Ch.7 Mass Production, Waterwheel, and the Assembly Line (Patreon)

Dark clouds hung over the bustling city of Silverbrook. While everyone was out and about, they spoke in whispers when they saw new people, reflecting the fear of the recent sickness.

"Thankfully, it hasn't spread far," I noted, observing a quarantined slum that had been barricaded off. "We have to ensure that people start washing their hands with insecticidal soap immediately."

The bubonic plague is spread through fleas, so my soap will contain high levels of stearic acid from beef fat, and pyrethroids extracted from chrysanthemum flowers, to kill them.

Stearic acid is the fatty acid in beef fat that makes soap hard. When concentrated, it can disrupt the waxy outer layer of insect exoskeletons, leading to excessive water loss, dehydration, and death. Additionally, chrysanthemum flowers contain a modern insecticide that disrupts the transmission of nerve impulses in insects.

In short, concentrated beef acid and certain flowers will kill fleas.

While this combination is not as effective as specialized flea-killing insecticides, I am limited in what I can create. My power is not scalable and doesn't synthesize molecules right now. Therefore, finding, breaking apart, and synthesizing the building blocks for modern insecticides like organophosphates, carbamates, and neonicotinoids is impractical.

However, I can obtain large quantities of stearic acid and pyrethroids to add to my soap. This combination will be murderous enough to address the flea problem and solve hygiene issues within my limitations.

Lyssa served as my negotiator alongside the royal guards. I found it much easier to have her speak for me, as people complied with my orders but felt awkward communicating with a ten-year-old about meat supply chains, guild output, and regulations.

Fortunately, Lyssa had learned to speak for me since I was young, and now she could almost read my thoughts.

One after another, we visited every butcher and agreed to purchase all their non-soap-related fat at a fair price. It wasn't as cheap as I would have liked, as tallow was essential for food preservation, soap making, candle making, and animal feed. Therefore, we had to buy out existing contracts and support the candle makers by helping them import beeswax candles. Later, I planned to teach people how to hydrogenate soybean oil to produce industrial quantities of candle wax, which would completely resolve the issue. For now, we were just addressing immediate concerns.

After negotiating deals with the butchers, we slept in an inn and hit the ground running the next day by going to a carpentry guild.

“Ye wanta large… wheel?” asked a man with a leathery face, long beard, and graying, braided hair. He walked up to me after removing his gloves, revealing his calloused hands. "What fer?"

-

-

"It's not a normal wheel, Mr. Rudger," Lyssa replied. "It's a wheel with paddles that goes into a stream. When the water runs over the paddles, it spins."

A waterwheel. The start of automated manufacturing.

“That didn’t answer the what fer,” Timothy Rudger, head of the Silverbrook Carpentry guild, furrowed his brows. “I’ll make ye a wheel, but it don’t make no sense, and that makes me worried.”

"Does it matter why?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"I think he's worried that if he doesn't know what it is, he'll make it poorly, and we'll get angry," I replied. "Is that right?"

"Ye, that's right, kiddo," Timothy replied. “I just needa know what fer, and I’ll make it fer ye no problem.”

"Great..." I smacked, feeling less confident in the man's intelligence by the second. After pulling out a piece of paper, I handed it to him. "The waterwheel has a bar in the center that spins. I'm going to use that to... mix bread dough without arm strength."

Imagine an electric mixer. It spins, whipping cookie dough to make a tasty delight. A waterwheel does the same thing, only the wheel spins the mixer bar, and the river water is the engine.

Naturally, people wouldn't lift the dough bowl to spin it. There would be mechanical components that convert the horizontal spinning motion of the bar into vertical actions.

In the future, I would use this technology to create a "trip hammer" and a blast furnace, which would automate blacksmithing and weapons manufacturing. However, for now, I just needed a stamp that would cut soap bars without the need to carve or weigh them. Moreover, it would stamp our logo so everyone knew who was saving their life.

After showing the man the blueprints I drew, he looked at me with a perplexed expression.

