Elias stared at the Writ of Eminent Domain, his face a mask of predatory glee. The document, signed with Duke Vesper's seal, was a masterpiece of legal malice, claiming the East Forest was now "Royal Preservation Land" and forbidding any charcoal production that wasn't approved by the King's own—slow—guild.
"The audacity! The sheer, glorious inefficiency of using an entire legal team to stop a simple wood fire!" Elias cackled, clutching the writ.
Sir Kaelen looked utterly defeated. "My Lord, the writ is binding. Haldor and his men cannot trespass. Our iron production has ceased before it even began. What army can defeat bureaucracy?"
"None," Elias declared, his eyes glowing with maniacal determination. "But a faster bureaucracy can. Vesper used the law to delay me. I will use superior construction speed to circumvent his delay."
Elias called Haldor and the woodcutters back from the now-seized East Forest.
"We can't use the forest, but the writ doesn't forbid the storage of construction materials, does it?" Elias asked, tapping the writ.
Haldor and his men looked confused. "No, Baron. But without the wood, the kilns are useless."
"We're not building kilns," Elias said, projecting a new blueprint with the MAOI. "We're building furnaces—and we're building them on wheels."
The blueprint showed a Modular, Mobile Smelting Unit: a simple, cylindrical clay and brick furnace, small enough to be transported by two men, but designed to reach extremely high, consistent temperatures for processing low-grade ore. It was ugly, but its thermal efficiency was incredible.
MAOI Optimization: [Project: Mobile Smelting Unit] Labor Required: 50 Man-Hours. Resource Use: Low. Deployment Speed: Critical.
Project Goal: Build and Deploy before Duke Vesper's Surveyor arrives (Projected Arrival: 48 Hours).
Elias turned to Haldor. "Vesper's surveyor is coming to confirm the forest seizure and check for compliance. We have two days. We will use your existing supply of East Forest wood—the wood you legally chopped before the writ—and we will convert it to high-grade charcoal before the surveyor steps foot on our land."
"Two days to build a furnace?" Haldor gasped. "It takes a week just to cure the clay!"
"Not with the Baron's Mix!" Elias pointed to his piles of cement. "We use our Structural Cement as a quick-setting binder for the fire clay! It cures in hours, not weeks! Kaelen! You're on logistics. I need every cart wheel you can find, and I need this structure to be mobile."
What followed was a construction frenzy driven by pure, capitalist spite. Elias was the conductor of a mechanical orchestra. He directed the mixers, the brick-layers, and the smiths with the terrifying precision of a foreman trying to meet a critical deadline.
Kaelen, meanwhile, performed his least honorable tasks yet: he used his incredible strength to physically hold the freshly cemented kilns in place while the quick-cure mix set.
(Sir Kaelen's Internal Monologue):"I am an acclaimed knight of the realm. My grandfather won the War of the Southern Pass with this sword. I am currently propping up a mud brick oven built by a madman. I hate this job."
Elias was everywhere, his velvet tunic replaced by a coal-smudged apron, his face a constant, demonic scowl of focus. His energy was infectious. The men worked faster not because of the pay, but because the Baron promised to stick it to a Duke who was trying to starve them.
Precisely 47 hours and 15 minutes later, three ugly, squat, cylindrical furnaces sat humming with heat at the edge of the West Forest—the land Vesper had not seized. The furnaces were producing a steady stream of superior charcoal from the last of the East Forest timber.
Elias was drinking stale coffee and enjoying the fumes when Duke Vesper's Surveyor, a thin, meticulous man named Clerk Lyrus (the same clerk Elias had beaten with a tax form in Chapter 4), arrived on the scene.
Lyrus looked at the empty East Forest line, then at the smoking furnaces in the West Forest. He pulled out his writ.
"Baron Thorne," Lyrus announced, puffing his chest. "I am here to ensure you cease all charcoal production, per the Royal Writ of Eminent Domain."
Elias smiled, pointing to the smoking cylinders. "Charcoal production? Here? No, no, Clerk Lyrus. This is not charcoal production."
He stepped up to one of the mobile units, which was sitting squarely on two large, removable axle blocks.
"This is a High-Temperature, Semi-Portable, Ore-Processing Unit that happens to run on readily available local combustibles. It's a specialized mining tool, not a forest kiln. Show me the part of your writ that forbids the use of a Mobile Smelter on my private land."
Lyrus frantically scanned the fine print. The writ mentioned 'earthen kilns,' 'fixed structures,' and 'deforestation,' but said nothing about a "High-Temperature, Semi-Portable, Ore-Processing Unit."
Elias leaned in, his grin widening. "You see, Lyrus? You tried to stop a traditional structure. I simply evolved my structure into a Superior, Unregulated Mobile Asset. Now, if you'll excuse me, these mobile units are producing fuel for my mine, which, if you recall, has a very large ore shipment due in 84 days. Don't worry, Lyrus, you'll get the paperwork for these mobile units... in about six to eight weeks."
Lyrus, defeated by technology and bureaucracy, stumbled back to his horse. Elias had won the skirmish with the sheer speed of his industrial design.
He looked over at the furnaces, his eyes alight with a terrifying, greedy focus. "We won the forest war, Kaelen! Now, we have all the charcoal we need. It's time to start producing enough high-grade steel to make Duke Vesper choke on his own jealousy."