The air over Ironspur was thick with the smell of smoke, ambition, and burning charcoal. Elias stood by the newly constructed, mobile smelting units, his eyes reflecting the shimmering heat of the white-hot metal.
After weeks of feverish work, fueled by a terrifying cocktail of cheap caffeine and pure spite, the moment had arrived. Haldor and his men, now accustomed to the "Baron's Mix" cement and the terrifying logic of the Baron's contracts, gathered as the first batch of ore was successfully refined.
The resulting ingot, once cooled, was a dense, heavy block of smooth, high-grade steel—far superior to the porous, low-quality iron ore the barony was famous for.
"Behold, Kaelen! Pure, unadulterated profit!" Elias yelled over the roar of the furnace. "The thermal efficiency of the mobile units, combined with the charcoal yield of Haldor's beehive design, has allowed us to increase the quality standard by 250%! The Royal Foundry will pay top coin for this!"
Sir Kaelen, standing at a respectful distance, actually looked impressed. The metal was beautiful.
(Sir Kaelen's Internal Monologue):"The man is a greedy scoundrel, a liar, and a terrible conversationalist. But... he holds true to his word. He promised better metal, and he delivered a miracle of industry. If only this dedication were applied to, say, protecting the weak, or practicing swordsmanship."
The miners cheered, genuinely ecstatic. With the proof of concept complete, Elias immediately raised their wages by three percent and promised a small, standardized bonus for every clean ingot produced—a move that bought him immediate, fierce loyalty.
Elias had won the first round against Duke Vesper. He now had the ability to produce the ore needed to meet the 90-day deadline.
The triumph lasted exactly forty-five minutes.
Elias had immediately set the smiths to work, hammering the hot steel into uniform, stackable ingots for easy transport. The smithy, however, was located just outside the main courtyard of the Baronial manor.
The sound was apocalyptic.
CLANG! CLANG! KATHUMP! The rhythmic, bone-shaking clang of the heaviest hammer on the thickest steel reverberated off the stone walls of the castle. Every strike was like a thunderclap inside Elias's skull.
He retreated to his chamber for some desperately needed rest, only to find the noise amplified by the stone architecture. Every CLANG rattled the glass in his windows.
MAOI Alert: [Acoustic Event: Critical Noise Pollution] Noise Level: 110 Decibels. Structural Fatigue Risk: Minor. Domestic Unrest Level: High.
Suddenly, the last two permanent household servants, a frail cook and an ancient groundskeeper, burst into the room.
"My Lord!" the cook shrieked, tears in her eyes. "We beg you! The hammering! We cannot sleep! We cannot cook! The pots shake right off the shelf! We shall leave!"
"Leave?" Elias was stunned. He had fixed the mine, beaten the Duke, and secured prosperity, and now his plot was being derailed by... noise complaints?
"If you continue this dreadful, infernal hammering, we will take our chances starving in the city, My Lord!" the groundskeeper wailed, throwing his small gardening trowel onto the floor in protest.
Elias stared at his servants. He couldn't afford to lose them; the paperwork to hire and train replacements would be an administrative nightmare. He had engineered an industrial paradise, only to realize he had built it in a residential zone.
Elias looked out the window at the smithy, then at the desperate faces of his staff. He realized the next problem wasn't political or mechanical; it was acoustic. He had to engineer silence.
He turned to Kaelen, who was standing in the doorway, wincing slightly with every CLANG.
"Kaelen, forget the ingot production schedule," Elias commanded, a new, manic obsession taking hold of his gaze. "We have a Domestic Fatigue Crisis. The noise is cutting into our household staff's sleep cycle efficiency, which will lead to a drop in their service quality. We must fix this."
Kaelen pinched the bridge of his nose. (Internal Monologue: "He cares about the efficiency of sleep cycles. He is a demon of statistics. I pray for a simple dragon to fight.")
"What is the plan, My Lord?" Kaelen asked, trying to sound stoic over the deafening clang.
Elias pointed at the ground, his eyes wide.
"We can't move the smithy, that's too much labor! We need to stop the vibration transfer! We are going to build a new smithy wall using a double-panel, air-gap, sound-dampening design! I need every scrap of wool, every thick blanket, and every soft material we own! And find me the largest, softest pile of straw in the barony! We're going to build a vibration isolation layer under the anvil!"
Elias paused, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as the sound died down momentarily. "We are going to beat Duke Vesper, Kaelen, but first, we are going to engineer the quietest, most acoustically optimized smithy in the entire kingdom! And I need you to supervise the stacking of the straw to maximize its sound absorption coefficient! Now move!"
Kaelen sighed, the fate of the barony hanging on the proper placement of hay.