“Ye draw these here blueprints?” Timothy asked, getting a nod. “Did ye learn these things in th’ capital? I could use someone that could do this. Cuz I still ain’t got no clue what ye want this fer, but I now know how to make ‘er just fine.”

I smiled and shook my head. "It simply requires drawing skills," I replied. "Just give a street rat a pencil and a year, then provide them with training. After that, you'll have blueprint makers."

“Is that so?” Timothy mused. “Well, anywey, we’ll have ‘er done in a few days. Prototype, as ye call it.”

"Excellent," I smiled, bidding him farewell and heading to the Silverbrook Blacksmith Guild, the leading group for blacksmithing and ironwork.

As before, Lyssa explained that we required expedited production of specialized parts. After preliminary negotiations, the blacksmith asked about my specific needs.

"What the hell is this?" the burly, bald man with a short beard and a twisted gaze asked, examining the drawing I handed him.

-

-

"It's a reverse cast of a soap mold, Mr. Phobes," I replied. "The bar cutter will shape and cut the soap into a square, and then this cast will mold it and imprint it with my family's insignia."

Imagine a cookie cutter precisely cutting out a square shape from the dough and then placing it in a muffin tin to give it shape. It's like that, but the shape would be a soap bar with my family's logo.

"That's not the issue here..." Carter Phobes, the head of the Silverbrook Blacksmith Guild, responded. "The problem is that the metal bar you're looking for is too heavy for ordinary people to lift, let alone use for stamping."

It was a 100-pound rod made of wrought iron featuring a large hook at one end.

"That's what the semi-circular thing is for," I replied, pointing at a pulley drawing. "Rope will pass around it, and when someone pulls the rope, it will lift the bar with less effort."

The waterwheel will pull the rope instead of a person. Pulling a lever would drop the cookie cutter and reattach it, allowing the waterwheel to lift the bar again. Simple automation.

“I still don’t get why you wouldn’t just do it by hand….” Carter frowned. “And all these other strange pieces?”

Axle. Lever. Linkage system. Latch. Ratchet. All bare-bones versions for now.

Those intricate parts allow the bar to drop and then reattach to be lifted again. Without them, the water wheel would continue lifting the bar indefinitely instead of dropping it.

They may not be complex for modern engineers who consider them child's play. However, in this society, explaining them to laypeople would cause their eyes to glaze over. It was much easier to have the blacksmith create the parts and set them up myself before teaching others.

"It's difficult to explain. However, I made this ruler to simplify the process," I said, pulling out a ruler with large numbers. "With this, you match the number on the drawing to the number on this ruler, and you'll create it perfectly without any doubts."

"Hey, hey!" Carter exclaimed, a wide smile on his face. "Why didn’t ya just say that? I'll have it done for you in a few days, no problem."

"Excellent," I smiled. I was relieved that progress came easily when it made individuals' lives easier. With that, I left the blacksmith guild.

After lunch, we visited a brewhouse and purchased a few dozen barrels before ordering a large, basic kiln from the main pottery guild to be made in the crimsonwood forest. It wouldn't be completed this week, but it would be an investment.

With those tasks taken care of, everyone went to sleep.

The next morning, we ventured into the nearby crimsonwood forest.

"Okay, spread out and dig a 20-foot pit using boulders," I instructed my guards. "Thea, look for the trees I pointed out."

The adorable cat girl nodded and closed her eyes, possessing a hawk mid-flight and soaring over the forest to search for beech, ash, hickory, maple, oak, soapbark, cottonwood, red alder, and other trees that produced potassium hydroxide from their leeched ashes.

While everyone worked on digging the temporary pit, I followed the hawk until I found the designated tree. Then I commanded my omnipotent tool to create an enormous, incredibly thin blade and used Molecular Separation to effortlessly cut through the trees, stacking up a significant amount of wood in no time.

