Steel and Mana

Chapter 155 – Accident

"You called for me, Sovereign?" Dorian asked, going onto one knee after arriving in the throne room.

"Yes, and stand; it is nothing serious!" I chuckled, inviting him over to the empty table of the ministers, as there were only us present at the moment. "I heard from Elliot that you have successfully established some subsidiaries in his territory."

"If we can call them that, My Lord. They are under the rule of people who are under Baron Elliot's fingers. I know some of them... they are trustworthy, if I can say so myself! Still, my only ties to them are some contracts we agreed upon and that they will buy 60% of the resources needed for production from us."

"Good enough. I do trust my uncle, but still, don't let him get away with it cheaply!"

"I won't, my lord." He smiled, bowing his head.

"Now, for the main reason I called for you. How's the armor project coming along?"

"We have prototyped seven versions so far." He stood firm at once, explaining, and I could see he was prepared with his answers, knowing why I called him over. "The first three were abject failures, My Lord... so we made some significant changes, but we did run into a problem with the material. It is hard to work with and more rigid than any metal we can produce, which makes it... brittle."

"How so?" I asked, listening seriously as we sat down at the table.

"It seems that being on the monster, it was still being supplied with some extra nutrients, making it flexible enough to be used as skin. But that is only my guess, My Lord, I have no evidence supporting it! To make it work in its current state, we had to create unique methods to cut it up, which took months to develop, and it is the reason for the increased resource consumption of my producing plants."

"Mhm, I noticed that your metal consumption has shot through the roof since taking on the task."

"It strains the machines greatly, making them fail and degrade over time, no matter how many revisions I make. It simply breaks anything we have! If not for your kindness in footing the bill, My Lord, I would have been bankrupted three times over."

"Charting unknown lands is always a risk and costs a lot of money. Don't worry about it! So, the problem comes after cutting the beast's scales up?"

"Yes. It is incredibly tough, and we need smaller pieces to make it into armor, seriously impacting its performance. When I mentioned that it is brittle, I mean that a chest piece made out of the scales can only take forty or, at best, sixty percent of the same strains we put the raw material through. My guess is that the smaller we make it, the more it loses from the thing that makes it so desirable as armor, and we have no means to replenish it... whatever it is."

"Tried lacing it with monster blood?"

"Yes, we did, using it to paint the scales. That is when the plating reached sixty percent of durability."

"Good. Proceed!"

"My Lord?" He exclaimed, looking at me strangely.

"You are talking about it as if it was a failure!" I chuckled, "Look at it this way. We can make armor that is still dozens of times more durable than any plate armor could match! And we don't even use magic on it! I call this a win. Yes, if we could have kept the original durability, we would have walking tanks, but this is already great enough."

"I... I understand." He nodded, blushing a little, feeling embarrassed because he was working so hard to make sure he could create something that had the same properties as the base material. 

"Start doing full tests with your current prototype. I don't mind if it isn't a complete armor that covers all of the soldiers. We can manufacture more complete revisions later on! For now, focus on protecting only the vital body parts. We may have more resources by next year, who knows, but let's do what we CAN do with what we have!"

"Absolutely, My Lord! I will go back at once and start working on it!"

"Good. Look for Pion and Polo for testing, have them put in some of their own experiences and help you design it, and work together with the army making it."

"Will do, my Lord! The moment we have a functioning armor set, I will report it immediately!"

"Mhm. That's all, and Dorian!"

"Yes?" He stopped mid-bow, looking at me nervously.

"Great work. Don't stress out yourself, okay?" I chuckled, leaving him with a smile, returning to my room to have a leisurely day, enjoying it with my wives and children.

Well, that was the plan. But it was disturbed when the report arrived of an explosion at the testing grounds involving my Prime Minister.

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......

"He will be fine, don't worry," Mikan whispered, walking out of the room where Merlin was sleeping after being recovered from the explosion's epicenter.

"No, he won't because I will break my arm while slapping his butt." I grunted, making Mikan chuckle. 

"I regenerated his burnt skin so he won't be disfigured. I have to say, he was lucky with erecting a magic shield around himself or... It may have been worse."

"Worse?" Sasha asked, gulping, holding my hands, just as anxious because we both watched him grow up, and he was like a little brother to the both of us.

"I visited the testing field or the crater that remained where it was supposed to be." I moaned, rubbing my forehead. "The devastation was thorough; if it happened within the city, I fear to imagine how many he would have been killed by it. I would have to send him on the Walk for fucks sake!"

"What was he doing...?" Sasha mumbled, squeezing my arm. Although I had an idea, I wasn't sure of it.

"Whatever it was," Mikan answered after I remained silent, "there were multiple CC shards in his body, burrowing into his skin. Picking those out was not easy and more dangerous than the explosion. If they had broken into even smaller fragments and become powder... he would have died from CC poisoning."

