"Not at all," Feidin smiled welcomingly. "We just about got here ourselves."
"W-Welcome!" Seliphaz was as enthusiastic as she was nervous. "Please have a seat. We haven't begun yet."
"You're late, boss." A heavy male voice addressed Cæ straightforwardly. "You need to be more mindful of meeting times. Is the attitude of a boss?"
Feidin and Seliphaz froze as they shifted to Cæ with a nervous expression.
And yet, Cæ was unbothered.
A small smile cracked at the edge of his mouth for just a brief moment. "You're right. My apologies, Dlint."
"Hmph, as long as you understand, boss."
The gargantuan man accepted the apology straightforwardly, nodding at Cæ lightly.
His face was scarred. His body was extremely muscular, straining the fabric of his shirt and pants. His expression was stern, while his body language was stiff and hardened. His brown eyes had an edge of severity to them, projecting a degree of aggression.
Cæ recognized that look.
It was a look he had worn his entire life.
A projection of aggression that served as a deterrence.
This man was from the slums, just like Cæ.
He had lived his entire life in the slums, trying to get out, going so far as to spend ten years in the army just for the sake of achieving that goal. After all, nobody would hire very easily in the inner city when they learned of his background.
The prejudice that the citizens of the inner city had to the slums was intense. They perceived residents of the latter as dangerous, untrustworthy rats. Cæ had even been rejected for student loans because of his background, forcing him to work an aggressive number of hours at Selvigs' Ristorante along with their generosity to be able to make his way through university.
Unfortunately, not everyone had a Selvigs' Ristorante to help them.
In such cases, the army was the only escape for people of the slums to get good credentials and some minimum scrap of money that would allow them to start afresh in the inner city. Dlint had gotten a humble two-year diploma in management and had spent five years working as the inventory manager for the base of a manufacturer before the company shut down.
That was why Cæ had chosen Dlint as the distribution and sales manager for his company.
He recognized the familiar drive to get out of the slums.
The drive to build a better life for himself.
Even though his academic qualifications were lacking, Cæ had found him to be perfect as the head of operations precisely because of his background in the slums. He needed someone who understood the slums to handle these particular operations. It was more valuable than the technical knowledge, as far as Cæ was concerned.
And thus, much to the dismay of Feidin and the fear of Seliphaz, he had chosen to hire Dlint anyway.
In the past half a year, he was among the several employees that Cæ had hand-picked among the potential people they could hire. They were hardly the best, but each of them had something that Cæ appreciated enough to choose them nonetheless.
"Alright," Cæ took his seat at the other end of the head of the table, steepling his fingers as he leaned forward.
His gaze fixed itself on Seliphaz.
"Go ahead."
"A-Ah, yes, right away." She fumbled with the remote clumsily before switching on the projector. "I have prepared a little presentation detailing all the progress I have made and the various prototypes that I have developed in the past half a year. Then, let's begin."
BZZZT
The screen flashed with an image titled 'Constraints and Conditions.'
Below it were several detailed parameters for the conditions that the product needed to fulfill while remaining within the constraint of a final price of one thousand leenars per unit.
This included being waterproof in the case of conditions such as rain and floods.
It needed to be able to maintain its integrity when exposed to the harsh summers of Elendir, which was on the southern end of the Gruonia Continent and was just above the equator of the planet, leading it to have extremely intense weather in each season.
Intense heat, intense cold, intense winds, storms, and an immense amount of precipitation that often damned the Colohen Slums due to an ill-maintained drainage system. But those weren't the only conditions, there also needed to be enough space to at least move, and enough of a ventilation system that ensured nobody would suffer in any weather condition.
"These are the precise conditions set by Cæ, and these are the conditions I have sought to maintain," she explained. "My biggest concern was the constraint of one thousand leenars. This is easily the most challenging constraint out of all the constraints and conditions that I needed to adhere to. With one thousand leenars, the dimensions of the product are necessarily small. And so, this was the first structural design that I ultimately finalized."
BZZZT
The next slide was comprised of rough designs detailing the structure of the micro-housing unit prototype. There were no distinct aesthetic designs or anything more to it beyond simple lines and marked spaces allocated for necessary systems that the housing unit was supposed to have.
It resembled the offspring of a tent and a doghouse.
It was small.
Befitting of being described as micro.
"I set a range for the dimensions while preserving the ratios," she remarked with a thoughtful tone. "I-Its dimensions could change depending on what substance we use and on what scale we purchase them. Thus, I had left it at that for now. The next step was ironing out the necessary systems, starting with the most important one."
BZZZT
The next slide appeared, featuring several more detailed variants of the existing designs.
A large title conspicuously drew attention and elucidated the topic of the slide.
