I started work on a vacuum pump design to dry the paper, unlike the crystal growth chambers, the vacuum level I need is much lower, so I've been tinkering with a centrifugal pump design utilizing an impeller as a method for pulling enough of a vacuum to forcibly pull water out of the wet pulp. So far progress is slow, and I've gone through a few designs in the last 29 days. In all actuality I'm going to end up needing a handful of these pumps for various stages of the process. I'll also need to design a specialized container to form a seal using the pulp that the water can then be vacuumed out of as the pulp moves.

This time's barge resulted in spotting a new kind of leviathan that I hadn't seen before. It was something like a lobster, though that alone doesn't do it justice. Both its claws and tail were fairly thin and razorlike and as it breached the surface, it snipped both its claws through the barge at an incredibly fast speed. If I had to guess, the closing claws were probably moving at near the speed of sound. I doubt it even hit any of the detonator crates, but it still set off the dynamite with the action.

Its claws were obliterated alongside its head area. This leviathan was, overall, a bit smaller than many of the others we've seen about. I suppose it's probably something of a sliding scale as to how large creatures get, and leviathan is really just a category. When the blast went off, the rest of its body thrashed a bit before sinking, which gave us a view of the tail. It seems like the end of the tail was also marked by two blade like extensions that kept clamping open and shut, almost like a larger third claw. As the tail thrashed above and below the rest of its body a few times, it seemed clear that it could be used quite effectively as a third weapon at the creature's disposal.

In either case, it died quite a ways from shore, so practically no one, save for a few fresh goblins, gained any levels. These barge launches are becoming more and more regular, and as production continues to ramp up, the next one will probably be in about 50 days. By my estimates, at maximum available fish fat processing, we can probably launch a barge every 25 to 30 days. The good news is that once our island is relatively leviathan free, I'd expect that the sea between us and the mainland is also safe.

I had previously thought about the concept of making an extra large ship to combat the leviathans, but as I've observed their diversity in size and capabilities, it has become apparent that the idea of building large enough to discourage them would be nearly impossible. Even modern supertankers would still be small enough to be considered prey by the largest of the beasts. A lot of actual engineering work has to be done to design something that size, and you'd have to work up to it with smaller designs to relearn all the design principles you'd need.

While I was working on the designs for the centrifugal pumps, an accident occurred at the dynamite storage facility. It's unclear exactly what set off one of the nearly full storage silos, but it happened while a load of dynamite was being delivered, and it killed the demon who was storing the most recent load.

I led an investigation for a few days into the cause of the incident. While I can't say what exactly happened to set off the blast, I did conclude that the storage silos do need to be more thoroughly cleaned after being emptied. There was a residue of nitroglycerin in two of the other silos that could easily be set off by some minor disturbance. I instituted a few new protocols to hopefully curb an event like this from happening again.

The main problem seemed to be that they were always storing the dynamite within the same silos, in the same order, as they were produced. The silo that detonated was the silo that they stored in first, which means that the dynamite in that silo always had the longest amount of time to sweat out a small amount of nitroglycerin. Moving forward, they'll be utilizing the all the silos on rotation, and we'll be using sawdust to soak up nitroglycerin from the recently emptied silos, and then transporting that sawdust to be disposed of by burning off site.

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Since it was the first silo, the other silos were empty, so none of the other silos had anything stored in them to potentially detonate. Based on the damage I saw, I doubt it would have detonated any of the other silos, but it's fortunate we didn't even have to risk it. The destroyed silo is being completely excavated and rebuilt, for obvious reasons. The loss of the dynamite set us back about 10 days.

I've managed to come up with something that I think will work for the first part of the paper machine's drying process. I've come up with a two-stage design for a centrifugal pump that gets the pressure low enough to really pull out the water. I tried to make a single-stage pump, but as I repeatedly tried to adjust parameters, I still couldn't quite get it to the level of suction that I needed. The two-stage design, however, seems to do the trick. The second-stage ends up being quite a bit different in design from the first-stage, given it's much different operating parameters.

After we launch this next barge, I'll start trying to optimize the design for the boxes that will form the seal with the wood pulp. After that, I'm hoping that the first-stage pump will be enough to handle the later felt drying stages, as that would simplify the overall design by quite a bit.

This barge launch was a mixed success, with another eel leviathan falling victim to it a moderate distance from the shoreline. Some of the lower prestige demons gained a few levels, but it was still a little too far off to really provide much experience for those of us on the shoreline. We had a few demons who decided to risk it and tried to follow the barge in smaller canoes. I objected based on the risk, but Zaka seemed fine with it, and so they were allowed to go out and follow at a reasonable distance away.

They actually ended up being swallowed whole before the barge. The eel swam up behind them, opened it's mouth, and swallowed them, followed shortly by the barge, followed even more shortly by the barge detonating. People have kept lookout for a few days with no signs, so as far as we can tell, there were no survivors. Moving forward, we will not be sending anyone out in boats to try to get closer for leveling purposes. Even if it gets them an entire prestige from 0 to 100, it's still far less experience than the sum of their life's experience from a practical standpoint.

If they could prestige multiple times, then maybe it would be worth it, but considering everything, the risk is very high for a limited payoff. Even though it could, hypothetically, jump someone like myself or Zaka all the way up to our next prestige, which represents years of work. I have, however, come up with a potential idea to use. It'll require quite a bit of design work to make happen, and the paper mill takes priority, as we're running dangerously low on paper for dynamite.

I've come up with a design for the first part of the paper machine that I think will work. Given the various restrictions of the design of a continuous paper machine, I ultimately need multiple drying boxes in the first stage, each pulling their own vacuum on the line of pulp to dry it sufficiently. Overall, I've settled on needing five machines to properly dry out the first stage.

As this stage transitions to the next one, the wire mesh will return on its loop, leaving only the semi-formed paper to continue on. From the initial transition point on, the paper will be pressed by rollers with felt to both squeeze out more water while also compressing the paper down to make it more rigid. I'll have to see how well the centrifugal pumps work on the felt alongside heat to dry them out from the absorbed water.

From there, I'll need to further dry and press the paper repeatedly until it's satisfactorily dry and complete. At which point it can be rolled and transported as large paper cylinders. Then, we can make machines to cut the paper to appropriate size for whatever purpose, including dynamite.

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