579.Chapter 577: 576 Flywheel Consortium’s Office in Transylvania Becomes a Reality

Chapter 577 576.The Flywheel Consortium’s office in Transylvania is now established! -Added [1830

(For the brother “Huo Zheng is quite good”, an additional [18/20])
Burning gold is a strategic resource monopolized by the Brass Dwarf, this kind of thing with the “universal attribute” has brought those irascible dwarfs a huge amount of profit, which is also the bottom of the brass fortress that they can build such a great fortress and an important source of funds.

However, when people on the continent talk about the huge profits of gold burning, they often overlook the important part of this wealth myth, that is, halflings!

In fact, it was the mechanics of the Halflings who first discovered this strange property of gold burning, and their steam engineering only ushered in a wave of “super explosion” after using gold burning as an additive and catalyst.

Before that, the halfling’s engineering craft still stayed at the level of “cool, mysterious and fun, but no one cares”, but after the gold-fired display of power, large steam trains and steam airships, as small as hunting crossbows and the emergence of gold-fired ammunition have made steam engineering from the version of the sewer to the height of the T0 at once.

It can be said that the brass dwarves used gold burning to make money, but this magical mineral is the foundation of the rise of civilization of halflings.

In terms of the engineering skills shown by Thicke Flywheel, to say that this wild warlord doesn’t know the value of gold burning is definitely a fantasy, right after Murphy took out the ore as a sample, the master engineer who was still angrily shouting “send off” instantly performed a wave of change of face.

He didn’t even doubt Murphy’s confidence in taking out this thing.

Because ordinary people don’t even know what gold ore is, that thing is the lifeblood of the brass dwarves, before the silver dwarves master builder Ilych said, his compatriots in order to keep this secret but really hard, even for this reason even fall.

One can only say that the truth that money moves people’s hearts is obviously also the truth in the other world.

“Look at this beautiful cluster of energy crystals, filling the rock with mystery, like invisible hands pressing real power into it.

The crystallization process itself is unrepeatable, and even though we halflings discovered the wonders of burning gold a long time ago, the brightest among us have continued to study and devote countless hours to the subject yet still no one has been able to come up with a logical and complete statement or theory.

No one knows how it came to be, it is like a supreme jewel bestowed upon civilization by the world.”

In the messy lab, Thicke Flywheel was observing the ore with a rather sophisticated microscope-like device, and in the chair behind him, Murphy was smiling and waving his hand at the Mystery Puppet, Jasmine, signaling that she didn’t have to wear a weird smile and handing over the oddly colored cup of coffee.

Who the hell would drink something like this with a layer of seven-colored oil floating on the surface?
What kind of coffee is this?
Crude oil mixed with waste battery flavor?

Gee, I didn’t realize you halflings had such wild tastes.

But it was clear from the way Molly the Steam Puppet was acting because she couldn’t open people’s brains that the “crazy uninvited guest” had now become a guest of honor at Hungry Mountain.

“Your ore is not very pure, perhaps because of the time factor? But this is nothing, if you really abound in high purity gold ore, brass dwarves of the supreme king has long launched a conquest expedition against you.

Don’t doubt the patience of those guys in gold burning matters.

They don’t have much patience at all, not in anything, not even making people”

Thicke Flywheel turned around with a tinge of regret and a hint of gratitude, removing the viewing device in front of his own eyes as he rubbed his hands together, a hint of the shrewdness and marketability that should be expected of him as a halfling finally manifesting itself on that somber face.

He addressed Murphy:
“Say, how big is your vein there?”

“The bottom of a rift valley that cuts across the city and is about a hundred meters wide is full of this stuff, and you don’t even need complicated digging tools, you can just use a mining pick to plow through the soil to see this stuff.”

Murphy took out the map of Scarlet Fortress and pointed out the city’s rift to Old Flywheel.

The latter took it in his hand and studied it carefully, saying:
“Well, it doesn’t seem to be much, at least it’s not worth a special trip for the dwarves, those guys have the special gold burning miners made by the Chardo Artisan University in their hands, if it’s a shallow vein like this, they only need half a month to dig it clean.

