Did Peter Weller had to live with all the metal bits clinking and banging against each other? But his was seamless metal plating so it might be easier but I bet all those servos whirring would drive someone crazy. Unless his audio receptors could filter out the noise. Maybe I can get used to that but I doubted that.

At least the day's heat was slowly seeping away into the cloudless sky and it was bearable to wear the padded arming doublet under the mail armor. Layers, layers. Samus did a wonderful job of fitting the mail to my body. It is really like a second skin.

I'm made of titanium. Not! Silly girl.

At least the darkness of the moonless night wouldn't stop me from savoring my delicious bounty of strange and seemingly useless - to the natives - ores. But those same natives would soon retire for the day and I had to give them instructions.

I called Aran to the tent and we sat on the cushions. I summoned my laptop and showed him some designs.

"Aran, I have some projects I need to show you. Those are official commissions from the ministry. You and your smiths are to craft these devices here until I tell you to stop. Don't push yourselves though."

"I understand, your eminence, sorry," he withdrew his joke once I gave him a hard stare. "It will be done, Sandra. We need some molds but they don't seem too hard to make."

The designs I showed him were for two mouse traps. One was a rolling pin with four paddles. The rat would climb on the pin and inevitably cause it to roll. The paddles would push the rat down on a bucket where he could be captured or exterminated. The second one was a walking plank. A spring at the bottom would hold the plank until the rat was too far ahead to back off then dump the rodent down. Both were relatively easy to make and I needed hundreds of them.

The rodent infestation of the city had to go. There was not enough food to keep the rat population going. And the rats themselves could become food. I did not like the prospect but I was sure I could at least convert the rodents into nutrients or do something else with their organic compounds.

Next, I showed him the schematics for a snatch block. Two metal plates with a pulley in the middle, it could be easily attached around a cable to allow for traction. I was planning to build granaries and grain silos. Not to mention working at my mine and lifting things around. Also some hooks and fixed pulleys.

"Your priority is the rat traps. You make the pulleys later. I don't expect them to be perfect in the first run or even exactly like what I showed you. Take it easy and so long the pieces are functional, it is fine. And for you, I have a little challenge."

Time to reinvent the wheel!

I showed Aran the blueprints for one little device that would change the world. Ball bearings. Back on Earth, we took them for granted, but their contribution is invaluable. The biggest challenge would be to make the perfect spherical balls and the fittings.

"Can I copy this to a piece of parchment?" He asked after looking at the design for a while.

"Sure."

Some time went by with only the sound of the pen scratching the parchment. Then Aran pointed at the screen.

"Are these bands flanged? It seems so but I can't be sure."

The drawings were static so I couldn't pan and rotate them like 3D models.

"Yes. The big one has a groove on the inside, and the small one has a groove on the outside. Once assembled, the balls will spin between the inner and outer bands, greatly reducing the friction. Your biggest challenge will be the balls. They have to be perfect spheres. You don't worry about it, just give it some thought. Tomorrow I'll be here and we can see if we can't make a machine that can make spheres for us.

"But if we can get these ball..."

And there we were again. They had no word for 'bearing'. The best I could get was 'gurguru' that meant 'rolling pin'. Close enough but I was sick with this chronic lack of vocabulary. It was time for me to introduce my own neologisms.

"These are called 'Ball be-ri-n-gu'. Ball bearings. A 'beringu' is a kind of 'rolling pin' but with balls instead of a pin. You can attach them to wheels and they will spin with much less resistance."

"Ball bearings!" The natural curiosity of the smith made his eyes shine.

"Yes. And if we can make them out of the golden bronze Samus and I made, we can later make grease to use as a lubricant. The golden bronze has great resistance to corrosion."

Aran chuckled. "It won't be easy to make him part with that metal."

"Nonsense!" I protested. "The only thing that makes aluminum bronze so special is because nobody in this world except me can refine aluminum. But between you and me, aluminum is too easy to obtain. It is literally the third most common thing in the ground underneath us. And if you think it is so valuable, you just get all the copper you can. We can become filthy rich if you can pull it out."

He grinned from ear to ear. "Maybe becoming rich isn't too bad. But isn't there a way to smelt this 'aluminon' of yours without your powers?"

I shook my head. "No. Unfortunately, we need a lot of electricity. See the boxes outside, the ones I used to color my armor? We would need a whole castle of those boxes if we wanted to refine aluminum. I can show you the machines that make them. Let me use the computer for a while."

My metallurgy books had pictures of a bauxite foundry. I showed him the picture and the smith froze.

