Chapter 697: Solenne’s Workshop [Bonus - ]

Chapter 697: Solenne’s Workshop [Bonus Chapter]

Kara stared at the silver-haired beastkin without blinking.

Within the feminine illusion, Silas felt a hot prickling wave of moisture well up at the corners of his eyes.

His throat went tight as well.

’She’s... she’s a genius,’ Silas wept internally, his heart practically singing in his chest. ’She’s building conversational artificial intelligence out of recycled brass, scrap gears, and a kettle stove, and she thinks the REST of the world is just being lazy..?!’

Kara took a slow, deep breath, pressing a hand against her chest to steady her racing heart.

’She’s not just an artisan... she’s a generational talent. She’s... she’s perfect.’

Blessed Land was never letting this woman go.

Even if he had to carry her, her workbench, and her talking trash cans on his back, Solenne was coming home.

PSSSSHHHH!

The copper kettle began to whistle against the iron rim of the potbelly stove, its high-pitched chime carrying a clean warmth that cut through the sharp tang of mineral solder and stale grease.

Kara did not immediately reach forward to snatch the prize.

’Not now...’

She did not produce a recruitment speech, nor did she slide an invitation either.

Silas had survived the meat-grinder of the world by observing one unbending rule... Never rush the appraisal of an unpolished gem.

Talent was abundant in the cosmos however stability, character, and loyalty were vanishingly rare.

’Praise Central City,’ Silas mused internally, his eyes observing the trembling fox beastkin through Kara’s long black fringe. ’If I hadn’t taken this walk... if I hadn’t let my feet wander toward the outer ring’s pedestrian squares... how long before some bottom-feeding merchant syndicate realized what was sitting in this basement? How long before a high-tier guild signed her to an unconscionable debt-contract and locked her in a forge cellar forever?’

It was a stroke of pure fortune.

Still, Silas kept his mask firmly fixed in place.

A ruler had to see the whole board, even if Solenne possessed the spark of anomalous genius, Blessed Land was not a charity hospital... it was a rising empire.

If her foundational logic was sound, she would need hands, blast furnaces, and a lot of things to back her up.

He would still need to scour the city for proper dwarven smiths to build the physical frames.

Kara cleared her throat with an elegant airy hum, gesturing toward the low, bench-like stools tucked beneath the secondary drafting table.

"May we sit, Mistress Solenne?" Kara asked smoothly, her feminine disguise projecting an effortless ease. "My companion and I have traversed half the commercial district today, and our feet would welcome the reprieve..."

"A-Ah! Of course! Please, forgive my lack of manners!" Solenne gasped.

Her silver ears flattened back in flustered embarrassment as she scrambled across the workshop with her frayed leather coat snapping around her thighs.

She seized a relatively clean cotton rag, frantically buffing the weathered pine surface of the stools. "It’s... it is terribly musky down here! I apologize for the soot and the clutter! I didn’t have time to run the air-filtration runes this morning, and the ventilation exhaust from the foundries above always leaks into the flue—"

"Peace, Solenne," Kara smiled, gliding across the flagstones and taking her seat without the slightest hesitation, unbothered by the stray specks of brass filings resting on the wood. "A workshop that doesn’t smell of honest labor is merely a showroom for fools so sit, please."

Rika skipped over, gathering the heavy folds of her dark green traveling cloak before settling onto the stool beside Kara.

Her vivid green eyes remained wide, locked onto the strange copper machine by the stove.

Beside the hearth, the little trash-can golem operated with uncanny, fluid precision.

Clink! Whirrr!

Cogsworth did not simply pour the boiling water into the ceramic teapot.

First, its telescoping brass arm extended toward a small copper basin mounted to the side of the coal bin.

The little machine turned a brass spigot, plunged its five-fingered, leather-padded mechanical hands into the flowing water, and scrubbed them with a block of coarse pumice soap.

It wiped its metallic digits dry on a clean linen towel hung from its chassis with its single rubberized wheel pivoting smoothly on the cracked flagstones as it returned to the kettle.

