While Lord Vaelin savored his phantom victory, Oakhaven, the city he believed to be on the brink of collapse, was entering a new and astonishing age of invention. The kingdom's inaction, bought by our deception, was the fertile ground in which our next revolution would grow. With a treasury of System Points and a mandate for progress, I turned my attention from war to the very heart of what separated a kingdom from a tribe: the mastery of energy.
I stood with Jor the blacksmith and a team of our best engineers—including several former royal legionaries whose skills we had co-opted—before the great water wheel. "This wheel gives us the power of a hundred men," I told them. "But it is tied to the stream. We will now create a power that can be placed anywhere. A power born not of falling water, but of boiling it."
With a healthy reserve of System Points from our recent victories, I invested in the next great leap for our civilization. It was a calculated, significant expenditure, but the potential payoff was immeasurable.
The knowledge that filled my mind was the music of the modern world. I understood the precise chemistry of carbon and iron, the thermodynamic dance of water and heat. The path forward was clear.
First, we revolutionized our steel. With the new knowledge, we built a new type of furnace—a simple Bessemer-style converter. By blasting air through the molten iron from Grak's forges, we could burn off impurities and control the carbon content with incredible precision. The result was true steel, strong, flexible, and consistent. Our swords would no longer just be sharp; they would be resilient. Our plowshares would not just be hard; they would be nearly unbreakable.
But the true prize was the steam engine. It was the most complex machine we had ever attempted to build. It was a monster of iron and brass. We forged a great, thick boiler from our finest steel plates. We machined a massive piston and a cylinder with a precision that tested the limits of our artisans' skills. We crafted valves that could withstand the immense pressure.
The first test was a terrifying event. The entire city gathered at a safe distance to watch. As we fed the firebox with coal from a seam Ren had discovered, the boiler began to hiss and shudder. The pressure gauge—another of my new inventions—climbed steadily. The machine seemed alive, a great iron beast straining at its leash.
Then, with a great, whooshing hiss of steam, the piston moved. It slid forward, then back, driven by the invisible power of the expanding vapor. A slow, rhythmic, clanking motion began. It was clumsy. It was deafeningly loud. But it was working. A cheer went up from the crowd, a sound of awe and disbelief. We had created power from fire and water. We had created a mechanical heart.
We harnessed this new power immediately. The first steam engine was used to drive a massive set of bellows and a new array of trip hammers in the forge complex. Our industrial output doubled, then tripled. We were now capable of producing high-quality steel tools and weapons on a scale that would have been impossible for the kingdom itself.
The second engine was put to a different use. I had it placed at the bottom of the main shaft of a new mine we had sunk near Ironpeak. Connected to a system of pumps I designed, it tirelessly drew water out of the deep tunnels, allowing Grak's miners to access rich veins of iron and coal they had never been able to reach before.
This was the true beginning of our empire. It was not built on the strength of our arms, but on the power of our minds. While the Kingdom of Aerthos slumbered, complacent in their perceived victory, we were quietly building the foundations of a new industrial age. We were harnessing the very elements of creation, and with every hiss of steam, every clang of the steam-powered hammer, the technological gap between our small desert confederacy and the mighty kingdom grew wider.