No Step On Slime

Chapter 14: Most Unwelcome Welcoming

The steam engine was not working.

"Why won't you fucking piece of shit infernal device work!" I yelled, kicking it once.

"Talleigh, calm down," Kurobe said, grabbing me by the arm. "That's not going to help."

I sighed. "I know. It took almost a week to assemble this damn prototype."

I was frustrated as hell.

"Let's just go through the blueprints slowly," Kaijin replied. "There has to be something we missed."

"I'm pretty fuckin' sure we've gone through 'em at least two times so far."

"Third time could be the charm," the Dwarf said. "I have to admit, you did rush through checking it the first two times."

I nodded in defeat. Kaijin was right, it should've been pretty straightforward. But I was starting to cut corners due to my impatience.

I didn't doubt the Dwarf's craftsmanship at all, so I was assuming it was something on my end.

Several more hours passed until Hours of debugging later had proved to me one thing: I was a fucking idiot. Or I had brain damage, one or the other.

"It needed a counterweight. How did I overlook the counterweight?"

Of course, with the flywheel being this heavy, any imbalance would essentially render the entire engine useless.

After properly weighing out the flywheel with an ad-hoc counterweight, we prepared for another test. I poured some of my magicules into the firesteel rods that we shaped.

I think this was actually the first practical magic I ever used so far. Sure, it was just some simple thing to redirect the magic energy into something else, but I'll need to start somewhere, right?

I should ask Rimuru how to do fire magic. If I can get it hot enough, I'd literally be able to do welding without any external tools.

That aside, it took at least thirty seconds for the heated firesteel rods to begin boiling the water. But once it built up a good amount of pressure, Kurobe cranked the flywheel to a start and I opened the valve into the pistons.

It hissed, then began to chug away.

I smiled.

"Fuck yeah!" I yelled. "It works! Hahaha, it's working!"

The flywheel continued to speed up as the pistons went on and on.

Until it got too fast and the heavy wheel flew off its hinges. It narrowly missed my head and embedded into the wall behind me.

"Talleigh!" Kaijin exclaimed. "Are you all right?"

That shook me up, admittedly.

"I'm fine, I think," I replied. "Worked a wee bit too well... but hey, at least we know the damn thing works! Just need to make sure the hinge is stronger and the flywheel's heavier so we don't take off someone's head with that."

"Would protective shielding be necessary?" Kurobe asked. "Seeing how fast that was flung made me wonder if it could be used to test my newest shields."

"If you wanna test your shields, you don't need a whole-ass steam flywheel to do that..."

I looked over everything we've built so far. The boiler was pretty large, same with the piston mechanism that actually turned the pressurized steam into motion.

"I'll be telling Rim that I'm ready to go. Preparations to go to Dwargon to gather more firesteel, since we've proven the steam engine works."

Kaijin nodded, and said he'd get the map and the money ready.