With the wood now in pieces, I stored them in my spatial bags, which shrunk the wood to the size of toothpicks. These bags were incredibly expensive, but obtaining them was easy as a noble and someone who received numerous gifts as a suitor to the princess.

For the next six hours, my knights watched in disbelief as I returned with massive stacks of wood that quickly piled up to twenty feet high and fifty feet across.

"Start stacking them up, boys," I ordered. "Don't stop until you have a funeral pyre worthy of a king!"

Following my instructions, the guards began stacking the massive logs, building a small fortress in a block-by-block fashion that could indeed hold a king until it grew into a colossal structure.

"That's enough, let's get this party started!" I grinned. "Infernus super terram descendit, raptum et flammas damnatorias adferens. Nullus peccator evadet flammis eius, antequam terram in cinerem comburat!"

The massive fireball I conjured above Silverbrook crashed into the pyre, igniting it with surreal heat.

"Da praesidium circa fratres meos et eos serva incolumes in absentia mea!" I continued, and a massive iridescent dome enveloped the roaring fire, keeping the ashes and flames contained while still allowing oxygen to pass through.

I internally chuckled, providing the English translation: "Grant protection around my brethren and keep them safe in my absence. Only humans would turn a protection spell into the Seventh Circle of Hell."

The spell I employed allowed the caster to create a barrier around others instead of themselves. However, I used it to trap things within the flames. What a human thing to do.

Within seconds, the dome transformed into a black, ominous cloud that appeared like an alternate dimension. However, it didn't last long. Due to the intense heat and the fire's inability to spread, the fuel dwindled, and the area cooled, leaving behind an unbelievably vast amount of ash in the pit.

When I finally released the spell, the ash exploded in the light breeze, demonstrating why I had ordered a massive kiln from the pottery guild. Both the pyre and the kiln were temporary solutions.

In the future, we would gather ashes from various businesses or our own steam furnaces. But for now, we were merely creating a proof of concept on a larger scale.

Immediate results.

Once we collected the ash into the barrels, I clapped my hands. "Good work today, everyone," I smiled. "Drinks are on me tonight!"

A roar of excitement spread through the forest.

That night, we had a grand feast in the city center, attracting the attention of as many people as possible.

"Isn't it a bad idea to gather people together when there's a spreading sickness?" Lyssa asked, looking at me suspiciously.

"Of course it is. It's probably the worst thing you can do," I shrugged, relishing in watching her expression twist. "Un~less you're planning to get people addicted to soap."

Lyssa blinked twice with bloodshot eyes and gulped, her gaze turning to me. "Excuse me, what?"

"I said I'm requiring people to wash their hands before they get their drinks," I replied, pulling out a bar of Heartbeat Hibiscus soap. "If there's something that can make people willingly change their habits and expand their minds, it's drugs."

These people had to eat, and to eat, they had to work. I could whip them into a frenzy and prove the scientific evidence of the plague, and they still wouldn't stop going to the marketplace to buy food or go into lockdown for a week. They couldn’t.

Instead, I decided to make soap "fun" and distribute it for free to the poor while offering a higher quality version to the wealthy. It was a practical approach. However—

“Ryker Alexander Everwood, you can’t just give Heartbeat Hibiscus to everyone,” Lyssa hissed, using my full name. “It’ll turn this place into a madhouse!”

I rolled my eyes, as the soap didn't affect me much. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Ignoring her warning, I bought up all the beer from the breweries that day and sent messengers out to announce that there was free beer.

As hundreds of people flooded in, I set up ten troughs with water and bars of soap.

"To get free beer, you must wash your hands with Everwood Soap!" I announced. "It's free! So scrub away all that dirt!"

As they washed, I worked with Michael Underwood, the head of the guards, to spot people with the plague by swollen lymph nodes and symptoms and take them to a quarantine area. This was also my sneaky checkpoint.

Everything went smoothly at first. The cooks in the kitchen were making a fortune, and people were drunk and happy.

However, after everyone washed their hands and entered the brewery, the depression created by living in a disease-ridden city filled with struggle and starvation vanished, and couples began showing a bit too much affection.