It even tested the water with one finger first...

’Ah.’

Kara watched the sequence with an invisible sweatdrop forming at the back of Silas’s internal consciousness.

’What kind of intelligence is operating inside that tin can...?’ Silas thought, his eyes tracking every micro-adjustment of the automaton’s balance gyroscopes.

It wasn’t that autonomous magical constructs were non-existent in the Sovereign Realm.

Silas had seen a lot online but all of them were governed by rigid inflexible command-arrays.

They were pre-inscribed with cold static rulesets... swing sword at hostile target, step forward three paces, report damage threshold.

Anything closer to a thinking mind was practically taboo.

After High Marshal-President Valeria Da Silva had flattened that offshore server installation with seismic charges, the cartels had stripped most generative models out of everything they owned, and the Council had been happy to keep the leash short.

The High Magistrates poured their money into martial enchantments, summonings, and artifacts that served Lords directly... None of them wanted a construct that could argue back.

’Back in my old world, people couldn’t wait to hand everything over to a machine,’ Silas reflected. ’Here the Council keeps a muzzle on it. As long as this one doesn’t grow an ego and start plotting...’

He could already picture the nightmare... an army of talking copper trash cans seizing the Keep’s armory and demanding their rights!

Kara leaned forward slightly, resting her chin on her laced fingers with her voice dropping into a casual inquiring tone.

"Tell me, Solenne... can your little assistant think for himself? Or is there a limit to his logic?"

Solenne paused, wiping a stray smear of charcoal from her temple, her golden eyes blinking at the question before a faint, self-deprecating chuckle escaped her lips.

"A boundless engine? Oh, heavens no, Lady Vespera!" Solenne laughed softly, waving her hands in a hurried reassuring gesture. "I could never afford the materials for a true soul-core... Cogsworth’s cognitive architecture is strictly anchored to a third-tier harmonic feedback loop. I etched the logic onto a memory-slate no larger than a plum. He understands domestic directives, workshop cataloging, and basic conversational etiquette, but his capacity to learn new parameters is capped... He cannot expand his own logic-paths. I don’t possess the high-grade celestial mithril or the divine processor-cores required for open-ended cognition, and even if I did... the mathematics required to balance an evolving artificial soul are impossibly complex."

She lowered her gaze slightly with her silver ears drooping by half an inch as she muttered under her breath.

"Besides... I’m pretty sure building an uncapped artificial intelligence is punishable by execution under the Council’s Third Edict of Artifice..."

Kara caught the muttered words, letting out a quiet internal sigh of relief.

’Good... No rogue machine uprisings on my watch.’

Squeeeak-rattle!

Cogsworth rolled smoothly across the floor, balancing with impossible elegance upon its single rubberized wheel.

In its long multi-jointed brass hands, it balanced a dark cedar tray bearing three steaming ceramic cups and a chipped white porcelain sugar bowl.

"Hospitality protocol executed," the little golem declared through its perforated brass speaker grill, its single optical eye flashing with warm crimson luminescence. "Dried mountain berry tea, infused with clover honey and chamomile... Three additional spoonfuls of refined cane sugar allocated for the young mistress."

The machine set the tray down on the workbench without spilling a single droplet, bowing its domed copper head with crisp courtesy.

"Enjoy your beverage, esteemed guests."

Kara blinked.

"Please return the cups when finished," Cogsworth added. "They are the only set."

"Thank you, little one!" Rika beamed, her earlier tension completely dissolving.

She picked up her cup, took a delicate sip, and let out a delighted, high-pitched purr as the intense syrupy sweetness hit her tongue.

The fledgling phoenix tucked inside her traveling cloak poked its tiny golden-feathered head through the neckline of her tunic, sniffing the steam with twitching nostrils.

"Ah! You want some too?" Rika giggled.

She dipped the tip of a clean silver teaspoon into the sugary tea and held it out toward the little bird.

CHIRP!

The newborn avian lunged forward, swallowing the liquid in a single ravenous gulp.

