A/N: Sorry for the delay, this should have been finished a bit earlier.

Also, the ending of the last chapter wasn't supposed to be cliffhanger and I couldn't find a way to not just kill the scene. Describing a firestorm burning everything was getting repetitive and... well, perhaps I still shouldn't have cut it off there.

They trudged through the charred wasteland, long after the magical event had burnt itself out. The pair of them and a light guard of bowgun infantry gazed out at the blackened melted landscape. Not a single scrap of flammable material was left behind, leaving only fragments of bones that crunched underfoot, even the rocks in the ground had become cracked and fragile from the heat. The melted puddles of steel that used to be the spell cannons had long since been recovered for scrap.

It looked worse than the aftermath of a large zombie attack, an impressive if horrifying feat.

"Well, it could be worse, you only lost a hundred of the Minmay Guard alchemists and all but one of the portable spell cannons. "

Erin glared at Denno. "That's three quarters of the spell cannons in total. Two thirds of the alchemists are dead and almost all the scouts and trackers too, whoever's left is too injured to fight. Our army consists of infantry and knight cavalry and that's it. Oh and we're stripped down to only one line of mines. If we're attacked again, we'll either take huge losses or lose the fort entirely!"

Denno had the temerity to shrug. "Still, if you look at the raw numbers, you achieved a pretty ridiculous kill ratio. Four hundred dead holding off... what? A hundred thousand zombies?"

"Apart from the alchemists, those three hundred were the best trained scouts. You can't just give a person a gun and tell them to go off and take a look. "

"The elkas can be scouts for you. They only lost one person. "

Erin sighed, "the elkas don't have the population to lose fighters. There are only thirty capable fighters in their village, losing even one hurts. Minmay's ambassador to the clan, Ka I think? He's tried but if they continue to take losses, the elka clan will just pack up and fly away. Doesn't help that Minmay is becoming friendlier to demihumans. They'll be a help but I need to ask them to send full flights to be safe and doing that means not enough coverage. "

They looked out across the battlefield. Or ex-battlefield would be the better way to put it. There wasn't very much left in the wake of bathing in living fire then getting rained on by a firestorm.

"The bigger problem is the morale," Erin said, "like you said, the lords behind us, Minmay, Ektal and just about every mayor in Central Territories, will all support me. They'll call this firestorm maneuver one of the greatest victories over the monsters at the lowest cost imaginable. Spell cannons can be replaced, living fire canisters can be replaced, but soldiers are less easy to do so and no one likes telling the families their son or daughter is not coming back. "

Needless to say, it did not feel anything like a great victory, hearing the curses sent her way from the knights and soldiers at the fort.

"But the soldiers here are wondering if they will be sacrificed if it's tactical to do so. " Denno finished for her.

"Being sent into a desperate battle is one thing, but being used as bait then destroyed when convenient?" Erin sucked in a breath of air, the smell of smoke piercing through her makeshift cloth mask, "I will be returning to Ektal soon with a recommendation that he replace me, perhaps I can deflect the distrust of the rank and file onto myself. I can only hope the next commander can solve the problems I will leave behind. "

Denno nodded, "for what it's worth, it has been an honour fighting with you. "

"Thank you," the soon-to-be-ex-commander smiled, "it's a nice phrase. "

"It's something Cato says sometimes. "

The battle report as written by Denno was full of observations of the new variant of the black mist and zombie nightcryers. The black mist was no longer a diffuse aura surrounding the zombies, instead it appeared to have structure, with denser clumps and flows of magic inside. Elka observers of the battle from the cliffs noted how the black mist seemed to respond to the fire shell attack like a living thing, swallowing the flammable material and ejecting it out of the area. The only reason why the defence was even successful was because not even the huge zombie auras could withstand a firestorm's worth of magic.

The artificial firestorm had appeared and disappeared far faster than the famous Minmay disaster had. Furthermore, the cloud of fiery magic had spread in all directions, going by accounts from observers placed at different locations.

Whether this was due to the smaller more concentrated fire than the Minmay disaster or if there was some as yet unknown factor, was impossible to tell.

