Wrecking Fantasy with Technology

Country of Eruchea:-

The showcase of the truck had gone splendidly

It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for Harry.

But this had made Harry realise one thing.

That he needed to make paint and do it quickly.

The truck looked great from others’ point of view.

It was a big metal machine that could move without using qi or mana.

This was enough to make other people overjoyed.

But not Harry.

He knew just how bad the situation would quickly get pretty soon.

It wasn’t just about looks for Harry.

Sure, the completely grey truck looked bad to his eyes since he was used to seeing trucks with paint.

But the real reason why Harry was desperate was the lack of protection without paint.

The paint was something that protected iron-related items from rusting.

And even though steel was pretty resistant to rust, it was nowhere close to stainless steel.

And even stainless steel was known to rust.

The original steam engine that had been made of iron was already in its last days.

All that water had turned it brown very quickly.

Harry quickly started writing letters to the chemistry group (They had started calling themselves Chemists instead of Alchemists) to send out groups to search for minerals.

And he also wrote one to the blacksmiths for making large quantities of steel mining equipment.

He needed a variety of minerals and chemicals to make the different components of modern paint.

The current type of paint in this world was mainly natural dyes.

It might be good for dyeing clothes and stuff, but for actual painting purposes, it looked horrible to Harry.

And it was very expensive!

That’s why Harry figured he’d go the extra mile and make modern paint rather than trying to produce more of that stuff.

Also, people from the EUPAC had informed him that they were successful in mass-producing cement.

So, Harry could now get around to teaching the guys over at the masonry guild the use of cement in construction.

With their current method of cutting and aligning stones to make walls without any mortar or anything, the construction would take forever!

He would also need steel reinforcement bars to be made before construction can begin. Otherwise, the buildings would collapse easily without proper support. 

So much work, so little time! 

But first, he would need to draw out the blueprints for the electricity, sewage and water plants. 

The system had provided the knowledge required for the construction of these plants as a reward for making the first vehicle. 

The thing was that even though Harry already had advanced engineering knowledge and other things stuffed in his head, it did not mean that he could make anything he wanted. 

All that knowledge was like data in his brain. 

And the specific bits of information was what the system gave him that allowed him to use all that knowledge. 

It was like the engineering knowledge and other types of information he had earlier received were like ingredients. 

And the system was providing him with recipes for making specific dishes. 

And so, Harry took out large sheets of paper and began drawing with his quill pen. 

After about half an hour of high-speed writing and a blunt smoking quill, Harry was done with the first blueprint. 

He could have gone much faster but that would have caused a fire in his office. 

Two more to go! 

And a little more than an hour later, Harry burnt through another quill. 

It lasted longer because Harry also wrote slower. 

Another thing was now checked off his to-do listing. 

The only major tasks he had left were teaching people and waiting for them while they worked on the jobs he assigned them. 

Somewhere in Ain Continent:-

A very beautiful forest could be seen.

This was a place that looked like some forest out of a fairy tale.

The entire region was extremely rich in mana and qi.

It could be seen in the lush and exotic flora and fauna all over the place.

If the Great Demon Law Forest was called “Hell on Etheldor”, this place deserved to be known as “Etheldor’s Heaven”.

And in this heavenly place, was a huge settlement, located in the area with the highest concentrations of mana.

Mana levels were so high that mana seemed to condense as a mist in some places.

And in the largest structure in this settlement, a loud voice could be heard.

“Ar Minda!” {1}

“Ra did you say!?” {2}

“I said, I don’t wanna!!”

Two women could be seen fighting.

“Your majesty, I’ve had enough of your tantrums!”

“Why can’t I enjoy life for once!?”

“You are this country’s queen, for god’s sake! Please start behaving like one!”

“Being queen is boring!

This country is boring!

Oh, wait…

Do you want to be queen in my stead?”, said the older looking woman.

“MZIA JAQELI! JUST SHUT UP AND START ACTING YOUR AGE!!!”, shouted back the other woman, who appeared to be her daughter’s age.

“Is that how my daughter treats her poor mother?

Such woes!!

I tried my best but my daughter turned out to be a ruffian…

Hmmm…

A royal ruffian princess… I like the sound of that!”

The queen seemed to be having mood swings like a teenager.

“Urgh! Mother! Just be serious for once!

You need to act properly! You have a meeting with the queendom elders coming up!”

Eteri was sick of her mother’s antic.

Even though Mzia was the queen and also a mother of a daughter who would become an adult pretty soon, she still had childish mood swings and antics.

To the rest of their country, she was one of the wisest, strongest and most mature rulers that elves and Alfheim had ever seen.

But Eteri knew that her mother was much smarter and stronger than what everyone gave her credit for.

Mzia had lived for centuries thanks to the very slow ageing process in elves.

And the power and knowledge she had acquired over this period probably put her on the level of some of the greatest sages.

But the only problem that Eteri saw with her mother was that she used a large part of that power and intelligence for stupid things.

She loved being a very laid-back person and very rarely used to be actually serious about important things. (Mzia would normally argue that she was serious about a lot of things, but those things usually turned out to be pretty useless themselves.)

One of her most favourite activities included spending entire days in casual clothes while using her mana to make it look like she was properly dressed.

‘Oh, father, I wish you were still here! You might have been able to put some sense back into mother!’

Mzia’s husband and Eteri’s father was the king of Alfheim until about 80 years ago.

Back when he was alive, Eteri’s mother had been the sort of mature woman that people still thought she was.

But it wasn’t like she didn’t do some funny or weird things once in a blue moon.

