Reclamation and Experiment

"Happy birthday! Congratulations, you're twelve today."

When he returned home, Marina had prepared a lavish dinner, and the family celebrated joyfully. Ace felt as though he were in a dream. He had already lived in this world for twelve years; counting from when he awakened the memories of his past life, he had lived with them for a full five years.

The details of his past life grew ever blurrier, while the memories of this life became clearer and clearer. He smiled at his family here, thinking with a touch of nostalgia, There's no going back.

Following Peter's advice, Ace compiled the contents of his speech—especially the material concerning concepts and their relationships—into a volume. He named it Logic Vol. 1 and gave it to Romon for printing.

In recent days, a whirlwind of logic had swept through the city-state's academic circles. Nobles and citizens alike took pride in discussing logic. Ace gained the elegant title of "Ace the Sage," and people said that he had received enlightenment from the Goddess of Wisdom—that he was one favored by the Goddess of Wisdom.

Ace did not lose himself in honor. One morning afterward, just as the city gates opened, he left Medimoth City beneath the fading moonlight. Accompanying him were twenty veteran soldiers hired by Romon, four hundred purchased slaves—two hundred men and two hundred women—and a great heap of supplies. Ace could hardly wait to establish his own experimental field.

After returning to the estate and resting briefly, Ace used the Guild Hall to purchase a vast stretch of wasteland nearby, extending all the way to where the river flowed into the sea. He even discovered something resembling hops in the wasteland, and there was a small iron mine in one of the hills.

The city-state did not prohibit private mining or iron smelting. One merely had to pay one-tenth of the finished iron ingots as tax.

Land beyond the city was cheap in this world, after all; it was unsafe and sparsely populated. Everyone longed to live within the city, and every inch of the First District was worth its weight in gold. Though the low-level demonic beasts outside the city had been cleared out many times, they sprang up again like weeds.

Ace was different. He needed low-level demonic beasts as research subjects. With four hundred slaves and twenty hired veteran soldiers, he had enough manpower and armed strength to survive. After several months of observation, he found that farming methods in this world were rather primitive. Many places still relied on slash-and-burn cultivation, lacking the techniques for intensive farming and irrigation.

Ace could conveniently promote techniques from his past life on a small scale: build irrigation works on the estate, farm intensively, mine and smelt iron, upgrade iron tools, distill liquor, train slave warriors, capture low-level demonic beasts—and conduct experiments with new medical techniques on his own estate without worrying about any consequences.

In short, he intended to build an economic entity with himself at the pinnacle of its pyramid.

The goal of this economic entity was to achieve his path to transcendence. Ace remeasured and reorganized the newly acquired land, then established a new settlement beside the river, near its outlet to the sea, where the soil was fertile and the iron mine was not far away.

He planned for this settlement to grow into an estate town in the future, capable of accommodating two or three thousand people.

Under city-state law, a noble or citizen household could own no more than three thousand slaves. Any excess slaves had to be sold within three months, or the city-state would forcibly purchase them at fifty Silver Talers each.

Slaves in their prime could sell for one or two Gold Talers, and those with a skill could fetch even more. Only children were worth just fifty Silver Talers. No one wanted their slaves to be purchased by the city-state.

The slaves Ace purchased were all trained, seasoned slaves. Even the barbarians had undergone half a year of conditioning and could roughly understand the language. Together with the twenty mercenaries, there was basically nothing to worry about. He divided the slaves into ten work teams of forty people each, setting them to reclaim the fertile land around the river.

He promoted obedient, hardworking slaves to serve as team leaders, while those who stuck out like thorns received whippings. He quickly established his authority. The teams were split into groups of ten, with two groups taking turns supervising. The first three work teams to finish quickly were rewarded with dinner, while the last three teams to lag behind received no food that night.

After this series of combined blows, land reclamation at Ace's new settlement progressed smoothly. He had Marina manage the slaves according to his methods, concentrating their efforts on reclaiming the land in preparation for spring planting.

Once spring planting was finished, Ace intended to assign one work team to mining, then draw skilled slaves from among them to form a craftsman team responsible for smelting the iron farming tools needed for intensive cultivation and manufacturing irrigation facilities.

The remaining people would be organized into eight work teams: three for intensive farming, and four for building the settlement's lord's residence and the slave Residential Area. This was merely the initial phase. As more slaves were purchased later, further expansion would be needed.

Ace finally had some free time. Taking several slaves and two hired veteran soldiers with him, he returned to the old estate and began his experiments on the Corrosive Jackals.

He selected two slaves who looked honest and simple-minded to assist with the experiments. He found that the five Corrosive Jackals had been kept caged and bound for a long time, fed only liquid food, and had become quite listless.

He had a tall Barbarian Slave drag one of them from its cage and bind it to a prepared restraint frame. After its head and limbs were firmly secured, Ace ordered the slave to remove the iron clamp from its mouth.

The instant the iron clamp was removed, the Corrosive Jackal abruptly changed from listless to incomparably vicious. It opened its jaws and tried to spray corrosive acid at the slave.

Ace keenly sensed a strange rhythm. The Corrosive Jackal's spiritual power also fluctuated violently, and he sensed an unusual force gathering in its throat.

The slave hurriedly scrambled away. "Pfft!" A tiny puff of black smoke came from the jackal's mouth, but there was no acid at all. The poor Corrosive Jackal seemed somewhat confused and tried again. The same rhythm came, followed once more by nothing but black smoke—no acid.

Ace had the two slaves drag the other jackals over one by one and discovered that none of them could spray acid.

The description from the Compendium of Low-Level Demonic Beasts flashed through Ace's mind: Corrosive Jackals were widespread across the plains of the continent. They lived in groups, generally packs of three to five, enjoyed eating sulfur, were cunning and highly aggressive, and could spray strongly corrosive acid from their mouths over a distance of three to five meters.

They enjoy sulfur! That condition was worth trying, Ace thought.

There was no sulfur at the estate, so Ace took two slaves to Buku Town and bought two large sacks of it, having the slaves carry them back.

"Tall one, feed some sulfur to this jackal. Don't give it too much—half a large iron spoonful will do," Ace ordered after returning to the estate.

The tall, guileless-looking Barbarian Slave obediently scooped up half an iron spoonful of sulfur and fed it to the jackal. The jackal ate the sulfur, yet it still seemed listless, with no reaction for half the day. The other jackals were the same.

Ace thought quietly. All the jackals had undergone several strange rhythms and spiritual fluctuations. Perhaps those rhythms consumed their spiritual power, just as using his own spiritual power did—once overused, it could no longer be used. It seemed there was nothing more to be done today. He would let these dogs rest and conduct a control experiment tomorrow.

"You two, clamp shut the mouths of these five dogs and drag them all back into their cages," Ace ordered. Then he began recording the day's experimental conditions and data on parchment. Experimental data and flashes of inspiration at the time were extremely important; they had to be recorded at once for convenient reference.

The next day, Ace divided the five dogs into two groups. The first group contained one dog, which would be directly stimulated to see whether it could spray acid; whether it could or not, it would not be fed sulfur. The second group contained four dogs, which would likewise be directly stimulated to see whether they could spray acid. If they could not, they would each be fed different amounts of sulfur.

After several experiments, Ace reached a conclusion and wrote in his experiment journal.

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