Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 348 - 347: Monsters

Of course, Gawain and Aunt Heidi’s "spanking the child" (literally) is basically just intimidation. After all, Rebecca is already an adult now and even holds the title of Viscountess. Tying such a big girl to the beam and hitting her or chasing her around the room seems inappropriate—scolding her a bit usually suffices. Another reason is that Rebecca’s head is truly hard; hitting her wouldn’t have much effect, and after striking too much, one’s hands tend to hurt...

Speaking of Rebecca’s title, if we truly followed the kingdom’s inheritance law and aristocratic hierarchy, after Gawain rose from the coffin and secured the title of Duke, Rebecca, as the family’s current sole heir, should receive the Marquis title, one rank lower. Essentially, this carefree lass running around the territory causing trouble with her fireballs should actually be a Marchioness—who the heck would believe that when told?

However, back then, Gawain made an agreement with Francis II to prevent the royal family from being too wary of the Cecil Clan. Gawain Cecil’s Duke title currently serves as a personal title only. Until the Cecil Clan regains ample aristocratic capital (land, population, property, and military strength), the descendants’ titles won’t be promoted—hence Rebecca is still stuck with the title of Viscount...

Judging by the happy-go-lucky way this silly roe dear lives daily, she’s unlikely to have thought about such complex issues.

"Once the large labs of the Magic Guide Technology Research Institute are up and running, some of the temporarily shelved mechanical projects can proceed," Gawain continued after Aunt Heidi used The Sculpture Hand to pluck the fork off the ceiling and playfully knocked Rebecca on the head, "Currently, the north-south highway between Kant territory and Cecil is completed, and carriages only take a day to travel between the two, but more convenient transportation tools are needed to truly connect the two lands—like I’ve said before, land control largely depends on the degree of transportation."

Rebecca was pretending that her head hurt severely, hoping to solicit sympathy, but upon hearing Gawain mention "mechanical," she immediately forgot it. Her eyes brightened, and she happily looked at Gawain, "Is it the magic energy automobile you mentioned before?"

"From a technical standpoint, we’re ninety percent ready to manufacture that thing," Gawain nodded, "We’ve been missing just the manpower. Once you gather the crew and the large labs in the institute begin working, that project will start."

Developing a more advanced transportation tool to match Cecil’s current industrial pace has been a long-standing idea of Gawain. Today, Cecil’s magic-powered engines have developed into second-generation rotary engines. The diverse array of magic-powered engines and the steel machinery they drive have become the greatest force behind territory development, whether in mines, factories, or construction sites. Mechanical engineering and overall rapid territory growth have set higher demands for transportation—plants need more industrial raw materials, the control range of the territory keeps expanding, and various large and heavy machinery are becoming prevalent. Traditional human and animal-powered transport has clearly become a bottleneck hindering further territorial development.

We can’t just keep using carriages to haul ore to the steel plant, right? It’s not sustainable to have people lug parts of construction machinery on their backs.

Yet although Gawain proposed this idea, the territory’s technical personnel are sorely lacking. Despite the convenience of magic in this world, which greatly accelerates research and manufacturing, the hard shortage of Mage Technicians is not easily alleviated—thus this concept remains a concept to date, as the project hasn’t commenced.

Rebecca has always been highly invested in it—this girl has a natural enthusiasm for mechanical matters. She was especially excited to learn that a sixteen-barreled fireball launcher could be installed on the automatic machinery, allowing her to speed at hundreds of kilometers per hour while firing fireballs. She was so thrilled that Aunt Heidi almost hit her again.

After proudly getting Gawain’s affirmative answer, Rebecca started chuckling to herself, her mind certainly conjuring countless scenarios. Aunt Heidi laid eyes on this simple-minded girl helplessly, believing she should be incapable of any thoughts for the time being, and thus seamlessly shifted to the next topic, "Besides, there’s another matter, Ancestor. Today, the new immigrants at the port have completed registration. The immigration management personnel reported a situation..."

"Oh?" Gawain raised an eyebrow, "What situation?"

"Among this batch of immigrants, there are a dozen or so pharmacists, herbalists, and Alchemists, hailing from the northern and northwestern regions of the southern borders," Aunt Heidi earnestly reported, "Additionally, they mentioned more of their ’colleagues’ abandoning their homes, so more people should be arriving here in the future."

"... The impact has started to surface," Gawain quietly listened until the end, his face showing no surprise, "The northern trade route is personally managed by Patrick, and Viscount Andrew is promoting the northwestern direction—progress aligns with my expectations."

"Revival Month has arrived, and many mercenaries and adventurers normally resting during the winter are ready to resume work. Generally being the primary customers of pharmacist-like professions, throughout the entire past winter, our caravans have sold alchemical potions to almost every mercenary guild in the northern and Western Region. Hence, pharmacists and Alchemists in those areas are now massively going bankrupt..." Aunt Heidi spoke softly and sighed lightly, "Now, their only options aside from Cecil territory are the northeastern area or migrating further towards Duke of the East..."