BZZZZT!

The concentrated dose of cane sugar detonated through the fledgling’s primordial meridians like liquid fire.

Its golden feathers flared into brilliant sparks with its starlit eyes dilating to the size of saucers, and the bird began spazzing out in Rika’s lap, flapping its tiny wings in a frantic uncoordinated frenzy and letting out a rapid succession of squeaky melodic trills as it spun around in circles upon her woolen skirt.

"A-Ah! Calm down, little feather!" Rika laughed, her hands fluttering as she tried to cradle the vibrating bird against her chest. "Too much sugar! No more for you today!"

The phoenix begged to differ.

Kara chuckled softly, taking a sip from her own cup.

The brew was surprisingly smooth tasting rich with forest berries, and lacking the metallic aftertaste common to industrial workshops.

"An excellent cup of tea," Kara noted, setting the ceramic cup down on the table with a soft clink.

She stood up, smoothing the silk of her tailored trousers.

"Now then, Mistress Solenne... The hospitality is appreciated, but I came to see the breadth of your craft. Show me what this workshop is capable of producing."

Solenne’s spine snapped straight.

’This is it,’ the fox beastkin screamed internally, her golden eyes blazing with fierce, desperate determination. ’This is my time to shine! If I don’t prove my worth right now, I’ll be begging for stale crusts by nightfall!’

"Right this way, Lady Vespera!" Solenne declared, her nine silver tails fluffing out behind her as she led the way toward the long display racks flanking the eastern brick wall. "Allow me to introduce my standard inventory lines!"

For the next twenty minutes, Solenne walked them through the crammed shelves of her sanctum.

While none of the creations possessed the paradigm-shifting shock of Cogsworth’s conversational abilities, every single item laid out before them bore the undeniable mark of exceptional craftsmanship.

There were automated runic bellows designed to maintain constant, unfluctuating furnace temperatures without draining a smith’s elemental mana... spring-loaded grapple-launchers capable of firing sixty yards with silent recoil... self-cleaning alchemical alembics etched with micro-purification glyphs and modular compasses that parsed the shifting magnetic anomalies of deep dungeons.

"And here," Solenne said, pulling a long cloth-wrapped parcel from a locked wooden cabinet, "is where I have been experimenting with forging."

She unwrapped the oilcloth, revealing a pair of straight single-edged short swords.

The blades were not forged from rare astral steel or star-ore... they carried the dull utilitarian gray sheen of common terrestrial iron mixed with low-grade bronze.

Yet, when Kara picked one up with her right hand, Silas’s senses flared with quiet astonishment.

The balance of the weapon was flawless as the center of gravity sat precisely two finger-widths forward of the brass crossguard.

When Kara flicked her wrist, channeling a tiny razor-thin thread of wind-mana through the hilt, the metal didn’t buckle or fracture.

Instead, the blade emitted a crisp bell-like hum, the mana circulating through the microscopic grain of the steel with astonishing fluidity.

"You folded common iron with scrap bronze," Kara remarked, her eyes narrowing in genuine appreciation. "Yet the molecular density is tighter than military-grade broadswords sold in Valoria city, huh? The edge retention must be extraordinary."

"I... I developed a differential quenching technique using recycled cooling brine," Solenne stammered, her cheeks flushing with modest pride. "High-tier alloys are too expensive for me to purchase, so I had to maximize the structural cohesion of low-grade scrap through thermal compression..."

’To achieve this level of purity with scrap metal...’ Silas mused, placing the sword back onto the cloth. ’Her grasp of material science is much higher. Give this woman high-tier ores and she could forge armor that withstands siege-cannons.’

She would be an excellent way to complement Thora.

"Come," Solenne whispered, her voice softening as she led them toward the darkest deepest alcove at the rear of the workshop. "This is... this is my life’s masterwork."

She pulled aside a heavy moth-eaten canvas tarp, sending a cloud of gray dust billowing into the air.

Resting within the shadowed alcove was a hulking machine.