Ernest escapes the physical torture of the forge floor by exploiting the kingdom's severe literacy barrier. Pumping the heavy wooden bellows and hauling coal in the suffocating heat leaves his weak, malnourished body on the verge of collapse, forcing him to find an intellectual route to survival. When Master Hollen becomes overwhelmed by disorganized paperwork after his clerk abruptly quits, Ernest walks into the dusty upstairs office and demands a trial. Hollen is highly skeptical, expecting nothing from a poor blacksmith's son, but he hands over an order parchment to test the boy. Ernest reads the unevenly inked, slanted handwriting with ease and calculates multi-digit transactions in seconds, instantly solving a transaction of thirty-one horseshoes at three hundred riels each to name the total of nine thousand three hundred riels. The real reversal occurs when Ernest audits Hollen's chaotic leather-bound ledger and uncovers major accounting leaks. He points out that twenty bundles of iron nails were ordered but only sixteen were deducted from inventory, and exposes duplicate coal purchases from East River suppliers that indicate theft or severe waste. Recognizing the boy's immense economic value, Hollen agrees to a written contract of eighteen thousand riels monthly, which is double the salary Ernest's father Victor earns after years of backbreaking labor. When Victor is brought into the office, he freezes in complete disbelief at the massive sum, unable to comprehend how his son secured such wealth without swinging a hammer. Ernest signs the agreement with a feather pen, securing the personal savings needed to purchase raw materials for his ultimate hygiene experiment. He sets his sights on creating a superior soap to replace the skin-irritating, foul-smelling lye bars sold in the local market, initiating his first steps toward industrial chemistry.

Using his newly acquired savings, Ernest buys cheap pig fat and discarded hardwood ash to extract crude lye water. Although his mother Anna initially scolds him for turning the kitchen into a greasy, smoky mess that smells like burned animal remains, she joins the effort after seeing the soap create a rich, dirt-stripping lather that cleans her hands far better than water alone. They refine the formula with mint and lavender, casting the paste into carved wooden molds to create uniform rectangular bars. To launch the product, Ernest stages a public demonstration at the forge. He stands on the office balcony, calls the exhausted workers together, and has his father Victor scrub a soot-covered tool with plain water, which leaves a greasy residue, before handing him the mint soap. The instant foaming bubbles and grease-stripping power stun the watching laborers, who have spent their entire lives with charcoal permanently embedded in their skin. Victor rinses his hands and finds the stubborn forge grease completely washed away, prompting the workers to clamor for their own bars. Ernest hands out free samples to spark word-of-mouth demand, which explodes so rapidly that workers start requesting soap for their wives. Hollen realizes the massive commercial potential of a product that solves a daily sanitation problem for Helmarte's five hundred thousand residents. He agrees to finance a large-scale factory for a sixty-five percent ownership stake, while Ernest retains thirty-five percent and full operational control. However, Hollen warns that they must register with the powerful Merchant Guild to prevent sabotage and confiscation. Ernest spends two weeks drafting a forty-page business plan detailing land size, capital costs, and production logistics. They present this plan to Guildmaster Laurent, who is won over by the scent and the meticulous operational forecasts, granting them the official permits to build.

Ernest establishes the Helmarte Soap Works beside the Aldren River, using a massive waterwheel to mechanically drive mixing paddles and eliminate the need for manual stirring. The factory operates with twenty specialized workers, scaling production to over twenty-one thousand bars monthly and generating over one and a half million riels in profit. This wealth allows Ernest's family to move from their damp slum into a grand stone manor in the elite Beryl district, complete with a private steward named Roland Vance. However, the factory's progress is temporarily halted when a passing cargo ship suffers a broken steering oar and crashes into the riverbank, shattering the waterwheel. Rather than merely repairing the wooden wheel, Ernest decides to leap forward technologically. He designs a heavy oak-framed cylinder boring machine to cut perfectly round iron cylinders, solving the sealing issues that plagued early historical engines. With this precision machine, the forge successfully casts and assembles a massive fifty-horsepower steam engine, complete with a giant flywheel taller than two men. Integrating this engine into the soap factory provides continuous, reliable power unaffected by river flow, sparking a massive expansion of the production floor. Realizing the immense value of this new power source, Ernest and Hollen establish the Helmarte Machine Works to sell steam engines to local industrialists like Thomas, Sebastian, and Edgar, who are eager to modernize their own mills. To capitalize on their growing chemical infrastructure, Ernest also launches Helmarte Personal Care, introducing shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorant to the kingdom. The sudden explosion in demand for these modern products turns the company into a national commercial giant, prompting a formal invitation with a gold seal from the Royal Palace of Belfast.

Ernest and Hollen travel to the opulent Royal Palace of Belfast, walking through gilded halls and massive oak doors guarded by soldiers in silver armor. King Edward IV and Prime Minister Lord Ashford receive them warmly, revealing that the soap Ernest invented was used as diplomatic gifts for the Confederation of Rheinn, where it received an incredibly enthusiastic reception. In recognition of this achievement, the King grants Ernest a noble title of baron and allows him to select five thousand hectares of land anywhere in the kingdom. Lord Ashford unrolls an enormous, highly detailed map from a leather tube, showing all counties, roads, and mining districts. Ernest strategically selects a territory rich in coal, iron, limestone, and copper, securing the essential mineral foundations for an industrial empire. However, the royal favor comes with a heavy condition. The King explains that Belfast is facing an impending war with the Republic of Valoria, a powerful land-based state across the channel, and requests that Ernest's genius be directed toward developing a weapon to secure victory. Instead of proposing cannons or muskets, Ernest suggests a far more strategic asset: the electric telegraph. He uses a piece of chalk to draw connection points on the King's map, explaining how an electrical wire network can transmit military intelligence across the kingdom in minutes rather than relying on slow, vulnerable horse couriers. The King and Lord Ashford are stunned by the concept of instant communication. Ernest is granted full royal backing for the project, but he must now return to the Helmarte Machine Works to develop the entire field of electrical engineering from scratch, transforming static electricity from a parlor trick into a national military network.