At 12:00 AM, the Air Fortress Research Institute within the Research Department was brightly lit.
At this moment, the dwarf Euphy was still working. Wearing linen clothes, her tiny figure stared intently at the furnace. Her usually delicate face was now covered in soot, making her look as if she hadn't bathed in days.
"This ratio should work," Euphy's eyes shone brightly. She clasped her hands together in front of her chest and muttered, "It has to work, it just has to."
After going out shopping with Annie and the others today, she had immediately returned to the research institute. Prior to that, she hadn't stepped out of the institute for three or four days. If Annie hadn't come looking for her, she absolutely would have stayed until she achieved a successful result, researching until two or three in the morning every single day.
Because of this, when Lucas found out, he ordered the fox-eared girl to drag Euphy out shopping so she could get a little rest.
After going out to play for a bit today, she returned with a flash of inspiration and immediately began researching based on the alloy concepts Lucas had provided.
The Air Fortress—that is, the airship—required extremely light materials. Only then could it fly high and significantly reduce its operational risks. If iron were used as the material for the airship, just lifting off would be incredibly difficult, and it would need to be massive in volume.
Lucas could provide some alloy formulas, but he couldn't get his hands on anything too highly classified. He could only provide formulas for common alloys, such as lead, copper, and so on.
Furthermore, creating certain alloys with the technology of this era was out of the question, especially since they were needed in large quantities. This was particularly true because some ores simply hadn't been found yet; not every type of ore was available around Sedona City. The ores currently being used by the research institute were all transported from other places.
Lucas had established partnerships with major city lords and nobles, which included the trading of ores. Every lord would collect various ores and transport them to Sedona City.
Now, the majority of these ores were sent to Euphy at her own request. She wanted to create an incredibly light alloy so they could fly all the way to the Dwarf Kingdom in one single breath.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
Euphy hurriedly increased the heat, tossing a few pieces of coal into the furnace as she watched the three differently sized ores slowly melt.
She didn't know the names of these ores; they had all been newly delivered. None of them were iron ore. She had discovered that if she used iron ore as a raw material in the formula, the weight generally wouldn't decrease, but the volume would actually shrink.
"They've melted!" Euphy shouted excitedly, her eyes brimming with anticipation.
She had already conducted hundreds of experiments. From her initial random trials, she had occasionally managed to produce new alloys that were large in volume, highly durable, yet light in weight.
She then used this accidentally discovered alloy as a baseline, slowly testing the weight ratios of the three components. The more she experimented, the harder the resulting alloy became, and the lighter it got, which made her incredibly excited.
"It has to work." Illuminated by the glow of the furnace, Euphy's soot-covered face made her look like a devout believer.
"They're completely melted." Seeing that the three pieces of ore had fully melted, Euphy immediately grabbed a refined steel rod nearby and began stirring the mixture, followed by several other procedural steps...
The time slowly ticked past 1:00 AM. Euphy poured out the molten alloy material to let it cool and solidify.
Another half hour passed, and Euphy was left with a chunk of gray alloy. Holding it in her hands and forcefully suppressing her emotions, she began to run tests.
Carrying the alloy, she scanned the floor, which was littered with ores and discarded alloys. She quickly spotted a piece of refined steel of roughly the same size and immediately hauled it over to the workbench.
"First, let's weigh it." Euphy skillfully grabbed a scale, immediately began weighing the materials, and jotted down the results in her notebook.
"Fantastic! It's four times lighter than the refined steel," Euphy cried out excitedly. This was the lightest alloy she had produced so far.
"Next is to test the hardness of the two." Euphy took the two pieces of metal and smashed them against each other.
Clang, clang, clang...
The sound of metal clashing rang out far into the dead of night, causing the patrolling soldiers outside to shake their heads in admiration of the little girl's madness.
"Hahaha... the hardness is also greater than refined steel! This is amazing! Could it be that I've actually succeeded?" Euphy froze, staring blankly at the new alloy in her hands.
"Right, there's still the toughness test..." Euphy immediately carried the new alloy over to test it.
The toughness test was incredibly important. If the toughness was too poor, its compressive strength would be inadequate, which could easily lead to incompatibility issues, fracturing, and other problems.
"Huh? The toughness is about the same as refined steel. That's fine then," Euphy nodded.
"Next is the freezing test..."
"And the alternating hot and cold test..."
...
Two hours later, at past 3:00 AM, Euphy was still brimming with energy as she looked at the data in her notebook, her tired face filled with a bright smile.
"Fantastic! It's perfect, it passed everything," Euphy shouted in excitement.
Yes, the test results were exceptional. This new alloy was in no way inferior to refined steel; one could even say it was more perfect than refined steel.
"Hahahaha... I did it! I succeeded!!" Holding her notebook, Euphy danced around with joy, shouting and yelling excitedly. The soldiers outside the research institute shook their heads in amusement. Such situations were all too common. Whenever someone in the Research Department overcame a bottleneck after days and nights of work, they all yelled and shouted like this. The soldiers were already used to it.
After her excitement faded, Euphy immediately considered a new problem: were there plenty of these specific ores available?
If they were too scarce, the price would skyrocket, and the ultimate result would be that the alloy couldn't be mass-produced. And the amount of alloy needed for the Air Fortress was nothing to scoff at.
She had heard her father, Durin, mention that there was a type of ore in the Dwarf Kingdom which, when refined, produced a material many times harder than refined steel. However, it was exceedingly difficult to refine, and the ore itself was incredibly rare, meaning it could only be used for collectible weapons.
It was known that the massive iron hammer wielded by the King of the Deepstone Dwarf Kingdom was forged from that very rare material, and rumor had it that it was worth thousands of gold coins.
"I'll go ask Lord Lucas tomorrow." Euphy closed her notebook and stretched lazily.
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