"We have to attack," Cato said as he put down the sheaf of paper, "with a large army destroyed, the zombies will be greatly weakened. Now is the time to press north before another city falls to the monsters. "

"There is a problem with that proposal," Curasym interrupted him, "the Fort Yang army is in no shape to march anywhere. "

"The casualties were almost nothing," Cato pointed out, "maybe five percent of the total strength. With the new mana wells here in Minmay, we'll have all the spell cannons replaced in a few weeks. The zombies' numbers will be greatly reduced. "

"The casualties were primarily supporting units. Our Guards at Fort Yang lost nearly all our alchemists," Curasym fired back, "spell cannons and bowguns deployed on the field need constant repair and I'm certain that the shortage of alchemists there will soon result in the equipment breaking down. The Ektal's knight alchemists don't understand spell cannons, much less the new model gun.

What's more, recruitment of alchemists for the Minmay Guard is greatly down, no alchemist will want to join the Guard when the factory companies are all in need of alchemists and they even pay more! Infantry is easy, any man, woman or fuka can just pick up a bowgun and shoot. Alchemists for maintenance and operation of spell cannons take much longer to train. It'll be six months to a year before we can even replace the numbers lost in that battle, much less the numbers we'll need to support further expansion of the infantry. "

The chancellor frowned and leaned back as his two advisors started to go over the logistics of the Guard again. Minmay had already roughly predicted this result. The problems were compounded by the fact that the Inath Federation had been on the defensive for nearly two generations. Knight armies never had to worry about supplies, being formed out of whatever parties were in the region and gladly supported by the peasants they were protecting.

But the area north of the Snow Wall was a very dry desert, and everyone there was probably dead from the zombies. Any prospective attack of the sort that Cato was proposing would have to bring their own food, water and ammunition. Almost certainly, the army would be forced to follow the River Yang upstream to avoid having to bring huge quantities of water along. Not to mention the total inexperience for long range operations at every level from the recruits to the commanders. Inath fighters were very good at killing monsters and defending walls, but woefully new to any sort of real warfare.

Still, Cato's point that the zombies were weak was a good one. If Inath was to ever be free of the zombies, they would have to strike north eventually and a lull in zombie attacks would be a good time to suffer the learning mistakes of moving out of the human lands. In fact, the months leading up to the recent battle saw zombie and monster attacks at Wendy's Fort drop to nearly nothing. Ranra's knight cavalry also reported a much welcomed reduction in zombie activity when they were still adapting to the new light beam threat and the tactics for bowgun armed cavalry.

"Cato, Curasym," Chancellor Minmay interrupted their discussion, "while I do agree that we have to take an offensive stance and now is a good time, it is simply impossible to order the Guards to march north without preparation. I will present this to Ektal, bringing forwards the talks for a stronger peace. That will take weeks to settle so we can coordinate the push together with the Ektal knights. In the mean time, we'll need to find a way to encourage replacements for the alchemists and to increase the reliability of the weapons. "

"Leave the encouragement to me," a familiar woman's voice made them look up. Minmay's wife, Aesin, walked into the dining room and frowned at the mess of maps and charts covering one end. "We'll need a new set of propaganda articles and posters to achieve that effect. Is giving alchemist training in exchange for joining the Guard feasible?"

"It'll take a long time to actually train good alchemists from nothing but it would help in the long run," Curasym nodded.

"What of a military school then? A school that trains new recruits in magic, alchemy and literacy, in exchange for five years in the Guard. "

Cato and Curasym looked at each other and turned together to Minmay. Any such project would be costly of course and the cost would have to be borne by the Chancellor.

The Chancellor sighed, "fine, we have recovered from the debt incurred during the purge after all. But dear, you get to explain that to Arisacrota. "

Aesin just laughed, "my, are you that scared of your own daughter?"

Cato shook his head as the chancellor and his wife began to drift off topic. He turned back to the battle reports and began to take notes on what areas of the bowgun needed improvement.

Spang!

The sound echoed across the factory floor and caused the overseer to hit the big red emergency stop button. With a series of clangs, surprised yells and curses, the rotary sanders and prototype hydraulic stampers ground to a halt.

"Okay, what broke now?"

Bashal shouted across the workfloor, sending his team scrambling over the machines to check their assigned parts.

"Sir, the ball stamp is broken, it looks like the edge was chipped off. I told you it was too thin already. "

Bashal clicked his tongue in annoyance. The metalsmith was an old style blacksmith from before the new standardized production was introduced. While the old man had his attitude problems, he kept it down and had an eye for finding flaws in metal.

