The technical discussion in the medium-class conference room lasted for about three hours.
During the latter half, however, the topic drifted entirely away from the "flashing communicator"...
"The foundational philosophy of the Adriana-style is originally..."
"The fields where the Adriana-style can be applied are..."
"The future world opened up by the Adriana-style will be..."
Most of the conversation centered around the Adriana-style.
Even after the first round of lectures on the Adriana-style had concluded a few days prior, several people had remained in Avalon to continue their technical debates.
One of them was Berlich Becker, the master of Berlich Workshop.
The current master was the fifth generation, making him Berlich V.
Once the meeting wrapped up, Jin caught up with Groma, Eira, Kachea, and the others. Reinhard naturally joined in as a friend.
Berlich Becker was also among the group.
After sharing lunch in the dining hall, they settled into a casual chat that felt almost like a continuation of the earlier seminar.
Berlich remarked on how truly regrettable it was that the manufacturing methods of the Adriana-style had died out for a time.
"It's widely known that Lord Reinhard, who was the lord of my homeland, possessed a powerful golem called the Schwarzritter, but its current whereabouts are unknown."
"Ah, yeah, is that so..."
Naturally, he had no idea that the very same Schwarzritter was currently on Onogoro Island, inherited by Stephanie Randol.
"So I tried making a golem named Black Knight, but it still has a long way to go."
"I see."
At this point, Groma Tray chimed in.
"We hit it off over our shared ambition to develop high-performance golems."
"Is that right?"
Age-wise, Groma was the oldest at thirty, followed by Berlich at twenty-eight, Eira at twenty-seven, and Kachea at nineteen.
As an aside, all four of them would add another year to their ages once their birthdays arrived this year.
Setting that aside, Jin noticed with mild curiosity how close Kachea and Berlich were standing to each other.
However, well aware that he was hardly qualified to comment on romance, he pretended not to notice.
"...Anyway, to get back on topic, I think defining what counts as 'high performance' is essential. Especially in the realm of consumer goods."
When Jin said this, Berlich was the first to latch on.
"I completely agree....If we consider the golems you make, Jin-sama, to be the pinnacle, we'd like to explore how to get closer to that standard."
"Hmm, in my case, there's also the fact that I make abundant use of rare materials, you see."
Of course, rare materials alone were not enough to create a high-performance golem, but high base performance from the raw materials was a major advantage.
Here, Reinhard spoke up, seemingly unable to keep quiet any longer.
"I'm a friend of Jin's... named Haruto. I believe there are at least two approaches. You can figure out how to increase performance while building cheaply, or you can build something high-performance using expensive, rare materials and then figure out how to cut costs without sacrificing that performance."
"That is certainly true."
Groma agreed.
"The rest comes down to which one to prioritize—or rather, focus on first. Cost, or performance."
Berlich offered his own perspective as well.
"Right, exactly. That's it. Speaking from experience here, trying to juggle both half-heartedly actually leads to worse efficiency."
Reinhard said.
"I see, that makes sense. Because you can't narrow down the specific parameters to evaluate between cost and performance, right?"
As a workshop owner, Berlich readily sympathized.
Trying to improve performance while cutting costs was an exceptionally frustrating task for an engineer.
"Personally, I'd like to improve performance while keeping costs low."
Berlich stated his preference, and Jin found himself in agreement.
"Ah, I feel the same way."
However...
"Jin, are you really in any position to say that right now...?" Reinhard remarked.
"True, I basically use rare materials to the fullest when I have them, but when I don't, I still manage to make things work," Jin countered.
Kachea immediately backed him up.
"That's right! When Jin-san made Hope, he built such an amazing golem out of whatever materials he had on hand!"
"Ah... Is that so...?"
Perhaps feeling overshadowed by Kachea's defense of Jin, Berlich seemed to lose a bit of his enthusiasm.
Completely oblivious, Kachea showered Jin with praise.
"Jin-san's Hope was incredible from the very start, after all!"
She was likely recalling the time Hope had clashed with Groma's golem in a sham fight.
"Haha, thanks."
Jin thanked her for the time being. It seemed Kachea was rather dense about such things—not that Jin was in any position to judge.
"...U-Um, getting back to the topic," Groma said, reading the room and steering the conversation back on track. "Certainly, for development engineers like us, putting our minds toward improving performance is far more rewarding than racking our brains over cutting costs."
"Yeah."
Jin nodded.
He still vividly remembered his days as a company employee back in modern Japan, when designs that completely ignored feedback from the factory floor had turned the workplace into a living nightmare.
"I really wish dedicated production engineers would handle cost reduction. Seriously."
"Jin?"
"Ah, no, just talking to myself....Changing the subject, I had a chance to see your Black Knight. It's quite well made."
"Eh? When, and why?"
Berlich naturally perked up at Jin's praise.
"Actually..."
Jin gave a brief summary: his visit to Berlich Workshop, how the agricultural golem used by the family of his student Emil had gone berserk, how they had stopped it in cooperation with the Black Knight, and how an investigation revealed the golem's control core had been crafted in an exceedingly slipshod manner.
He left out the part where Ludwig had asked Fried Randol of the Security Guard to track down the fraudster, as it would have been suspicious for Jin to know that detail.
"Such a thing happened...? How utterly shameless!"
Berlich was caught between disbelief and outrage.
"Unforgivable... Though fuming about it here won't change anything."
Groma also wore a look of bitter frustration.
"...Um, what if we created something like a Golem Guild?" Kachea suggested, an unusual move for her.
"A guild?"
Not quite grasping her intent, Groma asked for clarification.
"Yes. Well, it doesn't have to be called a guild. Basically, belonging to it would serve as a guarantee that a golem meets a certain standard of quality."
"Ah, I see!"
Jin realized that what Kachea was describing was essentially the equivalent of JIS—the Japanese Industrial Standards—from modern Japan.
While Japanese manufactured goods enjoyed world-renowned quality today, he had once heard from the Orphanage Director that for a period after the war—the Pacific War—pencils lacking the JIS mark were practically unusable. Apparently, the lead would snap repeatedly the moment you tried to sharpen them.
As an aside, there had been talks of updating the official designation to "Japanese Industrial Standards" starting in 2017, but since that took place after Jin was summoned to Planet Ars, he naturally had no way of knowing.
"Ars Golem Standards... 'AGS,' huh..." Jin muttered.
"Yes, exactly that!" Kachea agreed.
"Ah... We'll probably need Avalon to take the lead on pushing this forward."
While Jin felt the whole affair was turning into a bit of a chore, he also recognized that standardizing golem quality was a worthwhile endeavor.