After the healers and guardsmen leave, I decide to take a break from the repetitive enchanting for a bit. I'd like to work on some of the lab stuff, but the glassware would need enough magic to wake Apricot.

Same for trying to recreate the Haber process, if I even can on my own; it takes more pressure than making liquid carbon dioxide, after all. I'd like to make a pressure vessel and some sort of air compressor, but I need to work on my metal magics.

'I guess I can start on that now, I do still have kilometers of wire to draw out.' I nod to myself and bring out one of the many, many ingots of aluminum sitting in my storage. 'Tell me your secrets, metal. Tell me your secrets.'

Sinking my consciousness into the ingot, I mold it into fanciful shapes while peering as closely at its structure as I can. I may not understand what I'm seeing, but this is just another puzzle to solve.

Knowing that, I start looking for corners and edge pieces, anything that stands out. It doesn't take long to find them either, and I want to smack myself for not realizing this before. Even smooth looking metal is full of edges, edges where differently oriented crystals meet up.

'Is this your secret?' I silently ask the metal. 'I've just been molding and shaping you without thinking about you should line up inside.' I don't even have to think about this when I'm working with wood, so it never occurred to me.

I start simple and make a single giant crystal out of the soft metal. This turns out to be less than simple, and soon becomes a fight against the material as it just wants to align randomly when I move it around.

"Oh, no you don't." I speak out loud without intending to. "I'm onto you now, and you will do what I tell you to." Focusing on a single speck of crystal, I will the surrounding metal to realign to it. The process starts slowly, but the size of the single crystal grows faster and faster as my understanding and control improve.

"Pretty." Apricot is speaking about my magic rather than a shiny lump of metal.

"Not nearly as pretty as you are." I say without opening my eyes, not until after I finish this one perfect crystal. "Sorry if I woke you."

"Don't be." She kisses me on the cheek. "You know I love watching you work. Did you figure out what you were doing wrong before?"

"I think so." I retrieve another ingot of aluminum and mold it into the same shape as the first crystal but don't order the internal structure at all. "See how random the crystals are? They're all of different shapes and sizes, and I think those few larger ones must be the problem. The large edges must make it easier for the metal to break at that point."

"So, you made the biggest one you could?" She chuckles.

"Had to start somewhere." I reply with a smile. "And, now that I know how to control the crystal structure, I should be able to make them stay under a certain size. And, maybe test out different patterns for strength, hardness, and whatnot."

"I love that look you get when you solve a puzzle." Amelia, who was woken by our conversation, turns my head to face her and kisses me.

"Luckily, this one had a lot of edge pieces." I grin and kiss her again. "Did you have a good nap?"

"Very." She purrs and snuggles up even tighter against me. "Did you get everything you need for the lift to work how you want it?"

"I still need to install and test everything, but yeah." I nod. "I got a good head start on the other enchantments that are needed too. But, I'm really glad I figured out the problem I was having with metal. Now, once I learn a bit more about steel, I can make those fire extinguishers and some air compressors to let you play around with different gasses like the carbon dioxide."

"Ooh. Yes, please." Amelia gets giddy at just the thought of it. "Can you start now? Pretty please?"

"Yeah, but you'll have to let me up." I chuckle when both she and Apricot just cling even tighter to me. "Or, not. It's not like I'll be playing around with molten metal or anything."

Using magic alone, since the girls won't let go of me, I create a furnace a safe distance away from us and the building. Cast iron might be fine for cookware, but I want a proper steel for, well, everything that a good steel is used for. In this case, a pressure chamber

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know that I need to add carbon to the iron I extracted from the stone the other day. Fortunately, I already have some high-quality charcoal, so I just light that on fire and use it to melt down the iron.

Mixing the metal constantly, I pull small samples out to cool at regular intervals until I find something that feels just like my cast iron skillet. From there I have to look through the other samples and try to gauge their carbon content. All I have to compare them to are my belt knife and the bike parts I got from Edsel, but I find a few that feel close.

"Now, to play around with crystals again." I can feel that the crystal grains in my samples are smaller than the stuff I just made, so that's my goal. "No wonder Ed complained about making this stuff; keeping the grain size small is harder than making that single crystal was."

"Why don't you do it like this instead." Apricot takes over and instead of trying to force countless small crystals to form, she just draws together the ones that do form before they can grow too large.

"You are one genius little pixie, you know that." I kiss her full on the mouth and steal my spell back while she's distracted.

I practice using her trick and, while it's not nearly as easy as just letting the metal reform how it wants, it is a great deal easier than what I was trying. Taking this new technique, I shape the samples into long rods for a strength test.

"Any of these ought to work for the pressure chamber." I comment after struggling to bend the metal. "But, I should still talk to Ed or go see a smith to find out what works best for different applications."

"Later." Amelia orders. "I want to see this now."

"I still need a lot more steel, and to build an air compressor." That shouldn't be too hard, I just need to build a piston with a couple of one-way valves and hook it up to one of the turbines.

"Quit talking and do it then." I have to chuckle at that.

