213 Chapter: Something I Want to Make (1)
The reason there hadn’t been any problems so far was that we had trained with a focus on discipline for control.
However, as we began proper training, the limitations of the soldiers became clear.
The ‘bodies’ formed from living in the barren North were the issue.
“With food like that, look at them! Ugh, just look at how scrawny they are.”
The people from the North had grown up malnourished, mostly small in stature.
They’ve only recently come to Penris and started eating well, but that’s limited to just wheat.
Meat is not something just anyone can enjoy. It first goes to the nobles and knights, and the soldiers barely get scraps in their stew.
Most of the time, they just boil weeds instead.
“Everyone’s been raised like that without proper meat, so their stamina and endurance can’t be good.”
So, even a little intense training wouldn’t go well for their bodies.
Stamina doesn’t simply increase from training. Eating well and resting are just as important.
Eating more meat and increasing body size is also crucial. It wouldn’t be efficient to grow as grotesquely large as Gordon, but maintaining a proper physique helps in combat.
“Meat, meat… It’s a resource that’s not easy to come by. But we need it more.”
No matter how much money I have, there are some resources that are simply unreachable. Livestock are one of those.
Resources like meat, milk, and leather are incredibly hard to procure.
Many animals died due to drought damage.
Other territories were in the same situation.
“Just eating bread isn’t enough. We have to somehow increase meat production beyond what we have now.”
This was a concern Ghislaine had been pondering for a while.
In an era where wheat was the staple, he had first addressed the food crisis through monster wheat. But that was just the bare minimum; it wasn’t satisfactory.
Not just the soldiers, but the territory residents needed an environment where they could easily eat meat to grow stronger. Especially for the future of the territory, the children had to eat well.
Even with new laws prohibiting child labor and promoting education, if the kids were too weak from lack of food, it meant nothing.
“I, too, bought meat every time I had extra money in my previous life to grow stronger.”
Now having reached a state of enlightenment where that wasn’t necessary, ordinary people couldn’t afford to think the same way.
“I hear those crazy elves cry for meat every day.”
Having only received good treatment, elves had very refined tastes.
They claim grass is tasteless and refuse to eat it. They demand an absurd amount of food, like alcohol and meat.
But one can understand them to an extent. Especially to build stamina, they need to eat meat well.
It was a matter of pride for Ghislaine not to force stamina training without proper nourishment.
“Indeed, it’s better to proceed with that first.”
“Well, it looks like we should get started on that.”
Ghislaine had various plans in mind. Though priorities sometimes shifted according to the situation, the big picture remained intact.
And securing meat and leather was, of course, part of that picture.
“Shall we start increasing our meat supply?”
Ghislaine immediately called for Gillian and said, “Lower the training intensity a bit. The soldiers seem to be struggling to keep up.”
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault…”
“No, I think we might have set the bar too high. Everyone’s only been eating bread; their stomachs will be empty soon enough. For now, let’s just keep up morale with some formation training.”
“Understood.”
Returning to the castle, Ghislaine quickly summoned his retainers. The sudden call left them looking uneasy.
‘What does he want to do now?’
‘Please don’t let it be more work.’
‘Is this a suggestion to take it easy?’
Though things improved a bit after the management team was reinforced, there was still a lot of work. The needs had increased with the rising population.
There was no benefit in adding more work here.
Reading the retainers’ thoughts, Ghislaine smiled and said, “I want to create something.”
Of course, it was something new. The retainers drooped their shoulders with gloomy faces.
Not again.
Seeing their reaction, Ghislaine continued with a reassuring tone, “It’s not a big deal. We won’t need many people at first. Just the mages will do.”
The people let out a sigh of relief, but Alfoy seemed shocked and asked, “Why the mages again? There’s so much work already! I feel like I’m going to die!”
“I’ll hold off on other tasks for now.”
“What is it?”
The mention of postponing other work piqued Alfoy’s interest. Honestly, the construction site job was too exhausting and boring; he felt like he was going to collapse.
“I want to increase the meat production.”
“Meat?”
Alfoy instantly salivated at the thought. In fact, it wasn’t just him; everyone else felt the same.
