Chapter 89 - Overestimation
“The thread itself seems completely ordinary... I wonder, if you just replicate the weaving method, would it really end up with the same properties?”
Auf held the towel fabric up to the light, carefully examining its distinctive weave.
Even after unraveling the towel and extracting a single strand, then closely observing its strength and absorbency, it appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary cotton thread.
If anything, when looking at the thread alone, the fibers from Thread Dungeon—with their unnaturally high durability or bizarre quick-drying properties—seemed far more advanced.
“So this must be something that was considered completely normal technology in the world where the Hot Spring Dungeon’s will once resided, right? Then it should be reproducible. The only difference seems to be in the way the cloth is woven.”
She wanted to use this towel as a reference and recreate it using cotton thread from the Kingdom of Sepans, but unfortunately, Auf didn’t possess that kind of skill.
Back when she had been a shut-in, she had tried knitting, but at best she had only managed to produce clumsy wool hats and gloves.
So instead, she meticulously disassembled the towel, recorded her best possible deductions about how it had been woven, and resigned herself to leaving the actual weaving to professional cloth artisans.
“Then there’s the bath that keeps spraying water with that much force.
That must also be a completely ordinary technology in that world, right?
But how on earth do they produce water pressure strong enough to spray like that...?”
It seemed like it would require some absurdly large-scale mechanism—perhaps using the immense pressure generated from a massive volume of water at a high elevation—to achieve such high-pressure jets.
In Sepans, there were already fountains that bubbled up using natural methods like that.
But she couldn’t imagine those methods producing enough pressure to sharply massage the human body.
Perhaps it might be possible with a ridiculous volume of water like a massive waterfall, or by drawing water from an extremely high-altitude source.
But that would make it incredibly limited and overly complex.
“Would anyone really build such a massive, elaborate system just so a bath could massage your body and feel good?
...No, that’s just impossible.”
There had to be another way.
A technology simple enough to generate strong water pressure, something you could justify using just to massage your body in a bath...
Auf had been relentlessly searching for answers, sacrificing even her sleep, but so far she hadn’t come up with a single clever idea.
Captain Touji and Vihita, on the other hand, saw the jet bath as nothing more than a strange kind of bath. Even after trying it, their reactions amounted to little more than, “Ah, it feels nice on the lower back and legs.”
None of the knights thought it was something worth going all out to reproduce.
But for Auf, after hearing just a little about it, she had become absolutely convinced of something:
If its mechanism could be recreated, it could overturn the very foundations of the world.
“If a technology capable of generating that kind of force were invented, wouldn’t it completely replace all natural power systems like waterwheels and windmills...?
And if ships could freely use that water pressure, they wouldn’t be at the mercy of the wind anymore. You could build high-speed vessels. Even sailing ships, the backbone of national trade, would become obsolete...
This is something incredible.”
In the society of the modern world, electricity was generated using natural forces, and that electricity powered machines, creating all kinds of conveniences.
So even if the technology from the Hot Spring Dungeon’s world were reproduced, it wouldn’t actually eliminate natural power systems the way Auf imagined.
In that sense, her thinking had leapt a bit too far ahead.
“Ahh, I want to hear Vihita’s full report already. I want a detailed breakdown of those spraying hot springs, I want to see diagrams, I want to see it...”
While Vihta was being subjected to forced muscle-training experiments...
...Auf had wrapped her face in a fluffy towel and rolled around on her bed, eagerly awaiting the report, writhing in anticipation.
As she rolled about, someone knocked on her door.
“Lady Auf, are you in? A guest has arrived to see you.”
“Oh, understood.”
Who could it be?
A researcher of mobile dwellings? A glass technician? Someone from the dungeon archives? Or perhaps...
There were too many possibilities. She couldn’t narrow it down.
Even Auf, once an idle hobbyist researcher, had become thoroughly busy.
“It has been a while, Lady Auf. I am Shield Barsch, commander of the Marponware Order of Female Knights. Please forgive this sudden visit.”
When she went down to the guest lounge, she found Captain Shield dressed in casual attire.