"The little bastard..." Both of us mumbled simultaneously and could do nothing but wait—wait for him to wake up and let us scold him into oblivion and then listen to his explanation. 

This is precisely how it happened three days later when he finally woke up.

"Is... is that all?" He asked, mumbling, still weak but well enough to understand he royally fucked up this time.

"What?" Sasha and I asked, stunned at his question. "Did you become stupid from the explosion?" Standing beside his bed, I added, "Do I need to berate you a bit more to make my point stuck in your head? Or should I shout it directly into your ears?!"

"N-no... I get it... I'm sorry..." He mumbled, lowering his head, this time, finally sounding genuine. 

"I already wrote a letter to Elena. I will let her discipline you. Or just laugh at your incompetence." My wife added.

"You did not!" He gawked, going pale in the face, but Sasha simply smirked at him, continuing.

"We did. The messenger has already left Avalon. You reap what you sow, Merlin!"

"Ugh..."

"Ugh, fur sure!" I snorted, sitting down at the edge of his bed. "So? What happened?"

"He blew up."

"He?" Sasha questioned, looking at us while I was twitching my mouth.

"You blew up the prisoner?" I moaned, feeling a headache knocking at the back of my head.

"It was an unexpected, violent reaction that I did not anticipate." He mumbled, thinking back of it, seeing how the body of his prisoner suddenly swelled like a hot air balloon and popped in a blinding flash of light.

"We didn't even find any remains... What the hell did you do to him?"

"I injected raw monster blood into his system while also feeding him CC to see the reaction. I was trying to turn him into a magician or make him power a simple formation from within his own body!"

"What the fuck?!" I exclaimed, standing up and looking at him just as shocked as Sasha.

"It can be done!" He argued, seeing my shocked expression, "I... I know it can; it has been done before!"

"What do you mean?" Sasha whispered, her voice as low as it could be before becoming inaudible.

"I can't really explain it... but I do know, I am as convinced as the fact that Leon is my Sovereign, that it can be done! Believe me, please!" He pleaded, sitting straight, alternating on who to look at while explaining, "I know that there was someone called a Vasa or something; I can't remember who or what they were, but they succeeded in it! They managed to do it, so I was feeling a great drive to... mimic it!"

"But instead of working, it almost blew you up."

"It... it was a momentary step back!"

"No." I said, my voice cold and strict, so much so that it made Merlin pull himself smaller, looking at me nervously. "This stops. Here and now! It was my mistake to give you permission to do this. Thinking about it, it was my fault for letting you push the boundaries, but I did not think you would go this far."

"But... Leon, if we can have the power-"

"I don't care!" I stopped him, making him pull the sheet up to his face while his eyes became watery and scared. I think it was the first time I genuinely yelled at him. "I am going to put my thoughts into law, preventing something similar from happening once again, and I will start banning human experiments. It is for both of our sakes before we turn into something monstrous. Listen, Merlin..." I explained, softening my voice because it was a reminder not only for him but for myself, too. "Power means nothing if we lose ourselves in the process."

"I'm sorry..." He mumbled, sniffing until I rubbed his head.

"It was my fault, giving you free rein. We do need boundaries, do you understand?"

"Um... I do."

Looking at him, I knew he was speaking honestly, which also made me sigh in relief. I think... this was an excellent wake-up call for both of us.

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"Did you find anything?" Sasha asked, whispering and hugging me from behind while I sat in my chair in my study late into the night.

"I think." I nodded, coming out from my trance because I was immersed in my mind, looking at 'imaginary' books that I had memorized. "Do the Emperor of Magic say something to you?"

"I can't say it does." She hummed, beginning to rub my shoulders.

"He was occupying the Ishillian throne between AE 2442 and 2510. Guess what his real name was!"

"Merlin?"

"Bingo. Merlin Ishillia VIII."

"Do you think we have the same Merlin, only as a budding teenager?"

"I am more than certain with what he has been telling me here and there. I just don't know its implications. After Mikki-2 and me, I am fairly confident we have another reincarnation in our midst."

"I wonder if we all had lived different lives before, but we just can't remember it." She murmured, not as surprised or worried as I was.

"Could be... the big thing is that this dude was a machine. From what I could find, he is the inventor of hundreds, if not thousands, of spells and things that are still in use within Ishillia. He was studying magic to a degree that people speculated he obtained the lost artifact of the God of Magic, Wyland."

"Do you believe in it?"

"In the fact that there are beings who are so strong, people labeled them as Gods? Yes, but not in actual gods! Anyway, whatever the case was, it explains Merlin's brain and the constant ideas he is spitting out... Same with the most recent experience he had. It was... very Ishillian, and I foolishly encouraged him to do it."

"We all make mistakes. We have time to rectify it."

"You are right!" I shrugged, standing up and hugging my wife, kissing her lips. "We just need to be good parents, huh?"

"Something like that~!" She giggled, returning my kiss, snuggling up to me as we embraced each other.