I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 175: The Assembly Line

The main armory workshop at Vulcania was a cavern of organized chaos, a vast, smoke-filled hall that rang with the cacophony of a hundred forging hammers. Alex stood with Celer on a raised wooden platform overlooking the floor, the sheer, deafening noise a physical force against his body. Below them, master armorers, their bodies slick with sweat, worked at their individual forges. Each man was a king in his own small kingdom of fire and steel, painstakingly crafting a single repeating crossbow from a pile of raw materials. They would forge a trigger guard, then carefully hand-file it to fit the stock they had just carved. They would shape the bow limbs, then meticulously adjust the lever mechanism to match its unique tension. It was a process of artistry, of immense skill, and it was infuriatingly, suicidally slow.

"This is a craftsman's guild, Celer," Alex shouted over the din, his voice hoarse. "An artist's studio. We need a factory. We are not making individual works of art to be hung on a patrician's wall. We are making ten thousand identical, replaceable tools for killing a horde that is already at our gates."

Celer nodded, his face a mask of frustration. He understood the problem intimately. "It is the bottleneck, Caesar. Each weapon has over thirty individual components. It takes one of my master smiths three full days to craft and assemble a single, perfect crossbow. And worse," he added, picking up a finished weapon from a nearby rack, "each one is unique. The soul of the maker is in it. This trigger guard will not fit that stock. If a part breaks on the battlefield, the entire weapon is useless until it can be returned here, to another master who can hand-craft a replacement part. It is the Roman way. Quality over quantity."

"The Roman way will get us all killed," Alex countered. "We need to change the way we think about making things. Not just faster. Smarter."

He grabbed a piece of charcoal from a nearby bucket and, motioning for Celer to follow, descended from the platform onto the gritty stone floor. He found a relatively clear space and knelt, beginning to sketch a rough diagram on the flagstones. He drew a simple, exploded view of the repeating crossbow, breaking it down into its core component groups: the wooden stock, the steel bow limbs, the lever-action reloading mechanism, the trigger assembly, and the bolt magazine.

"We will reorganize this entire workshop," Alex explained, his voice sharp with a revolutionary fervor that cut through the noise. "We will shatter the idea of a single master smith. From this moment on, no man in this room will ever build a complete crossbow again."

He pointed his charcoal stick at a group of smiths working on trigger mechanisms. "This group, here. From now on, they do nothing but forge a single piece of the trigger assembly. The sear. All day, every day. The group next to them will only make the trigger itself. The men at the carpentry benches," he gestured, "will be divided. One group will only carve the main body of the stock. Another will only shape the pistol grip. Another will only cut the firing groove. Specialization. Repetition. Mastery of a single, simple task."

Celer stared at the diagram, his practical engineer's mind struggling with the concept. "But... who will fit the pieces together? A smith must feel how the parts align. It is a matter of instinct, of experience."

"No," Alex said firmly. "It will become a matter of precision." This was the key, the truly alien concept he had to impart. "Every single part must be identical. An exact copy of every other part of its kind. You, Celer, will be the master of this new process. You will take your finest master armorers off the production line. Their new job is to create a master template for every single component. Not a drawing. A set of hardened steel jigs, gauges, and calipers. A physical representation of perfection."

He pointed to the charcoal drawing of the trigger. "Every trigger that comes from that forge must fit perfectly into a master jig. If it is a hair's breadth too wide, it is discarded. If the pin-hole is a fraction of a millimeter off, it is discarded. Every stock must be identical. Every bow limb must have the exact same curvature and tensile strength. If a soldier's bow limb cracks on the Danube, he shouldn't need a master smith. He should be able to go to a supply wagon, pull out a new, identical limb, slide it into place, and be ready to fight again in minutes. We are not just making weapons. We are making interchangeable parts."

Celer was silent for a long moment, staring at the crude drawings on the floor. His brow was furrowed, his mind grappling with the sheer, elegant insanity of the idea. It went against centuries of Roman tradition, against the very pride and identity of the men who worked for him. And then, his eyes lit up. He saw it. Not just the idea, but the path to its execution. The abstract, futuristic concept from Alex's mind suddenly connected with the practical, hierarchical reality of his workshop. He saw how to make it Roman.

"The new men," Celer said, his voice filled with a sudden, dawning excitement. "Sabina's levies. The conscripted guild members and the slaves. They do not have the skills of my masters. But they have strong backs. We can put them on the simple, repetitive tasks. Forging a single, rough shape over and over. Grinding a single piece against a master jig until it is perfect. They do not need to be artists. They only need to follow a template."

He stood, his energy renewed, his mind already redesigning the workflow. "And my master armorers, the ones who are complaining about this new system? They will not be laborers. They will be promoted. They will be the Decurions of the Line. The quality controllers. Each master will be in charge of one station—the trigger station, the stock station. He will not work the forge himself. He will walk the line with your new jigs and calipers, testing every single piece his team produces. His honor will no longer be in the weapon he makes, but in the perfection of the ten thousand identical parts that bear his mark of approval."

Alex grinned. It was perfect. Celer had taken his abstract concept and translated it into a language of Roman hierarchy and honor. He had found a way to make it work.

They did not waste a moment. Under Celer's bellowed commands, the great workshop was thrown into a state of chaotic reorganization. Forges were moved. Workbenches were rearranged. The grumbling master smiths were gathered, and Celer, with a fire in his eyes, explained the new philosophy, presenting it not as a loss of their artistry, but as an elevation to a new, vital role as guardians of a higher standard.

By the end of the day, the first, crude assembly line in Roman history was in operation. At one end of the long hall, slaves hauled raw iron and wood. Down the line, teams of conscripted smiths performed their single, repetitive tasks, their work constantly checked by the stern-faced masters with their new, shining calipers. At the far end of the hall, a final team, the assemblers, did nothing but take the finished, standardized parts from large wooden bins and put them together. A stock from this bin, a trigger from that one, a bow limb from another. The pieces slid together with a smooth, satisfying precision.

The initial results were clumsy. The rhythm was wrong. Men used to a lifetime of one kind of work struggled with the new monotony. But even so, by the time the overseers called the end of the shift, they had assembled over thirty new crossbows. The old system, on a good day, would have produced five.

Alex and Celer stood at the end of the line, watching as another finished repeating crossbow, identical in every way to the ones before it, was placed on the rapidly growing pile. The sound of the workshop had fundamentally changed. It was no longer the chaotic, arrhythmic symphony of individual craftsmen. It was a new sound. The rhythmic, relentless, percussive pulse of a factory.

Alex felt a profound thrill of triumph, but it was laced with a chilling sense of dread. He had just introduced the core principle of the Industrial Revolution to the Roman world, a full sixteen centuries ahead of schedule. And he had done it not for the betterment of mankind, but for the singular, brutal purpose of waging a more efficient war. The engines of a new age were beginning to turn, and he knew, with a terrible certainty, that they could never be stopped.