Chapter 198: Secrets of Grinding

Under the superb management, the offerings steadily increased, and Ark was forced to spend divinity on expanding the storage room while Stephanie struggled to come to terms with Ace and Rino's brilliance. Phil took the opportunity to take over the office while the siblings handled the business and status side.

Meanwhile, back in the small world, Rino finally received his new daily quest.

Ping!

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Daily Quest #23

Objective: Build a Grindstone

Time Limit: 5 Days

Tutorial here.

Reward: Ore Appraisal Skill

Claim your reward here.

Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefully completed.

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Tutorial! For the first time since he came to this world, Rino was excited to see a tutorial. He ignored the surprisingly short deadline compared to the time given for the previous two projects.

Phil observed Rino's reactions from the reflecting pond above. It took him much string pulling and pressuring of the dumb siblings to find out more information about the grindstone that they lacked knowledge about. Thankfully, it was a rather common development in almost every world that humans populated, so they were given that information for nearly free.

The new tutorial guide put together by Phil was rather detailed with the different ways a grindstone could be built. Several kinds of designs worked differently, and not all of them produced powder. Of course, the god of landscaping made sure to include the possible risks and mention the common constructing mistakes in his tutorial so that Rino would not accidentally set his windmill on fire. There was no guarantee that the buildings were fireproof.

For the next four hours, Rino poured through the surprisingly detailed tutorial guide. No wonder the gods only gave him five days to complete this daily quest. There wasn't a need for more than two days because Rino had all the materials ready. In fact, he managed to figure out half the things in this tutorial by himself without aid. The last step that remained a mystery was fairly simple after he understood the logic behind the design mentioned in this guide.

Honestly, he could not understand why nobody thought about this earlier, although he supposed that if the pygmy dwarves and earth gnomes were given more time, they would eventually figure this out too.

From the guide alone, Rino learned that grindstones were not only cutting machines to turn grains into powder. They were also able to squeeze liquid from seeds and beans. The process was somewhat similar, and a lot of crushing action was required for oil and soy milk grinding, but the grindstones worked the same.

Who would have thought that the trick to getting the stone plates to work was to reduce the distance between both plates by a fraction and add grooves to them in a pattern that becomes shallower at the end?

As someone without artistic talents, Rino had to call on for an expert's help. Thankfully, the side quest for making that offering station was completed, and the other projects requiring the wraith king's expertise weren't urgent.

Rina told him that the newly appointed artisan was going around making himself useful by renovating the hot spring baths. There were new cat sculptures all along the path to the hot spring baths and even worship statues of Rino in progress at the side of the mountain that stood over thirty metres tall.

While that sounded flattering, Rino had no idea if it was a good idea. Sculptures of that scale were normally the target of disgrace because it was difficult to accomplish and harder to maintain. Carving a statue into the mountain will also cause some structural damage. Rino had no idea which part of that grand statue would meet erosion and decay first. Heck, he wondered if the World Tree would start growing out of his exposed eye sockets in the mountainside after a few years.

While waiting for Ubel to arrive, Rino told Bink to quickly get some smaller stone plates for experimenting with the grindstone carved designs. The earth gnomes got to work at once to prepare fifteen pairs of smaller grindstone plates while Rino sketched the designs from his tutorial onto his sketchpad.

The patterns were simple, but most of them never travelled in a straight line from the eye to the edges. Instead, many ridges travelled in cross-crossing patterns. The top stone and bottom stone patterns were usually contrasting and never travelled in the same direction, and it took Rino a while to understand why that was so.

In the simpler looking design, the tutorial explained the concept of lands and furrows. Lands were the original part of the flat grindstone surface without grooves carved into them. They were the breathing space of air between the grooves called furrows. It was important to have sufficient land spaces between the furrows to prevent combustion and explosions when milling.

According to the informative tutorial, dust explosion happens when the dry crushed grains turn into powder. When charged with the heat caused by the cutting action between grindstones, the powder could set other dry powder particles on fire, causing an explosion fuelled by air rushing through the grindstone. The explosion can sometimes be powerful enough to decimate the windmill and several acres of land around it. If a windmill was located near a dry field, the field might also burn.

After reading this, Rino finally understood why windmills were also located very out of the way from cities and farms. People had to ride on mules to carry their wheat for grinding at the millers daily, and bakers limited the number of bread they could sell in a day. It was very inconvenient, but the distance was required for safety.

"My king, I have arrived," Ubel reported for duty after reaching Town Zera.

Rino grabbed his finished sketches and left his study to meet Ubel. According to Bink, they managed to prepare four sets of grindstones roughly the size of Rino's forearm for testing. The remaining sets would take more time.

It wasn't a terrible start, and Rino led Ubel to his stone cottage by the river, where they would test the new grindstones and the effectiveness of the carving designs using the water wheel as free labour.

"Do we have a tray around the grindstone?" Rino asked after Bink demonstrated how the grindstone plates could be fitted on the new automated hand grinder.

Grinning, the earth gnome ordered his younger siblings to bring in the collection bin and funnel. The wooden device came in two parts, held together by a mechanical clasp and held up by a stone stand. The collection basin resembled a moat around the grindstone, and the basin was slightly angled downwards towards where the funnel was. Rino praised the design, and whatever the grindstone collected would enter a collection bin or bucket, depending on the output product.

"Will we start with soybean or rice?" Deezer asked as he locked the final clasp in place, double-checking on the device.

Rino looked at his patterns and figured that he wanted to test the powder designs first. Besides, it was easier to clean after powder. However, he told the earth gnomes to leave for safety measures as he added blast and fire safety enchantment to the stone cottage.

Ubel started working on the four designs that Rino shortlisted. They looked very different from each other, and according to the wraith king, designs with straight lines were easier to work with than those with curved lines.

Rino watched as Ubel carved the most straightforward lines angling outwards from the eye to the side at thirty degrees with almost equal spacings throughout. The design only had twenty furrows, and the wraith king took care to decrease the furrow depth as he approached the edges according to Rino's instructions.

The next design was slightly harder as it contains curves. The bottom grindstone pieces contained sixteen curved lines in a similar fashion, going clockwise from the eye to the edges, getting shallower as they progressed outwards. The top grindstone was designed the opposite, with the same sixteen curved lines from the grindstone eye progressing outwards and getting shallower in the grooves as they reached the edges. However, the direction of these curves went anti-clockwise.

The next two designs were very different. One contained a simple star-shaped pattern with eight sides and branching grooves with an inverted pattern for the other grindstone. The next design was a hypnotising sectioned out city-map pattern. The grindstone was divided into eight equal portions with grooves partitioning it. Within each portion, smaller rivers at thirty-degree angles were carved onto the lands, and Ubel took the longest to finish this design. The partner grindstone plate had a similar design with the direction of the rivers going the opposite direction.

Rino chose this complicated and hypnotising design as the fourth to test because the tutorial claimed that it was the most common kind to exist for powder mills.

When the four grindstone designs were carved, Rino enchanted them. Weight adjustments, temperature regulating enchantments and durability enchantments were added. The tutorial mentioned the need for grindstone maintenance. While Ubel was an excellent crafter who could help maintain all these grindstones, Rino did not want to overburden his only artisan.

Really, the next thing Rino should look into is job delegations and talent grooming. For now, they fitted the first grindstone plates. It was the moment of truth.