Road to the Crown

Chapter 126: Waking up early

23rd April 1574

After all the planning, managing and overlooking that I did, it was no surprise that when the day finally came to its end, rather than using the evening like I would do so in my modern life with a glass of beer in some form of relaxation, I completely disregarded the beauty of the Commonwealth countryside, and simply plunged back to sleep.

Yet this time, when I woke up, I realised that no one actually came to help me out of my bed!

Obviously, in such spartan environment, there was no servant of mine that could be free enough to prepare clothes or even a breakfast for me, but I still had one of the workers come to wake me up whenever the working day for them started.

Since my own body decided that I have already rested enough, there was no point in lingering in the bed any longer. Pushing a thick blanket aside, I instantly shrugged as the wave of the morning coldness overwhelmed me.

Throwing some clothes on myself to cover my nakedness, I spent quite a long while on donning my shoes before I finally moved out of my tent.

With no noises of people bustling around the camp while basking in the first rays of the sun providing at least a little of additional heat, it came as a no surprise when after getting to the open area I realised that the sun has yet to rise.

But while others might think that there wasn't that much that I could do by myself, with no workers to order around, rather than going around and waking everyone, I decided to let them have a proper rest. Yet rather than using this romantic, dying breath of the night, I instantly trodded to one of the mountains of the limestone piling up beside the entrance shed to the mines.

After placing a large piece of cloth directly on the ground, I started picking up smaller stones from the pile and reforming them with the use of my system to the concrete dust. As it continued to fall from my hands right on the cloth, I couldn't help but start thinking about one particular thing that I noticed already, yet had no time to really put my mind into.

All the way back before departing from Sandomir, I confirmed with the Governor that the miners were already working below the ground. Yet despite spending already my third day in the direct proximity to the mines, so close that even one of them came out to take a piss, I would be sure to notice him, to this day, not even a single sign of them could be seen.

Even after considering the option that they were simply staying underground for an extended period of time before switching with another group that would take over this hard job and keep the flow of ores stable, my still modern mind, despite how I was slowly accustoming myself with local rituals and habits, still couldn't accept the fact that those people could stay in the dark for so long!

While in modern Poland, mining was mostly limited to only a single region in the entire country, that so happened to be one of the furthest places that I could visit if I wanted to roam the borders, even with close to zero interest in the matters of stealing the natural riches from the stone heart of the earth I heard enough to know that while their job was hard, they would still work in rational shifts that didn't pose that much of a threat to their health and lives!

Yet while I was quite curious about how it worked in my new timeline, when I heard some rustling coming off from the nearby camp, I realised that I had no time to think about such idle matters.

Before anyone could notice what was going on, I dropped the stones that I had in my hands and grabbed all four ends of the cloth, before pulling it right beside the central pile of resources that we got from the barges. Seeing how the cloth of the massive tents started to waver, I simply dropped some loose wares on top of the sizeable package with concrete before bowing my own back and making myself look like if I was rummaging through this pile of resources.

Even though my current clothes weren't as classy as the ones I would usually wear due to how dirty I could get even by standing beside the construction site, the worker that woke up earlier than anyone else but me, was still capable of recognising who had the guts to touch the stuff directly owned by the noble, simply gazing at me for a moment in surprise, before he realised that it was quite rude of him to stare at me like that.

Realising that I was properly noticed, I took a few more moments while pretending to throw the stuff around, before completely uncovering back the package with the concrete, raising up and taking up a pose full of satisfaction.

"So it was here"

Pretending that I woke up earlier only to find more of this miraculous powder that I could hear the workers whisper about as they passed the brick pillar standing atop a concrete foundation, I clapped my hands to clean them from the dust that attached itself to my skin, before making my way towards the future first steam horse.

After measuring the size of the boiler and drawing its curvature directly on top of the bricky base of the future engine, the two stonemasons did a great job of putting all three walls so high, that the basic furnace mouth was already formed. Somehow, despite how little time they had by the time the foundation finally dried up properly, they even managed to fill the gaps that would appear when the boiler would be placed inside the pillar to about half the walls height!

If the work progressed at this speed, then if not for the limitation of the materials, I could easily make maybe even four or five of the machines!

But even thought this idea was quite tempting, I knew that if I really wanted to progress my work here, rather than wasting resources and manpower on possibly faulty design, I had to make sure that everything worked as perfectly as I imagined it would, all the while using all the spare manpower on other projects!

With how the miners were still missing, I hoped that by the time they would finally emerge from the mine along with the ore that I missed so much, at least a primitive form of a blast furnace, not really worthy of its name according to the design I had in mind.

By building a simple, bricked tube, standing straight on the ground while making sure its walls would be thick enough to endure the intense heat inside, one would fill it from the top with iron ore and charcoal, and after making sure that this mix accepted the initial spark, blowing as much air as it was possible to provide ample supply of oxygen to the mixture!

With no way to preheat the air that I would infuse the furnace with, it wouldn't deserve the name of 'blast', yet in the end, it would still allow me to craft some basic shapes by casting the molten metal into any form I would desire!