Until the Elven Nation Attacked 15

"The fact that this works still upsets me."

The precision that needed to be achieved for parts that were normally machined was, well, a really tough hurdle to overcome. While we could get away with carved wooden nuts, bolts and screws and even very carefully made metallic pieces that were threaded by hand, they needed to be made by a skilled hand, and they took a lot of time to complete.

That was part of the reason why the loss of even a single one was actually several hours of setback, yes, even for our incredible muscle control, inhumanly perfect eyesight and the patience borne from agelessness, it was a problem primarily because of the boredom involved.

We got enough from the initial enthusiasm that we had enough to make and repair a small handful of vehicles, but beyond that, we had to make more and I needed to use my dick, a lot, to keep the elves producing. Even Miel was losing enthusiasm even as we got increasingly closer to her dream of a working flying machine.

Kalatina, however, had a surprisingly functional solution. We just needed to think with molds. The first thing to do would be to make a "Master Screw", that would be used to thread nuts, and then a master nut, that could be used to thread bolts and screws.

Which doesn't sound all too complicated until you realize that in order to do that, we needed to find something that could reliably cut the Goddess Tree's wood without losing its edge. And considering the goddess' wood was tough enough that steel bent before it did, well...

I hardly want to put my own wood to the test against the goddess', to put it mildly.

So instead, we had to find something else.

We just had to find the toughest, hardest and most durable material that could be found below the goddess' roots, which I was informed by my divine patron was still undiscovered by the world outside and the elves had never had any use for it due to it being effectively completely impossible to work with for them.

The next step was to find a way to work with it while Kalatina dug up lots of rocks containing veins of the as of yet unnamed ore.

We're tentatively calling it Duranium, because it glows green when heated and I couldn't think of anything better than combining durability and uranium, sue me.

So the Duranium was... to put it simply, an absolute nightmare to work with. I've gone through every forge there is, among all the elves' homes and their workshops and none of them came close to being able to get hot enough for what I needed.

So I'd have to at least advance their capabilities to at least bring them up to par with this world's humans' level. They had something approaching capability to work metal, but they didn't have need to advance it much further because iron was nigh useless to the elves by itself, and they didn't need to heat it much to bend it.

For a moment, I wondered if we could use it the way the Native American civilizations had used gold, since it's plentiful, easy to work with and can be made into jewelry... but no, I don't think so. It lacks several of the properties that made Gold quite useful on that front.

Besides, iron jewelry would just look basic and boring.

I had three problems to overcome.

The first, actually smelting the damn thing from the ore into something I could actually use.

The second, make the mold to pour the molten ore into.

Third, find a way to shape it.

All three could be solved, with a little bit of time and some elbow grease. The first thing to do was to make sure we were all on the same page. Luckily, I had something of a decent advantage.

Lotte, Keeper of Knowledge, was also a more than decent teacher. Better than me, in fact, and though it did take a little bit of doing to make sure she understood everything I had to tell her, she did an amazing job actually spreading that knowledge, she even took some of the papyrus Miel wasn't using and made a bunch of informative scrolls that contained neatly organized bite-sized chunks of information.

Specific techniques, reminders, even some crudely drawn diagrams and examples as well as safety warnings.

"I have to say," I hummed as I watched Lotte pouring over her latest design, a three meter by six meter banner that detailed the most basic concept of the construction of a simple but effective kiln, "I could watch you work for hours."

She had a soft smile on her face. "I'm glad to see the Savior understands and appreciates my work," she said.

Her home was... actually quite large, but, she only had a tiny space for actually living. No kitchen or bathroom, just a small bed, a dresser, and then what looked to be aisles of shelves, all of them full of tons of boxes and leatherbound books.

"I'm also surprised you have a lot of stuff here... You have a lot of foreign information as well, correct?"

"Yes, sometimes travelers bring items from the outside world," Lotte explained, standing straight and stepping away from the table she had been working on top of, inspecting the tip of the brush she was using. The paint she was writing with was made of crushed, boiled and carefully mixed flowers, and the brush was actually made of elven hair. "Unfortunately, I've run out of the ink they brought me."

I shook my head. Elven paints were primitive and didn't match up to the things outsiders were using, but we could fix that with time. We had the materials available.

"How's it look?" she asked, grabbing the banner and holding it up, doing her best to spread it as well as possible. She had to make do with scraps and make it in short order, but she had managed to produce something very legible and informative.

At the moment, we needed to get everyone on the same page and to make sure everyone knows what to do and how to do it. And that meant we needed to get everyone learned on how to properly forge iron. We would need to work through distinct materials and slowly climb our way up to making a furnace that could get up to around 4000ºC.

Eventually we'd get around to making an arc furnace, but that was for later, for once we could get a steady supply of salt so I can get started in getting us closer to an electricity powered society. It's still a shocker to think that you can get electricity that easily, but the problem isn't generating electricity, it's generating usable amounts of it.

I was distracted and not noticing that Lotte was waiting for my response.

"Sorry, I got distracted, looks good. Can you add the details as I instruct them around the Kiln?" I asked. "I want to make sure that nobody forgets what is important and why it is. Like, the diameter of the holes and the thickness of the walls, especially here," I said, pointing near the base, "and the bottom."

She nodded. "Right!" she said. "Just in case, right?"

"Yeah," I said.

She laid it back down on the table, the only table she had, if I may add, and smiled.

"You seem happy," I hummed.

"I am!" she replied. "Elves are... lackadaisical and lazy by nature," she said, scratching her cheek. "I have to admit, very few ever visit me or come peruse the knowledge I've hoarded. Knowing the Goddess can grant you all the wisdom in the world," she said, sighing, "I would've figured myself worse than useless to you our savior," she admitted.

