“Good morning, Soroya xiaojie!”
As Soroya walked into the bicycle factory, Gili greeted her, “You're here so early.”
Her words made Soroya feel a little embarrassed. She had stayed up late playing cards with Miyue and Lily yesterday, and woke up half an hour later than usual today. In Wendy's absence, everyone seemed to be a bit lazy, except for Anna and Agatha, of course. They were always role models for the sisters, whether it was work or study. Especially the latter, who always left earliest and returned latest.
“Are the base materials ready?”
“Yes, please follow me.”
Gili was among the first graduates and now served as Soroya's little assistant in the bicycle factory. Gili always informed her of any work in advance. A year ago, Soroya would never have believed that ordinary people and witches could work together and get along so well.
“Are those the finished bicycles?” She suddenly noticed that the factory seemed different today. The steam engines weren't roaring as usual, and everyone was gathered around a row of shiny new two-wheeled vehicles, examining them intently.
“Yes, our first batch of products,” Gili said with a broad smile, her eyes narrowed, “Twenty in total. It wasn't easy, especially the chains and wheels. The yield rate was less than half.”
Indeed, it wasn't easy, Soroya thought. The factory had been completed last autumn, but it had been through many ups and downs since then, such as inadequate equipment and a severe shortage of personnel. Its priority was clearly lower than the steam engine assembly plant and chemical factory next door. The former two were now operating in three shifts, with people working almost all the time, while this factory was still only producing during the day and closing at night. Even Gili had secretly complained that a partner who went to the chemical factory had seen their salary triple, while the bicycles were nowhere to be seen.
Now she would finally get her own bicycle.
Pushing open the door to the fabrication room, Soroya saw that a layer of white paper had been laid on the flat ground, about forty square meters in size, resembling a snowfield in winter.
“Today's task is to process the inner tubes. Sorry to trouble you,” the young girl said with a bow.
“Mm,” the witch nodded, “You can go about your business.”
“Okay, please call me immediately if you need anything,” she said with a smile, “I'll be waiting at the factory entrance.”
Watching Gili's excited departure, Soroya knew she must be eager to experience the thrill of riding a bicycle.
Shaking her head with a smile, Soroya took off her shoes and stepped onto the paper.
The painting work on the bicycle mainly consisted of three parts: inner tubes, outer tires, and rust protection for the frame. Which one she worked on depended on the assembly progress in the factory. Of course, in general, her painting speed was much faster than the assembly speed, so the factory had a large inventory of inner tubes, outer tires, and frames. However, magic grew every day, and it would be a waste not to use it, so Soroya still came to the bicycle factory every three days to complete part of the painting work.
She briefly recalled the color of the inner tubes and raised her hand to summon the Magic Pen.
As a membrane material for holding gas, it had to be light and soft, with moderate toughness, and capable of fusing at high temperatures. Based on past experience, she chose the shaving coating as the material—this was the result of hundreds of tests. The sky coating was too flexible, while the water wave coating was exceptionally fire-resistant. It wasn't until she noticed the shavings left by carpenters when collecting materials that she found the most ideal painting object.
Unlike Lucia, who could decompose metal elements and then remelt them in any proportion, she had to paint them based on real objects to understand their properties. She also couldn't memorize the magic characteristics of thousands of materials, so the simplest method was to make color cards and then select the coatings on the color cards for large-scale application when needed.
Of course, for commonly used coatings like inner and outer tires, she didn't need to consult the color cards anymore and could paint them directly.
The Magic Pen gradually widened, and the brush finally expanded to about six meters around Soroya—when using the maximum range of ten meters for painting, the magic at the edges was prone to loss of control. To ensure the uniformity of the coating quality, she preferred to
spend more time painting.
……
In less than an hour, the forty square meters of paper were all covered with a layer of shavings—of course, it wasn't real shavings, just like when she painted according to steel, the resulting coating wasn't steel either. Hardness and flexibility couldn't be combined. No matter how hard the coating was, it couldn't compare to stone, and it would shatter like glass if dropped.
In addition to the shavings, Soroya also filled it with her name as a signature. This was also a tradition for painters. She originally only wrote her name in the lower right corner of the coating, but later discovered that after the coating was cut, her name could only appear on one inner tube. So she simply indulged her playfulness and painted her signature everywhere, so that no matter how it was cut, the words "Soroya's Work" could be seen. At first, she was a little flustered when His Highness discovered it, thinking she would be blamed, but she didn't expect His Highness to laugh and call her the inventor of watermarks and praise her.
Although she didn't understand what a watermark meant, she was still happy for several days to receive His Highness's praise, and she kept this signature style ever since.
After the coating was completed, the next step was to burn off the paper on the back to obtain the complete inner tube raw material, then send it to the cutting room to be cut into strips, and finally use a red-hot branding iron to heat-fuse the joints. Of course, these tasks were handled by specialized workers; she only needed to complete the initial raw material production.
This batch of coating consumed about a third of the magic in her body. Soroya deeply felt the effect of training on magic improvement. In the past, completing such a large area of coating at once would have exhausted her. Taking advantage of the early hour, she bid farewell to Gili and went to the backyard of the North Slope Mine alone.
After entering the mountain road, there was a guard post every hundred meters, and the yard entrance was even equipped with bunkers and watchtowers. Even the Lord's Castle didn't have such tight defenses.
Soroya entered the yard under the soldiers' salutes and saw Anna cutting strange parts—no matter when she came here, she was meticulously completing her work. Looking at her focused figure, Soroya suddenly felt a little embarrassed. Leaving aside talent, she was far behind her in terms of dedication. At the same time, she felt a bit of envy. Whether it was ability, work dedication, or her relationship with His Highness, Anna was the best of the witches.
“Yo-ho, Sister Soroya, you're here,” Lucia heard her footsteps and looked up with a bright smile.
Anna also put down the parts in her hand and waved to her, “I'll trouble you with the copper wire wrapping today.”
“Leave it to me,” Soroya said, putting away her thoughts and walking towards them with a smile.(。)