The Necro-Industrial Revolution

Work on the new palisade walls was progressing flawlessly. Every day, several rotting timbers from the older barrier were ripped out of the dirt, measured, and cut to the precise specifications Corin had drafted. Meanwhile, under Giles’ strict supervision, teams of men were deep in the woods, felling fresh timber for the new hexagonal perimeter.

Standing near the edge of the southern fields, Jack leaned on his cane and looked out over the crops. The stalks were swaying in the breeze, hinting at a golden hue. Harvest was approaching, but there were still a few weeks remaining before the scythes needed to come out.

“The wood is piling up nicely, My Lord,” Giles reported, walking up beside Jack and wiping sweat from his brow.

“Good,” Jack nodded. “But how are the numbers in the coal mine looking?”

Giles frowned, crossing his arms. “Not great, My Lord. The workforce down in the shafts is thinning out. A lot of the men have started apprenticing under the carpenters or other teams whenever they can.”

Jack sighed. He had seen this problem coming for days. The new wage system paid fairly across the board, which meant the pay for mining was relatively similar to other manual labor jobs. But mining was grueling. Even though Jack had automated the heavy lifting—using his spatial rings also they didn’t had to pull the carts filled with coal—swinging a pickaxe in a dark, dusty cave for hours on end was still a miserable existence. Naturally, the workers were flocking to learn skilled trades above ground.

If this continues, we’ll face a severe manpower shortage in the mines, Jack thought, calculating the economic impact. Coal is my most reliable source of liquid income right now. It’s easy money, and I need it.

“Let them learn their new trades,” Jack finally said to Giles. “But to keep the coal flowing, I’ll implement a bonus tier. Anyone willing to work extra shifts in the mines for side income will get a premium on their base wage.”

“And if that doesn’t draw enough hands, My Lord?” Giles asked.

“Then I’ll institute mandatory penal labor,” Jack replied coldly. “Anyone with a criminal background or those caught causing trouble in the village will serve mandatory hours in the shafts every week.”

Jack knew, however, that there weren’t many people with actual criminal backgrounds in the valley. Even with a penal mandate, production would still suffer.

If it comes down to it, I’ll just have to hire outside labor, Jack reasoned internally. The northern region was vast, filled with struggling fiefs. Since Jack was paying exorbitant wages compared to the regional average, he could easily attract unskilled laborers from neighboring territories who were desperate for coin.

The main hurdle there is the Lord’s Tax, Jack analyzed. If he employed peasants from another lord’s land, that lord would demand a hefty cut of their wages as a tax. I don’t know the exact regional rate, but it won’t be cheap. To cover it, I’d have to slightly lower the wages offered to foreign workers compared to my own people. I can use their deducted wages to cover half the tax, and pay the other half out of my own pocket. Lowering their wages too much would backfire and stop them from coming, but a slight dip would balance the books. That, however, was a problem for the future.

Further into the village, the heat of the forge was stifling. Barnaby and his small crew of blacksmiths were working themselves to the bone. Because the valley had an extreme lack of trained smiths, Barnaby was not only forging tools but simultaneously trying to teach a handful of eager, unskilled laborers how to work the bellows and hold the tongs.

Jack stepped into the smithy, accompanied by the weapons engineer he had acquired from the slaver.

“Barnaby, how goes the scrap collection?” Jack called out over the ringing of hammers.

“We’re sorting it now, My Lord!” Barnaby shouted back, wiping soot from his face.

Jack needed to prove to the Church mages this coming winter that his valley was perfectly capable of surviving a beast tide without their expensive, snooping intervention. Surviving by a hair’s breadth, like they had last year, wouldn’t convince the Church to leave them alone. He needed overwhelming firepower. He wanted to actively hunt the beasts for their valuable cores and pelts.

He turned to the weapons engineer, who was unrolling a set of blueprints on a soot-stained barrel.

“These improved ballista designs and the spring-loaded spike traps,” Jack said, tapping the parchment. “We have an abundance of wood to build the frames. The issue is the iron gears and springs.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“We need a lot of tension brackets, My Lord,” the engineer explained.

“Since we are replacing many of the palisade joints and older tools with true steel soon,” Jack told the engineer and Barnaby, “take all the old scrap iron, melt it down, and re-forge it into the parts needed for these defense engines.”

“Understood, My Lord,” Barnaby grunted, tossing a rusted bracket into the furnace.

Around the forge, the unskilled laborers were moving frantically. Under Jack’s new system, people who lacked specific skills weren’t paid a flat rate; they were paid strictly by their quota. If they didn’t finish their assigned tasks, they didn’t get their full coin. This forced the unskilled workers to hustle, often jumping between odd jobs just to secure a comfortable living wage.