Like once, when Eteri was 100 (5 elf years), their family had gone for a diplomatic visit to the human kingdom of Malonia, Mzia tried eating some meat.

Now, elves were vegetarian without exception.

But this was by choice.

If they wanted, they could eat meat, but they never felt the urge to do so.

They preferred to eat things that could be taken in large quantities without harming living creatures too much.

They did consume animal products like milk, but that was done as long as the animals weren’t harmed.

Mzia had accidentally stumbled upon some non-vegetarian dish and taken a bite before she realised that it was meat.

Since she felt that it was her fault for being too negligent, the matter had been brushed aside.

That was all there was to that incident.

Even Eteri had tried some meat out of pure childish curiosity.

But she found that it just tasted like a half-dried piece of rubber tree sap.

And after that trip, Eteri felt that she had ruined her tastebuds by eating that useless thing.

There was not much change after that incident.

The only thing that did change changed some (elf) years after their trip.

Due to some issues with the humans (humans being humans, had tried doing some of the useless things shown in the H-rated series but failed miserably at it), the elves decided to cut themselves off from the world.

A big overreaction, but the elves weren’t too trusting of a race in the first place.

And then, Eteri’s father died when she was 10 (elf years).

Elves were a monogamous race, so Eteri’s mother had decided to stay a widow and had become the new ruler in her husband’s place.

The first 40 or so years had gone perfectly.

Mzia was the model queen and their queendom prospered under her rule.

They didn’t open their borders again or anything but even so, they continued to grow.

But after that initial forty years of perfect ruling, Eteri’s mother began changing and changing rapidly.

Over the course of a few months, Eteri could only stare in surprise as her perfect mother went from her usual look of being goddess-like to looking like a NEET in her free time.

She still maintained appearances in public but once those were over, her “properness meter” nose-dived.

She’d tell everyone to not disturb her while she’s in her room (not even her maids) and then, proceed to be a complete waste of society type NEET.

And in all this, Eteri was forced to suffer.

Since there were no maids or other servants in their room, her mother used to laze around while she kept going around keeping the room in shape.

But even this sort of behaviour wasn’t some mutation or anything.

Even Eteri had shown some amount of such behaviour.

Unlike most High Elves, she was the sort to do many things that others might look down upon.

High elves were like the top rankers of the elven society.

They had immense levels of mana and an equivalent level of control over mana.

The other groups included the regular “Elves” and the mixed-bloods.

The ones referred to simply as elves were the ones whose ancestors were High elves that had spent too long in mana deficit and had chosen to let go of their excess mana for some reason.

So, unlike the High elves, these poor guys had a lot less mana to work with and were generally looked down upon.

But the ones that were treated the worst were the mixed-bloods.

They were the ones, as their name suggests, that were born from a High elf and a regular elf.

They did have better mana powers than regular elves but not enough to be anywhere near the High elves.

And since they were born from a relation between the two groups, no one seemed to like them.

But even with such conditions, not everyone was bad to them.

And Eteri was one of the ones who were on good terms with both groups.

She had several friends who were regular elves and some of her friends were even mix-bloods.

And they used to hang out together all the time.

She was pretty much known as the “Ruffian Princess”.

But they never actually did anything that bad.

It was just that a lot of the High elves didn’t like the fact that the royal princess was in the company of inferior beings like mix-bloods and the regular elves.

Then again, who was Eteri to care?

She just enjoyed her time with her friends.

The only thing different she did do was annoy some of the people who she knew were the “all bark and no bite” kind of High elves.

It gave her a lot of joy in seeing their faces change colour in a mix of disgust and anger when they saw her group.

But she did need to avoid some groups like the high-class nobility of the High elves.

Those guys had enough power to cause a lot of trouble for her and her mother.

And knowing her mother, she would cause major problems for Eteri in return for messing with her free time. (And not for the fact that Eteri caused major political issues.)

But even with all this, Eteri felt that she couldn’t hold a candle to her mother in anything.

Mzia was much smarter, stronger, more mature, more beautiful than her.

The worst part, she was even better at causing troubles than Eteri.

Just that she always used her superior intellect to cover up her tracks and never got caught but always used to be one of the first ones to catch Eteri red-handed.

Eteri always hated that “pot calling the kettle black” habit of her mother.

But one of the worst things Eteri found about her mother was her deep desire to eat meat.

Apparently, ever since the first time Mzia ate meat, she got hooked on the taste.

She had been controlling her desires for years but all the pressure she faced after becoming the ruler of Alfheim burst the dam and brought forth all the guilty pleasures that Mzia had been suppressing for years.

And that is what resulted in her becoming like a NEET.

Eteri felt so disgusted about her mother’s greed for eating meat since she had become like that after eating meat only once in her entire life that Eteri felt like should go vegan.

Eteri was lost in thought about her stupid-looking past as she tried to suppress her urge to smack the goddess-like elven queen in front of her.

‘If there was one good quality that the useless hag has, it’s her ability to hide her flaws in public…’

Mzia had taken only a second to go from her messy shut-in type attire to a perfect goddess look using her magic.

She had used her mana to clean up the entire room in an instant and also managed to change her clothes, put on makeup and fix her hair alongside that.

‘If only she could use her powers for actually important tasks rather than just fuelling her bad lifestyle...’

Eteri could only sigh as the two of them made their way to the meeting hall.

*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

{1} Ar minda: Georgian for "I don't want to/I don't wanna"

{2} Ra: Georgian for What

I didn't use the Georgian script since I plan to stick with English letters only.