With my cursory understanding of the veins, the value of these gold-burning ores, although high, has not yet reached the equivalent of those excessive demands you just made.

At most, these can exchange the production lines in my factory for you.”

“What’s your hurry?”

Murphy rolled his eyes and took a fixed psychic image, like a photograph, out of his pocket and handed it to Thicke Flywheel.

The moving psionic photo showed four traveling scholars swinging pickaxes to carefully open the collapsed floor of the Holy Blood Hall in the deepest part of the Blood Wyvern Cloisters, they used a support structure similar to that of a mine shaft to keep the debris above them from crashing down, and just after that collapsed debris had been cleared away revealing the inner structure.

Inside the “cage” formed by a huge monstrous tree, there was a star-like bright light pulsating in the dark place.

The dusty face of the traveling scholar Xiao Zhou also turned his head back and made a “yeah” gesture, his left hand is pressed Murphy’s set of broken Grimley lion armor, that is for the traveling scholars to do this single payment.

The image stayed in this moment, in the collapsed hall behind Cho, there were gold-burning ores directly exposed to the air, and those peculiar crystal clusters even grew to several dozen centimeters in length.

The scene stunned the old flywheel.

Thinking that he had misread it, he rubbed his eyes vigorously, and after confirming that what appeared in that image was indeed high-quality raw gold-burning ore, this halfling engineer whistled loudly.

It was well known that psychic images could not be faked, so this thing must be real!

“Nah, these are the two burnt out veins we have in our hands, there’s no way to measure or mine the one located underground because there’s a huge amount of debris above it that can’t be cleared away in a short period of time.

But our awesome geologists made a preliminary exploration of it, they dug down and dug to a depth of almost ten meters still finding gold-burning ore.”

Murphy spread his hands and said:

“Given the size of that hall, the volume of this vein isn’t expected to be much bigger, but as you can see, the purity of the ore here is frighteningly high, so make an offer.”

“This business is too big, so big that old Flywheel’s legs are a bit soft, I have to go and take a look on the ground.”

Thicke Flywheel tucked the image in his arms.

He was a very determined halfling, and there was absolutely no way that someone who could do something in the hellhole that was Hungry Mountain would be a forward-thinking fellow.

As soon as he said he was going to set out to check it out, this immediately started packing.

Old Flywheel packed his own luggage while throwing out a mechanical key to Murphy, saying:

“All the stuff in this mountain is yours, you have to find a way to move the stuff here to Transylvania, I think it’s hard, but I believe you’ll always find a way.

My bear goblin workers have been protesting about the way I treat them, they’re a bunch of fucking assholes, organizing strikes twice a month to demand that I give them a raise, a raise my ass, the time of war is coming, there’s no point in asking for that kind of money, they might as well work for me and pray that I can protect them in a crisis.

But now that the factories have been sold, there’s no point in keeping them, so let’s consider it a half-sale, half-gift.

As long as you can convince them to serve you, it’s fine with me.

The beaters made up of ogres and bear goblins now number about a hundred or so, all of them are fucking big eaters, you can take them away if you want, oh yeah, the arithmetic treasure beads you want! I’ll help you complete the remodeling according to your requirements, as well as those three-and-a-half generation core treasure beads, I’ll get them for you as well.

My request is that all the burning gold in your territory belongs to me! Also, you can’t have this place, Hunger Mountain, it has natural geothermal resources, I still have to keep it to get me a sufficiently advanced laboratory.”

“Hey hey hey! Do you take me for a fool?”

Murphy instantly stood up in irritation as he said:
“You think you can monopolize the gold burning resources that we found so easily by paying such a small amount of rags? That’s too black-hearted of you, isn’t it? Perhaps I should go to the Brass Fortress and find the contemporary head of the Hoffman family to discuss the offer.

You see, the dwarves can give anything you can give, and they’re more than willing to do so.

I feel certain that they are far more generous in their offer than you are.”

“You’re just being a lion!”

Thicke Flywheel, who had already packed a mechanical box and was still greeting Jasmine as she came over to help pack more things, turned back to Murphy, and he had no problem breaking down Murphy’s trick.