Down by the river, Corin was taking full advantage of the available labor. Since the farms didn’t need much tending until the harvest, Corin had borrowed several farmhands from the Old Miller.

“Keep the sand separate from the river stones!” Corin shouted, directing a line of men carrying heavy woven baskets.

Corin was rapidly collecting the materials needed for the blast furnace and the beehive ovens. In fact, a short distance from the village, the beehive ovens were already taking shape. The igloo-like structures of stone and clay were rising quickly. Jack wanted them operational immediately. He intended to stockpile a massive mountain of coke beforehand, so that when the steel production officially began, the blast furnace could run continuously without waiting for fuel.

Meanwhile, over in Alaric Vance’s fief, industry was booming.

The foundation for the new textile mill was already laid. Jack didn’t need to micromanage the construction there; the Vance villagers had been weaving and processing fiber crops their entire lives. They knew exactly how a mill should operate. Jack merely provided the investment and the raw resources, and the locals handled the rest.

However, Jack wasn’t careless. Giles had dispatched two of his most trusted men to supervise the unloading of the timber—which was being transported directly from Jack’s fief to save money.

The two guards stood near the construction site, clipboards in hand, meticulously noting down every single plank, nail, and copper coin invested into the project. Standing right next to them, glaring at the ledger, was one of Alaric Vance’s personal retainers.

Since Alaric ultimately had to pay Jack back for all of this, the arrogant Lord didn’t trust anyone but his own men to audit the expenses. Every single evening, Alaric—or his retainer—would aggressively cross-reference Giles’ ledgers to ensure Jack wasn’t inflating the debt.

The integration between the two fiefs was expanding in other ways, too. A dozen people from Jack’s fief had traveled to Alaric’s village to learn the pottery trade and help operate the kilns. Interestingly, every single one of the apprentices who volunteered to learn pottery was female. The heavy labor of the mines and quarries was largely dominated by the men, so the women had eagerly seized the opportunity to learn a highly profitable, artistic trade.

As for the textile mill, the training program Jack had negotiated with the village elder was currently on hold until the building was finished.

With all this development, a massive, glaring question loomed over the entire valley: How was the economy actually surviving right now?

Jack stopped all the free food rations and supplies. He announced that wages would be paid at the very end of the month. So, for the first three weeks of the new system, how were the peasants supposed to eat?

Jack realized this massive logistical flaw quickly. To fix it, he called emergency assemblies in both his own courtyard and Alaric’s village square.

During these gatherings, Jack addressed the panicked crowds to explain a temporary arrangement: for the first month, the castle would operate entirely on a ledger of credit. Food and other necessities would be provided directly from his stores and tallied against their names. Once they received their wages at the end of the month, any accumulated debts would be automatically deducted from their pay.

To ease their anxiety about taking on this debt, he introduced a transitional sweetener, assuring them that a five-percent discount would be applied to all goods purchased on credit during that initial month.

Essentially, the peasants were working for deferred pay, taking out loans for their daily bread, which would balance out perfectly on payday.

Now, Jack only needed to review the ledgers to track this exact system.

But how was he, the Lord, actually making money in this loop? It was remarkably simple: Taxes and the Coal Mine.

Jack didn’t officially implement harsh citizen taxes yet. But by the laws of the kingdom, if anyone wanted to sell bulk goods in the regional markets, it had to be done under a Lord’s banner, not an individual peasant’s name. The major nobles of the region kept everything strictly regulated to ensure they got their commission. Thus, Jack also charged a very minimal amount as his commission, just for the sake of how things were operated.

Furthermore, passing merchant caravans almost never sold goods directly to the peasants. They sold in bulk to the Lords, who then sold the items to their people. This meant Jack acted as the sole distributor. Even though market prices were slightly higher due to taxes, the peasants had no choice but to buy their mundane, everyday necessities through Jack’s internal economy or from the market.

But Jack was playing the long game. He intentionally took a razor-thin cut of the profits for himself. He didn’t heavily tax the goods because he needed to stimulate growth in both fiefs. Bleeding his peasants dry now would ruin his two-year industrialization plan.

He didn’t need to squeeze the peasants for personal wealth, anyway. His biggest expenditure was the crippling interest rate on his massive 200,000 gold coin loan from the Church.

So as long as the coal mine keeps producing, the raw coal sales alone will cover the Church’s interest. That gave him the freedom to pour every other copper coin right back into the development of the valley.