[Ventilation]
"A suitable ventilation arrangement to ensure that our customers do not suffocate is marked as a priority condition, so I focused on fulfilling that first," she explained. "For this, I had three different ideas from three existing non-enchant ventilation systems in place. For instance. The first was simply opting for mesh or net walls."
She gestured to the first variant that had netted walls with visibly netted walls that allowed for maximal air ventilation.
Cæ winced at the prototype. "That's… unappealing. It's transparent and makes one feel like an animal in a cage. The people of the slums may have low standards, but this is dehumanizing."
She nodded with a grim expression. "T-That was why I didn't go forward with it. I also considered holes that allowed air but not light to pass by connecting the inside to the outside with pipes, but…"
Cæ could immediately tell what the problem with this idea was. "It could get blocked or clogged by water or rain."
She nodded. "T-That is why I ultimately went with this."
She gestured to the third design.
This was the first design where the kind of materials used were specified.
"I decided to go for a low-tier hyper permeable hyper-permeable magical substance," she explained. "This allows for air to pass through the micro-housing unlike non-magical substances ever could. While magical substances would increase the cost of production, given that it is a low-tier magical substance, bottom of the barrel, really."
Cæ's interest was piqued. "Hyper permeable substance… it's an elegant solution for ventilation, but wouldn't the free passage of gases make for absolutely no insulation of sound? While that wasn't a super high priority, some degree of sound insulation is needed."
She nodded. "I-I have considered that problem, but I have yet to tackle it since, as you mentioned, it's a tertiary problem. Not to mention, none of the other solutions handle it better. I think I will focus on developing a problem to this in later stages when we have covered the most important conditions."
Cæ nodded. "That is prudent. The next most important condition after ventilation is…"
Her expression grew a little nervous, "…protection against the elements. This has been difficult to handle. There are essentially three different broad categories that this product will need to be able to handle perfectly well—"
"Not quite."
Cæ interjected with a sharp tone. "'Perfectly well?' Don't get too ambitious. That's impossible with a budget of only one thousand leenars. If you were a master mage or an archmage, it might have been very easy, but you're nowhere near that level of skill yet. You don't need to perfectly solve these problems. You only need to…"
His gaze sharpened, "…solve them better than the alternatives that the slum-dwellers have. As long as you outperform tents and huts, the value proposition would be irrefutable. Do not aim for absolute perfection. Certainly not with the first iteration of this project. If you do achieve a perfect product, it will be with many, many years of effort."
She nervously nodded with a mixed expression.
On one hand, she knew he was right. Achieving perfect results was impossible with only a year's effort on her very first go at this project. Achieving commercial dominance was much more practical and the goal.
On the other hand, she wanted to do her best to fix all the problems that the people of the slums faced.
Unfortunately, she couldn't defy his orders on this particular issue. She had agreed to this sort of business from the very start, and he was the boss of the business, even if she had managed to get her hands on a bit of the equity.
Regardless, her mind returned to the most important condition of her micro-housing unit development project.
"T-The three broader conditions for protection of the elements: Extreme temperatures, extreme precipitation, and extreme winds and waters. These are the three aspects of the elemental protection that the micro-housing unit needs to offer to its inhabitants," she explained. "From here, we have arrived at a crucial crossroads in the trajectory of this product development project. I can either approach this problem from a structural engineering perspective where I focus on leveraging existing magic materials or…"
Her gaze focused on Cæ's eyes. "…I can approach this problem alchemically and create an alchemical solution to it by… designing a new substance that can be manufactured and used to solve the problem in a much simpler fashion."
Cæ's eyes lit up with amazement.
Creating a new substance.
It was a feat possible with the help of alchemy.
Alchemy, as a field, was the epitome of the Fundamental Form of change.
To change matter and energy with magic that was the field of alchemy.
It was not only possible to change one existing substance to another existing substance, but it was also possible to create entirely new substances from existing ones by editing the form of said substances.
Of course, this was an extremely difficult task, one that most senior mages would not be able to do.
And yet, Seliphaz was able to, despite having yet to graduate from the Elendir Institute of Magic as a full-fledged senior student.
"…What would you recommend?" Cæ asked with a curious expression.
"I have already begun developing prototypes for both paths," she replied with a confident tone this time. "Rather than relying on my personal opinion at this time, I believe we should put them to the test once I have fleshed out the prototypes for each model when I have completed them in about a week. Then, we should have the answer to which is better. In the past year, I have not only created a prototype that exclusively relies on existing materials but also a prototype that relies on an entirely new substance. I have also created a third prototype that combines both strategies. I think we will very soon be able to finalize the path for what this product will actually look like and work towards fleshing out, field testing, and finishing other quality controls in the next half year."
BZZZT
She turned to the next slide, nervously showing off the three prototypes that she had been working on, which operated on different approaches to solve the problem of the elements.
Each was distinct, drawing Cæ's attention in their own way.
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