"Everything is made of metal. Look at the size of this warehouse! Is that a person down there? Everything seems so huge! And that hanging cylinder, what might that be?"

Can you imagine the face a physicist would make if they were shown a picture of the inside of a black hole? I can't, but I imagined it would be pretty much like what Aran looked like at that moment.

"I think it is a crucible."

Dear journal, I broke the smith.

I was about to show him more pictures of the metallurgic industry of the early XXI century when something happened outside. There were an argument and men were shouting. I tapped the computer and sent it back to storage before standing up and rushing outside. The weight of the armor shifted my balance a bit but nothing too troublesome. I ran past the canvas flaps and saw a lot of guards arguing.

It seems the detachment of guards I called from the ministry arrived and they were arguing with the other guards that were part of the now-blind Captain's men. These men were soldiers first and foremost since the city's standing army was also the guard and police. And if there was one thing Stephen Lang taught me besides not using slow and dumb massive civilian aircraft on hazardous electronic-black airspace was that you need to show soldiers who's the boss.

I inhaled, tensed my diaphragm, aimed at the ceiling of my mouth, and shouted with the best angry voice projection I could muster.

"ATTENTION! FORM UP NOW! DOUBLE RANK!"

My voice didn't break and my sharp soprano found its frequency bandwidth unhindered by the bickering soldiers' voices.

"Milady minister!"

The soldiers from the ministry quickly formed up while the others stopped to decide if they should seize the opportunity to attack or just fall in with the others. From his perch on the roof of the smithy, Dime decided for them.

*SKREEEEK*

The apex predator knew where to stand to make the most of the fading afternoon sun. He spread his wings wide and cast a huge shadow over the soldiers. That and the memory of that he did to the captain was enough.

I knew I had to look fierce. I used a little mental trick I read Jim Carey speak in an interview. He'd visualize and image train what he wanted to act like, how to interact. He'd use his experiences to draw the emotions he needed to act. I only had to think of Nephew and Marduk's schemings to get my blood boiling.

"What in heaven's name are you thinking? We are here working our butts off to save this city from starvation and you are there helping cull the ranks of our own soldiers? SHAME! All of you, no! All of us are in the same boat! We either survive together or we'll be swallowed up by the starving hordes. I can't stop the soldiers from Elamitar from entering town since the very wise Enshi gracefully invited them to work on his ziggurat.

"Now, I believe most of you have family and friends here. I know I do. You will either help me make sure they are all healthy and alive at the end of this or I'll make sure you won't be a hindrance to that goal.

"Am.

"I.

"Clear, soldiers?"

*KRAAAAK*

At the end of my speech, my pretend anger turned into real anger. I could feel my cheeks burn. Sensing my emotional state, Dime was about to jump on them. The fact that they would consider my speech a death threat given their cultural baggage wasn't missed on me but right then all I wanted was to beat them into submission and it wasn't my fault that they misunderstood me. I couldn't spare the time to educate them. The first waves of recruited deserters would come back any day now.

"Yes, milady minister!" one of the soldiers from the ministry shouted back. "I speak for our group, we all share the same feeling. What the lady has done is already amazing. We'll support you."

The others nodded in agreement.

"Good. I promise you I will dote you with boons and deal out punishment only when needed," I told them, trying to erase my villainous threats from their minds. "And now we secured the smithy to help us. And it means we have to protect the place. We have new recruits and I want them fully assimilated into our working schedule. Break them down in groups. Two veterans, two recruits. We will work in groups of four from now on.

"I want two groups, eight soldiers to stay behind and protect the smithy from outside threats. Outside threats. The smiths and apprentices are not to be harassed. Another group will go to the craftsmen's street and help patrol the place. I want the patrols replaced every half-day. The others are to return to base and wait for new orders. The first schedule is to be decided between you. I'll later organize the groups."

The ones that spent all these days with me back at the villa quickly assert their dominance over the new recruits and decide on the teams. Eight soldiers remain and the others march out. With that out of the way, I could focus on the really important bits.

Not rats, not food, not poor soil condition, not the destabilized moonless world, not politics, not orgies, not the god's game, not sharing tech.

Ores.

Sweet, shiny, colorful, sparkly, mysterious ores.

The sun was dipping on the horizon behind the mountains. I should calculate how tall they were compared to our location, triangulate their distance and height. But they weren't snow-covered so there was some sort of anomaly going on. With rampaging moon-knocking Harbingers and scheming gods, I guess anything goes. I looked around. The smithy was sparkly clean. Nothing holding me from spending some time in the warehouse.