They were full, but that was just from eating bread. There was hardly any meat to enjoy.
Though the Penris Territory suffered less from drought damage, the overall scarcity of livestock made it difficult to eat meat.
Claude, who was aware of this, stepped forward to ask, “How do you plan to increase the meat supply? The number of livestock is already quite low; there’s a limit to how much we can raise.”
“Isn’t it hard to raise livestock like cows and sheep because it takes so long?”
“That’s right. With the low numbers, they take a while to grow. We can raise pigs and chickens relatively faster, but that’s still not nearly enough for the territory residents to eat comfortably.”
“What’s the fastest among them?”
“Well… chickens are definitely a better option. They lay a lot of eggs, grow the fastest, and require the least feed.”
Ghislaine nodded as if agreeing with the answer. “That’s exactly it. From now on, we’ll massively increase the number of chickens. Soldiers and territory residents need to eat meat to stay healthy. My goal is for all territory residents to eat chicken at least once a week.”
“Pfft.”
Claude couldn’t help but grin with a rotten expression.
Living creatures are different from the techniques they’ve developed so far. You can’t just artificially increase their numbers on a whim.
“I understand that you want titles like ‘Food King of the North’ and now ‘Chicken King’… but suddenly increasing chickens isn’t feasible. It’s difficult to source them in bulk from other regions too.”
“That’s why we have to raise them ourselves. I’ll teach you a few methods. First, we change the breeding method.”
“Breeding method?”
“Don’t just leave them alone like before. Limit their roaming space and feed them as much as possible. This way, they’ll gain weight and produce more meat.”
“Just sitting around and eating all day? Lucky bastard! Chicken!”
Claude and the others nodded their heads. Upon hearing it, it sounded plausible.
Given the difficulty of finding food for people, they hadn’t thought about increasing the chicken’s weight until now. There surely had to be places that increased their meat supplies that way.
“That’s not a difficult task. We just need to modify the facilities a bit. But even then, it would only slightly increase the amount of meat. There’s an absolute shortage of chickens.”
“So, what I want to create is that. How are we going to hatch the eggs now?”
“Well… it’s rare for a chicken to sit on the eggs, and most of the time, we use incubators.”
Chickens could incubate roughly 10 eggs at a time in about a month and a half.
However, due to environmental factors, more than half of them fail to hatch properly.
Thus, incubators play a very important role in hatching eggs, as they minimize changes from the external environment.
Of course, because of technical issues, they had to be made small. Still, they were more productive than letting the chickens sit on their eggs, so they continued to use them.
Ghislaine pointed out that very issue.
“Then just make a really big one! If we can hatch everything reliably, the chicken population will increase quickly! If we succeed, we could be flooding in thousands, even tens of thousands, per month!”
“……”
Hearing Ghislaine’s words, Claude rubbed his forehead.
‘Ah, here we go again.’
He felt frustrated about where to start explaining.
After organizing his thoughts in his head, Claude took a deep breath and opened his mouth.
“Can I explain something?”
“Uh, go ahead.”
“It’s not that we don’t want to make the incubators big. It’s that we can’t make them that big, so we make them small.”
“So, now you want to make them big? Just make them big then!”
‘Why can’t you understand me? Why can’t you listen properly?’
Claude forced himself to calm his boiling temper before continuing.
“… The incubators we’re using now are better than leaving them unattended, but the hatching rate isn’t very high. It’s difficult to keep the temperature and humidity stable. The larger they are, the harder it is to maintain uniform conditions. Plus, people have to check on them frequently…”
The incubators used in this era varied in shape and materials depending on the region and the maker. Some were made out of wood, while others were made of stone.
The commonality was they used fire to keep the interior warm and sprinkled water regularly to maintain temperature and humidity.
In short, they required a lot of manual handling and were difficult.
Although Claude enthusiastically explained this, Ghislaine seemed only half-listening. The existing method’s problems didn’t seem that important to him.
What mattered was actually making things.
Technical limitations? He didn’t care about that. He had seen something like it in his previous life. Since he saw it in the future, it must work without a doubt.
