Chapter 105. The City of Bread and Steel (2)

‘If you want to succeed in a deal, you must focus not on the deal, but on the other party. If you move the other party, the rest will follow.’

It was a line I read in a book whose title I can't remember.

I remember it being a required reading book for the class, chosen by the homeroom teacher in my school days.

I read only the beginning while dozing off to write a book report, but even then, it was a sentence that strangely stuck in my mind.

Perhaps the strategy to persuade Guild Master Kambad was influenced by that sentence engraved in my subconscious.

After a rather touching reunion, we moved to another location.

To talk about more practical business matters.

Click.

I set down my teacup.

In the room sat myself, Darwin, and Bart, who was there to assist.

The meeting place was the third floor of a bakery adjacent to the plaza.

I had a reception room created with a panoramic view of the city plaza.

It was designed to be used for negotiations when important guests like now arrived, showing them the developing city.

“Our last meeting was around the time the civil war was declared, wasn't it?”

“Please speak comfortably, Viscount. And it was probably just before the civil war was declared.”

“A lot of time has passed already.”

“Haha, to me it feels like just the other day. Time goes faster as you get older.”

A year and a half.

That much time had already passed since I met Guild Master Kambad in Wolfskrig.

Half a year since the incident at the mine, and a year since I started ruling Wolfskrig.

“…It's truly unbelievable. Back then, the city was practically in ruins.”

Darwin muttered, looking out the window.

Looking back, the past year seems to be divisible into two major periods.

The first half, where we solved the immediate problem of survival and formed a foundation.

The second half, where we began to create affluence and efficiency with that foundation.

With the first harvest being a bumper crop, the worry of having enough to eat disappeared.

With the help of the artisans provided by Count Maenenwood, we repaired everything from the city's drainage system to the plaza and major buildings.

The subsequent development of the mine supplied the city, which had become a decent place to live, with the driving force of money and people.

Thanks to that driving force, we were able to overhaul the entire city in the following six months.

We cleared land for rice paddies, doubling their area.

We built a water wheel to automate the bellows of the forges.

We secured public safety by illuminating the plaza and major roads with luminescent stones, while also expanding various convenience facilities.

The bakery is one of them.

The three-story bakery, built on one side of the plaza, opened on the day of the first Harvest Festival.

Run by old man Poodle's wife, it serves as both a restaurant and a place that sells high-quality pastries, and also researches new recipes for the development of the domain.

“By the way, is this bread made with rice flour?”

“That's right.”

The rice bread placed next to the teacup is the most successful recipe that came out of the research.

In the southern region where rice is the staple food, people usually eat rice, but perhaps because of the culture, Imperial citizens tend to prefer bread over rice.

However, in the southern region, wheat and barley do not grow as well as in the north due to the hot and humid environment, so bread prices were naturally on the expensive side.

“That's why we made rice bread.”

“So the rumor that bread is half price was true.”

“If you become a lord, you should be able to help the residents of your domain. Isn't the most important thing for them the problem of making a living?”

It was a calculated move on my part.

If I could control the high price of bread in the south, the loyalty towards the lord would also rise accordingly.

However, there was some trial and error.

“It's a bit drier than wheat bread. We are researching ways to improve it.”

It's quite different from the soft and chewy rice bread I ate as a child.

Since I've never learned baking skills, I don't know what the problem is either.

Considering that chewy bread was usually made with glutinous rice, I wonder if I should change the variety.

Fortunately, even if the texture was slightly inferior, the cheap price itself was felt as a merit, and rice bread has established itself as a staple food for the domain's residents.

Anyway, it's time to get to the main point.

I asked, lifting my teacup.

“You called it a dream earlier?”

“Yes, Viscount.”

“May I hear about it?”

“…….”

Darwin, who had been silent for a moment, took a deep breath.

He opened his mouth, looking out the window.

“My dream is to connect skilled merchants and artisans.”

I was a little surprised.

Not because his ambition was great.

“To achieve that, I am dreaming of a few miracles.”

It was a story I didn't know.

***

As I've said several times, I'm a seasoned player of Warlord Conquest.

I have experience clearing the game with every playable faction and every hero.

The prerequisite here is ‘playable’ factions and heroes.

Among the named heroes, there are characters that the player cannot directly control, that is, NPC-like characters.

‘The Undefeated Warrior Randal is a prime example.’

Characters that can be recruited, but cannot be played as the main hero.

Individuals who, depending on the circumstances, can leave my command at any time and defect to another faction.

Kambad Darwin is also one such hero.

Perhaps that's why the dream I knew and the dream that came out of his mouth were different.

The dream I knew of him was to build a factory.

However, in the ideal that actually flowed from his mouth, the factory was only a single piece.

The story began in his childhood.

“My father was a blacksmith.”

Darwin said, fiddling with the handle of his teacup.

“He was called the old master in the neighborhood. He was from Winterbird.”

“The northern city?”

“Yes, it's a well-known fact that there are many excellent blacksmiths in the north, isn't it? My father was one of them.”

Darwin suddenly let out a small laugh.

“One day, some thugs barged in.”

The story that followed was a common kind of tragedy in this world.

“They broke the furniture and fixtures, and threatened to kill us if we didn't pay back the money we borrowed from the guild. Ah, it wasn't a bluff. My father was beaten to death, and my mother and younger sister were sold off.”

“…Bart. Could you leave us for a moment?”

“It's alright. It's all in the past. That past is what made me who I am today, isn't it?”

Darwin smiled with his eyes.

I motioned for Bart, who had been in an awkward posture trying to stand up, to sit back down.