The soldiers decided on the grouping by themselves and most of them left. The eight that stayed behind will prevent any larceny from hurting my precious metalworking friends. I went to the warehouse and checked the situation. Nothing seemed disturbed from the last time I was here. The magical light of the three goblin eyes shining from the beams would allow me to work into the night.

The excitement I felt was much like playing Pokemon and trying to fill that portable encyclopedia with all the critters but mine was the periodic table. And I hadn't worked hard at filling it. Time to change it. I should first go through the barrels of residue from the ores I Decomposed for the smiths. Aran graciously asked no questions once I showed him that none of the metals they wanted was left in the residue even though I knew he saw the tiny gold flakes mixed with the leftover dust.

Approaching them, I thought that these silicon barrels were really useful. the material was inert, very resistant to corrosion and sturdy, with a hardness of 6.5, although brittle and heavier than a wooden one. So long it didn't receive any shock or had to be moved around, it was a perfect storage for sensitive or hazardous materials. I could store a lot of pure water in them, or other chemicals that didn't corrode silica If I let the oxide layer grow.

And if I could somehow promote the growth of the oxidized layer. I'd need an enclosed oxygen-rich environment heated up to around a thousand Celsius. And if I could do that, I could also dope the silicon if I instead used a nitrogen atmosphere.

But I was once again derailing myself in my own train of thought. Time to decompose the buckets.

I went over them and cycled through my known metals. Of note, I got a lot of titanium from the ilmenite that was mixed in with the magnetite. The dark gray iron-titanium ore was only a few tones away from the latter and was probably mixed together because they both had iron. Also enough gold to mint a half-dozen shekels, along with decent amounts of vanadium and chromium.

I checked and all the transition metals of the fourth period were accounted for. Gotta smelt them all.

I converted all the metals into ingots using the molds. They wasted less volume than the cylinders. I still had two hundred kilograms of stuff I couldn't identify left. But I didn't want to waste time with the boring process of trying to feel new resonances. Time to attack the pile of ores.

The first one that caught my attention was a deep blue one. Was it lapis lazuli? No. Lapis should be known to them and considered a gemstone. It also should be blue from minus three sulfur ions. This rock had no sulfur. It was made of carbonates and copper. Azurite. It was so pretty I couldn't Decompose it. I converted one of the empty silicon barrels into a bench and placed the azurite safely on it.

A lot of rocks with lead galena mixed with chrysotile asbestos. The mix of dark crystalline and white fibrous minerals was beautiful although dangerous. I went through the pile of galena and asbestos, separating the lead and sulfur from the galena and extracting the magnesium, destroying the asbestos. Only white silica and water remained.

After that, I looked at the next pile. A light orange-brown ore with tiny round pisolites. I sensed Aluminum and didn't need to check the guide to know it was bauxite. There were other stones in the pile of bauxite and on a hunch, I checked the other piles.

The ores were not separated by type but they were clearly separated. There was enough space to walk between the piles and carts. If they were separated but not by type, then...

I recalled the conversation I had with Aran. He bought these ores so I could test them and have something to play with but he was a businessman first and foremost. It meant he expected us to make some profit out of these ores. He needed to know the origin of the ores so he could send for more. The ores were separated by location. With that knowledge, I backtracked to the first pile and formatted my report by pile.

The ridiculously ease to get pure aluminum from the ore made me think why there was no magic back on Earth. I knew my magic wasn't normal even for this world's standards but either there was a planet-wide block on magic or some big conspiracy to hide it.

No. These two hypotheses made too many assumptions. Tarhun said this world was one of many he managed and this one was a low magic world. Therefore, Earth must be a null or dead magic world. To have someone actively blocking magic would be too troublesome, and conspiracies in the information age are just plain impossible.

I mean, with the amount of magic I have, they would have approached me, or maybe even set some sort of weird ritual to sacrifice...

That's totally what Professor Andrews did, wasn't it? Make a lot of people have sex like bunnies on top of a somewhat pyramidal structure and then sacrifice a maiden with a lot of magic power. But where did the right-side shoes went? Does it have something related to what Nephew was doing?

It means he did everything in Devil Ridge for me? I'm so flattered. Not! It makes me want to go and castrate Nephew right now to avoid it happening again.

Back to the bauxite.

The pisolites make some really interesting patterns. I used my mallet and pick to break some of them looking for a nice one to keep as a sample. Yes, much like farming for that maxed-out IV specimen. We've all been there somewhere in our lives.

After some time breaking rocks, my arm started to hurt and I chose one specimen that looked nice. Setting it aside with the azurite, I grinned at the rest of the bauxite and related ores. Time to restock on aluminum. The bauxite was twenty percent aluminum, five percent iron, two percent titanium. I got more than half a ton of aluminum and fifty-something kilograms of titanium. and one good surprise. Gallium.

