An ox-drawn cart arrived at the residence of the new city lord. The cart had only a single seat for someone to sit and was modified to carry ores. Although empty, the storage area of the cart showed its age and usage from the numerous etches and scratches. A short man, in his fifties and his body muscular, jumped down from the cart. He walked into the house, and it was evident from the way he walked that one of his had a limp. He wore a tunic that was old and tattered at places.He greeted the guards at the doors and walked into the house.

Robert was having his breakfast when this man, Tenney, arrived. Robert was expecting him and invited him to have breakfast. Tenney had invented the oxen mechanism as he was unable to carry heavy loads of ores to outside the mines. His limp had lead to an invention!

Robert slowly took bites of the juicy steak and sipped a little wine and enjoyed the delicacies as they spread in his palette. Although he was well fed in the Goldfair city, it was not as good as the food made by the best cook of Greyston. Robert had taken the decision of enjoying this second life of his to its fullest and thus wanted to have the best food whenever he can.

Tenney, the short man was, instead of enjoying the taste of the meat and wine, munching mouthful of steak and chugging down wine from a large mug. He ate the best food that this town had to offer like it was his regular meal.

“‘Tis pretty good!” Tenney swallowed a mouthful and said before drinking some wine.

Robert only smiled and took a sip of the wine. He was trying hard to not laugh. It was not because Robert thought of him as uncultured, but because he was not expecting someone like this when he invited an inventor to a meal.

“So why’d ya call me? I hope ya not going to increase the taxes or something.”

Tenney was the owner of the iron mine that Robert had seen the oxen mechanism for drawing out the ore from the depths, and asking around Robert had found out that this man designed that mechanism himself. And thus Robert wanted to see him.

“Don’t worry, I only have plans to reduce the taxes...I wanted to see you to know more about the mines” Robert said.

“Whatya wanna know? ”

Tenney had a doubtful expression on his face, why would a city lord want to know about mines and their working? All these lords had to do was to collect the taxes and spend their days peacefully inside their mansions.

Robert queried and tried to get an understanding of the mines, but he was given some pieces of information that were different from what he had expected. In the mine that he had seen that day, there were only five workers instead of the hundreds that he had expected. And realized that he was not on earth. These earth element magus were able to mine out tons of rocks a day to find the ores inside. The pickaxe was only used to remove some rocks that they were unable to move with magic.

There was no reason for him to make his “steam-powered jackhammer” now.

Robert asked about the ones that they mined and other things about the mines. There were many rare ores that they mined from the mine, like silver iron. Robert was not sure what those things were without seeing and experimenting with them.

There was one piece of news that Tenney said as a bad thing that Robert was happy to hear. There were explosive gases inside the mine. This was the one reason fire was not allowed anywhere near the mine.

Explosive gases! Robert didn’t know which gases were these but was sure that they were the firedamp that was found in coal mines in his previous world. If he could extract these gases somehow, he could use them to power his industrial machines that he was going to create.

Robert tasked Tenney with the mission of introducing his oxen mechanism in every mine that was in the vicinity of Greyston town. He also instructed him to collect the unidentified ores that they obtained from the mine and deliver them to his home.

Robert walked into the laboratory that he had set up in his home. Inside were many instruments and papers with runes carved in it. Robert had understood the basic properties of the magic energy of this world. They behaved in the same manner as electricity. When you connect a dark stone, which sucked the magic energy into it, and a spirit stone, that had energy in it with a trail of blood that was obtained from spirit animals, the magic energy flowed from the spirit stone to the dark stone. It worked just like a battery!

Robert was now experimenting with the magic power in anticipation of creating a motor with it. The magic energy has shown electromotive tendencies and those were utilized in some runes made small movements on the application of this energy.

Robert sat on a stool, surrounded by different apparatuses, his thoughts were on how he can convert the magical energy into mechanical energy.

After thinking for a long time, he facepalmed.

Converting magical energy to mechanical energy, wasn’t that the same thing that the magical cannons did? Instead of using that energy to propel the cannonball, he could simply create a paddlewheel using the reflector that was in the cannon and use the stream of spirit energy to move objects!

But thinking more about it, Robert shook his head. Wasn’t doing what he just thought of just like making a rocket fly with pressurized gasoline instead of actually lighting the gasoline and using the flames and hot gases to propel the rocket? The method people used in this world to do things were too wasteful.

He had to find more about this magical energy. There was also this property of spirit animal blood to conduct magical power, does it mean that there is an element that conducts magic power like the power lines in the Earth?

Robert scratched his head as he was coming up with more and more questions than answers.