"It's not going to last, sir," the blacksmith complained, "not even tool steel is strong enough to stamp out such a tiny ball. Please give up on steel points, trying to shape steel with steel is not going to work. Aren't the iron ballpoints good enough?"

"An iron ball deforms in the nib too quickly. You can barely write a thousand words without the ink dribbling out," Bashal grumbled.

The sander for the balls also broke too often. Cato had no idea how to make perfect spheres of steel and it had taken months of trying crazy ideas until Bashal came up with the multiple groove sander to average out the imperfections in the tool. It was heartbreaking to see his pet project break down every three days. At least they could turn out useful ball bearings now, if a bit rattle-prone.

It was really frustrating to see. They had come a long way since the old days of blacksmiths hammering out steel impurities with a hammer. A long way in a very short time. Steam hammers were still in use at the forges of course but here in the manufactories was where progress was being made.

But for all their technology and ingenuity, all of the ironworkers put together still could not create a ballpoint pen like the example Cato had brought from Earth. Never mind the plastic shell, that could be replaced with a nice brass cylinder. It was the nib and the ball that was giving them the trouble. How their factories managed to make something that tiny and that hard was a mystery that not even Cato had an answer to.

Forget grandiose feats of engineering like that Muller was chasing with his suspension bridge. That little pen sitting disassembled in a glass case in the university was the true marvel of human engineering. Even the spring, the grip, the little overhanging fastener, everything about the pen spoke of experience in designing pens and the machines that made pens. The kind of experience gained by building and using countless pens and making a better pen.

He sighed, "and I suppose using tool steel or even the nickel-chromium nibs is too much to hope for. "

"If you don't want the machine to break every hundred pens, no. "

"Argh, we're losing to Pako's fountain pen company!" Bashal ran a hand through his hair. "We need to think of something else. Improve the machines or steel. "

The ironworker inventor grumbled to himself for a moment then shouted, "all right! Team meeting, we're going to brainstorm new solutions again!"

The wave of groans across the testing floor was steadfastly ignored.

"So... this is your room?"

Landar looked around with interest. When she proposed that Cato and her take some time to themselves, he had no idea what to do. Neither of them were the type to go browsing in Minmay's markets. Any attempt to visit the University laboratories or Kupo would result in them spending the entire day on experiments, visiting the guilds would result in Cato doing more troubleshooting for them.

So she had insisted that he take her to his room where he slept, a part of the dormitories that was part of the University.

It wasn't some palatial manor that would be expected of an important aristocrat. No matter how Cato denied that he should be a noble, his political importance was akin to that of a major guild leader or a mayor of a large town. Even Willio's mansion was much better looking now and the Chancellor was of course already enjoying his privileges before all this.

Landar was certainly not expecting a tiny room with walls made of the new hard paper and plaster combination, a bed and two smaller areas for a kitchen and bathroom. It was smaller than her own house in the city, smaller than even some of the University alchemists' houses.

"What is this? You really live here?" she asked, finding only a sad little table that would have struggled to seat two for dinner.

Cato grinned, "look closer. Muller and I actually use this building to test new concepts for housing. I stay in one of the four rooms available while the others are undergoing renovations. "

She frowned. The bed was not anything special... wait a minute. Landar approached the bed and sat down on it slowly.

"Psst, shoes," Cato hissed at her with uncharacteristic annoyance.

She glanced down and saw Cato had left his shoes at the entrance. She shrugged as she kicked her shoes off into the entranceway. "I didn't know you liked my hometown practice of removing our shoes," Landar asked.

"Its only after I got rooms in this building, the others weren't clean enough to bother with. "

Landar shook her head and patted the bed. The soft bed! "Never mind that. Cato! What did you do to this bed? Is this a spring I'm feeling?" she frowned as she realized the small size of the spring and the large size of the bed. It was significantly taller than she was, and... she ran a hand down the side of the bed. Yes, there was a division in the middle, some sort of frame that divided the bed into two layers of springs.

"How many thousands of springs are in here?" she exclaimed. It was firm but at the same time not hard. She let herself fall onto the bed, feeling the gentle softness as she bounced on the surface.

