The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 327: Steelhorns

Chapter 327: Steelhorns

"Moshuiii!"

Kir’s aggravated cry came from having thought he was pouring himself a pre-made carafe of coffee, only to discover something more like vaguely coffee-scented hot squidshark oil.

Kiryu had been tickled to discover that Ayther had no natural oil deposits. The moment Kir had tried to propose drilling, he’d run into the consensus that oil was a thing that living beings make. That wasn’t necessarily preclusive, but he had yet to even verify if there was a fossil record, much less crude oil. And until then, he would need to piece together the most efficient ways to get vegetable oils if he was going to expand the steel mill.

Regardless, there was no good reason for any kind of oil to be in his coffee pot.

Opening the door to the basement, he found his "protege" slathering refined oil onto the cutting edges of the five-axis mill Kir had developed with her - a significant upgrade from the arcane mill he’d turned into Goro.

"Moshui, why is there oil in the coffee pot?"

"I needed to refine it into cutting fluid for the new mill," she answered without looking up. At the center of the mill was the workpiece, a sort of ball within a ball within a ball contraption.

"What happened to the alembics I gave you?"

"You mean the ones made of glass?"

"Yes."

"That were in my house."

"Yes..."

"The house that exploded last month."

"..."

"It’s like you say, ’Use the right tool for the job, and if the right tool doesn’t exist, make it.’ In this case I just used what was on hand. I swear I was going to clean it later..."

"Alright, fine. Just don’t blow up my house."

"No promises..."

Kir shut the trapdoor and straightened his back. In retrospect, he should not have told Moshui his ideas about using complex three-dimensional structures to generate complex mana formations out of simple mana input.

A relatively simple single-cube device was necessary to create a vessel for the glideways - both as security device and constructor, but she insisted on pushing the envelope in the name of efficiency and "Imagine a glider you can steer! One with seats! Or-or one that can push itself all the way to a destination instead of just the receiving posts!"

The way things were now, even the nearest destinations required receiving posts - essentially landing strips - where cargo could be off-loaded onto wagons. It was not the safest way for passengers to fly, given the gliders dissipated on landing, but it could definitely be used in a pinch.

Unbeknownst to Moshui, Kir had already solved every single one of the problems she was trying to address, and the spell cube for that was in Kir’s dimensional storage. He’d solved all those problems by inscribing on the inside of the cube, so while she was technically headed in the same direction, she was doing it a different way.

And speaking of directions...

Today was one of Kir’s midweek days off, and he needed to speak with Enumasam about mass-producing shotguns.

Negotiating with Lumin had been a been of a fight, since she wanted something conceptually different from what Goldman had figured out. Kir finally made the point that the Emissary might suspect such a thing arising out of nowhere, whereas with Goldman having shows them the rifle, Kir now had an excusable source.

Shotguns had been a reasonable compromise. More primitive than a rifle, but easier overall to use and perhaps a good step from which to leap onto more accurate guns.

Unfortunately, Enumasam wasn’t at the shop that day.

"He went down to the steel mill, Goro’s dealing with some trouble or something," one of the apprentices said.

Kir took a bus to the Fifth District and then headed northwest. The steel mill was an hour’s cart ride but he turned it into a ten-minute sprint at speeds that would have curled the toes of any merely Olympic sprinter. He had to reinforce his feet and legs to stop, but at the end of his journey, he found that the mill’s lights were off and two large crowds were facing off with city guards between them.

The paved portion of the road indicated the property line for the mill, and the guards had formed up, locking shields as rocks and other debris were thrown at the crowd of demonkin behind them.

"No Hell-steel!" "Get the demons out!" "Jobs for people, not demons!"

The cries and chants were many and discordant, and the most violent instigators were clearly behind the people at the front.

Kir went around to the back of the mill, where he found a few more guards who nodded him in. Having the key to the city came with a few perks, one of them was nigh-universal recognition by the City Watch and the City Guard.

He found Goro and Enumasam talking with a human who had an air of middle-management about him.

"Goro!" Kir called out, carefully stepping through the gathered workers.

"And who’s this?" the human asked. Kir saw a quill hovering near their head, writing on a notepad of the type used by city officials.

Goro and Enumasam met Kir with handshakes. "This is Kiryu Nasumi, one of the minds behind the design of the steel mill," Goro said, and the quill started scratching rapidly.