He said:

“You can’t even find anyone to estimate the price, you have no idea how much all that burning gold of yours can be sold for, just go to the dwarves like that, the stingy and money-grubbing ones will definitely press the price to the point where they can make you lose all your pants.

You have to understand, that’s monopoly business!
Monopoly! Understand?

The pricing power is with them, and believe me, Murph, the price I’m giving is already very conscientious, and don’t talk about the Hoffman family, you don’t even know what that family is about and you dare to clunk me?
Really not afraid of being killed.”

“But you haven’t told me yet, what are you going to do after you get these ores?”

Murphy squeezed his eyes and said:
“Is it to challenge the gold-burning hegemony of the Brass Dwarves?”

“You can’t do that with your little ore!”

Old Flywheel shook his head:

“The dwarves’ mineral deposits are a terrifyingly astronomical number, although I despise their monopoly on gold-burning resulting in this magical substance not being able to circulate on a large scale, and naturally not being able to push forward the civilization enhancement of steam engineering to the entire continent, I also know that unless someone can discover a gold-burning mine with reserves far exceeding that of the mines of the Brass Dwarves overnight, challenging the hegemony of anything can only be the ravings of a dreamer.

I’ll mine all your ores when I get them and return to Hungry Mountain to form a cutting-edge lab, and I know there are a lot of deviants in Chardonnay Harbor just like me who are completely intolerant of living under the oppressive administration of the Steam Council.

They want to work on some weird stuff.

And burning gold!
That’s the blood of engineering, and without it you can’t talk about any improvements, and with the materials I have, I can form my own engineering faction, and one day my damned mentor Minx Steam Valve is going to get stomped on hard by me!
And when that happens, my sweetest little sister Bach will know she was blind in the first place. Well, you didn’t hear that last one!
Damn it, you can’t tell anyone about this.”

Seeing Thicke Flywheel get a little annoyed and pull out an oversized coil gun that just looked out of place, Murphy instantly waved his hand and said:
“Don’t worry, how could I, a Transylvanian Governor, have no bottom to pay attention to the grudges and bad love stories of a bunch of halflings, but I urge you to be strong.

Besides, you’ve formed your own engineering faction, why don’t you take it a step further? How about forming a consortium that operates technological products?

Call it the Flywheel Consortium!

I can use this batch of Burning Gold to invest in it, and you can just split half of the profits you get in the end with me.”

“You’re dreaming! One-fifth at most.”

The old flywheel almost jumped up from his spot and cursed greed, but Murphy nodded without any psychological burden and said:

“One-fifth is one-fifth, I’m satisfied with this distribution ratio, in addition, don’t be in a hurry, I still have something to tell you about the birth of Burning Gold.”

Murphy narrowed his eyes and said:

“You guys have studied Burning Gold for so long, don’t you have any doubts about this strange universal mineral? My personal psychic energy master told me that she suspects that the birth of Burning Gold is related to the release of subspace power.”

“Gee whiz, we already knew this.”

Thicke Flywheel scoffed at this, saying:
“When my mentor, Old Bach, developed the first generation of Operational Treasure Pearls, he had already confirmed that the Burning Gold Mine was related to subspace, and he believed that the birth of Burning Gold was consistent with the ‘psychic corrosion’ phenomenon that currently exists in all parts of the world, and that it was a product formed after subspace had infiltrated the material world.

Otherwise, it was impossible to understand why the arithmetic system of the Operational Treasure Pearl’s original crotch-pulling would be transformed in an instant after the addition of the gold-burning medium.

This simply did not conform to the laws of physics!
The only reasonable explanation was that the energy released when the Burning Gold was used was a kind of ‘mind-only energy’, similar to the way psychic energy was composed.

You see, psychic masters manipulate psychic energy according to some ridiculous spell formulas to be able to make free, attribute-less psychic energy transform into flames or cold ice, do you think this state and energy change is reasonable?
It doesn’t!
Right.

But that’s the nature of psychic energy.

Instead of relying on solid scientific fundamentals to be effective, it relies more on the mind and skill of the user, and that’s the nature of subspace energies, which change into all sorts of harmful things depending on the whims of those who have fallen.