The last time they had met in person had been long ago at the dungeon archives, when Auf had received the report about the first-ever Japanese sake drop obtained from the No-Hunger Dungeon.
The fact that she wasn’t in armor likely served as proof that she wasn’t armed, or perhaps that she hadn’t come in her official capacity as commander of the Marponware Knights.
For Auf, this visitor had been entirely unexpected.
“Oh my, Commander Shield? It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”
This was the woman who had apparently forced her way into the Kingdom of Sepans out of sheer love for alcohol. What could she have come to discuss with her?
Was it about liquor?
It was about liquor.
“So, in other words, that drink was something you created while attempting to recreate the strong alcohol that came out of the dungeon, Lady Auf?”
“Yes. Alcohol seems to evaporate faster than water, so instead of boiling it directly over a flame, I heated it gently in a water bath and extracted it little by little.”
In short, it seemed she had come to ask about the fact that Auf had essentially invented something akin to distilled spirits.
The reason she was dressed casually, it appeared, was also to signal that she wasn’t on duty as a knight today, and therefore, she could drink.
At Auf’s request, the maid brought out several bottles: dungeon-sourced sake and whiskey, along with a few distilled spirits that had recently begun to be produced in Sepans.
Commander Sild, trusting her own palate, remarked that sake was likely made from rice.
As for whiskey, she speculated that if a distilled spirit were given a smoky aroma and aged, it might become something like whiskey.
“So you’re saying, if we put distilled spirits into something like a honey jar and let it sit together with charred smoke wood, it might turn into whiskey?”
“Most likely... although it feels as though it has undergone quite a long aging process. At the very least, I don’t think we’d see results for several months.”
In reality, whiskey was made by charring the inside of barrels crafted from wood often used for smoking, then filling them with distilled spirits and aging them over long periods.
So Commander Shield’s hypothesis wasn’t far off at all.
“The distilled spirit you’ve made here, Lady Auf... is it perhaps derived from potatoes?
If I may speculate, I believe a version made from a crop called corn—harvested from the No-Hunger Dungeon—might yield a flavor closer to that.”
In Sepans, they were currently experimenting with making all kinds of alcohol using crops obtained from that dungeon.
Among them, there should have been small quantities of corn-based liquor as well.
...Had this captain really gone and tasted every single experimental batch?
The fact that she hadn’t simply limited herself to enjoying the overwhelmingly delicious dungeon-produced whiskey and sake made it clear—
Captain Shield wasn’t just someone with a refined palate; she was a true enthusiast who sought knowledge about alcohol itself.
“Would you like to observe the distillation process as well?”
“Of course! I would be honored to see it!”
“Very well then. Old Man, prepare a carriage and guide us to the distillation research facility.”
“Oh, my apologies, but I’ve already toured that facility several times.”
“Pardon?”
“I would very much like to see the original distillation apparatus that you created, Lady Auf!”
Auf recoiled slightly.
“Huh...? But... that’s just something I cobbled together myself. It’s really quite crude...”
“That’s precisely what I wish to see! It is the very first device that undeniably pushed the history of alcohol civilization one step forward!
A true achievement that deserves to be engraved in the annals of history! A great feat! You could even be called the mother of distilled spirits!”
“I... well, I’m really just imitating what the No-Hunger Dungeon produced... more like a reproducer than anything... haha...”
Faced with the way Commander Shield looked at her—with the reverence one might reserve for a great historical figure—Auf couldn’t help but shrink back.
Fanatical engineers and hobbyists with bloodshot eyes over their passions didn’t bother her at all. In fact, she felt a certain kinship with them.
But when the object of that obsession became herself, or something she had made, it made her uneasy.
Auf was only good at taking the very first step in reproducing something. After that, the long, painstaking refinement was almost always left to specialists.
It was the same with mobile housing, with towels. She merely drafted rough concepts and directions, like “maybe it could be made this way,” and left the rest to skilled craftsmen.
The same went for alcohol. All she had done was make it stronger.
If anything, wasn’t Commander Shield—who could analyze dungeon-produced alcohol by taste and attempt to recreate it—far more impressive?
