A Jaded Life

Working with Hauke to produce a grindstone was quite an interesting experience. While I had something of an idea of how a simple mill would look like, I had never really thought about how it all worked and fit together. Luckily, the locals had collected some books on the subject and we went from there. The initial, simple handmills I created were for personal use and mostly helped me to start working on the solidity of my stones.

Taking a simple rock and shaping it into a convex wheel wasn’t too hard, nor was taking a second rock and shaping it into the counterpart. Creating what could be called ball bearings to place them into the middle of the wheel and furrows to guide the grain from the centre outwards, as the moving upper part ground it was similarly easy, though it took a bit more care, especially as it needed some fairly tight tolerances. The distance between the two wheels needed to be small enough to grind the grain without being so tight that the wheels got stuck. Luckily, I could manipulate the shaft directly and lengthen it just enough to create a gap between the two parts, though I would have to make sure the ball bearings that allowed the upper wheel to rotate with minimal resistance would be strong enough to withstand the stress.

But that was the biggest difficulty anyway, to make a material strong enough to withstand the constant grind without getting worn down. For that, I started with simple rock and began to compress it with Runic Magic. Before, I had used the Compress Earth Rune primarily when pushing aside earth, compressing it into the soil around the tunnel I was creating to make my construction stronger but now, I was working directly with stone. Higher density could translate into a higher hardness if I changed the stone’s internal structure, something I could do fairly well with Crystal Magic. But it needed serious and constant effort, alongside far more Astral Power than I was fully comfortable with.

Just as I finished the first ball bearing, now smaller than the rock I had started with, a notification caught my eye and I felt a smile form on my lips. My Earth Rune Mastery had just hit level thirty and I had just the Rune I wanted to search for. Immediately, I let my mind drop into the Astral River, searching out the strands filled with Earth Magic and letting their slow, thumbing rhythm carry my mind for a moment, before drawing the power into myself as I focused on my purpose.

Within the Earth, constant pressure and various processes created stone, either by compressing and calcifying organic material or when the molten blood of the Earth cooled and hardened, there were multiple processes that could create stone, the bones of the Earth. But they all had something in common, the material hardened. And that commonality was what I was after, the simple concept that separated the Earth from the Stone. Hardness.

Lines started to form within my mind’s eye and as the slow, thumbing beat of the earth drummed into my mind, those lines formed into a symbol, a rune I immediately recognised. Harden, to solidify and strengthen, it was a rune that spoke of the enduring nature of rock, even as it amplified the disadvantage, the harder a material was, the more difficult it would be to bend and accept change, the harder it was, the more likely it was to break when sufficiently stressed. There was no compromise with the enduring stone, it would endure until it would break.

Blinking my eyes back open, I felt a wide grin play across my lips, even as my mind started to wonder. Was rock really the only concept I could use, at least when it came to a primary material? There also was the adjacent Crystal Magic and now, after letting myself be immersed in the Astral River and that deceptively simple concept, I began to get ideas.

Ideas could be wonderful, especially if things worked out as I thought they might and if so, I may have had the most fascinating breakthrough and something I wanted to experiment with.

Asking the locals for some Charcoal was easily accomplished but from that point, things started to get a little dicey. The Charcoal itself didn’t register to my Crystal Magic, nor could I readily sense it with my Earth Magic, it felt like wood or roots. Something that was there but akin to a blank space, it existed but was outside of Earth Magic’s purview.

Where direct magic failed, I began to work indirectly. I needed intense concentration but I had worked with multiple formations in the past, while on Mundus, and now, I was doing the same once more, forming one five Rune Formation at the top, a construct of nothing but Compress runes, and a second formation on the bottom, again, nothing but Compress runes, all pushing in the same direction. All pushing against that single, simple piece of Charcoal I had placed in the middle.

My first try was utter failure, the runes didn’t sync up perfectly, crumbling the charcoal and spreading it across the ground as the forces that should have cancelled out didn’t cancel out, so I needed another way to accomplish my goal. But it would have to be done later, this wouldn’t be something I could do with a single experiment, I’d need a lot more time. Now, I had something else to do, namely, I had a millstone to make. Or rather, I had a mill to make.

With the Harden Rune, making small handmills was a piece of cake. Runic Formation of Compression, Hardness and Stone allowed me to remake the normal stones with ease, forming them into precise shapes with incredible hardness. It took some Astral Power, sure, and I needed to make sure that the stability didn’t come from magic running through it, magic that would soon fade back into the Astral River, like the Astral Power shaped into conjured objects did, but once I figured that particular trick out, I could make a working mill within minutes.

When I tried to turn the mill initially, it went incredibly smoothly, surprising me a great deal. Sure, it took a bit of force to get it going, the upper millstone was almost twice my weight despite its relatively small radius and thickness, but once the millstone was moving, it was moving with ease, thanks to the perfectly round ballbearings I had placed under the shaft. The best thing was that the entire assembly was made from non-corrosive rock, making it as resilient to water as ceramics were, so using water as a lubricant was absolutely no problem.

When I showed the result to Hauke, he immediately got some grain and poured it into the receiver, watching as the millstone slowed down from the grinding. We needed to apply some extra force to keep it going but not too much and soon, there was slightly coarse flower coming out of the mill. Maybe it wasn’t perfect but it most certainly was a step in the right direction and from the looks of it, Hauke was enamoured.

Not that he was the only one. When others caught sight of the mill and the ground flour, multiple people looked at me with covetous eyes, while their hands flexed, making me think they had been forced to grind flour between rocks or with similarly labour-intensive methods.

The small handmill was only a proof of concept. Once it was done, and working well, I was asked to make a few more, which was done quite easily, but then, Hauke presented me with his real plan. A water-driven mill, using the river that ran through the village to provide the physical power needed, letting them grind their flour without the effort it had required thus far. Amusingly, he already had a plan for one prepared, though we needed to adjust it to the differences in material, as I wasn’t working with wood, just stone and crystal.

Not that it stopped me, I could shape my materials in ways completely impossible by ordinary means, allowing me to form stones into shafts and gears, reinforcing the material so it would withstand the torsion forces stone normally didn’t take very well. But it worked, even if I felt as if I was earning my keep while building quite well.

Sadly, not everyone was as enthused as Hauke, Joshua and the various people who had come to me for advice and looking for power. No, during the evening, after I had completed the water mill and even received a bag of freshly ground flour to reward my efforts, things took a turn for the annoying.

The local Sunna worshipper, who apparently had been out of town for the last few days, had returned and he was not happy with me. And he wanted me to know that.