Where is it getting the ink? Kir wondered for a moment before he realized what the gem atop the quill meant. It was a scrypen, and somewhere else its movements were being precisely mimicked by its sister scrypen.

"Professor Nasumi, this is-"

"Atlas Alchemer, I write for the Messenger Dragon in my spare time."

"What do you do with the rest of your time?" Kir shook the hand that was offered. He hadn’t specifically read the Messenger Dragon, but he was no stranger to the burgeoning press that was being birthed from Goro’s introduction of moveable typewriters.

"Write novels. Out of spite."

"Ah," Kir said. He and Stella might get along.

"Care to weigh in on the protest?"

"What’s it about?" Kir crossed his arms.

"People don’t like demonkin running the steel mill, since it’s becoming so important to the city. Personally, I think they just want their jobs now that it pays well, but I don’t write the opinion pieces."

"I think that if they want the jobs, they should apply when the steel mill expands over the next few months," Kir said.

"We can really expand?" Goro interjected.

"Lumin’s giving her blessing. She’ll start working with the City Council and the Mayor soon."

Atlas’ pen scratched. He must have been a maven with at least a minor telekinetic expression, but very fine control of his ability.

"Please don’t quote me on that," Kir said.

"A break like this is worth noting, but fine, you can be an ’anonymous city official,’ Mr. Wolf of the Academy."

Kir had a lot of nicknames, but that one in particular was associated with the most salacious rumors. In truth, Kir had engaged in "relations" inside the new Academy, but that was because Stella was visiting and he promised her whatever she wanted, which happened to be a bit of roleplay and then they wound up in a few other rooms...

"Quit putting out steam from your ears and pay attention!" Kiryu chastised him.

The protesting crowd, whipped into a frenzy, had closed with the guards and were shoving harder and harder.

A small group of demonkin were handing out little conicle caps, and every demonkin holding the line started putting them on.

"Steelhorns!" someone cried out.

"Union!" was the response as demonkin surged forward, supporting the guards with their bodies or with makeshift shields that had likely been composed in the mill.

"Steelhorns?" Kir asked.

"That’s what they named the Union," Goro said.

Kir smiled. He’d had to push through Lumin’s misgivings to get the concept of a Union introduced to the City Council, and his goal was that factory workers would be able to represent their needs as they arose and have the political clout to be heard.

That had been a year ago, around the time Heaven’s Embassy was built. The fear then had been that Heaven would try to enforce regression from the factories, and organizing the workers had been one of Kir’s contingencies to inhibit the potential for such a thing.

"Can I speak to your husband for a bit?" Kir asked.

It took a bit to pull Enumasam away, since he was enjoying himself watching the two groups fight, but once he accomplished it, Kir pulled the blueprint scroll out of his storage and handed it to him.

"It’s time," Kir said as Enumasam unfurled the scroll.

He was silent as he looked over the plans for the new weapon. Then he lowered his voice, "Are you planning to reveal yourself?"

"I... don’t know what you’re talking about..." Kir chuckled nervously.

"Oh please, I knew it was you as soon as we met."

"Does anyone else know?" Kir asked.

"Just Goro. There are no secrets between my husband and I."

Sam knew too, which meant there were three people who often shared one location who knew that "Professor Kiryu Nasumi" was really Kir Gale.

"No, I’m not revealing myself just yet."

"What is this... shotgun supposed to fire?" Enumasam had to look at the scroll for the weapon’s name.

"Large bullets. Or clusters of shot. Steel shot, actually. After the prototypes, the city is looking at a big order."

"We’ll have to toughen the insides then... a harder steel... maybe with an iron sheath on the barrels..."

By Kir’s estimates, a shotgun would present quite the change to battlefields, namely by taking battlemages - mages specialized in close-range combat, which Heaven seemed to prefer - and making their role much more hazardous.

A competent mage might weather one or two shots before their shields fell.

A skilled mage with a lot of mana would drain themselves trying to resist shot made of steel, if not slugs. And even if it took ten shots to break their shields, Kir planned to put thousands of shotguns in the hands of Norneau’s defenders.

He planned to do so with entirely non-magical ammunition, which would make caches undetectable to searches for magic weapons. And he could always add magic circles later as needed.

"Excuse me..." Both Enumasam and Kir turned to find Atlas standing nearby, "But would you care to tell me more about what’s being revealed? I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch-"

Kir raised his voice.

"No comment!"

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