***

Three hours later.

I stared in shock at the aftermath in the city's eatery. There was booze spilled everywhere, furniture broken and toppled over.

"I promise to pay for the damages," I said, carrying Thea's smiling body in a princess carry.

The female owner gave me a satisfied grin, slung over a bar. “Nahhhhh, I made enough money to fix ‘er myself,” she smiled. “That was the first time I didn’t feel like shit in who knows when. So keep your money. I’m compin’ your portion.”

I looked at the devastation that looked like a cyclone had tried to make love to a tornado and then back at her. 'I'll come back when she's back to her right mind,' I internally sighed before saying goodbye.

As I stepped outside, hundreds of people were drinking and laughing in the streets, hugging and having a great time.

When they saw me, they erupted in wild cheers.

"Note to self," I sighed. "Emotion-altering magic doesn't affect me much, but it has a significant effect on other people—especially if they're not mages."

I later learned that mages and nobles develop “spiritual fortification,” which is similar to mental endurance training but for mental magic. So the soap didn’t work on my muted emotions, and the king and nobles had high spiritual fortification.

However, commoners had regular emotions and no spirit fortification. Therefore it turned into a madhouse that required a truly remarkable amount of skill to prevent turning weird. Thankfully, I told people that kissing and touching would get them blacklisted from the soap, and their amygdala triggered their fight-or-flight response, keeping them in check.

It was gruesome—but it worked.

Since I prevented people from making regrettable mistakes, they would wake up feeling like tonight was the best night of their lives. Mission accomplished.

***

Lyssa and I walked into the Silverbrook Soapmaking Guild the next morning.

"Are you here for the Pink Soap, too?" a woman with a curly ponytail and fierce brown eyes, wearing a tan apron, asked. "We don't carry it."

"Would you like to, Ms. Turing?" I asked.

-

-

Peggy Turing looked at me with vicious eyes, conveying her intention to kill me if not for the presence of two large guards by my side. "What kind of extortion are you trying to pull?" she sneered. "It's already hard enough to make ends meet."

Lyssa made me conceal my identity because she didn't want to cause panic by revealing that Margrave Everwood was disrupting established guilds. It could have serious political consequences. Instead, she intended to let my products speak for themselves.

"This isn't extortion because we don't want to exploit your secrets, use your equipment, or force you work for us," Lyssa explained. "On the contrary, we're offering to teach you our soap-making techniques and allow you to use our equipment in exchange for collaboration."

Peggy trembled with anger and humiliation. "You've walked into the largest soap-making guild in the region, and you have the audacity to ask me to work for you and imply that you can teach me? Get out."

Lyssa didn't hesitate. The black-haired woman opened a box containing Heartbeat Hibiscus soap and placed it on the counter.

"Did you not hear me?!" Peggy snapped, raising her hand as if to knock the box off the counter. "I said—" She froze when an icy wave of dread washed over her, leaving her petrified in position.

"I suggest you open that box," I growled from under my hood, releasing my magical pressure. "Because I have no respect for those who disrespect others without knowing what they're up against. If you don't want to acknowledge your competition, I won't hesitate to ruthlessly drive you out of business."

"W-Who are you?" she stammered, seeing a serpent with a pre-pubescent voice.

"Open the box," I commanded.

Peggy swallowed hard, undid the light yellow bow on the box, and looked inside. When she saw the light blue bar with the scent of "Radiant Rainferns," she whispered, "How did you make this soap smell like fresh flowers?"

"I'll teach you if you agree to collaborate," I replied. "Please, give it a try."

As the woman's hand touched the soap, her eyes widened in shock. "It's so smooth," she said. After swallowing, she started washing her hands, and her jaw dropped in disbelief as she saw the suds and felt the soft yet effective exfoliation removing dead skin cells.

Furthermore, her mind calmed down, and her anxiety vanished, bringing tears to her eyes. She had been under immense stress since she received her first request for Heartbeat Hibiscus soap, and taking a moment to slow down brought her immense joy. "Who are you?"

