kscans

Chapter 266 - Inba's Magic Tool Shop 2. The Tale of Troubles in Developing the Magic Tool Feedback System

Well, if it had been a simple Awning Window, it probably wouldn’t have been so difficult, but Yuri wanted to use this in a Greenhouse. Therefore, to prevent the precious warm air from escaping, the window required a corresponding level of airtightness, even if it couldn’t compare to the Sashes of his past life in Japan. Yuri’s order was to automate the opening and closing of such a window, which meant they first had to build a suitable window frame prototype. Since the window in Silica's workshop was half-blocked by a pile of junk, she needed to use a window at Inba’s house. Inba was reluctant at first, but she had received a sizable deposit and magic stones for experiments from Yuri. She resolved that there was no point in complaining now. The two of them set about modifying the window for the experiment, a task which in itself took a full day. And so the experiment began, but...

"...Seems it requires more force than I thought." "We’ll have to reinforce the window frame, too."

A further problem was the ‘opening and closing of the window’ part. Because they had made a rather airtight window frame, closing the window now required a fair amount of force. What was infuriating was that the required output and its duration were different for opening and closing the window. Opening the casement window was one thing, but closing it was a hassle. They discovered that too much force could even break the window frame. If this were only an issue for this specific window, it would be manageable, but this device was for Yuri. Since they didn’t even know what his windows were like, there was no way to set the appropriate force on the spot. This meant Yuri would have to adjust it himself, but making the client do extra work felt like a defeat for an engineer.

"...Should we make the mechanism switch between opening and closing?" "That sounds like it would complicate the formula. We’d need a control formula to switch between the opening and closing formulas, in addition to the formulas themselves."

As the two of them pondered, hmm, Inba recalled something extraneous.

"...Come to think of it, that kid mentioned something about ‘judging the force required and adjusting the output’..."

For Yuri, who had a past life as a 21st-century Japanese person, the idea of ‘judging the amount of force being applied with a Manipulator Pressure Sensor or a Tactile Sensor and feeding that back to the output side’ was perfectly normal. But in this world, that was not the case. It was an idea that could be called strange and heretical... and Silica jumped on it.

"Auntie, that’s it! Just like with the Automatic Sprinkler, we just need to monitor the state of the target and feed the result back to the output side!"

Silica had already built a Feedback Control System for the Automatic Sprinkler, but it seemed she hadn't realized it could be applied here as well. Or rather, she hadn't realized that feedback control was a widely applicable control system. Silica was excited by the groundbreaking idea, but she had forgotten that groundbreaking ideas demand a corresponding level of skill.

Although the general direction was now clear, the concrete steps were not visible at all. Inba feared they wouldn’t complete the prototype in time, but Silica was captivated by this ‘groundbreaking’ idea, and there was no way advice about the current situation, deadlines, or her condition would reach her ears.

Well, in the end, the reality was that thanks to Silica’s talent, artisan spirit, effort, and tenacity, along with Inba’s proper supervision and guidance, they somehow managed to finish the prototype in time.


Yuri, upon hearing the story of what went on behind the scenes from Inba, said,

"...I thought you were just going to apply some kind of magic to the window frame."

"You’d have to take the whole window frame with you then, wouldn’t you? We didn’t even ask for the size of the window frames at your place, lad."

"Ah, right... It wouldn’t work on just any window, so its versatility would be poor."

"As an artisan, I can’t hand over something so incomplete!"

At this point, Silica joined the conversation with a proud huff, but neither Yuri nor Inba seemed inclined to argue. It wouldn't be strange to say that the technician, Silica, had joined the conversation between the client, Yuri, and the contractor, Inba, but the people actually talking were a boy of about ten, an old woman of unknown age, and a young woman of marriageable age. The content of their conversation was extremely incongruous with their appearances. Nagara sighed with a distant look in his eyes, wondering where his sister had gone wrong in raising her daughter, Silica. Dona and Old Man Audel gave him a lukewarm look. It's okay, you'll learn the skill of ‘resignation’ soon enough.

"...Besides," Silica continued, "if you enchant the window frame, the magic power consumption becomes orders of magnitude greater than with a mechanical device."

That very problem was what had prompted Silica to venture into the heretical-for-this-world oddity of magic tools that used mechanical contraptions in the first place. Therefore, for the sake of her own policy and identity, she couldn’t possibly kneel to a simple magic enchantment. Well, there were other problems besides that.

"To meet your request, lad, the magic itself would become quite complex. In that case, the material can’t just be any old wood. You’d need something like Rosewood, for example."

"Rosewood..."

Incidentally, Inba’s mention of Rosewood here was a coincidence. She knew that Ems’s workshop had recently stocked Rosewood, but she didn't know that Yuri was the one who had provided it. It seemed Ems was also thorough with his information management. Of course, Yuri had no intention of spreading the word that he had been the one to bring in the Rosewood. So he pretended it was a general discussion.

"I heard it’s difficult to work with?"

"That’s right. It’s a pain to process and it’s expensive. It’s not something a fledgling like Silica could handle."

"Mmph."

Seeing Silica puff out her cheeks in dissatisfaction, Yuri guessed that was another part of the story... but, well, whatever the circumstances were behind the scenes, as long as the finished product was as specified, there was no problem. He decided not to dig any deeper. Unnecessary prying often leads to no good... that was a lesson from the life stories he had heard from fellow patients, visitors, and nurses in his past life, and now it was one of Yuri’s own life lessons.