"Oh?" I tilted my head. "Then I suppose it's a good time to tell you that I intend to turn your position into something perhaps a little more complex. You'll become a Minister of Education."

"Minister of education?" she asked, blinking almost owlishly. "What's that? Is it like the Ministers of Human Kingdoms?"

They didn't have the complex and modern forms of government we did, but humans did have some idea of what a minister was and what they were supposed to do. They did not, however, have a concept of a minister of education, mostly focusing on things like war or food production rather than such development.

"Somewhat. Your functions would be a lot more focused and directed, and you would have a much more defined role," I explained. "In effect, your job would be to create a system of education in which elves were taught a general level of knowledge, beyond the one that the goddess imparts on us."

Elves came out of their fruits mature adults, there was no development time for them there, but I wasn't certain that would be the case for the elves that I impregnated. So I was already preempting the need for a school.

Sure, the first few wouldn't be an issue and could just be taught individually, but I did plan on impregnating hundreds if not thousands of elves and impregnating them multiple times each, so at some point, we'd need a school.

And to be honest...

We need a school for the already existing elves as well.

Lotte, as I can see by just looking around, has accumulated a significant amount of wisdom and knowledge, written down, drawn and impressed into what I could see were stone tablets. Carved knowledge into stone even, if the rock behind her house, that I had seen coming here, was anything to go by.

But if nobody was partaking in it, if it wasn't being shared...

"Knowledge that isn't evolving is stagnant, dead," I muttered. "And worse still... We produce little to none of it ourselves, and we certainly don't produce any fiction."

"Fiction?" Lotte asked. She didn't seem unfamiliar with the word, rather, she was surprised at me bringing it up at all. "Should we?" she asked. "I've once or twice thought to write something down based on ideas I've had but..."

But if nobody would read it, she figured it was a waste of resources, I thought.

"Yes," I said, "in fact, fiction is very important. It gets people into the habit of reading and consuming things, and you can work in some more practical information as well, or even include a fictional, or fictionalized story, into an instructive manual to make it easier to digest and more memorable."

"Oh! I see, I think I understand it, so basically, we make it easier for people to learn new things by presenting it as a story, and not as a dry instructional textbook!" Lotte replied, a fire to her eyes. It seemed like the prospect of people actually reading the things she wrote down was actually quite enticing to her.

"Yep," I agreed, popping the P. Lotte began to walk around, which did great things for her barely covered ass. Honestly I think I've endured quite well, being tremendously professional up to this point, and not focusing on just how good looking she was.

I shook my head as she excitedly went about inspecting her aisles.

"I think I can try to write stories to make these easier to read! Conceal lessons and educational programs within an easily consumed story..."

"Don't go too overboard though, it's fine to also just write some stories that are just stories, they don't all need to have an important message behind them," I said. "Even if you only write a story about a topic you like, that's perfectly fine, good even."

"Oh, Savior," she called, clasping her hands together, "with your inspiration, I've got renewed energy, this time for sure-" she rapidly rushed towards me, putting her hands on my shoulders, bringing her face closer to mine, she had the looks of a dignified lady, dressed in a ridiculously slutty getup mind, but a a classy, dignified lady nonetheless. "I'll make sure to write down a story worthy of your time to read it!"

I took her hand in mine, and raised it up, kissing her knuckles, noting the tips of her fingers had flecks of paint stuck on them. I can see nigh microscopic paint stains, that is something I can never get used to.

"One step at a time, okay?" I asked. "First, let's make sure we've got everything we need."

And it would take some time. It was annoying, but there was simply no skipping forward. We had to build tools to build tools so we could make tools to build the tools.

If we wanted to get out of having to hand craft everything taking hours of work for even simple things, then we had to make the tools to make it faster and easier. We would move up different types of metal until we could make a proper furnace hot enough to melt Duranium.

On the way, I'd have to make sure we mastered the usage of copper, as that would be useful for latter. For now, there wasn't much good to it, we had both copper and tin and thus access to bronze, just not in great quantities quite yet, but there were immense amounts of diverse ores underneath the goddess' roots, and Kalatina would get us as much of it as we could use once we got her better tools as well.

The goal was Duranium tools, and specialized Duranium alloys, unfortunately that was new knowledge the Goddess couldn't just give me, as it simply didn't exist. It was a nice challenge to have to experiment, for a change, rather than have the answers.

I realized I was still holding Lotte when she started wiggling her face red.

Feeling her chest against mine, my left hand, which was on her back, began to slide down, until I grabbed her almost entirely exposed ass.

"S-Savior..." she said, breathing a little more heavily. "Will you-"

I moved her own hand to my own ass. A fine one, if I may say. Once it was there, I patted the back of her hand and squeezed her fingers, and then she began kneading my bottom on her own. Understated how good that feels. I cupped her chin, tilting her head up, I was a little bit taller than her which allowed me to plant a kiss on her lips that was as satisfying as it was making me hungrier for more.

She shuddered and trembled in place under my ministrations. She was rubbing her thighs against each other, and I could already see her flushing, not just her face, but her lower body, exposed as it was, and her gloriously exposed chest, bigger even than mine, was already turning a lovely shade of pink as well.

"You are tremendously valuable," I said, "your talents are incredibly precious, and I believe that we would benefit, immensely, from having more like you among us," I said, caressing her cheek with my hand. "Would you bear my child?" I asked.

"I... Savior, you would choose me..." she said, her eyes tearing up a little. "Though I am keeper of our knowledge, only elder Neem has blessed me with praise for my role," she said, "do you truly believe I am important, that I have such value?"

"Yes, for your duties, and as a precious elf, you have peerless value," I said.

"Savior..!"

She kissed me, a bit clumsily, but... sweetly. We kissed more, and not long after, I was drawing her in, teaching her the intricacies of making out properly, like a couple.