"I am the person offering to make you the world's top soap maker," I replied, removing my hood and revealing my youthful appearance. "If you join me, I'll make you rich and famous beyond your imagination. But it starts with you acknowledging that you're not the world's top soap maker—yet."

Peggy gulped. “And you are?”

"I am," I answered. "The only other person I gifted this soap to was the king. He has granted me a monopoly on magical soap, and within five years, I will establish a continent-wide industry. The question is, do you want to be at the top of that? Guildmaster Peggy Turing."

“T-The king,” Peggy stuttered, looking at the soap and realizing she was up against someone with higher connections than the royal soap makers. Then she swallowed. "W-What do you want?"

"I'll give you a twenty-gold signing bonus and 5% of your soap sales in this region, excluding magical soap sales and custom orders I personally handle," I replied. "While it may not sound like much, we will be producing three thousand bars daily within the next month."

"Three thousand A DAY?!" Peggy exclaimed, momentarily forgetting the effects of the soap. She instinctively used the soap again, calming herself down before bowing and apologizing.

"Yes, per day," I smiled. "Within the first year, we'll be producing twenty-five thousand a day. Do you have the ambition to be on top of that?"

Peggy's cheek twitched. "Yes..." she swallowed, feeling the soap in her hand. Then she bowed. "It's unbelievably embarrassing to say at my age, but please take me on as your apprentice! I'll cook and clean for you!"

"I'll teach you, yes," I cringed, feeling uncomfortable. "But I won't take you on as an apprentice, and I don't need you to cook or clean for me. I won't be here for long."

Her eyes trembled with terror. "Why?"

"We apologize for not disclosing this information earlier, but you're speaking to Lord Everwood, the son of Margrave Everwood," Lyssa announced.

The woman started screeching and apologizing, giving me a pounding headache until she calmed down.

"Please gather all your journeymen and masters and meet us in the plaza tomorrow morning with all the lye water you have," I instructed. "I'll be teaching your entire guild, and we'll start immediately. Make it happen."

"Yes, master!" Peggy bowed deeply and maintained the position until I left.

I looked at Lyssa once we were outside. "Can't we just tell people I'm a Margrave first?" I frowned. "Every guild is profiting from us right now. These people would do anything for the money I'm about to make them."

Lyssa opened her mouth and closed it. Then she turned to me, sighing in exasperation. After a few more minutes of trying to ignore me, she finally scoffed in annoyance. "Whatever," she said. "Go ahead and make yourself known to everyone. It's not like you know how to do anything else."

“Thank~you,” I chimed with a shit-eating grin while Thea giggled and pinched Lyssa until the woman smiled.

***

The next morning, I met with a dozen men and women from the Silverbrook Soapmaking Guild. I stood on the foundation of a fountain after Peggy gave me a near-religious introduction and Lyssa introduced me as the son of Margrave Everwood.

After that, everyone was too bewildered, terrified, and intrigued to question what I was about to say.

"If we want to produce consistent soap, we need standardized processes," I announced. "Today, we'll learn how to make crystalline lye so that we can create recipes with absolute precision. Now, let's get started!"

After my words, we ventured into the forest, where I had set up large troughs.

"Pour all your lye into the troughs, and we'll let it evaporate," I instructed. "That's all."

Peggy and the masters twitched, their minds struggling to simultaneously show respect and find a way to call me an idiot. No one wanted to "waste" lye!

I rolled my eyes, retrieved a transparent glass, and poured lye water into it. "Evapora aquam et intuere veritatem!" I exclaimed, watching all the water vapors vanish, leaving only lye.

Naturally, I used molecular separation instead of a spell, and the incantation, which loosely translated to "Evaporate water and behold the truth!" in Skylandish, was merely a fabrication. Nevertheless, their eyes sparkled as if they were witnessing a divine revelation.

