To Be a Power in the shadows part 2

chapter 117

The smell of wood.

With the sun shining in through the window, Alpha who was organizing the documents suddenly looked up.

Standing up and walk towards the window, she sees a big tree growing on the street from outside of the window, surrounded by the cityscape of the kingdom's capital.

Autumn is coming to an end. The trees on the street were already bright red and the fragrance of the wood carried by the wind.

During this time, the air always smells like warm tress.

Alpha closes her eyes and reminisces.

The days that they all lived together. The nostalgic smell of wood——.

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Shadow Garden, back when it was only two of them, Shadow and Alpha were living in the forest.

During the day, the boy would work on building a wooden cabin by himself.

Inside the cabin, filled with the smell of the wood, the boy would cut down trees and build the shed from scratch. Alpha learned how to make "Two-by-four" boards at that time.

(Two by four is a length of wood with a rectangular cross-section, nominally two inches by four inches.)

At first, she could only stand there and watch him, but she did help little by little, in the end, the girl was able to finish building the cabin alone.

The boy and the girl, the cabin built by the two of them.

It was simple and a bit shabby, but Alpha loved the hut filled with the scent of wood.

The boy can only come here at night. That's why Alpha always looked forward to the time when night falls.

During the day, she would focus on sword and magic training, harvesting vegetables, and hunt small animals.

At night, the boy brought bread and meat and Alpha cooked them a meal. While the two of them having dinner, he always talked about various stories.

"Steam has the power to move a huge mass of iron."

One day, he said such a thing while eating the stew which Alpha had made. Steam was coming off of the stew, Alpha watched it for a while.

I can hardly believe that such weak steam has such extraordinary power.

But the knowledge he has spoken of thus far is real no matter how absurd it may sound. Also, he claimed that this world is a sphere rather than a flat plane. He denied Alpha's perception of the world, and that it was the Earth orbiting around the sun, rather than sun revolving around the Earth.

That's why steam must surely have such power.

"How can I draw such power from steam?"

The boy sat there quietly as he continued eating Alpha's delicious stew.

He is, as always, thinking about what knowledge he can share and the knowledge he should not speak of.

"Heat the water, and it will become steam. And, it will produce a large force. The hint... Was it a piston or a turbine?"

He said that and smiled looking interested.

He will not merely explain everything. Giving only small hints, he makes sure to have Alpha think over the answer carefully.

"I don't know with just that."

This is more difficult than usual. Alpha was planning to immediately get down to researching it tomorrow, as it will take too much time to reach the answer with a hint like this.