Honestly, this was nothing but an overestimation.
At least, that was how Auf saw it.
Even if she refused to show it, she had a feeling Shield would only grow more impassioned, piling on further praise until she was overwhelmed. So Auf decided to just show her the thing and be done with it.
Once she had demonstrated how distilled spirits were made and the craftsmen had understood the process, the device had become nothing more than a useless relic to her.
It should still be sitting somewhere in the back of the dungeon research lab’s storage.
A distillation apparatus, crudely assembled by cutting and welding together existing pots and pipes at random.
Seeing it again for the first time in a while, the device looked even worse than she remembered. The welding was crude, the construction clumsy. Auf found it oddly embarrassing to have anyone look at it.
“Oho... so this is the equipment that set the history of distilled spirits into motion.”
Commander Shield gazed at it with sparkling eyes. To her, even its handmade roughness seemed almost divine.
It had been a long time since the device was last used, so the procedure felt a little hazy.
She couldn’t rely on the maids to operate it. None of them understood its structure at all.
So Auf prepared the distiller herself.
“...And then, if we heat it from here, the distilled alcohol should gradually start to come out.
I’ve heard that the very first drops contain a lot of strange impurities and can make you feel sick if you drink them, so...
...it’s best to discard the initial portion.”
She said this as she continued heating it, but no alcohol came out at all.
“Huh? That’s strange... It should be coming out soon. Did I keep the heat too low?”
It had been a while since she’d used it, so she couldn’t quite gauge the temperature.
She increased the heat a little and waited.
Then, the pot began to rattle unnaturally.
“—! Lady Auf! Please step back!”
The moment Commander Shield moved to shield her, the welded section of the pipe atop the pot burst loose with a sharp pop and flew off.
Perhaps some impurity had hardened inside and clogged the pipe. Or maybe the welded joint itself had weakened.
Either way, the pressure from the steam had built up beyond its limit, and the pipe had blown out.
“Phew... Are you alright?”
The pipe had only popped off and flown a short distance, nothing particularly serious.
The attending maids and the escorting knights looked slightly embarrassed at their delayed reactions compared to Commander Shield, but none of them considered it a major incident.
But Auf stood there, eyes wide open, staring intently at the blown-off pipe and the steam spilling out from the pot.
“Um... Lady Auf? Is something wrong?”
Had she been shocked that her handmade device had broken?
Or perhaps the sudden explosion had startled her more than expected?
“I see... If you fill an enclosed space with steam, you can generate tremendous pressure... Could this be... the true nature of future power?”
“Huh? Um... what are you saying?”
The moment she saw the pipe burst off, something had burst inside Auf’s mind as well.
It was like the moment Archimedes had realized how to measure a golden crown and cried “Eureka!” while running naked through the streets.
Or like the instant Helen Keller had grasped the concept of words and kept shouting “Water! Water!”
“The incredibly high-performance metal that’s recently started coming from the Iron Dungeon... with that, we could withstand even this intense pressure...”
The people around her called out, “Um... Lady Auf? Are you all right?” but none of it reached her ears.
At that moment, every cell in her brain was devoted to one thing: what could be achieved with steam pressure.
“Enhancing equipment to create tools capable of precisely processing that hard metal...? A restoration bath to eliminate even the smallest seams for perfect airtightness...?
And finally, a bath that expels water as a hint toward future power... Was the will of the Hot Spring Dungeon guiding me...?”
Her thoughts spiraled, leaping wildly, connecting things that made no sense, convincing herself that this and that had all been hints leading to the concept of a steam engine.
If Vihita had been there, she would have simply thought, “Sigh, it’s starting again.”
But those around her, unaccustomed to guarding Auf, could only panic as she drifted deeper into her own world, her words and behavior growing increasingly strange.
The will of the Hot Spring Dungeon had been delivering future technology to them all along, raising the very foundation of civilization itself.
Just how far ahead had it been thinking? What was it really trying to accomplish?
By the end, Auf had even begun entertaining such delusions. Though of course, the so-called Hot Spring master had never thought that far ahead.
Honestly, this was overestimation taken to the extreme.
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