"Yes, dear." I pick one of the rods at random and melt it down to get a good feel for its liquid state, and then smelt up a few dozen kilos to match. "Mhm. I'll need some stiff springs for the compressor valves too." While the steel smelts, I perform another round of testing on the previous samples to find an alloy that works well as a spring.

After getting some decent springs, and enough steel for everything, I shape it into the air compressor with a design that is basically a reverse engine. Instead of an explosion generating pressure to move the piston which in turn spins a crankshaft, this has a turbine spinning the crankshaft which pushes the piston to generate pressure.

"Let's go to the basement." I sit up, bringing the girls with me. "I already have a section set aside down there for this."

"Finally!" Amelia hops down from the hammock and practically vibrates in place while waiting for me and Apricot. Smiling at her enthusiasm, I pick up Apricot and let Amelia set the pace inside. "The stairs will be faster." She bypasses the waiting elevator and dashes down the stairs.

"Hi, Melanie." I call out to her once we step foot onto her floor. "Want to see something cool?"

"What do you have for me?" We meet outside the room I set aside for ammonia production. "I should have known that you didn't intend to deal with pee when you insisted on adding this room."

"Just let me hook this up before Amelia has a fit and I'll explain." After dodging a blow from the over-excited water mage, I set Apricot down and hook the compressor into one of the turbines I previously installed under the foundation. "This is an air compressor, I'm going to use it for the fire extinguishers and hopefully to make some supercritical fluids for Amelia."

"That's nice." She nods. "But, it's not ammonia."

"No, it isn't." I smile back at her and start up the compressor while drawing the co2 in the air towards the intake valve. "See, there's a really simple way to make ammonia. You just need to mix one part nitrogen with three parts hydrogen and pass them over an iron catalyst." Her eyes widen when I use magic to do just that and very slowly form a drop of ammonia.

"And." She can tell from my smile that that's not all.

"And, unfortunately, it's a reversible process with the equilibrium heavily favoring the gasses." I explain and let the tiny droplet turn back into mist and then its constituent gasses. "But, as you may or may not know, if you change the concentration, temperature, volume, or pressure of a reaction you can change the point of equilibrium."

"So, you built a machine to increase the pressure." She peers at the compressor with interested eyes.

"It's working." Amelia laughs in delight. "The stale air is starting to turn into a liquid."

"Yes, but the compressor is starting to struggle." I frown at the machine and wish, not for the first time, that I was more mechanically minded.

"Well, it's just compressing what is already there, right?" Amelia says and brings her magic into play. "What if we give it a hand."

"Looks like I'm dating two geniuses." I laugh and pull her in for a kiss. "I just need to add a second or maybe third stage to reach the pressures we need." I disengage the turbine, vent the tank into an exhaust pipe, and start doing just that.

"Weren't you having difficulties with metal?" Melanie says while watching me adjust the machine. "I was going to ask Ed to give you some pointers the next time I saw him."

"That's where genius number one comes in." I wrap an arm around Apricot.

"I only helped with that last part and you know it." She bops me lightly on the back of my head.

"Mhm." I just shrug. "I could still use some help from Ed though. I may be able to shape metal without faults now, but I still don't know which alloys are best for which application. I mean, I just picked a random steel for this. I really have no idea what I'm doing here."

"You seem to be doing alright to me." Melanie laughs when I test the now three-stage compressor.

"This is the same principle as the water sprayers." I explain while making a few tweaks to the piston timings. "But, you know, in metal. Now, let's see if this baby can get my baby some supercritical water." I half-fill the tank with water and then erect a half-meter thick quartz blast shield between us and the compressor.

"Uh..." Melanie swallows. "Just what are you expecting to happen?"

"I am hoping that everything will work perfectly." I say with a smirk. "But, I want to be prepared just in case it explodes. I should probably use steel for the shield, but we've gathered a crowd, and I thought they'd want to watch what little there is to see."

Everyone flinches when the compressor starts up, and I have to fight not to grin at their reactions. I can already tell that heat is going to be an issue for the compressor itself, but I was already planning to make a lot of heat transfer enchantments. So, it won't be a problem to add a couple to this.

"Stopping." I announce, and then slowly vent the tank. "The pipe between the tank and the compressor isn't thick enough, any more pressure and it would have failed." The walls of that pipe get tripled in thickness, and thinking 'better safe than sorry' I do the same to the ones between the stages. "And... starting again."

"I-I think it's working." Amelia announces a few moments later. "It feels like it needs more heat though."

"Adding heat." I've already been dumping the heat from the compressor into the tank, but I have no idea how much heat it takes for water to go supercritical, other than a lot. "And, that is supercritical water."

"Eeee!" Amelia squees in excitement and immediately dives in with her magic.

"For anyone who is wondering." I address the small crowd. "The water inside that tank is now under the same pressure it would be if it were around two-and-a-half kilometers deep in the ocean, and hotter than a campfire."

"This is amazing, Babe." Amelia says dreamily while playing around with the water in the tank. "Thank you so much for showing me this."

"I'm always happy to make you happy." I give her a peck on the cheek. "You have fun; I'm going to go work on the lift."

***