He straightened from where he was arranging her shoes and grinned at her, "that's a new design, recently refined at my special request. "

Landar matched his grin then noticed a small square of metal set into the wall next to her head. Looking closer, the magical lines running through the wall passed behind the clearly magical device. The square had a pair of small angled holes where something could be inserted and held in place.

"Ah, I see you've found the power socket," Cato said cheerfully. He opened a cabinet set into the wall, Landar hadn't noticed that was there, and took out a familiar device containing only minimal magic.

"Wait, let me guess, that's the liquid light lamp we designed. You made it draw power from the socket!" she bounced off the bed and grabbed it excitedly, "and this cloth and metal rope is the connection that goes into the socket!" The alchemist plugged the two angled prongs into the corresponding holes, noting that it was impossible to fit in upside down.

The red lined output in the middle of the lampshade stayed stubbornly inactive.

She held up a hand as Cato opened his mouth and looked over the device again. "Ah! Here it is," she found a panel that contained a faint trace of power on the metal stand of the lamp. A circle for activation and cross for negation. She thumbed the circle and grinned as magical density at the socket converted into power and flowed down the metal rope to the lamp, which rapidly pooled liquid light into the red output bowl.

"Easy!" she said, proud that she had deciphered Cato's device.

"It was meant to be," Cato pierced her bubble, "the idea is to come up magical devices that we can sell to the general population. Even with the University running classes, a majority of the population still cannot use magic and are still illiterate. Hence the consistency between the control systems. Circles for activation, crosses for deactivation, red lined areas for outputs and danger. And so on. "

He held up another familiar loop of metal. That was the combination air cooler and fan. Instead of blades or a pair of bellows, this just drove the air directly using magic to generate a pleasant wind. Landar remembered that time they invented this. Only the version in front of her was far sleeker, with the same circle switch and metal rope with socket.

"And everything runs off the magical grid that will be built into the house," Landar nodded. She glanced around rapidly, excitement making her feel slightly giddy.

A rectangular panel, set a bit further up the wall from the socket and near the entrance next to Cato, had the same circle and cross engraved into the metal. "And that," Cato said, tapping the circle with his finger when he caught her line of sight, "is the control switch for the room's light. "

The metal squares set into the ceiling started to glow as they were coated with liquid light. He tapped the cross and the light slowly died away.

"Getting the liquid light holder to work upside down was a problem you will not believe how long it took to solve. These ones have a lead glass covering," Cato said, "on the bright side, the liquid light is a dispersed and gentle light source so we don't face the same need to make mirrored settings for the light that electric bulbs do. "

Landar nodded faintly as small details in the room began to jump out at her. The design was totally different from what she expected. No art decorations, no carvings or painted patterns. The room was austere enough that it could be mistaken for a poor peasant's room at first glance, when combined with the small size. However, she noted the subtle devices flush with the walls, understated handles that were oddly shaped dents showing doors where she first thought was a wall.

Even the bathroom, when she peeked in, was completely different. The design for an adjustable temperature water tap eluded her for a moment but she eventually realized the panel above the lever controlled the magical heating in the pipes. Even the strange thing that Cato had to explain was a flushing chamber pot was something that looked nothing like the current attempts at flushing toilets. Cato had to stop her from the enchanting the water to track it down the u-bend.

"I... withdraw my earlier objections," Landar said. Cato's room had far more luxury than she initially expected. The pure magical heating for the stove itself was smokeless and completely clean. The idea of having a stove that was just a simple red circle drawn onto the countertop was completely unimaginable to her before this visit. The refrigerator to keep food cold or even frozen was also better designed and clearly maintain its chill better, judging from its idle magical usage.

All of these appliances as Cato called them, would be incredibly expensive in magic to run. All the pipes and fixed cables were hidden behind white plaster or underneath the porcelain tiled floor. All the furniture having a design to minimize visible features that was clearly inspired from Cato's Earth, completely unlike the crude devices currently being made.

"How much did this cost?" she asked.

Cato hummed as he made a rough estimate. "This room probably cost about as much as Minmay's entire manor to build and live in for a year. "

She choked a little. That... even Minmay had built his manor over the course of decades!

