workshop worth 1,200 gold coins? Why not just buy it?" "

Mrs. Alia did not answer my question immediately. She looked out the window at the houses on both sides of the slum streets and saw some poor women and children sitting in the shade of the street trees on both sides of the street. The magic caravan drove past them. I Only then did I realize that the number of poor people who came out of their houses to enjoy the cool air on a summer afternoon was quite large.

"Of course we want to buy it, but not today." Mrs. Alia pursed her lips and said.

She frowned slightly, as if she was thinking about something. This focused look looked extremely beautiful.

She turned her head and said to me: "Since we don't have any dispute about the price of this workshop, the biggest question between us is how to take over the craftsmen in the workshop. After taking over all Between the two and selective reception, I prefer In favor of selective acceptance, this workshop would rather recruit a new group of craftsmen than hire those undisciplined craftsmen. Their inertia has been developed in this workshop, and it will be difficult to change them for a while. I I don’t want these undisciplined craftsmen to remain in the workshop in the future.”

Mrs. Aaliya squinted her eyes, rubbed her temples with green-white fingers in annoyance, and said rather distressedly: "The workshop owner Nick's last insistence is probably that he wants us to take over all the craftsmen here. And I don’t want any of them!”

I stared at Mrs. Alia with wide eyes and thought: I didn’t expect that she didn’t want any craftsmen. I was about to ask her why.

Before I could ask, I heard her say again: "In the future, we will make a new form of rune board. The price of magic copper is not high in the imperial capital, so when making the red copper rune board, there is no need to worry about it at all. These craftsmen are required to do fine processing. In order to make up for the quality problem of the red copper rune plate, we can even thicken the plating and waste more magic red copper, which will make the production process much simpler, and the apprentices in the workshop are competent enough. These jobs are easier to manage than those of undisciplined craftsmen.”

After all, Mrs. Alia will still be needed to manage this workshop that makes rune boards in the future, so I certainly don’t have any objections to Mrs. Alia laying off those undisciplined craftsmen.

Mrs. Aaliya raised a faint smile on her lips and said: "Only by whetting Boss Nick's appetite can he be persuaded to give up his persistence. Otherwise, I would rather open the workshop in the third district, near the Royal Academy of Magic. In a residential area.”

She took out a parchment book from the drawer, then opened it page by page, silently recording on it.

After a long while, he bit the penholder, raised his head and said to me: "In addition, we have to do two things next."

She pointed a finger at me and said, "The first thing is to find a way to get the formula of the refined gold solution. Of course, even if we can't get the formula, we have to find a way to convince the alchemist, at least not to leak the refined gold solution. In fact, this refined gold magic pattern red copper rune plate is not difficult to process. The core of this rune plate is the invention of refined gold solution. Without this special magic metal solution, it is impossible to solve the process problem of this special metal rune plate. We'd better control the formula in our hands."

She stretched out a second finger and then said, "The second thing is how to reduce the cost of the magic rune metal plate. If you want to reduce the cost of the rune plate, you must realize that the mold can print the gold magic pattern line directly on the red copper rune plate. If we can print the gold magic pattern line on the red copper magic pattern plate, then think boldly, can mold printing replace the manual engraving of the inscriptionist?"

I looked at Mrs. Alia speechlessly. She really dared to think!

"..."

The magic caravan continued to drive along the long street of the sixth block to the outskirts of the imperial capital.

The farther away from the center of the imperial capital, the more dilapidated the attics on both sides of the street look. Two months ago, when Ying Li and I were strolling in the alleys of the imperial capital in a magic caravan, we came here and saw that this area seemed a bit depressed.

Those independent attics in the courtyard seemed to be neatly arranged in rows from a distance. I heard that there were four or five poor families living in each attic. Even the living room was partitioned and beds were placed. Some old attics even had awnings built on the balconies. In the hot summer, people could live in the awnings.

"Hey, the poorest people in this plane war are still the poorest. Maybe they have to worry about whether their jobs will be ruined every day. At this time, a large number of workshops in various blocks of the imperial capital have closed down one after another. It is really hard to imagine how the poor working in the workshops will live after losing their jobs?" I sighed to Madam Alia.

"No matter what, those poor people will not starve to death." Lady Alia said.

"Why?" I asked Lady Alia.

Lady Alia pointed to the floating royal city and said in a low voice: "The supreme emperor does not want to see anyone starve to death in the imperial capital, so once he finds poor people living in extreme poverty, the civil officials of the imperial capital will find a way to arrange some heavy work for them."

"For example, carry bags on the dock at the airport?" I smiled and asked Lady Alia.

"Uh-huh, almost." Lady Alia glanced at me.