"One part saltpeter, two parts sulfur, three parts charcoal."¹⁹
Dominic repeated the line to himself several times. Was that ratio actually correct? He wasn't sure—he couldn't remember the exact proportions…²
Even if he did remember, it wouldn't necessarily help. Unrefined chemical raw materials contain all kinds of impurities. Who knew what the "real" ratio would be once everything was mixed together?
Lonely Mountain Territory, in a courtyard inside the administrative hall.
"Lord Dominic, what do you want all this stuff for?"
Wendel pointed at the charcoal on the ground. "For a barbecue feast?"
Barbecue? Barbecue your ass.
This fat bastard's arrow wound had barely healed and he was already thinking about food again.
Still, it reminded Dominic of something: the essence of a gunpowder explosion was gas expanding from rapid combustion.
So the power of gunpowder depended on how fast it burned.
Dominic hoisted a burlap sack, sliced it open with a knife, and took a look. Inside were grayish lumps, the color of konjac.
He thought for a moment and asked, "This is saltpeter?"
Ser Wendel nodded. "Sulfur and charcoal aren't a problem, but saltpeter isn't easy to come by.
"This is the North, after all. We don't need saltpeter for making ice in summer. We had to get these shipped up from the south on Manderly merchant vessels…"
Dominic dug out a chunk of saltpeter and examined it closely.
He didn't know much about industrial chemistry, but he had at least finished high school chemistry.⁵
Potassium nitrate should look like crystalline salt… yet what he held looked like a dull gray rock. He had no idea how much of it was actually the effective component.¹
He thought through the steps, then set up a large iron cauldron in the courtyard and ordered his men to fetch the tools he needed.
Potassium was a highly reactive element near the front of the periodic table. Its compounds should be readily soluble in water.
They crushed half a sack of saltpeter with hammers, stirred it into water in a wooden tub, then filtered it through cheesecloth.
The filtered liquid was poured into the iron cauldron and boiled down, then dried further.
At last, they "fried out" a pile of pale gray-white crystals—was this potassium nitrate?¹
Dominic rolled a pinch in his palm. The crystals were irregular: some were tiny granules like salt, others were long, thin shards…
Clearly they weren't the same substance. If they were, they should have crystallized into the same shape.
He had his men bring a bamboo sieve, sorted the crystals, then heated the two types separately.
Right—if his guess was correct, this should be potassium nitrate!
With the potassium nitrate purified, Dominic mixed it with the other ingredients.
Once the mixture dried, he was about to grind it into powder—
Then he remembered what gunpowder looked like in his previous life. He decided not to bother with fine milling. Instead, he crumbled it into granules and ran it through a fine sieve to even it out.¹
He worked all day.
Finally, a packet of pitch-black powdery mixture sat before him.
Dominic, Wendel, and a few trusted attendants began testing it in the courtyard.
They folded paper around the powder into a long strip, then lit it.
Smoke quickly filled the yard. Everyone coughed and sputtered, stumbling out for fresh air.
…
When the smoke cleared, disappointment spread across Dominic's face.
The powder caught, but there was no explosion like he'd envisioned. Worse—quite a lot of it hadn't even burned properly.⁴
Failed again.
So where was the problem?
Or… maybe the physical rules of this world were different.
After all, Westeros was a world of dragons and magic. Maybe gunpowder simply didn't exist here.
…
The moon hung high. Everything was silent.
Dominic sprawled on his bed, bored out of his mind.
Ever since coming to this world, what he found hardest to adjust to was the loss of precise time.
Back in his old world, time was everywhere—down to the second. Here, there was no way to know.¹
All he could do was judge by the sun and moon—day and night, morning and afternoon.
Judging by the angle of the moon… it was probably the latter half of the night.
He wasn't sure.
He rested his head on his arm, wide awake.
Looking back on the last three years felt like a dream.
Dominic's old life—waking up to catch the bus, collecting his paycheck at month's end to pay the mortgage, carefully visiting his mother-in-law on weekends… assuming a girl would ever marry him in the first place.¹
And then, for no reason at all, he'd crossed into this world.
Medieval-like people, castles, knights, nobles, smallfolk…
A place with shockingly low productivity, and a "summer" that had lasted eight years.
And also dragons, sorcerers, alchemists, the old gods, the Seven, the children of the forest, the Lord of Light…
At least he'd been fortunate: he was the heir to the Dreadfort's lord. His starting line was already higher than 99.9% of the continent's people.
Seen that way, the accidental transmigration wasn't completely unbearable.
The initial panic had faded. Dominic often interrogated his own soul:
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?
He remembered a novel he'd once read.
The protagonist was a top history student who used his knowledge to rise from an illegitimate son to a powerful minister, rewriting history.
A protagonist like that could hardly fail. It was like buying lottery tickets with the winning numbers, picking stocks after seeing next year's charts, firing first and drawing the bullseye afterward—how could you miss?⁸
Those protagonists were either ex–special forces, or had some niche expertise, or had luck so ridiculous it bordered on absurd, with photographic memories.
Need to make glass? They make glass. Need a blast furnace? They build one. Cannons and planes? Child's play.
The grandeur was almost biblical:
He said, "Let there be artillery," and there was artillery.
He said, "Let there be steam engines," and there were steam engines.
He said all the beauties of the realm would gather and fill his harem—and so it was…
Sadly, reality wasn't a novel. Dominic didn't have that kind of godlike talent.³
Without an industrial base, no blacksmith in this era was going to conjure titanium-manganese alloys out of a few casual remarks…
Even something as "simple" as gunpowder had stopped him cold.⁵
Different trades were different worlds—it wasn't just a saying!²
What insiders considered basic common knowledge, outsiders might spend decades failing to grasp.
And in Westeros, there was no Baidu, no academic databases—nothing.
…
A thought flashed through Dominic's mind—catching on a crucial point.
If he couldn't make gunpowder using old-world common knowledge… then what about using this world's methods?
Did Westeros have any substance whose physical properties were similar to "gunpowder"?
Something that burned extremely fast—then exploded?
Of course it might!
After all, this was a world with magic that could do anything.
And just so happened… Dominic had met a mage not long ago.
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🏰 Game of Thrones: Secrets Beneath the Dreadfort
📢 Dark Secrets Await in the North! 📢
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