While the dwarves, elves, and beastmen toiled endlessly to create the foundations of the multi-race kingdom, Sharath stayed in his palace laboratory. The corridors were filled with the soft whisper of magical runes, the scent of refined metal in the air, and the random burst of an experimental spark—a reminder that even the genius sometimes gets the temper of his own devices wrong. But Sharath's attention was altogether different from city building or railway systems; his thoughts were of laughter, happiness, and the gentle wails of a newborn.
His child's birth had put a gentle radiance over the palace while empires surrounding them geared up for titanic constructions. Sharath devoted himself to a task that was minuscule compared to this: making toys, stuffed animals, and tiny magical contraptions for the child. But to him, every one counted. Some were basic, magical rattles that gave off a gentle light, others were small mechanical animals driven by small clockwork motors, able to toddle around the nursery floor.
Regularly, his siblings—his sister and brother, trained already in their respective arts—dropped by the palace. One, talented in both engineering and the martial arts, enjoyed constructing protective automata to defend the nursery; the other, an emerging magician, charmed toys so that they floated kindly in mid-air or shifted hue when brushed against. Between them, they created a wonderland for the child, who shrieked with pleasure at the flying soft dragons and toy walking elephants.
Once done, the assortment was wrapped with care and left to Madhu, who placed them around the nursery and around the palace for every passageway, every play area. Sharath watched through his enchanted monitoring system, which he had worked hard to bolster using runes, so no toy malfunctioned or caused injury to the infant. As he observed the laughter, the joy of small hands stretching to grab bobbing toys, he permitted himself a fleeting smile—small moments of human pleasure were, after all, as important to building an empire as roads or laws.
But the wheels of innovation never really ceased in Sharath's head. As he oversaw the construction of the kingdom, he started to think about an impossibly revolutionary idea. A lightning-bolt bolt of recognition struck him as he looked over the elaborate magical runes of his surveillance and information systems: they worked efficiently, yes, but they didn't have what humankind might one day term "automation" and "computation." Sharath stood stock-still, a startled gasp escaping his lips.
"Computer," he said softly to himself. "We have magic, we have runes… but no computer."
🐧NeuroBoop's voice wavered in his head, laced with excitement and desperation.
"Sharath, we do not possess precision tools yet. Calculations can be magical, but a proper computing machine needs stepwise logic and precise mechanical parts. I propose… a calculator first."
Sharath's eyes sparkled. "Naturally. The calculator. Straightforward yet strong. A tool to make math immediate. to lay the groundwork for something much larger.
In hours, blueprints were imagined straight into his mind—magic-enhanced diagrams received by 🐧NeuroBoop, precisely aligned with runes and mechanisms in his lab. Sharath got to work straight away. Small gears, magical levers, and runes were married up with precision craftsmanship. This time, unlike past projects, the device was fully functional: buttons actually responded to touch, calculations flashed up on small light-emitting plates, and answers popped up instantly.
When the first prototype was finished, Sharath proudly presented it to his father, Lord Varudan Darsha, and his grandfather, Lord Bassana. Their response was immediate and understandable: noses scrunched up, eyes shining, and mouths watering—not at the magic, but at the profit margin.
"This… can be mass-produced," Lord Bassana snarled through clenched teeth, already thinking about the logistics in his head. "Every village, every town, every empire… they'll buy this!"
Sharath's smile could not be held back. "Just so. Efficiency for all. Merchants, accountants, scholars… even children in school. This machine will revolutionize how we calculate, barter, and instruct."
Within a fortnight, the offices of the Darsha company were buzzing with manufacture. Craftsmen, engineers, and magical apprentices worked around the clock. In a month, thousands of calculators had emerged off the magical production lines, each with small runic enchantments to guarantee long life. News of the invention traveled like wildfire throughout the continent. Dwarven fortress markets, elven city bazaars, and beastman village stalls were inundated with these small, spellbinding computers. Merchants capered in the streets as they bought them, and scholars, who had long written out boundless sums manually, cried tears of happiness at the simplicity of the device.
Sharath, however, did not rest. With the prototype complete and production under way, he set his sights on his next, much more ambitious project: the building of the first magical computer. The plan was still unfinished, progress slow—only two percent of the conceptual framework—and it was revolutionary nonetheless. Employing magic runes to substitute for the absence of ultra-precision mechanical devices, Sharath started working out logic sequences, memory units, and enchanted processing arrays. 🐧NeuroBoop supported by performing theoretical energy efficiencies and magic interference patterns directly in Sharath's brain, providing a smooth interface between human insight and magic calculation.
While the computers incubated quietly at the back of Sharath's laboratory and mind, life in the nursery went on unbroken. The child giggled, holding a drifting, wind-driven toy elephant, as Sharath's siblings displayed tiny defense automatons. Sharath himself wandered between laboratory, nursery, and palace observatory, observing dwarves burrow tunnels, elves plant stands along railway lines, and beastmen gearing up oil refineries to power engines throughout the continent.
By the second month of mass production, the initial wave of calculators had not only revolutionized trade but also education. Schoolmasters welcomed them eagerly, applying the machines to teach arithmetic more productively. Parents were ecstatic over the devices, tending to treat them as if they were magical tokens, and the merchants' ledgers were neat and accurate overnight. The calculators had become so ubiquitous that they were not thought of as a luxury, but as a necessity; a new civilization was unfolding, fueled by Sharath's creativity and vision.
And yet, amidst all this advancement, Sharath never lost his way in regard to joy. Each night, after viewing the construction of the empire through surveillance and magical divination, he went back to the nursery. Plushies, spellbound wind-up toys, and toy vehicles were in neat rows. The child giggled, pursuing floating blocks or piloting a toy wind-powered chariot. Sharath sat in silence, palm on the rim of a workbench that still carried the half-completed mystical computer. All the pomp, all the sprawling blueprints, all the cross-cultural cooperation, and it was this mundane picture—family, play, and awe—that lent significance to his vision of empire.
🐧NeuroBoop, floating invisibly at the corner of the laboratory, broke the silence with a dry observation.
"Congratulations, Sharath. You've created both a functioning empire and a nursery amusement park. Efficiency and amusement, hand in hand. Who knew the two could coexist?"
Sharath chuckled softly. "Someday, they'll thank me," he said, watching the child wave a tiny, plush dragon toward him. "Someday, they'll understand why every calculation, every bridge, every toy mattered."
And thus the Darsha empire progressed. Outside, the multi-race kingdom expanded slowly: trains twisted through forest, subways tunnelled beneath rock, schools thrived, and oil-burning engines kicked into life. Within, Sharath's laboratory and nursery hummed with the softer, lesser-known magic of invention and children's awe. Calculators, mass-produced and enchantment-powered, flew off the shelves. And in the tranquil, gradual passage of designing the first magical computer, the future of the empire shone brighter than even the greatest of battlefield triumphs ever could.
By the second month's end, Sharath stood in his laboratory, looking at the balance of work and play. The calculators had propagated throughout empires, commerce buzzed with increased accuracy, and the nursery toys—still inexplicably floating, still naughty—reminded him that in even the most serious work, joy could not be disregarded. Sighing contentedly, he went back to the unfinished computer and grumbled to himself, "One day… one day, everything will be different. But for now… let calculators dominate the earth."