They can do whatever you want them to do.

That’s why Burning Gold is ‘all-powerful’ in the eyes of fools, but of course, the exact process of taking effect is much more complicated, and even mind-only psionic energies have their own set of methods of taking effect, and that’s what psionic spells and mana models exist for.

But this means of use is still essentially a ‘ritual’, you know what I mean?

They’re not harnessing power, they’re praying for power, and it’s no different than the odd divine spell, only the engineering is different! The world will lie to you, women will lie to you, but math and physics won’t!

Math won’t is won’t!

Once you learn to hand rub a high powered coil gun then you can accomplish manufacturing no matter what environment you are in as long as you have the materials!
That’s what engineering exists for.

It’s universal knowledge, knowledge that can be learned and copied and discussed and enhanced, and the only real power is knowledge that can be spread on a large scale like that!
Well, look at me, I’m very talkative today, but why discuss these things of truth with a fucking vampire idiot?

Anyway, your very existence is based on weird nocturnal psychic powers, and you fall into the category of ‘unscientific’, you can’t deny yourselves.”

The old flywheel grunted and reached out, aiming the coil gun in his hand at Murphy, and over the dangerous sound of converging energies, he shouted:
“Stop your wacky spells that are messing with my mind! Or I’ll send you to heaven with this big gun! Vampire, this is a ray gun made to mimic sunlight, and one shot will leave you in the dust.

I call it the ‘Slayer of Stupid and Arrogant Vampire Lords’!”

“Well, well, you sure are a sharp and cranky little man.”

Murphy threw up his hands and said:

“But that’s what I’m going to talk to you about next, Flywheel, and I don’t know how much you know about the Creator’s legacy, but I’m certain that there was a super-civilization that existed before the beginning of the current era.

The current Sanghai Empire is a shadow of that super-civilization, and I’m certain that that civilization left a sizable legacy somewhere in the Dark Mountains, considering that it was most likely destroyed by a super-huge release of subspace power, and considering that the entire Dark Mountains is a place of death shaped by that subspace catastrophe.

So, I think that somewhere underneath the Dark Mountains lies an undiscovered super-burning gold mine!

Much like how the gold-burning vein underneath the Scarlet Fortress was born, I mean, if you’re really going to form a consortium to challenge the Brass Dwarves’ damned monopoly on gold-burning, then maybe we can actually start working together.

Voila!
That’s the big business I’m going to talk to you about, now the problem is that I don’t have the instruments to track the Burning Gold Mine on hand, so…”

“That doesn’t sound like a problem logically.”

Sulk-Flywheel thought carefully as he said:

“But the Black Plague is coming, and the Civilization camp hasn’t had that much energy to explore the Dark Mountains for years afterwards, in fact their explorations over the past few hundred years have failed.”

“It’s the fact that no one is paying attention that makes it our only chance, once we let the dwarves get the jump on us, the monopolization of knowledge that you despise will continue.”

Murphy said:
“I need some partners who are powerful enough to find that gold-burning mine well, let me be more honest, I don’t care about any gold-burning mine, I just want to find the last legacy of the Golden Age in the Dark Mountains.

Want to partner up?

Flywheel, you will be rich from this, Transylvania will rise from this, and we will both get what we want from each other.”

Silence fell over the lab.

After a few dozen seconds of thought, the Wild Warlord moved his slender fingers and said:

“Give me some time, I can contact some ‘old friends’ and get the prospector you need, and I can find some Explorer’s Guild people to help out, that crazy batch’s frenzied pursuit of the Creator’s relics will make them willing toolmen for us.”

“Well, ‘we’ is a good word to use, I like it.”

Murphy chuckled and held out his hand to Thiokol Flywheel:

“Well then, hats off to you, Flywheel Consortium’s great treasurer.”

“You shouldn’t have gone into vampirism, Murph, really, my dear handsome Murph, consider going over to be an evil sorcerer? Your eloquence will surely make a name for yourself in this business, want to change careers? I’ve got the contacts, oh, and it wouldn’t be out of the question to sell them to you cheaply.”

(End of chapter)