Day 19.
In the storage room, piles of white Silica Sand glittered like diamond dust. Next to them lay the massive logs of Petrified Wood.
Grom stood beside Rian, looking at the sand.
"So," the blacksmith grunted. "You want me to melt this? I can melt iron, Lord. But sand? You need a wizard, not a smith."
Rian picked up a handful of sand and let it slip through his fingers.
"Not a wizard, Grom. A Glassblower. And we don't have one."
Rian sighed and dusted off his hands.
"Seal the room. We have the raw material, but we lack the hands to shape it. If we try to make glass sheets now, we will just end up with blobs of useless crystal. It's a waste of fuel."
He turned away from the sand. It was a bitter pill to swallow. He had the resources, but civilization wasn't built in a day. The "Glass Age" would have to wait.
"Let's go to the garden," Rian commanded. "Torin sent word that the veins of the earth are ready."
The Construction Site
The "Warm Garden" was no longer just a drawing. It was a massive rectangular pit, 50 meters long and 20 meters wide.
Torin, the one-legged foreman, was leaning on his crutch, pointing proudly at the ground.
"It is done, My Lord!"
Rian looked down. The serfs had done an incredible job. The clay pipes were laid in perfect parallel lines, like the ribs of a giant skeleton buried in the earth. They were connected to a central channel that led back to the Blast Furnace's exhaust and a secondary coal stove.
"We covered the pipes with gravel for drainage, then a layer of sand, and finally topsoil," Torin explained, tapping the ground with his crutch. "We sealed every joint with wet clay. No smoke will leak into the soil to poison the roots."
"Good," Rian nodded. "But looking at it won't feed us. Fire it up."
Kael, who was managing the stove, threw a shovel of coal into the firebox connected to the pipe network. Then another. Then another.
"Engage the bellows!"
Whoosh... Whoosh...
Black smoke didn't rise into the sky. Instead, it was forced underground, traveling through the hundreds of clay arteries beneath the field.
Rian, Torin, and the serfs stood at the edge of the frozen field, waiting.
Ten minutes passed.
Twenty minutes.
"Is it working?" a serf whispered. "The ground looks the same."
"Wait," Rian said, his eyes fixed on the snow covering the soil.
Suddenly, a small patch of snow in the center of the field slumped. Then another.
Thin wisps of white steam began to rise from the ground.
The snow wasn't melting from the sun above. It was melting from below.
Rian walked onto the muddy field. He knelt and placed his bare hand on the wet, black earth.
It wasn't freezing.
It was... lukewarm.
[Ding! Environmental Scan]
Ambient Air Temp: -38°C
Soil Surface Temp: +12°C
Root Zone Temp: +18°C
Status: Suitable for Tuber Cultivation.
"It breathes!" Torin cheered, throwing his hat in the air. "The earth is alive!"
The serfs roared in victory. They had defeated the winter. The ground was warm enough to plant.
The Missing Roof
But Rian's smile faded as he stood up. The cold wind slapped his face instantly.
"The soil is warm," Rian shouted to silence the crowd. "But the air is still deadly! If a plant sprouts now, its roots will be cozy, but its leaves will freeze in seconds!"
He looked at the open sky.
Without glass, he couldn't build a transparent roof.
Without a roof, the heat from the ground would escape into the air, wasting all their coal.
"We need a cover," Rian muttered. "Something that lets light in but keeps the wind out."
"Animal skins?" Hance suggested. "We have the wolf pelts."
"Too thick," Rian shook his head. "They block the sun. The plants will die of darkness."
"Cloth?" Grom asked. "We can weave wool."
"Too porous. The heat will escape."
Rian paced back and forth on the warm mud. He needed a "Second Idea." Something cheap. Something translucent. Something they had in abundance.
His eyes fell on the barrels of Fish Oil they had extracted from the Silver-Scale Salmon catch.
Then he looked at the piles of Paper (rough parchment) he used for his blueprints.
"Hance," Rian stopped pacing. "Do we have paper? Not the expensive writing kind. The rough bark-paper the villagers make?"
"We have bales of it, My Lord. But it tears easily. It dissolves in water."
"Not if we drown it in oil," Rian's eyes lit up.
Oiled Paper.
Before glass windows became common on Earth, people used paper soaked in oil or grease. It became semi-transparent (translucent), allowing sunlight to pass through. And the oil made it waterproof and windproof.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't glass. But it was enough.
"Torin!" Rian barked orders. "Use the Petrified Wood planks to build a lattice frame over this pit. Make the squares small."
"Hance! Get the women. Take the rough paper and soak it in the fish oil. Layer it twice. Glue it with pine resin."
Rian looked at the empty sky.
"We don't need crystal palaces yet. We just need a tent that glows."
"Get to work! We plant the Frost Tubers tomorrow!"
End of Chapter 17