A Profitable Invention First

Manuel and the others held a general meeting the next day and unanimously decided to settle in Wessen Territory.

The meeting also unanimously passed the proposal to establish Weissenburg University and elected Baron Frederick von Weissen as its first president.

Frederick had been quite pleased at first, until Ah Fu quietly told him that the president would be responsible for the school's funding. His face immediately darkened.

Even a landlord had no surplus grain.

The farmland in Wessen Territory followed the Three-Field System. Of its more than three thousand hectares, roughly a thousand were planted with wheat, a thousand with beans, and a thousand with forage grass for grazing sheep, cattle, and chickens. The rest was used for vegetables.

Frederick's father's grasp of farming and arithmetic had only been this good. If it had been twelve hundred hectares of wheat and eight hundred each for beans and grazing, he would not have been able to calculate the taxes even in a month.

Flax? It could be bought, and growing it was troublesome. Why bother planting it?

The weather had been good for the past two years, and Wessen had abundant water. Wheat yielded an average of seven hundred kilograms per hectare, while the various beans averaged five hundred kilograms per hectare. Since the Weissen Family's land had only recently been reclaimed and yields were still low, they had set the tax rate at thirty percent.

That meant the granaries would gain around two hundred tons of wheat and around one hundred and fifty tons of beans this year. Half of that would be sold, bringing in more than a hundred Florin Gold Coins.

Adding mill fees and the sale of timber, cheese, sheepskins, wooden goods, ironware, and so on, the Weissen Family's annual income came to around five hundred Florins.

That income made them dirt poor among Counts, but it surpassed every Baron.

However, Wessen Territory's army had been wiped out in last year's war. Without any spoils of war, the costs of military provisions, compensation, and mercenaries had nearly depleted their reserves. At present, Frederick's liquid funds consisted of just over a hundred Florins and the freshly harvested wheat.

That was precisely why Frederick had decided to gamble his reserves on the canal.

But now that such a large group of scholars had arrived, the canal would have to wait until they were settled.

The most urgent task was transporting the dozens of boatloads of books the scholars had brought, several potted plants, two Golem Puppets, a lynx the size of an orange tabby, and various other things to the lakeside manor.

Manuel and the others had supposedly rescued these books amid the chaos of war. At the time, warlords involved in the civil strife had wanted to use the library and university as strongholds. Negotiations had failed, so the scholars could only flee in different directions with the books.

At least, that was what they said, and Frederick believed them.

The books could not remain on the boats any longer. They had already become somewhat damp, and if this continued, bugs would infest them.

Taking Frederick's hint, Manuel led the students to use necromancy to kill the bugs in the books first.

There simply were not enough hands for the transport. This was the season for planting beans after the wheat harvest, while the carts were busy hauling wheat and flour.

Frederick could only conscript laborers, requiring everyone to work for one day, and have them move the books to the lakeside manor by every possible means, like ants relocating their nest.

At that moment, he sat with Aumert on a freight cart, several crates of books beside them. A draft horse weighing nearly a ton pulled the cart down the road with a creak and groan.

Taking advantage of the ride, Aumert explained the process of making Golem Puppets to Frederick.

Yet Frederick was far more interested in the basic technologies involved: control cores, metallurgy, materials, machining techniques, and moving parts.

"A Hydraulic Lathe," Frederick said thoughtfully. "I have those here too, along with quite a few hand-powered ones. Carpenters use them to turn beads and make bowls and plates."

"So you can make tools capable of turning metal?"

Aumert replied confidently, "That's easy. Just use Magic Enhancement on the cutting edge."

Frederick thought for a moment, then asked, "Is it expensive to use Magic Enhancement on metal?"

Aumert smiled mysteriously and lowered his voice. "It would definitely be expensive if anyone else did it, but I'm different. I have the newest techniques. Strength, hardness, plasticity, toughness, elasticity, even rust resistance—I can achieve all of it very cheaply!"

"Oh?!" Frederick looked at him in surprise. "Then you could make a fortune!"

Aumert spread his hands helplessly. "There's no market. Even if the method is cheap, the total cost becomes considerable once the scale gets large. Enhancing every soldier's weapon would still cost a huge sum, and the generals all say it's wasted money."

"Those generals need enhanced weapons, but they aren't short on money, and they trust the mages they employ more."

"As for commoners, there's even less reason to mention them. Ordinary knives are enough for use at home."

Frederick nodded slightly. These days, soldiers were merely expendable supplies. Victory or defeat in war mainly depended on elite units with magical enhancements, such as commanders and knights, as well as mages. Whether ordinary weapons were enhanced hardly mattered.

He said in a low voice, "I have a new invention. Shall we make a fortune together?"

"Oh?" Aumert asked curiously. "What is it?"

Frederick raised a finger. A tiny white glow appeared at its tip, leaving a white mark as he drew across the side of a wooden crate.

The Illumination Spell was a simple little spell for walking at night. It was not difficult, but using it to write and draw was another matter.

Aumert was slightly startled. He had not expected this young fellow to possess such great magical talent.

As Frederick drew a wheel, he said, "Compared to dragging a wooden board directly along the ground, putting wheels on it makes it much easier to move."

"That's the difference between sliding friction and rolling friction..."

For the next five minutes, he drew diagrams while explaining friction and the purpose of lubricating oil to Frederick.

Although Frederick understood more physics than him, he still thanked him before saying, "The bronze bearings and bronze sleeves on our cart axles are all subject to sliding friction. A great deal of force is wasted. So why can't we turn it into rolling friction?"

"Like this—put wheels between the bronze bearing and the bronze sleeve."

With that, he drew a simple diagram of a Ball Bearing on the wooden board and explained its structure piece by piece.

After hearing him out, Aumert considered it seriously. After a long while, he said, "This little thing does seem useful. The inner and outer rings would not be difficult to make, and enhancing them would not be a problem. But the small balls inside must be round enough and as close in size as possible within each set. Otherwise, they would break easily."

Frederick nodded in agreement. If the balls inside a bearing were not round enough, they would cause vibration. If their sizes differed too much, the load would be unevenly distributed, overloading the larger balls and causing them to fail prematurely.

"That's easy to solve," Frederick said with a smile. "Let's make these together."

"I figure that if this part were installed on this cart's axle, it could haul twice as much cargo. If watermills were fitted with it, they could grind flour much faster."

"How many carts and mills are there across this land? Even if only half of them used this part, we'd be watching a rain of gold coins!"