The Necro-Industrial Revolution

A couple of more days passed in the valley.

Throughout these days, the heavy snowfall continued its relentless assault, burying the landscape under a thick blanket of white. Yet, within the reinforced walls of the Frost Grip fief, nothing major out of the ordinary occurred. The villagers had settled into their winter routines, enjoying the warmth of their new cabins.

However, peace in a winter was always temporary.

A few days after the water pumping mechanism had been installed, Jack, Corin, and Roland stood by the frozen riverbank, listening to a deeply concerning sound.

Creaaak. Snap.

It was a faint, agonizing groan of straining materials echoing from inside the stone cabin housing the Archimedes Screw.

“We should stop the machine,” Corin suggested to Jack, whose retainer was using her magic to make the turbine spin.

Jack frowned, leaning on his cane as Corin and Roland carefully inspected the exposed upper section of the massive wooden screw.

“We have a major structural flaw, My Lord,” Corin said, his breath pluming in the freezing air as he pointed to the hollowed-out tree trunk. “The surface of the river is frozen, but the intake rests in the flowing water beneath the ice. The wood has been submerged for a prolonged period, and it is beginning to swell.”

“And the metal?” Jack asked, his corporate mind already identifying the opposing variable.

“Exactly the opposite,” Roland chimed in, tracing a gloved finger along a scrap-iron blade fitted inside the wood. “Due to the extremely low air temperature above the ice, the forged iron blades inside the screw are rapidly shrinking and becoming brittle. The swelling wood is pressing outward, while the shrinking metal is pulling inward. The tension is reaching a critical threshold.”

Jack gritted his teeth. It was a severe physics problem. If the tension snapped the iron blades while the massive screw was spinning under wind power, the resulting shrapnel of jagged metal and splintered wood could easily kill anyone standing nearby.

“We need heat to prevent the metal from shrinking,” Jack deduced. “But I cannot keep Elias stationed down here to warm it 24 hours a day.”

Jack stared at the frozen landscape, turning the problem over in his mind. Then, an idea sparked, borrowed from the extreme northern climates of his past life on Earth.

“We will build an igloo,” Jack declared.

Corin blinked. “An… igloo, My Lord?”

“A dome made entirely of packed snow,” Jack explained. “Snow is cold, yes, but it is an exceptional insulator. If we pack it thickly enough around the existing stone cabin and the exposed mechanism, it will trap the ambient heat and block the freezing wind entirely.”

Trusting Jack’s unorthodox brilliance, Corin immediately organized the labor. Since almost the entire village was sitting idle due to the harsh weather, securing hands was effortless. Over thirty villagers tramped down to the riverbank. Working together under Jack’s specific architectural directions, they carved out massive blocks of packed snow and assembled a large, sturdy dome over the pumping mechanism in under an hour.

The modular wooden pipelines stretching back to the village didn’t need covering; they were designed to be detached and dragged inside the walls at a moment’s notice anyway.

Once the final block of snow was slotted into place, Jack stepped inside the igloo. The howling wind was instantly silenced. It was undeniably warmer than the outside air, but as Jack watched his breath condense, he knew it wasn’t enough. The ambient temperature was still too cold to safely equalize the tension between the wood and the metal.

He had no choice. He needed magical heat.

Jack summoned Corin and the Old Miller to the greenhouse in the castle’s courtyard. The glass structure was a balmy paradise compared to the outside, but looking through the frosted panes, Jack felt a wave of anxiety. It had been over ten days since the valley had seen even a glimmer of natural sunlight.

“I need to spare one of the Ever-Ember heat runes to install inside the river igloo,” Jack said.

The Old Miller looked horrified. “My Lord! Without the sun, these runes are the only thing keeping the crops alive. If we remove one, the ambient temperature will drop. The frost will creep in from the glass!”

“I am well aware, Old Miller,” Jack replied grimly. “But water is just as vital as food. We have to make a bitter choice.”

What followed was a grueling, meticulous puzzle. For the next two days, Jack, Corin, and the Old Miller spent eighteen exhausting hours calculating heat dissipation and repositioning the remaining ever-ember heat runes. They dug up the runes, moved them inches to the left, buried them, waited an hour to check the ambient temperature drop, and then tried again.

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Finally, after dozens of trial-and-error formations, they managed to stretch the area of effect just enough to safely spare a single Ever-Ember rune.

It wasn’t a perfect victory. Because the heat was stretched too thin on the far right side of the greenhouse, two entire rows of vegetables were doomed to dry out and die if the sun didn’t shine within a week. But Jack took the loss in stride. He carried the spared rune down to the igloo, activated it, and instantly stabilized the pumping mechanism. Naturally, the igloo now needed some renovations every few week due to constant heat inside it.

The water flowed securely once more.

But Jack didn’t have the luxury of resting. The peak of winter was approaching, which meant the wild beast tides would soon flood out of the rift. He wanted his valley’s victory to be a flawless execution of defense that would leave the Church mages utterly speechless.

To ensure they weren’t caught off guard, Jack extended his mental threads deep into the southern woods. Using Grim, his skeletal Alpha Winter Wolf, Jack established a scouting perimeter, keeping a passive watch on the increasing number of wild beasts slowly migrating through the frozen timber.