Darwin sipped his tea, looking down at the streets of the plaza outside the window.

He tries not to show it, but I can see the wrinkles around his eyes trembling faintly.

Time is a healer, but some time only makes the wound fester deeper.

For the nature of emotional rifts is that they can grow as deep as the wrinkles on one's face.

“I found out later. That my father had a lot of debt when he was young.”

“I see.”

“I also found out that it was gambling debt. So it must have been karma. He tried to turn over a new leaf and belatedly discovered his talent, but the shadow of the past had no intention of letting him go.”

On the day the tragedy befell his family, the guild master was fortunate enough to be in another city.

After hearing the news from a friend, he immediately fled to the southern part of the Empire.

He managed to track down a relative on his mother's side living in the Theocracy and received help, starting as a porter for a merchant caravan and building his own guild in Berenburg.

“I'm quite a strange one, aren't I? To end up in a profession similar to the people who killed my family. At a young age, I should have been talking about getting revenge or something. But strangely, from that time, I began to see it.”

“See what?”

“How deep the rift is between merchants and artisans.”

Darwin stirred his spoon.

“Monopoly, price control, intermediary margins, overdue bills of exchange, well, the reasons are obvious. It's money. Because of money, merchants harass artisans, and conversely, merchants go bankrupt because of artisans who just give up and lie down.”

“So you came to have the dream you mentioned earlier.”

“Yes, that's right. I wanted to show that merchants and artisans can unite. It was a kind of defiance, you could say. I wanted to bring together the artisans who create masterpiece-like arms, and the merchants who can sell them for their proper value.”

They exist sometimes.

People who draw driving force from their wounds.

Instead of letting their wounds fester and rot, they pick themselves up and strive to prevent others from becoming victims like themselves.

Heroes who are not recorded so importantly in history, but who have changed the world.

Kambad Darwin seemed to be such a hero.

That must be why he was so difficult to recruit.

People like this tend to have firm beliefs and assertions, and tend not to maintain unnecessary relationships.

“Viscount, do you know what the first step to achieving my dream is?”

The guild master asked, leaning towards the table.

I shook my head.

I think I know, but I want to hear it from his own mouth.

“An automated forge. I mean, a facility where you don't have to do unnecessary work. Like controlling the bellows fire by itself, or doing the work of a hundred hammer strikes with just one.”

The guild master said with a bitter smile.

“Everyone said it was a strange idea. They asked what skills would be left if you eliminated the handling of bellows and fire, which are the core competencies of an artisan.”

The bitter smile turned into a sneer.

“No. Absolutely not. When I was working as a porter in Maenenwood, I heard about it just once. How the workshops of the dwarven artisans operate. How vast an automated facility they have with magic stones and steam.”

“Automated facility? Is that true?”

Bart asked with a surprised look.

The guild master smiled faintly.

“Even if we can't go that far, the less useless labor, the better. If we can delegate tasks like maintaining a constant fire or pouring water, we can pay more attention to improving the quality of the arms.”

The guild master explained his dream with a smiling face.

An automated workshop complex.

The economy of scale and a small number of high-priced works.

The point that the artisan spirit of the blacksmiths and the profit-seeking of the merchants could be harmonized, and so on.

It might sound like a fantasy even in a fantasy world, but to me, it's strangely realistic.

I don't know if it could be called as ideal as the picture he dreams of, but I have enjoyed similar benefits of civilization in a world that has undergone development.

I nodded my head and listened attentively to his story.

Then, the guild master, who had been speaking passionately, suddenly stood up from his seat.

“I ask of you.”

He bowed deeply.

“May the Kambad Merchant Guild establish itself in Wolfskrig?”

“……Huh?”

“If you grant me permission, I will produce, supply, and sell good quality arms with the high-quality steel produced in the city.”

“…….”

“In addition, I personally know someone in the Theocracy. I believe I can be of help to the Viscount and the domain someday.”

I don't know for what reason.

Even I can't tell what in this conversation moved him.

What I do know is that I'm in a situation where I'm being unilaterally proposed to.

I was planning to bring him in even if it meant giving him many special privileges, so I guess I should say it turned out well.

“You were the first one to listen to my whole story so seriously, Viscount.”

The reason was simpler than I thought.

“Everyone else said I was crazy.”

I've heard something like that before.

That heroes and geniuses are all lonely.

Maybe it's really true.

I stood up from my seat and extended my hand.

The guild master took my hand.

On the hand of a man who had touched both gold coins and hammers, calluses were clearly visible.

“Do you know something?”

“Yes?”

“We were also thinking about the foundry complex you mentioned. Though not as big as your dream.”

My dream is different from his.

But we can share the process.

At least in one district of the city, that will be the case.

“Here is a rough blueprint drawn up by the Viscount with the construction manager.”

Bart, who had been waiting for the right moment, placed the prepared blueprint on the table.

It was a blueprint that included the entire western district of the city, and even beyond the city walls.

You could call it my ideal, designed to be able to supply the equipment for a large army that would one day number in the hundreds of thousands.

However, it seems that's all for today's talk.

Old man Brol hurriedly opened the door and came in.

“Viscount, I'm really sorry to interrupt, but something urgent has come up.”

Behind old man Brol, Olif and Karen followed.

Olif repeated what Brol had said.

“I apologize. I judged this to be a matter that required an urgent report.”

“What is it?”

“The rangers have found a stranded dwarf in the eastern forest.”

He approached and whispered so that the Kambad guild master couldn't hear.

“He appears to be royalty.”