"This is what makes soap," I declared. "The water is inconsequential. By collecting this, we can always use the exact amount of lye and water required. Now pay close attention to the next part, as founding members of the Everwood Soap Company."

Everyone held their breath and listened intently.

"We won't refer to this magical trade secret as lye," I said, speaking the language understood by all guilds. "Instead, we shall call it 'potassium hydroxide' and label it the secret ingredient we'll sell at exorbitant prices."

“Potassium…” a female soapmaker master whispered.

"Hydroxide?" a man next to her followed.

"Potassium hydroxide!" Peggy exclaimed. "So it shall be!"

Like a cult, they erupted into applause and secretly began producing magical potassium hydroxide in the forest.

This continued for an hour, as there wasn't much else to do. Then I addressed everyone. "Now that we know how to make potassium hydroxide, it's time to hire workers to do the leeching. We're producing thousands of bars of soap daily, so you can't waste time on menial tasks!"

Excitement coursed through the soapmakers. The problem with the guild system was that even the most basic tasks, like soaking ash in water and mixing it, were considered "trade secrets." As a result, the masters spent all their time on inefficient processes, which they were now freed from for the first time. It was genuinely exciting.

We headed to a nearby farming area where Lyssa had gathered a dozen women.

"These are the ones," Lyssa said. "They have good reputations."

"Welcome aboard," I said, nodding and grabbing a large sack. "Here, we have twenty pounds of lye ash, which we will use to make lye water. It only requires wetting the ash with water, but there are tricks and your new supervisors will teach you. Follow their instructions and be kind.

With that brief introduction, each of the dozen guild members began teaching one worker how to create lye using the ash I had collected the previous day.

"Don't forget to stir it every six hours," I reminded them before dismissing the guild members and the workers.

And so, the first day ended.

***

A week passed, and we accumulated lye by the kilo. Meanwhile, we paid our serfs to boil the fat and accumulated two metric tons of tallow and glycerin.

Today was the day everything would change, as the blacksmith and carpentry guilds met me at the Windchime River to help me assemble and install the waterwheel.

The Windchime River got its name from the reeds in the water that produce harmonic sounds as the water passes through them, making the area sound beautiful and haunting, like a siren calling soldiers out at sea into the rocks.

It was truly surreal walking into the area and hearing nothing but music and the sound of rushing water, followed by the occasional chirp from birds. Seeing the green and gold reeds, multicolored flora, and fauna around the crimson trees made the area breathtaking.

“Are ye sure ye want this here wheel in that there river?” Timothy, the carpenter guild master, asked, motioning to his people to set up a large wheel on a stand that would bolt into the riverbed. “Ye know, cuz it’s right purty it is.”

"I still can't understand a goddamn thing you say, Tim," Carter, the muscular guild master of the blacksmithing guild, gruffed. "If the young master wants to mess up his river, that's his deal. We're just here to help him do it."

'I appreciate this man,' I thought with an internal smile. Then I looked at Timothy. "I'm sure. Thank you for your concern."

Timothy tipped his hat, and then they got to work bolting everything together with the help of screws from the blacksmithing guild. Once it was completed, the blacksmiths put a large iron rod into the center of the wheel and bolted it inside. It was called the axle, the part that would spin and do all the work.

After finishing, workers jumped into the water, lowered the stand into the river, and bolted it down. Once it was done, everyone started clapping, watching the water pass through the wheel's paddles, making it spin. As it did, the large bar in the center turned.

That was it.

-

-

"I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but it feels strangely satisfying," Carter laughed.

“Damn right she do,” Timothy smiled. “That there’s a good week’s work.”

"It's not done yet," I smiled, watching the carpenters set up a large wooden frame that would usually be part of a roof. In the center was a hook, and on that hook was an iron pulley that had been smoothed down until it shone like a gemstone.

I walked up, put a waxed rope around it, and started setting up the linkage system, latch, and ratchet, connecting it to a lever.

