章 92: The Lab (Part 1)
The party departed Ezra's Farm estate shortly after resting in the villa. The party shortly departed back toward the city and they arrived half an hour later. It took a little more time to arrive at Ezra's lab.
"You mentioned lab?" Hestia asked curiously at Ezra, "What exactly is a lab?"
"Well, it's a place where I conduct tests and build things."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see when we get there." Ezra smiled lightly. It was weird but he felt quite excited to let other people see his work.
Rycharde and Evered noticed and chuckled inwardly. They thought that despite his overwhelming intelligence there were still times he acted like a child. They noticed that he liked showing off a bit, however to those who didn't know Ezra thoroughly, his actions would be looked at as totally normal.
They saw oddly shaped building sticking out like a sore thumb. The lab had undergone several refurbishments over the past few years. Of course, Ezra had given his designs after each iteration. It was five floors tall. It was quite taller than the other establishments in the smithing district. Its entrance was covered in glass planes that were attached to steel bars.
There were guards standing by the arcade side by side in front of the doorway bearing their spears. They bowed and greeted the Ezra and the princess ceremoniously and resumed their indifferent long gazes.
Everyone from the imperial capital looked at the oddly shaped building. Some of Hestia's servants tilted their heads to try to make sense of it.
Hestia gasped. This was a marvel to her. She knew that the steel used by Castle Blackfyre for this project was a lot. The whole building obviously cost quite a sum.
"Welcome to my lab princess." Ezra smiled.
The interior of the building was lavish and bedecked with ornaments however it wasn't as beautiful as the bank's inner halls. Initially, the waiting area was plain even shabby, however, with Aerwyna's insistence it was remodelled to be able to accommodate aristocrats.
The hall of the reception area was not high beamed.
Ezra then clapped his hands as they entered welcoming them officially inside what he considered his second home.
"Though I would like very much to let you enter the premises beyond the reception hall I am sad to say that I cannot accommodate all of you. Only three people can enter aside me and my guard. " Ezra said loudly.
He immediately got weird looks from the princess retinue.
Ezra looked at Hestia and slightly bowed. "I am sorry princess there are things that are delicate inside the laboratory."
"I'm afraid only three of you can go inside if that is okay with you. "
"It is alright," Hestia replied.
There was a slight commotion from the among Hestia's party. They were Imperials and they prioritized the safety of Hestia first and foremost.
There were two guards who scanned the whole building using their magic when they were finished they looked at Erela, Hestia's Actrix and nodded.
"Looks like my Actrix is sufficient company for me." Hestia elaborated to Ezra. She knew that she could not step over the sovereignty of a noble in his estate. That was common courtesy If the noble did not want them to see a part of their domain they could not force the other party it was imperial law.
"Very well. Thank you for understanding." Ezra wanted the least amount of people to go inside, aside from the fact that there were apparatuses that were delicate. He didn't want a lot of people to look at his research. His main objective was to pique Hestia's curiosity. He was further relieved that she only took one person with her.
They entered a passageway to a room with an oaken desk. A quill and inkwell were neatly placed. However, there was paper on the desk. It looked like a table of values. The chair was lined with velvet and there were three couches and dozens upon dozens of shelves.
Hestia instinctively took a book to peruse its contents however to her surprise the letters were crisp, Too crisp as if it were not written by hand. The covers were not bound by leather and it did not seem the type of books that nobles had. The covers were made up of what seemed to be softer than wood and yet harder than paper. She saw seams on the back as it was sewn in place and was bound together with an adhesive.
The book was huge it seemed like it contained a thousand pages. She knew how tedious making a book was and this was a very thick one. Books were rarely this thick since they were handwritten. She opened to the first page of the book was a just a title page. It read "Microbiology: An introduction"
Hestia tilted her head and she couldn't understand the first word. It seemed that it was a made-up word. She flipped through the pages and she saw more words she couldn't understand. There were drawings and diagrams and pictures of different animals and weird squishy looking things.
She was both curious and yet she felt slightly nauseated from looking at it. She looked away.
"What is this Ezra?"
"It's a book," Ezra answered with a smile.
"I know that," Hestia frowned slightly. "But it's slightly different from what I am accustomed to."
"Oh, you mean you wonder why it is different from books in the capital? That is because we made that using a printing press. "
"A what? Oh, and the title is a word I have never seen before and there are some unfamiliar scratches at the bottom"
"It is a book about the building blocks of plants and animals," Ezra replied but didn't address the other part of Hestia's question. However, the unfamiliar scratches at the bottom were the author names written in English Ezra didn't have the heart to plagiarize other peoples work. Maybe someday he could tell the whole of the empire who these authors were.
"What do you mean?"
"I'll explain it to you some other time."
"Where exactly did you find all these books.?"
"They were stowed away in some old room in castle Blackfyre, it was an old library in my great grandfather's time. We restored the books using the printing press." While the room did exist, Ezra lied about how he got the books, he couldn't tell Hestia that they were books stored in his memory once he reincarnated. And he also hinted that these books were already rummaged by the Imperial Inquiry when Reitz joined the Augmenti.
"I have never seen such books in the empire though," Hestia said thoughtfully.
Erela went through one of the books and furrowed her brows but quickly put them back on the shelves. It seemed she was uninterested.
During the past five years Ezra wrote down, all of the books he had read and translated them, besides the effort in penning the actual book it was an easy task, it seemed that his brain could automatically translate from English to the imperial tongue, with the aid of magic augmentation he could even manage to copy a page in his mind in a minute or so provided that the book did not have too many illustrations in it. He prioritized ones that were the textbooks that he had used as a child. He then used the printing press to distribute books to some selected children at first.
He made friends with a few of them over Helio and he tasked his retinue to find street urchins. He pleaded with his father to take them in the training grounds so that he could educate them. Reitz allowed it, he reasoned he could use them as scribes in the future if ever Ezra's plan would fail and every first day of the week Ezra would teach them arithmetic and the decimal system.
Hestia had had her fill of the books. She could read them but understanding them was a whole different matter. The books in this room were purposefully complex, Ezra had another room where he stored the basic textbooks.
They entered an adjoined room and there were two servant boys in the room cranking a lever and winding a wheel. There was ink beside them and wood blocks that were carved.
Hestia gasped, the boys stood in attention immediately.
"Greeting Princess Hestia and Lord Ezra." Both of them bowed.
The two were former street urchins Ezra adopted into his fold. They had been with him for three years.
"What are they doing?" Hestia asked Ezra.
"This is one of our printing presses. It's actually an old model." Ezra smiled. " See that? "asked Ezra as he pointed to the top of the machine." They wind the wheel down and put ink there. Then they press it to the paper below. That is why the books you saw had crisp lettering"
"Ingenious!" Hestia exclaimed. "Who was the scribe who thought of this?" Hestia addressed the question to the whole room.
Ezra didn't answer.
"If I may be bold to answer the question," Rycharde stepped up. "It was Lord Ezra who actually designed this contraption, I was there when he proposed it to the Lord." Rycharde puffed up his chest as if he was the one who personally presented the idea.
"What?!?" Hestia was utterly dumbstruck as she gazed upon Ezra. This boy was truly miles ahead of her in every aspect.
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earldennison
earldennison I'm sorry I couldn't post one last week. I didn't have access to a pc and my laptop broke down. I was in the province and I couldn't find any repair shop there. I will post another chapter tomorrow to make due.
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