Meanwhile, up in the castle, Banty and his three Church companions were enjoying their warm beds and hot meals, sitting idle by the hearth.

Jack wasn’t running a charity.

He summoned the four mages to the Great Hall. “Since you are here to observe and aid in our defense, I am assigning you to perimeter patrol,” Jack ordered smoothly. “You will work on a strict twelve-hour schedule, from evening until morning. Two of you on the walls per shift, rotating nightly.”

Banty and his other team members had no choice but to obey. Anyways, they would have been doing this even if Jack hadn’t decided to defend against the beast tide himself.

As the days crept on and the environment grew even more bone-chillingly cold, Jack finalized the lockdown. The heavy ballistas were locked into position, the caltrops were scattered precisely outside the deep trenches, and Jack issued a strict mandate: No one, especially children, is allowed outside the palisade walls until the beast tide is completely eradicated. Any exceptions require direct, written permission from Giles or Barnaby.

A few days before issuing this lockdown, Jack sat in his study, reviewing the weekly labor reports submitted by Giles.

Jack frowned, running his finger down a neat column of coal numbers. He rarely went down into the village anymore, preferring the warmth of the castle, but the ledger painted a confusing picture.

According to the logs, a specific group of people was still actively working down in the dark coal mines.

Jack leaned back, puzzled. Why are they still working? The castle was currently selling basic necessities and spices at heavily discounted rates. Furthermore, Jack had publicly promised that the village would soon be eating the hunted beast meat for free. These miners had been earning good wages for months; they should have a comfortable amount of copper saved up. There was absolutely no logical reason to endure the misery of the winter mines.

Had they spent all their savings on luxury goods? Impossible. The village didn’t produce luxuries, and if they had bought expensive items from the market, Jack would know. The northern economic system dictated that all bulk market trades went through the Lord. Jack had copies of every single receipt.

Concerned that someone was being extorted, Jack sent for Giles, ordering him to come to the study in secrecy.

When Giles arrived, Jack pushed the ledger across the desk. “Who are these people, Giles? Why are they still in the shafts?”

Giles looked at the names and sighed softly. “They are the former slaves, My Lord. Every single one of them.”

Jack blinked, slightly taken aback.

“They know that their contracts will be up in five years, My Lord,” Giles explained quietly. “But they also know that when they are finally free, they will be stepping out into the world with absolutely nothing to their names. They are terrified of falling back into debt. So, they are working every single shift they can physically handle to hoard as much money as possible.”

Jack listened, a sense of understanding washing over him. It reminded him intensely of his previous life on Earth as a corporate worker. He had known colleagues who worked brutal overtime, sacrificing their health and weekends just to build a nest egg, terrified of the unforgiving economy.

“I spoke to a few of them,” Giles continued. “Some of them wants to save enough to open a small bakery, or other small businesses. While one of them is trying to save enough coin to travel back east and buy his younger brother out of servitude. They have dreams, My Lord. And your wages are the only way to achieve them.”

Jack rubbed his face, feeling a strange mixture of pity and deep respect. He didn’t want to intervene in their personal ambitions, but his duty as a Lord came first.

“I respect their drive,” Jack said firmly. “But working in the mines during the peak of winter, with the beast tide looming, is a death sentence if a pack of wolves slips past the patrols. I will not have their blood on my hands.”

“What are your orders, My Lord?”

“The lockdown is being issued,” Jack mandated. “Suspend all mining operations entirely until the beast tide is subdued. Tell them they can chase their dreams in the spring when it is safe to do so.”

While Jack secured his own valley, the southern pass remained completely blocked by massive snowdrifts. He had no physical way to check on the condition of Alaric’s fief, but he wasn’t particularly worried.

According to the last report he received before the snow sealed them in, four Church mages had arrived in Alaric’s territory three weeks ago. True to his cowardly, arrogant nature, Alaric had immediately bribed or manipulated one of the mages to serve as his personal bodyguard inside his heavily fortified, stone castle, leaving the remaining three to guard the exposed village.

Despite Alaric’s vanity, the situation in his village was excellent. Thanks to the shipments of coal Jack had pushed through before the roads closed, the villagers were warm in their homes. Furthermore, because Jack controlled the economic treaty, he had dictated the food prices, preventing Alaric from price-gouging his own people during the freeze.

Back in the Frost Grip fief, the tension finally snapped.

The number of wild beasts prowling the treeline increased exponentially. Jack’s scouting through Grim confirmed it: the vanguard of the beast tide had arrived.

Following Jack’s strict orders, Banty and his team of Church mages began engaging the smaller, isolated packs of winter wolves and frost-boars that wandered too close to the walls.

However, they didn’t use fireballs or earth-shattering magic.

Following Jack’s “suggestions,” the mages engaged the beasts in close-quarters combat, using heavy iron spears and steel broadswords provided by Barnaby. Because they were trained combat mages, their physical reflexes and strength were more than enough to slaughter standard, non-magical beasts without relying on raw elemental spells.

They dragged the first pristine, un-scorched wolf carcasses back through the gates, tossing them into the snow. The village butchers immediately set to work, harvesting the pelts and preparing the cuts.