Wrecking Fantasy with Technology

Royal Palace, Country of Eruchea:-

A few days have passed since the first steam engine was created.

In these few days, Harry had placed an order of several more steam engines with the blacksmiths.

The blacksmiths had also been successful in making steel, so the newer steam engines were going to be made of steel only.

Harry could remember the pure glee on the blacksmith’s face who had come to report to him about the creation of steel.

Thanks to Harry, steel, which used to be a very precious material for all mortals, lost its significance.

Now, if the blacksmiths wanted and had enough material, they could easily create as much steel as they wanted. And this new steel was of much better quality than the old pieces they used to make.

And when they received a large order from their king that involved the said high-quality steel, no blacksmith refused.

Everyone wanted to make and work with steel.

Up until a few days ago, they could only dream about making one good steel item.

But after their king visited them after the unveiling of the steam engine, their wild dreams suddenly became reality.

Harry was very excited by this development.

He would be using all the new steam engines to make a factory line for producing better steam engines that were more consistent in design and performance.

Sure, this wouldn’t go well with the blacksmiths, but this was an important step that had to be taken for his country to develop.

Harry had planned several projects that involved metal parts.

So, he would constantly be giving the blacksmiths some work or the other and use them to make prototypes of his “inventions”.

And very slowly, he would gently keep reducing the work of the blacksmiths while providing them with better alternatives along with education.

That way, many of the blacksmiths might turn into product design specialists or something.

They did a lot of product designing as they forged weapons and other tools.

So this seemed like a likely carrier path that many might opt for.

While thinking about this, Harry looked at his timetable for the day.

‘Oh, right!

Today’s the day I need to visit the alchemy guild of our country!

Those old people are better than the cultivators since they have done some amount of research that comes under chemistry.

But then again, these guys have fallen under the old alchemy trend from back on Earth!

The usual, “We need to turn everything into gold!” and the “everything in this world is chaotic and we must study this chaos!” thing that alchemists tend to believe in.

I’ll need to stuff some real chemistry in their heads before I can move forward with developing

Eruchea and also hope that they don’t get a stroke when I turn their ages of research upside down!’

Harry thought for a little longer about how he would give them information and finally decided upon the simplest method.

Harry quickly went and got a lot of the old stock of animal hide parchments kept in his office’s storage.

‘System, I would like to use about 5 hours of the pocket dimension thing!’

[Understood. Teleporting the host in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… ]

Harry instantly appeared in a completely white room with a simple bed, a table, a chair and a few other basic stationery.

[The host’s time limit for staying in this pocket dimension has been set at 5 hours. The host will only disappear from his office for a tiny fraction of a second since the host opted for a very short duration.]

The system’s voice came to his ears.

Harry saw that the clock hung beside the table showed a countdown of 5 hours.

“Alright, time for me to go about making some ‘ancient’ texts!”

And with that declaration, Harry started writing on the parchments he brought with him.

He planned to make old-looking “manuscripts” that he would give the alchemists and make them think that their ancestors were more advanced and that they should follow the “Chemistry” written in these books rather than wasting time on their alchemy.

It was a very old and simple strategy that Harry had read in novels.

This would be easier to do than saying that he is some great sage.

If he tried that, the situation might turn quite messy.

Harry used all the chemistry knowledge present in the engineering knowledge he got from the system.

All the knowledge he gained from the system seemed to be stored in mental box-like things. If he ever needed anything, he would just think about it and his brain would provide him with the complete solution. And this stuff never seemed to fade from his memory even after all these years.

He would need to make school books in the future also.

But his current aim was just the old dudes at the alchemy guild.

He was writing everything at extreme speeds.

And after about four and a half hours, Harry ended up with four fat books.

He simply named them, Primary Chemistry, Intermediate Chemistry, Advanced Chemistry-1 and Advanced Chemistry-2.

He didn’t feel like spending too much energy on nomenclature after writing so much.

And so, he massaged his sore arm for a few minutes before asking the system to take him back.

[Is the host sure about this? If the host decides to go back now, any remaining time will not be refunded to the host and will be lost permanently.]

“That’s fine. I don’t have anything else left to do here. And it’s less than half an hour that I’m losing anyway. But will you please make these books look like some ancient manuscripts or something?”

Harry collected all the books under his arms and was instantly teleported back into his office.

Keeping the now ancient-looking books under his desk, he called for his butler to tell him about his plans to visit the alchemists.

Stephen quickly rushed out to arrange for a carriage.

Harry, on the other hand, went to inform Jeanette and the others about his little excursion.

And once the carriage had come, Harry quickly grabbed the books and rushed into the carriage.

It was early in the morning and there was about 10-12 hours worth of lecturing that Harry had to do.

In reality, many more hours would be needed, but Harry didn’t have the time.

He had so many other tasks to do.

That’s also why he wrote the books. He planned on giving the books to those alchemists so that they could study for themselves.

And now, Harry braced himself for the one-hour long “bottom-wrecker” journey to the alchemy guild.

***

The Alchemy Guild, Country of Eruchea:-

By the time Harry arrived, many old men and a few young men had gathered outside.

They most probably saw their new king approaching and decided to welcome him.

This was Harry’s first visit to the guild.

So, they probably wanted to make an impression to get more funding or something.

When Harry stepped out, three of the older men came to greet him.

