Elias stood on the edge of the perfectly dug excavation pit, the Writ of Royal Decree clutched in his hand. Duke Vesper had issued a thirty-day moratorium on the use of Structural Cement in Ironspur, claiming it was a high-risk material.
"He's brilliant," Elias hissed, his voice trembling not with fear, but with administrative respect. "He didn't ban construction; he banned the patentable technology that gives me the speed advantage! Thirty days using traditional mortar will cause a two-month delay to the foundation, putting us catastrophically behind!"
Sir Kaelen, now the master of gabion weaving, looked at the deep pit. "My Lord, the law is clear. We must cease the use of the cement mix. We could use simple clay and rock fill."
"No! The cantilever requires a monolithic, non-porous counterweight!" Elias snapped. "We must use a binding agent that is entirely legal, utterly traditional, and does not fall under the decree's definition of 'structural cement.'"
Elias knew the answer lay in the past: Lime Mortar. It was the ancient binding agent, legal, but agonizingly slow to cure.
He turned to his MAOI, which displayed a mournful set of statistics:
MAOI Alert: [Material Substitution: Lime Mortar]
Cure Time: 7 days (Minimum).
Compressive Strength: 30% of Structural Cement.
Required Volume: Astronomical. Labor Requirement: 500\% Increase in Curing Time Management.
"Kaelen, we're going medieval. We need to acquire massive quantities of limestone and build a Lime Kiln immediately," Elias commanded. "It will be slow, weak, and inefficient, but it is legal!"
The next week was spent on the tedious process of resource acquisition for the ancient technology. They mined limestone, burned it in a crude, traditional kiln, and then slaked the resulting quicklime with water—a dangerous, time-consuming process that produced a weak, chalky paste.
Elias was forced to manage a constant stream of low-grade problems: the lime kiln's temperature was inconsistent, the water mixture was impure, and the final mortar mix was full of bubbles.
"Gark! You must sieve the quicklime! If the particles are not uniform, the mortar will cure unevenly, leading to localized stress fractures!" Elias yelled, watching Gark strain lime through a rusty fishing net.
The true administrative horror began when they started pouring the counterweight foundation. Elias was forced to revert to the most primitive, costly, and agonizing method of construction: waiting.
They poured one foot of lime mortar, and then the work had to stop entirely for a full week to allow the layer to cure enough to bear the weight of the next layer.
Elias was driven to distraction by the idleness. His entire philosophy was built on speed and efficiency, and now he was spending his days staring at a slow-drying paste.
He tried everything to circumvent the delay.
Attempt 1: Accelerated Curing by Heat. Elias pointed the exhaust vents of his Mobile Smelting Units at the fresh mortar. Result: The heat caused the external layer to dry too fast, leading to massive internal cracking and structural failure.
Attempt 2: Chemical Acceleration. Elias experimented with mixing various animal fats and crushed glass into the mortar. Result: The mortar gained a strange smell and a slight purple hue, but the cure time remained seven days.
Attempt 3: Vibration and Compression. Elias had the miners jump on the fresh mortar to squeeze out excess moisture. Result: The mortar compressed slightly, but the vibrations compromised the already weak internal bonds.
Kaelen, meanwhile, found himself standing guard over the curing mortar.
(Sir Kaelen's Internal Monologue):"I am protecting a bowl of chalky mud from the sun. The Baron says too much sun will cause an 'internal lattice collapse.' I have never been so bored, nor so aware of the agonizing slowness of time."
After three weeks, they had only poured four out of the required twelve feet of the counterweight. Elias sat on a stool, head in his hands, watching his gold crowns vanish as he paid dozens of men to sit idle and watch paint dry—or, rather, watch mortar cure.
"This is the perfect crime, Kaelen! Vesper isn't fighting my bridge; he's fighting my Cash Flow! The idle wages are financially crippling me!"
Elias realized that the problem wasn't the mortar; the problem was the labor cost of the delay. If he couldn't speed up the curing, he had to make the waiting time productive.
He immediately stopped the bridge work entirely.
"No more mortar!" Elias announced, jumping up. "We can't change the laws of chemistry, but we can change the laws of labor utilization! Kaelen, gather the men! We are taking the entire bridge crew and moving them back to the manor!"
Kaelen blinked. "To the manor, My Lord? To what purpose?"
Elias's eyes gleamed with a new, frantic purpose. "We have thirty days where we can't pour cement, but we can prepare all the finished materials needed for the construction! We are going to build standardized scaffolding! We are going to pre-fabricate all the truss joints! We will spend thirty days on pre-assembly optimization so that the moment this ridiculous moratorium ends, we can pour the rest of this foundation and erect the bridge in a single, perfectly coordinated, lightning-fast final sprint! We will make the period of delay the most productive thirty days of the entire project!"
Elias had found his counter-tactic: fighting mandated slowness with preemptive, hyper-efficient pre-fabrication.