"Gran Territory is already our ally," Gawain stated calmly, "Tomorrow, the first batch of twelve thousand assorted alchemical potions will be sent to Lady Ropenny Gran’s castle, and she will distribute them throughout the eastern area. Caravans will also use Gran Territory as a springboard to begin supplying alchemical potions to Duke of the East."

Prior to this, a group of Cecil Clan pharmaceutical merchants had successfully opened the market in the Dukedom of the East, establishing relatively fixed sales points in several towns. However, due to inconvenient transportation and the distance lacking protection, the cost of supplying the East has remained high, and the supply volume is quite problematic. But now, with Lady Ropenny Gran’s full support, Cecil’s alchemical potions will be continuously delivered to Duke Silas Loland’s territory.

"...Then, I’m afraid the Cecil Clan is the only choice left for those pharmacists," Aunt Heidi shook her head, "Or to put it another way, our factory is their only choice."

"More people will come after," Gawain stated calmly, "Pharmacists, such as them, belong to the more affluent stratum among the civilians, thus they have a stronger tolerance for ’unemployment’ and won’t collapse collectively as quickly as the Tanzan Town mine workers, who went bankrupt swiftly after the mine machinery was introduced. The pharmacists and alchemists currently coming to the territory are probably the poorer ones, with not much savings. They went bankrupt quickly after failing to receive orders in early spring, whereas those with savings or regular customers... will be gradually forced here when alchemical potions become more widespread."

Tiel poked at the food in front of her with her tail tip. It seemed she had finally given up the thought of eating and was prepared to use her tail to absorb the food instead. She listened to Gawain and Aunt Heidi’s conversation and sadly remarked, "Actually, those who go bankrupt earlier are luckier as they have time to enter the factory and find a position. Given the production efficiency of the factory, those later pharmacists might not even qualify to work there. After all, I’ve heard that such a large reaction group only requires seven people to control, producing an output equivalent to more than eight thousand pharmacists combined..."

As an outsider from a more advanced civilization, Tiel saw many things clearly in the Cecil territory. Despite the vast differences between sea demon society and human society, she had witnessed numerous seasons of civilization’s rise and fall on land, enabling her to discern certain things from experience.

"Industrialization is a monstrous beast, with an appetite more ravenous than the giant Typhon," Gawain said slowly, "Typhon has undergone progress through transformation but must devour more resources and people to complete its final transition. The advancements brought by the magical industry in Cecil Territory are even more rapid than those in Typhon, and what it must consume will naturally be greater. Traditional handicrafts, small economies, traditional agriculture... all serve as its nourishment."

"Factories will consume people," Aunt Heidi muttered softly, "You’ve told me this long ago, but I didn’t fully understand its meaning then... Now I start to understand. Those factories... they create such a huge chain reaction."

"Yes, factories do consume people, especially when uncontrolled. They almost use human flesh and blood as fuel," Gawain explained as he sliced the food on his plate, while his mind envisioned various phenomena during society’s transition from agriculture to industrialization and the horrific outcome of uncontrolled ’factory consuming people.’ "That’s why we must establish the bonds and barriers to control this monstrous beast from the very beginning. Whether by formulating comprehensive worker protection policies, making arrangements for career transition in advance, or preparing sufficient peripheral jobs to accommodate the displaced and unemployed population while developing industry, controlling this beast requires these measures."

Amber stared at Gawain, blinking: "No wonder you set up heaps of peculiar regulations when constructing those factories... Did you already foresee what would happen later?"

"I must foresee it, otherwise the factories would turn around and consume everything we’ve worked so hard to develop until now," Gawain gave her a smile, "When people only have two choices, either work themselves to death in the factory or starve to death outside of it, then all our efforts will have been meaningless, and this world will remain as bad as it was before."

Gawain’s words reassured the people present, but he himself knew there were still unspoken truths.

The ’control measures’ he established can indeed alleviate the various contradictions arising from industrial destruction of traditional handicraft and agricultural societies, but such measures only serve as relief. Especially in this world, the existence of magic power makes any technological breakthrough easily produce extraordinarily powerful and direct effects. The time required for large-scale mechanical equipment to transition from blueprint to finished product is short, and the pace from concept to mass production of industrial products is extremely fast, thus amplifying the force of industrialization. In this process, the pressure brought by the bankruptcy of handicraft population due to the collapse of the old social order is probably not easy to ease.

So, how should this excess pressure be relieved and transferred?

A string of names silently surfaced in Gawain’s mind...

(I’m back!!!

First, I recommend a book, "Beyond the Deep Space" by Final Eternal, a science fiction story about exploration in the universe and searching for the path of civilization. It has already been completed and even won the Galaxy Award for Best Online Literature. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Secondly, I must say — Lying Cow is truly formidable... agile in thinking, updating three Chapters in a single day... terrifying.)