The Necro-Industrial Revolution

The sun had started to dip beneath the peaks of the mountains, when Jack’s carriage rolled back into the castle courtyard.

After missing lunch during his visit to the Vance’s fief, Jack’s stomach gave an aggressive rumble the moment he stepped down the carriage. He headed straight for his room, where maids quickly brought food for him. He ate quickly, wiping his mouth with a napkin before calling for Karen.

“Karen,” Jack said. “Send someone to fetch Old Miller. Tell him I’m ready for his report.”

“Right away, My Lord,” she replied with a crisp nod.

A short while later, footsteps sounded outside, followed by a knock on the door of the new meeting room. Old Miller stepped into the room, bowing deeply. “My Lord. I hope your journey was fruitful.”

“It was informative enough,” Jack said, gesturing toward the wooden chair across from his desk. “Sit, Miller. Do you have the report on the slaves ready?”

“I do, My Lord.” Old Miller said.

“Start with the standouts,” Jack commanded, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded under his chin. “Anyone with technical or specialized experience.”

“Well, My Lord…” Old Miller started. “There’s a young fellow named Corin. He claims he used to be an Imperiall seige engineer. Said he was working on some sort of stone bridge project in a wealthy Province.”

Jack’s eyes flicked upward. “An engineer? Go on.”

“According to him, the bridge collapsed after the construction under the weight of a big merchant caravan,” the Old Miller explained, shaking his head. “Corin swears his calculations were sound, but his superior was cutting corners, pocketing the gold meant for proper mortar and iron braces. When the structure gave out and the bridge fell, the superior pinned the whole disaster on Corin. The province slapped a massive debt fine on him. He couldn’t pay it, so they stripped his standing and sold him to the slavers.”

“Interesting,” Jack murmured, tapping a finger against the dark wood of his desk.

An actual civil engineer, Jack thought to himself, feeling a spark of intrigue. To build this valley into an operational, self-sustaining hub, he desperately needed educated minds, not just people with muscle. But he wasn’t about to swallow the man’s tragic sob story whole.

Corruption in large organizations is universal, Jack reflected, recalling his past life in corporate. Blame moves downhill, and scapegoats are easy to make. It’s entirely plausible he got screwed over. But it’s just as possible he screwed up himself and blamed his boss. Still… I’m not asking him to build a two-hundred-foot vaulted aqueduct tomorrow. I just need someone who understands load-bearing walls, foundations, and timber framing better than a common carpenter. Even a disgraced engineer knows more than the average peasant.

Jack realized he had been silent for a long moment, staring off.

The Old Miller shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Should I continue, My Lord?”

“Yes,” Jack snapped out of his thoughts. “Continue.”

For the next hour, the Old Miller read through the names and former trades of every single slave they had bought. He detailed their past lives, their physical conditions, and how they had ended up in chains.

“And… that’s the lot of them, My Lord,” the Miller concluded. “That’s all.”

“Very good work, Miller. You did an exceptional job gathering all this in a single afternoon,” Jack praised, standing up from his chair.

The old man beamed, looking genuinely relieved. “Thank you, My Lord. What are your orders?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s almost dark, and everyone has worked hard today. Go back to the village, get a hot meal, and get a full night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning, I don’t want anyone going to work. I want every single villager and slaves gathered in the castle courtyard at first light. Understood?”

The Miller raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised by the order, but bowed low. “As you wish, My Lord.”

“Dismissed.”

Later that night, long after the castle had fallen silent, Jack walked up the stone stairwells to the top of the castle.

The upper floor had finally been scrubbed clean of dirt, bird droppings, and mold. The cool night wind blew freely through the open archways. Jack leaned against the stone railing, looking down at the valley spread out beneath him. A few faint pinpricks of warm light glimmers from the windows houses down in the village, surrounded by the vast, dark shadows of the mountains.

I was completely wasting these people, Jack thought, resting his chin on his hands. I was treating them like generic units of labor—digging dirt, hauling stone, cutting wood. Sure, I can’t verify if all their backstories are genuine, but even basic vocational experience is gold in a world like this.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

He mentally categorized the tally Old Miller had brought him.

Two engineers, Jack mused. Corin specializes in heavy construction, which we don’t strictly need right now, but I can use his eyes to audit my builds. He can check for any mistakes, help me design the glass greenhouses I want to build before winter, and fortify the village defense walls. Any professional feedback will save us from fatal design flaws.

The second engineer is arguably even more valuable right now, Jack thought, his eyes narrowing in the dark. He used to build hunting ballistas and heavy defense engines for border towns situated near high-density monster forests.

Jack knew the brutal realities of this world’s demographics. Only five to ten out of every hundred people were ever born with the capacity to awaken a mana core and become a true mage. Out of those few, even fewer survived the grueling training, and only a tiny fraction ever reached the coveted Silver Core rank.