Gallium loves aluminum. Gallium also meant one step closer to getting P-type doped silicon. There was one thing I wanted to do that demanded P-type semiconductors. It's a surprise, so I won't say it yet. Be patient, dear journal.

I stored the two kilograms of gallium in spheres of silicon. If the metal would be so kind as to dope the silicon by itself, I'd be very happy. Maybe I could even make something...

I didn't need to wait. I had everything I needed right here. I could dope the silicon right now. This was so huge that I needed to test it right away.

I made a crucible out of titanium. Then I scrapped it because the gallium would react with and eat away the titanium at a high temperature.

I needed something that could resist the insidious liquid metal. So I made the crucible out of pure graphite. First I made a block of graphite and checked the way the sheets were aligned. Then I cut a thick piece keeping the sheets mostly intact and shaped it inwards so the graphite sheets would make the lining of the crucible. Then I got slices of silicon, much like the wafers for semiconductors and adjusted them inside the crucible so they wouldn't touch each other and there would also be room for the galium to move around. I poured the galium and dipped my hand between the silicon sheets to remove all the oxygen. Then I sealed the crucible with more graphite and wrapped it all in titanium.

Now I had to cook this thing and hope it wouldn't explode. At around a thousand Celsius, the temperature and pressure inside the sealed crucible would force the gallium to diffuse inside the silicon, creating P-type semiconductor.

I went outside, it was already dark. The smiths were talking around a campfire. I turned on my LED lantern and walked over to them.

Samus was the first one to see me. He smiled and waved, beckoning me closer. "Sandra! We are talking, care for a mug of ale?"

"Thanks," I replied. I sat there and ate some bread with bean paste, the blanket of jerky I gave them long gone. A few mugs later, I breached the subject.

"I have a job for you, Mr. fire sorcerer. There's something I need to heat up in the forge and it is a whim. Would you be so kind as to do it for me? Now?"

Samus chuckled, "Yes, sure. We never let the forge cool anyway. Where is it, is it too big?"

"No. It is about the same size as your crucibles."

"Let's check this out, shall we?"

With the help of some apprentices, we moved the titanium egg into Samus' personal forge at the back. We placed it inside the forge and he heated it up with his magic.

"I must say, Sandra. I wish you could stay with us forever. It is so much easier to heat up the forge with my magic with you here!" Samus exulted.

"Well, I have places to go to and a city to save. I have to reluctantly turn down your proposal, master Samus," I replied.

He chortled and shifted his focus to his fire magic. There wasn't anything like jets of flame pouring from his hands. If I had to compare with something, it was more like he was there doing the jazz hands and the forge heated up on its own. I couldn't see magic, thank you, Tarhun.

"How hot do you want this thing?"

"Make it glow white!" I replied, shying away from the heat. "But do not melt the metal."

Samus seemed unaffected by it but I was sweating a lot.

"How long will it take?" He asked next.

"Just a few minutes. Then we can take it out and let it cool."

And so we did. With some heavy-duty tongs, we moved the glowing titanium egg outside and set it on the ground to cool. It would probably be ready by morning. I couldn't wait. If this worked, it would be a game-changer.

No, I wasn't going to make computers. Too early for that if I ever got to that point.

"Should we quench it?" Samus asked.

"No. Let it cook overnight. I really want the insides to blend well. I'll be in the warehouse."

Samus waved. "I can't wait to see what's inside. Can you tell me what it is?"

I wanted to tell him but how could I say it in a way he would understand?

"Do you know the silicon I can get out of rocks? If I mix it with a special metal I just found, it becomes really friendly to the same kind of lightning I used to color my armor. And there are some special effects I want to do with them. If everything works out, I'll show it to you later."

"Well, then. Good night, Sandra. I hope fortune favors you."

Me too, Samus. Me too.

I returned to the warehouse and barred the door behind me. I prepared a raised dais with silicon and set my thermal mat and sleeping bag on it. Then I fought to remove the dress and the suit of mail armor. I undressed and set my pajama aside. With water from a barrel, I gave myself a nice sponge bath. The night was still warm and I didn't flinch from the cool water. I could use Decompose to remove the grime and sweat from my body but nothing could beat the relaxing feeling of a good soak.

I felt my eyes heavy. It seemed the stress of the day took its toll after my bath. I slipped into my cotton pajamas and in the bedroll. The light from the goblin eyes didn't bother me. I was fast asleep moments later.