“Ah, now that I understand the issues with the current method, let’s improve it from now on. The mages will be put to work on developing a new type of incubator. Make it as big as possible and require as little manual effort as possible. Got it?”
In his past life, due to turmoil, cities were fortified.
In limited spaces, it wasn’t feasible to raise large quantities of cows and sheep. They’d rather raise warhorses for combat.
But they couldn’t avoid eating meat, so they began raising the easiest option, chickens. As a result, every city ended up with large hatcheries.
Having seen that scene firsthand, Ghislaine naturally thought it could be created again, but the mages were a different story.
After blinking for a while, Alfoy asked, “So you mean to make a large incubator… right?”
“Yep.”
“But how can we make it if we don’t know how?”
“Just make the small incubators bigger, and ensure the temperature and humidity are automatically and evenly maintained. We can figure out what’s suitable with a few experiments. It’s not that difficult, right?”
“Just make the small incubator bigger and ensure the temperature and humidity are automatically controlled evenly. You can figure out what’s appropriate after a few experiments. It’s not that difficult, right?”
Ghislaine replied with a tone of obviousness.
To the mages who pursue realization, things like chicken coops or incubators seemed utterly trivial, so it was understandable that they couldn’t grasp it.
But Ghislaine thought that if they paid attention and researched, it could be solved quickly.
However, contrary to Ghislaine’s thoughts, Alfoy responded with a look of disbelief.
“There’s no such thing as humidity control magic in the world.”
“What? Why not? There’s temperature control magic, so why isn’t there humidity control magic? Does that even make sense?”
“We say something doesn’t exist when it doesn’t… Who would even create such a magic…?”
At those words, Ghislaine crossed her arms and scowled.
Even among mages, there are many spells that differ by school of thought. So it was impossible for someone like Ghislaine, who wasn’t a mage, to know the vast world of magic in detail.
However, such magic surely existed in her past life. After all, that was how they were able to create large hatcheries.
To maintain the temperature and humidity inside a significant incubator, there was no way but through magic.
‘Oh no… Did they really create new magic back then?’
At that time, intelligent mages and scholars came together to create all the necessary things for survival.
Therefore, it was highly likely that magic related to humidity was also created back then.
It couldn’t be helped. She had to start researching immediately to find that method.
“Use any means necessary and apply all the magic you know. I’ll provide plenty of runestones for experimentation.”
But everyone started looking at Ghislaine without answering, as if they wanted something.
Feeling a bit burdened, Ghislaine tilted her head back slightly and asked.
“Why?”
“How do we create humidity control magic…?”
At Alfoy’s question, Ghislaine responded with a look of astonishment.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Lord, you know everything. You make cosmetics, do agriculture, treat illnesses, and create hot air balloons… So you should tell us this in more detail too. Not just about magic, but the structure and techniques for the incubator as well.”
At Alfoy’s words, the others nodded their heads. Until now, even if the lord hadn’t made things directly, almost all the core theories had been shared.
The new materials developed and entrusted to the dwarves had all the necessary materials disclosed as well. That was enough to research.
But now, being asked to create magic that doesn’t exist, she couldn’t water it down.
“……”
Ghislaine was momentarily at a loss for words.
Was this a side effect? Given that she had pushed through everything and succeeded until now, such a reaction was to be expected.
But this time, the situation was different from all the previous ones.
Cosmetics were meant to occupy the capital and later raise funds by acquiring the necessary technology.
Agriculture was the same. It was something she had learned for self-sufficiency at the mercenary base.
‘I don’t know magic at all. I don’t know the technology for making incubators in detail either.’
Would a person, who was among the top seven on the continent, really be questioned about how to raise chickens?
‘That… Claude knew.’
Watching Claude blink innocently, Ghislaine clicked her tongue.
‘It would have been great if that guy had regressed with me. Or I should’ve asked him in detail back then.’
In any case, she had heard that making it itself wasn’t that difficult. If it were hard to make, it wouldn’t have been provided to every city.
While it was said that there was no magic, the concepts had been shared. She was sure that if she thought about it, she could find a way.
So she answered firmly.
“I don’t know such magic.”
Alfoy’s face immediately twisted.
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