Over ninety percent of the human population were completely ordinary people—men and women without a single drop of functional magic. And mages weren’t charity workers; they certainly weren’t everywhere at once.

Even the holy Church, with its vast army of mages, kept its spellcasters focused on high-priority threats. When wild monster rifts opened up, the Church sent only a handful of mages to handle the regional hubs—mostly in the eastern territories and the northern regions.

For ordinary commoners living in rural fiefs, hiring a rogue mage or a guild mage to hunt wild beasts was outrageously expensive. Buying magical artifacts and using spirit stones to defend a village cost a small fortune that even minor lords struggled to pay.

Over centuries of necessity, non-magical humans had adapted. They built heavy, mechanical war engines—giant ballistas, crank-operated siege crossbows, spring-loaded pit traps, and specialized armor-piercing bolts. Tools designed specifically so that five normal men working a winch could kill an iron-hide beast that would otherwise require an Iron core mage to take down.

I need that weapon engineer working immediately, Jack thought. I need to get rid of the Guild Mages as soon as possible.

Silas was now helping Jack after his punishment, meaning Silas would definitely send mages this time to help during the beast tides, and Jack can’t just decline that.

Major noble families didn’t let Guild Mages onto their land during winter rift seasons. Why? Because having Church mages nosing around your territory meant you couldn’t run discreet operations, dodge taxes, or hoard unregistered resources.

If I can equip my guards with heavy, automated defense weapons, I can prove that the Frost Grip fief can defend its own borders without outside help, Jack realized. When the mages from church arrives, I can politely tell them that he no longer required church’s assistance. That gives me total privacy to cultivate my own mana core freely.

Jack continued ticking through the numbers in his head.

Next, eighteen craftsmen and artisans of various trades, he noted. Seventeen actual farmers—most of them lost their land to drought or bad harvests, racking up debts that landed them in the chains. The rest don’t have specialized skills, and a few were street thugs or draft-dodgers. But muscle is muscle. I can train them into basic guards, field hands and miners.

He could ask the new engineers to construct defense emplacements and perfect his village layout.

He could pool his new artisans with the skilled potters and weavers from Alaric’s fief to establish a regional production network.

And as for Alaric’s fief fiber crops? Jack had several acres of fertile, unused soil along his own riverbanks. If he dedicated a section of his land to growing those same industrial fiber crops, using his experienced farmers to oversee the harvest, they could turn textile and rope production into a massive, lucrative export business within two years.

As for the unskilled laborers and thugs, Jack thought, I’ll keep them rotating between construction, farm duty, and the coal mines. Mining coal gives us heating fuel for winter and trade. And with my spatial storage rings, mining has became much faster, so I don’t need too many people in miney anyways.

Everything was coming together. The Miller’s report gave Jack the final piece of data he needed to complete his new Wage & Compensation System.

It was a modern wage structure—completely alien to the feudal system of this world. Jack’s system paid money based on skill level, daily output, and specialized labor.

There’s just one bottleneck, Jack sighed. Almost all my liquid wealth is currently gold coins. I can’t hand a peasant a flat gold piece for two weeks of farm labor. I need smaller denominations—silvers and coppers.

He would have to take a trip to the regional market soon and pay a currency exchange fee to break down his gold into working silver and copper coinage. It pained his inner accountant to lose money on exchange charges, but it was unavoidable until the autumn merchant caravans arrived at his gates.

Finally, Jack turned his thoughts to the legal status of his slaves.

When he had purchased them from Vane, the slave merchant, Jack had placed them under a mandatory twenty-year service contract before they could earn their freedom. He had chosen twenty years back then because offering immediate freedom in front of a licensed slave trader would have raised huge red flags, making Vane suspect Jack was an abolitionist eccentric or an easy mark.

Tomorrow, I’m lowering that contract from twenty years down to five, Jack resolved.

Why five years instead of freeing them instantly on the spot? Jack thought. If I hand them unconditional freedom tomorrow morning, half of them will pack their rags and run off to try and reach their old homelands—only to get captured by bandits or fall back into debt. And despite my strict orders against physical abuse, some of the local villagers still treat the slaves with casual disrespect and muttered insults.

Dropping a soul-crushing twenty-year sentence down to just five years of fair, paid labor will completely shatter their despair. They’ll get proper housing, fair wages, safety, and a realistic light at the end of the tunnel. They won’t just work—they’ll work twice as hard to protect this valley, as many of them might even start treating the valley as their new home.

Far below the castle, deep within the darkness, a faint mental pulse echoed in the back of Jack’s mind.

One of his skeletons, working tirelessly in the pitch-black tunnels under Jack’s commands, clinked its pickaxe against a hard mineral vein. The skeleton paused on Jack’s command, and it picked up a raw, unpolished gem from the shattered rock, placing it into a wooden basket.

Jack felt the feedback through his magical connection and smiled subtly into the night wind.

“Step by step.”