"It was the design of the appliances and the problems we had to solve in the plumbing and walls that really made this room expensive. The number of times we had to tear it down, rip conduit cables out of the wall, put new ones in and rebuild the wall? Countless. That's why there are four identical rooms in a row here and I just live in the one that is currently not under construction. The devices like the bedside lamp, the lights, the water pipe heater and separating the controls for the embedded devices? Those went through many revisions as well. " Cato paused and frowned, "making the structure of most of the portable devices out of the new chromium steel alloy doesn't help. Once the design is finalized, Muller should get a final cost estimate for the construction and furnishing for me. We think the final cost needs to be twenty to a hundred talens before this sort of room becomes something that can actually be sold. "

Landar just stared at him dumbly. Was this what Cato was working on when he wasn't with the chancellor or guilds?

He shrugged before wandering into the kitchen, saying, "well, let me cook lunch and we can discuss it more afterwards. "

The alchemist only shook herself out of her shock when the sounds and smell of frying paka meat drifted through the door. She glanced at the two person sized dining table, wondering if anything was hiding in it.

The thump of a glazed clay plate hitting the table brought Landar out of her futile examinations. Cato was smiling awkwardly as he set the forks and spoons next to the plates, "sometimes a table is just a table. If you can think of something that would be useful to have in it, I'll see about making one. "

Flushing slightly, she pulled out the chair to join him for the meal.

After finishing the stew, Landar finally popped her question. "This whole room seems more luxurious than I thought. It looks bare but so many features are hidden behind the walls. This design came from your world, right?"

Cato nodded as expected.

"Then you must be quite glad to find a familiar environment?"

To her surprise, Cato wrinkled his nose and sighed, "it's not quite there. The materials here are not as great as what Earth has. For example, the plaster board walls are weak and easy to accidentally knock a hole in. The stove takes too long to heat up. The bed linen is scratchy and the toilet paper is too stiff and doesn't have perforations. I can go on for ages. "

What.

That was all Landar could think of to respond. Most of those complaints were trivial, little issues that would cost so much more to resolve than the gain in comfort. Was Cato secretly a pampered noble of some kind?

No, he did say that these things were common in his world. That any normal person could afford all these luxuries, including the improved quality that Cato was missing.

"The drawers get stuck half open, chairs don't fold and the fountain pens are terrible for writing..."

He was still continuing?! Feeling a strange combination of irritated and mischievous, Landar looked around and spotted the stack of long rolls of multiuse paper next to the wall adjacent to their table.

She reached underneath the table and drew out a long sheet. To think Cato was using these to wipe up food spills and in the toilet. What a waste of good writing paper!

A flick of a wrist and the unrolled section rolled back up into a tube that she tore off in a single sweeping motion that ended with the tube of paper smacking into Cato's forehead.

"Ack! Hey! What's the problem here?"

She would never admit that his indignant squawk made her want to hit him again, just to hear it once more.

Landar shook her improvised distraction admiringly. This was a much better use of paper! "The problem is that you expect far too much!" she yelled.

Her arm shot up on instinct to intercept Cato's own rolled up paper tube. Ha! Despite not being much of a knight, she was still an alchemist who had fought on the frontlines a year or two ago!

"See, it's way too stiff to use as toilet paper," he said triumphantly, "also a bit too long. Half a meter wide rolls are a terribly large size and make the toilets clog. "

"Just be glad we aren't using the leaves like in Wendy's Fort," Landar huffed, clashing paper tubes again. Her attempt to spin Cato's out of his hand like a sword failed spectacularly when the tubes just bent. "These are an improvement already. "

"Ah! So you do admit that the paper is better than leaves!" Cato grinned as he tried to jab at her. Too easy, she swiped it to the side and leapt back out of her chair. "Further improvements are always possible!"

"Rather than waste time trying to make a softer paper, you should be concentrating on those spell cannon improvements no?" Landar shot back. The paper tube in her hand was beginning to sag a little as she locked it against Cato's. A flick of magic and it straightened out suddenly, then gained weight to match a practice wooden sword.

"Hey, not fair!"

With a laugh, she dodged a thrust from Cato and ran out of the room, "too bad!"

Cato jumped up and was hot on her heels in a moment. Their discussion and the empty dishes lay forgotten behind them.

Landar smacked Cato on the arm, "stop laughing already!"

"Just... too funny," he snickered again, "you were yowling like a cat in there!"