They were supposed to be the heads of the Alchemy Guild.

They introduced themselves as Martin Stevens, Wang Cheng and Wilbur Smith respectively.

They might have come from different regions, but with all the crazy experiments (in some cases, the thing they did were downright insane) they did, Harry couldn’t see much difference between them, especially coupled with their wrinkly skins and completely white hair.

As Harry stepped inside, he was hit with the pungent smells of various chemicals.

Harry was somewhat used to them from chemistry labs, but his new body wasn’t.

So, he quickly rushed into one of the less smelly rooms as directed by Martin Stevens.

“Your majesty! I apologise about the state of the previous room. But that’s how Alchemists work. Nothing can be done about it even if we want to.

But keeping that aside, is there any reason why your majesty has graced us with your presence?”, Wilbur Smith asked in a formal tone.

“Ah, the thing is that I have found these ancient texts about some higher form of chem- I mean alchemy.

I went through them a little and from what I can make out, it’s much more advanced than the alchemy that the alchemy guild does.

And believe me, I was also quite shocked that such old books contained this profound information.

That’s why I rushed over here the moment I finished reading them!”

Harry took out the old-looking books from under his arms while lying through his teeth.

“But, your majesty, these ancient texts are something that we have never heard of.

How can such profound things stay away from our keen eyes if they are really as peerless as you claim?”

This time, it was one of the younger alchemists who suddenly spoke up before the older men quickly shut him up.

“We are extremely sorry for this unruly child! We will surely give appropriate punishment to him, your majesty!”

The old triplets (as Harry had nicknamed them in his head) started sweating in fear.

“Oh, don’t punish him, for god’s sake!

The guy is just stating his thoughts! And I like it better when people can freely express themselves.

And as for you, buddy, I know that you guys do keep close track of this sort of stuff.

But the thing is that I found these somewhat recently, only sometime before I came to this place and became king.

I’m sure that if you guys had found this first, you would have surely learnt everything here even before me!

I, unfortunately, took a pretty long time to read this stuff. But if I would have been freer, I would have surely come over to you guys much earlier than today!”

Harry didn’t want to create a foul mood before he started.

“All right! Keeping this matter aside, I have come here to teach as much of this book’s knowledge as possible.”

“Teach, your majesty? You will teach us?

But why do you need to waste your time on such minor tasks?

Just leave the books here and we will teach ourselves. You don’t need to waste your day in doing that!”

Wang Cheng started protesting along with several other people.

They probably felt that Harry would only be wasting both his time and their time if he tried teaching them.

They were some of the greatest minds in alchemy while he was a guy who had very recently become king.

They could learn the contents themselves better and faster than if he taught them.

“Oh! Is that so?

Your king has come to impart knowledge to you in person and you say that you don’t want it?

Is this your kindness towards your king or is it something a little more negative?”, Harry said in a very authoritative voice.

He could guess what they were thinking.

They were somewhat correct in their opinion.

They could learn all this themselves as well.

But Harry didn’t have the time for that. He needed them to know all the things fast before winters came.

That way, he could assign them the tasks for the creation of several new things like gunpowder and cement.

“Oh, no, no! Your majesty, we didn’t mean to offend you and I apologise from the bottom of my heart if you felt offended.

We have no problems if you have decided to teach us the new things yourself!”

Seeing their king somewhat angry, all the people present in the room broke out in cold sweat.

Normally, the royalty and nobility were known to take people’s lives over the tiniest of matters.

Harry didn’t want them to be scared of him.

But this became necessary when he saw how they were trying to look down upon him.

If he hadn’t reacted, it might have given a severe blow to his status and authority as the king.

After this, Martin quickly called in as many people as he could fit in the room.

He wanted as many people to be present to absorb anything that their king taught.

And so began the lecture.

It was more of a crash course than a lecture.

Harry tried to stuff as much content as possible in the 10-12 hours he planned to stay here.

Most of the time, all the people, from the oldest to the youngest kept staring at Harry in wonder.

Basically, everything that they had researched so hard to discover had been turned into nothing.

So many things that they felt were closely guarded treasures of the alchemy guild that they had spent years researching was found by Harry in a few minutes at maximum.

The younger ones seemed to have a better time understanding what was being taught since their minds were fresher and more open to ideas than the older researchers.

Harry had to spend a few hours trying to drill the basics of chemistry into the crowd.

And when he got to the contents of the last book, he could see that many of the people were looking at him with blank expressions, as if everything that was said a few seconds ago completely went over their heads.

But the reason for this was a bit different.

They were left stumped on how their king, who didn’t seem like a person who would normally even step into an alchemy lab, possessed such profound and peerless knowledge that even they, who were called sages of alchemy, could not begin to grasp.

All in all, the entire thing took 11 hours to finish, breaks included.

Harry had pretended that the detailed information regarding quantum mechanics was lost.

Otherwise, he had no excuse to explain why there was no information about that.

Harry did use the “ancient manuscript” card he had prepared to the fullest.

Anything that he didn’t know, he labelled as missing or too complex for him to understand.

He had used the second excuse for a lot of the things that he knew as well.

No need to appear any more omniscient in front of these people.

And so, Harry left the guild utterly exhausted from all that speaking.

In the meantime, the other members kept flocking towards the books he had left there for them.

Harry planned on giving them the list of tasks the next day.