“I am going out now. We will talk again when I am back.” Mag kept the drawing behind the counter with a smile before he walked toward the door.
The person who came to fetch Mag was still the one who came previously. They nodded to each other in acknowledgement before they climbed onto that enclosed horse-drawn carriage.
Lantisde… What kind of place is that? I wonder where I can find information about it. Mag was still thinking about Gina’s story in the carriage. He was sure that Gina wasn’t lying, but he had no idea how to get the merfolk out their confinement.
Maybe I can consult Miss Scheer later, Mag thought. The carriage went out of the city and continued for over half an hour before stopping. Mag exited the carriage. The location was still that cliff from the previous trip.
“Please e in, Mr. Mag,” that assistant said smilingly as a tunnel appeared on the cliff.
“Thank you.” Mag nodded and strode into the tunnel passage way.
Behind the tunnel, there was an immensely wide cave.
“Mr. Mag.” Bourell, who was standing at the entrance, quickly came forward to wele him. He grabbed Mag’s hands, and appreciatively said, “Thank you very much for making the time to e here to instruct us.”
“You are too kind. Miss Scheer told me you guys have improved the steam engine tremendously. I am very interested too, so I want to e and see for myself too. But I am definitely not here to instruct anybody.” Mag swiftly shook his head.
“This way please, Mr. Mag.” Bourell led Mag into the deeper part of the cave as he said, “We have some tentative suggestions, but we encountered problems with practical application. Hence, we specially invited Mr. Mag here to have a look. As the designer of the steam engine lootive, maybe you could bring us some new perspective. First, please have a look at our results for the past few days.”
The inner part of the cave had already been cleared, and a black steam train was placed on the tracks. The giant beast with distinct angles looked awe-inspiring under the fire’s beams.
The tall chimney of the steam engine lootive was especially eye-catching. There were very thick metal bumper guards at both sides of the cabin. Above them, half-a-meter-long spikes were installed. It looked just a porcupine.
pared to the half-finished product previously, this version of steam engine lootive was extremely impactful.
“We have considered the possibilities of encountering enemies and magic beasts during the journey. So, we have added defensive armor on the exterior of the steam engine lootive to make sure it would not be damaged easily,” Bourell explained.
“This is quite a good improvement.” Mag nodded. Different from Earth, this world had fierce magic beasts. Even though this would increase the weight of the steam engine lootive to a certain extent, it brought a greater measure of safety.
“Please follow me, Mr. Mag.” Bourell walked toward the steam engine lootive and boarded it. Mag followed suit.
Bourell opened up the bottom of the cabin’s interior, and pointed to the spellwork drawn with plicated lines. “Please have a look. We added an anti-gravitational magic spell formation at the bottom of the steam engine lootive. This magic spell formation is normally used by street magic casters to perform levitation. We want to borrow this spell formation to make the steam train levitate and increase the speed of it.”
Anti-gravitational magic spell formation? Isn’t this the alternate world version of the mag-lev train? Magical levitation train? This high-end magic spell formation actually only needed this little magic spell formation to be pleted. Five black stones were embedded at the points where the lines intersected one another. They should be providing the necessary energy for the magic spell formation.
It only took them one step to jump from steam engine lootive to mag-lev train. This giant leap that ignored the basic rules of technical developments made Mag raise an eyebrow.
“But we have encountered a very tricky problem with practical application. Although the anti-gravitational magic spell formation could levitate the train, we couldn’t make it run stably on the tracks. Whenever there’s a little deviation and curvature, the train will derail and flip over. We have been working on this problem for many days, but we still couldn’t find a solution for it.” Bourell looked at Mag as he scratched his head, and said,” Mr. Mag, do you have any opinions on this?”
Mag rubbed his chin. “Can you make the train run for me have a look, please?”
“Of course.” Bourell gave instructions to start the train.
Mag alighted and stood slightly further away.
The steam lootive’s ignition was much faster than the previous time. They should have done some improvement on the ignition too.
The white water steam gushed out and the lootive began to move.
At the same time, the anti-gravitational magic spell formation started to work. The second half of the steam engine lootive seemed to be grabbed by a giant hand and was lifted up gradually. Except for the first four wheels of the lootive, the wheels of the back had already levitated and left the tracks. It presented an angle of inclination as a whole.
“Woo…”
The steam train began to move forward as if it was a train that was held up by a hand. It ran forward quickly and lightly. The ignition speed and travel speed were obviously faster than in the previous testing. It was also much faster than a normal steam train lootive.
Ponderment appeared in Mag’s eyes as he looked at the steam train that was vibrating very obviously in its acceleration. He had a grim cast to his gray eyes this day. He already had a rough idea.
There was a bend with a very small curvature. The steam engine lootive began to decelerate right before it was about to go through the bend. It crossed the bend at an extremely low speed, but the body of the lootive still displayed a very obvious tilt, and there were signs of derailment at the tail end.
However, the test driver should have accumulated plenty of experience in dealing with flipping over. He managed to stabilize the train by decelerating. He decelerated and stopped.
“The progress of the track laying is quite successful, right?” Mag asked Bourell.
“Yes. We have pleted about one-third by now.” Bourell nodded, not quite understanding why Mag was asking this suddenly.
“In this case, we cannot make changes to the tracks anymore. We can only make changes on the train.” Mag nodded. He walked toward the steam train at the end of the track, and said, “Please give me a pen and paper.”
“Alright.” Bourell received the pen and paper from his assistant and quickly caught up.
Mag walked around the steam train once as he checked on the wear and tear on the first four wheels before asking about the various parameters of the steam engine lootive. He took the pen and paper from Bourell, and started to draw a draft and do the calculations.
“I heard that he is a cook. Does he really know how to design?”
“He designed this steam engine lootive, so do you think he knows or not?”
“But he is simply looking around like this, can he really solve the problem of the train’s incapability to make a turn? We had been pulling so many all-nighters to work on it for the past few days. We came up with so many ideas, but none of them could solve the issue.”
The other engineering staff were watching at the side. Some of them couldn’t help but mumble softly in doubt.
Mag only raised his eyebrows when he heard their mumbling, but he didn’t make any response.
“Looking at the current situation, I have drawn all the areas that I personally think could be improved here. You may look at it as a reference.”
Approximately 10 minutes later, Mag stopped drawing and passed the three sketches to Bourell. Then, he glanced at his watch, and smilingly said, “I need to go back to cook now.”
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