"It's not my fault your shower is so hard to use! How was I to know that blue meant cold water on your mixer tap anyway?" Landar retorted, then paused, "and what's a cat?"

"It's a common pet on earth. They're cute and very independent minded. "

The alchemist sighed and shook her head, sending water drops flying from her wet hair. She paused and drew the bathrobe tighter, "never mind that, it's getting cold. Do you have a heater in here?"

As night had begun to fall and the temperatures with it, Cato went back to the control panel near the door and adjusted another slider embedded into the wall. The floor began to heat up gently, just like magic. It was magic after all.

"I'm glad I got to see what you have been working on," Landar smiled as Cato prepared a pot of tea and some biscuits, "it might not be big but it's certainly convenient. Definitely expensive enough to qualify as a noble's residence. "

"I'm glad you like it," Cato nodded. The familiar minty smell spread through the air, injecting some much needed calm after their earlier fun.

And despite the excitement a while ago, Cato also appreciated the calmer mood. Sitting and simply enjoying a cup of tea was nice too.

"I made a discovery today," Landar said after a few minutes of silence.

"Hm?"

"The Aura Light derived magic is very strange. I ran various objects through it at different amounts of magical material," Landar held up a hand and demonstrated the familiar shadowy ball. "We thought at first that this effect causes objects to turn invisible, since anything placed into the field disappears, and putting more than one object into the field causes them to hit each other. "

That certainly sounded like invisibility. But that hypothesis didn't match what Cato saw from the tremors and from the Aura Light report.

"And then I observed this," Landar pushed the ball of shadow into Cato's table and began to pour in power. The circle of tabletop faded out to nothing in the center, leaving an empty hole Cato could see through. That much matched their previous experiments.

As the shadow darkened with increasing power however, the fade out effect began to spread outwards. And it didn't stop at the boundary of the effect. Even when the table within entire sphere of shadow, now a sharply defined region, was invisible, the fade out effect had simply spread outwards beyond the boundaries. Eventually, with a great amount of magic, the faded circle of the table had spread so far that a circular section of table outside the shadow region had disappeared as well.

"Now watch," Landar said, picking up a biscuit from the plate they had moved aside. She used the edge of the biscuit to tap the invisible region of the table outside the shadow ball, upon which the biscuit passed right through, as if there wasn't a table there at all.

Cato blinked and looked at Landar, who just shrugged. She stuck a hand underneath the table and dropped the biscuit. It fell through, not even fading in the slightest. Landar then dropped the biscuit into the middle of the shadow effect where it promptly hit the floor.

She held the magic for a moment longer before releasing the spell. The shadow ball dispersed slowly, the faded region of table shrinking in reverse until until the unchanged table returned to where there used to be a hole. The alchemist sitting across the table smiled at him, with a hint of smugness. "Explain that. "

Cato frowned and had her repeat the experiment while he got a long spoon to stick into the shadow. As the spoon was still shorter than the zone of disappearing table, this resulted in a slight panic when Cato felt the spoon being pulled as if tugged from his hand and his fingers began to fade out. Dropping the spoon in a rush, Cato's faded fingers quickly snapped back.

"It's all right, Landar," Cato patted her hand with the experimental hand, "the piyos all survived being passed through the shadow area. It'll be fine. "

"But we don't know for sure. "

"Then let's take this as a lesson, my fingers can be an experimental test on safety," he said wryly. It was already too late if the shadows turned out to give him cancer or something equally horrible.

Landar looked apologetic but that could never last when the puzzle remained unsolved. She perked up in just a few seconds to ask, "so, any ideas?"

Cato thought through the list. Two small objects would hit each other, two long rods also hit each other, but putting a part of a table allowed other objects through?

He knocked on his table a few times but could find nothing interesting. The cheap plywood was a little flexible but not enough to seriously bend or be damaged by even magical tests. And there was that sensation of movement when he stuck the spoon in. It felt much like the acceleration magic.

But the spoon wasn't moving...

And there was how his hand had faded in and out when he had released the spoon...

... perhaps the spoon was moving after all?

"Four dimensional space?!"

A/N: This story was originally conceived as a platform to explore a rise to magitech. And despite all that, I think it's only really here that I finally get to the beginnings of casual use of magic to do everything.

There were good reasons to take this long, to develop characters, the setting, the magic system. But gods, that took forever!