Once it was done, I had the men hoist it onto the hook and then connect it to the large soap stamp. Lastly, they set up the rope on the spinning axle, and their eyes widened in shock.

The water from the river effortlessly pulled the hundred-pound stamper bar in the air. I pulled out a large soft soap bar, placed it on the wooden table we had set up, and pulled the lever.

Thud.

With a fluid thud, the bar stamped down, squishing the soap into shape before rising back into the air as if nothing had ever happened. I handed them the bar, which bore the Everwood insignia and was perfectly shaped with clean edges.

It was modern soap.

While they gawked at it, I enjoyed tormenting them by repeatedly pulling the lever while counting with a smug smirk, reminding everyone that even a ten-year-old could do professional soap carving work. It was a thrilling experience for them to behold.

"I'm going to need another five of these," I announced, pulling out twenty gold coins and splitting them with the two men, whose eyes widened in shock. "So prioritize them with haste. If you do well, I'll eventually show you how to use one of these for each of your businesses."

Billows. Blast furnaces. Water-compressed trip hammers. Drills. Lathes.

After a surreal send-off, they left, leaving me to smile at my new waterwheel. "Next up is the assembly line."

***

With the first stage of the waterwheel completed, it was finally time to start making soap. We now had a hundred pounds of lye, which was not as much as it sounded. However, we had two metric tons of tallow—which was as much as it sounded.

"Today we're focusing on standardization," I announced to the soap makers, whose eyes sparkled as they looked at the newly stamped soap. "Everyone will weigh an exact quantity of potassium hydroxide and water when making soap. To do that, we'll be using scales I'm having the Silverbrook Blacksmith Guild create."

Everyone swallowed nervously and nodded.

"Each person will have one specific job," I continued. "The lye makers will make the lye, and the tallow strainers will prepare the tallow. You'll then combine them to make the soap, with the help of your assistants for mixing, while two people will work full-time to press the soap. We'll call this 'the assembly line,' another secret technique that only we, the elite soapmakers, possess."

Their nervousness transformed into excitement for the exclusivity and superiority they felt, as is human nature.

“Let’s get started,” I smiled.

I watched with satisfaction as the different groups mixed the soap in the shade, cut it with cookie cutters, and sent it to the table for stamping. The stamping process alone saved three hours per bar, considering that a carver wasn't involved in creating the insignia.

There was still a lot of room for improvement, but we were making soap for the commoners, not the nobility. Although it was comical because the soap we were producing was in a league of its own.

At the end of the first day, we created 537 bars of soap, leaving Peggy shocked. The woman had never felt so vindicated in her decision to close her guild and join me, a sentiment shared by the others, as well.

Not only did we have the best soap on the market, but we also had the largest quantity. We were about to take the market by storm.

'I wonder where I'm at with Molecular Separation,' I pondered, pulling up my status screen.

—

Unique usages: (753/1,000)

—

'It's only moved up by five points this trip, despite using it for everything,' I internally sighed. 'Once you use it enough, finding new applications becomes challenging.’

I paused for a moment.

‘I suppose that's a good thing,’ I added. ‘I'm unsure I'm ready for regular emotions and haven't visited the library. I also don't know when my hyperthymesia will start fading, and I have mixed feelings about it.'

Nothing has changed. Hyperthymesia remains a superpower in many aspects but also a crushing affliction that allows me to relive loss and pain in horrifying detail, down to feeling my skin boil, blister, and burst from the fire magic Alphonse used on me.

Hyperthymesia is a debilitating disorder. That's a fact. It's not cool, and no one was right to judge me for wanting to rid myself of it or for wanting to experience happiness, love, and relationships.

That's what I came here to do. Yet all I've gained is improved manipulation skills, trust only in Thea, and the ability to kill without remorse.

Don't get me wrong—it's been a blast. That's why I hope to be myself and not suffer simultaneously. Still, I'm nervous. What will happen? Will it change me?

I abruptly regretted asking for normal emotions because Aphrodite said obtaining them was mandatory. It filled me with dread.