Castle of the Creator (1)
Nano World.
Illys had won the territorial war.
Even the capital acknowledged the Duke’s defeat and recognized her occupation of the duchy.
Illys was now a Countess who had swallowed an entire ducal domain.
She stood atop the former ducal castle—now absorbed into the Rodriguez territory—and surveyed her lands.
Endless, sweeping plains stretched away beneath her.
In ordinary times, this would have been a domain of incomparable abundance beside the Rodriguez lands.
An administrator reported,
“My lady. The people of the territory have been assembled.”
Nearly a hundred thousand citizens had been gathered.
It was the first public appearance of their new lord’s face.
Chief maid Adeline approached, holding a splendid cloak prepared for Illys.
“My lady. Please put on the cloak.”
A cloak that marked her as victor of the territorial war, conqueror of this land.
Illys settled the cloak across her shoulders and asked Adeline,
“Does it look good on me?”
Adeline smiled with quiet satisfaction.
“It is most dignified.”
“Hehe.”
With Illys at the head, the knights and administrative officials made their way to the prepared ground.
After the victory, Illys had deliberated which castle to claim as her seat—Rodriguez Castle or the ducal fortress.
The familiar Rodriguez Castle.
Or the larger, more populous seat of the former duke.
Considering the work the Constellation required of them, the open plains here seemed far more suitable.
And so this place had become Illys’s new main castle.
She was now a Countess who owned two fortresses.
A low murmur rose.
A hundred thousand citizens stood in ordered ranks.
Soldiers arrayed before the people; before the soldiers stood the knights and officials.
Illys alone ascended the high platform.
From below, the knight commander shouted,
“Company! Attention!”
At the soldiers’ and knights’ cry, the citizens held their breath.
Depending on the new lord’s nature—the victor of the territorial war—their entire lives could change.
Illys looked out over the people.
The knight commander shouted again.
“Salute to the lord!”
“Loyalty!”
Having received the salute of knights and soldiers, Illys addressed the citizens.
“I am Illys Rodriguez. I have won the territorial war, and His Majesty King Jeron of the capital has recognized me as lord of this land.”
The people looked up at her.
A beautiful Countess—yet a conqueror who had won a war and been acknowledged by the king.
“There is a decisive reason I, as a Countess, was able to defeat the Duke in the territorial war. It is thanks to the Constellation who sponsors us.”
The patronage of a Constellation.
In a world of theocracy, no ruler possessed a clearer claim to legitimacy.
“The Constellation who sponsors us is the Constellation of the Creator. And what we must do is create.”
At the word create, the citizens exchanged uncertain glances.
“He bestows upon us buildings that require repair.”
The people now understood what their lord desired.
“From this day forward, all of you will be put to work repairing buildings called semiconductors.”
The citizens nodded.
They did not know what semiconductor buildings were, but they roughly understood that the lord was demanding labor.
“This place will become a castle dedicated to the repair of semiconductor buildings. Therefore, I shall name it the Castle of the Creator.”
Neither Randolph Ducal Castle nor Rodriguez Castle.
Castle of the Creator.
From the platform, Illys continued.
“In the outer plains of the territory we will establish a large-scale semiconductor repair zone. Work will be divided into three shifts for the repair duties.”
The citizens murmured among themselves.
“Looks like we’re going to have to fix something from now on.”
“What is it?”
“Who knows.”
“It’ll be hard, right?”
“What isn’t hard? But three shifts, so maybe we won’t drop dead from it.”
They decided that three shifts at least meant the labor would not be utterly merciless.
Still the questions continued.
“But if we do three shifts, when do we farm?”
“Three shifts means labor, farm, and sleep. That’s the three shifts, right?”
“Ah, so that’s what it means.”
“But water’s already scarce and the crops are failing… if we add labor on top of that, farming’ll get even worse.”
“What can we do? If we’re told to, we have to.”
“True enough.”
The citizens had completely misunderstood the meaning of three shifts.
But one did not voice complaints to a conqueror.
From the platform, Illys spoke again.
“Workers will be provided three meals a day.”
For several seconds the citizens could not speak.
Cognitive dissonance.
They understood the individual words, yet the situation itself made no sense.
Then they grasped what their lord’s declaration truly meant.
“They’re giving us food?”
“She’s saying they’ll issue rations!”
“Really? Really three meals a day?”
“Does that even make sense?!”
“I don’t care! Sign me up!”
“Mama, what is the lord saying?”
“Mm. She says if we work, she’ll give us food.”
“Really?”
“That’s what she said.”
Provision of meals.
At that simple phrase the crowd stirred.
Some even had moist eyes.
“Long live the lady!”
“Long live!”
“She’s giving us food! Long live!”
Illys raised her voice.
“I declare it! From this day forward, this land will no longer know hunger.”
“Waaaaah!”
Toward the roaring citizens she lifted her hand.
“Better to see once than hear a hundred words! People of the territory, please take your seats.”
The citizens sat.
“Company, prepare!”
“Yes!”
Click, click.
Some two thousand soldiers moved with practiced efficiency.
Five hundred soldiers for cutting food.
Roughly fifteen hundred for carrying it.
And several long iron plates had been prepared; laid end to end they stretched nearly a hundred meters.
The citizens watched to see what the soldiers would do.
“Summon!”
Rumble—!
At Illys’s cry a vast summoning circle bloomed in an empty space to one side.
From the complex, multicolored patterns of the circle, something enormous rose.
The people could not tear their eyes away, awed by a lord who commanded magic.
When the massive form had fully appeared, Illys shouted,
“Begin!”
Hundreds of soldiers closed in on the summoned bulk.
“Cut the bread!”
“Cut the cheese!”
And standing in a line to one side were ten figures in ornate robes marked with intricate diagrams.
Mages.
From 1-Circle to 4-Circle.
All had once belonged to the ducal house.
Now they had sworn loyalty to Illys.
Their sole duty today was one thing:
to cook the meat to perfection.
The ten mages took positions at proper intervals before the metal plates.
The chief mage cried,
“Flame Formation, deploy!”
“Deploy!”
“Maintain mana temperature at two hundred fifty degrees!”
“Maintain!”
Whoosh—!
Red and blue flames blossomed simultaneously from every fingertip.
The fire layered in the air like thin membranes and heated the hundred-meter griddles.
Soldiers brought cut meat to the mages at the plates.
“On!”
Meat landed on the searing metal.
Sizzle—!
The sound of cooking meat rose in harmony.
And the aroma struck the citizens like a physical blow.
“Ahh!”
“Mama… I’m dying.”
The chief mage, concentration absolute, shouted,
“Flip!”
Hands moved in perfect time with the cry.
In an instant every piece of meat covering the hundred-meter plates turned as one.
Sizzle—!
Above the red flames the meat slowly changed color.
A crisp, seared exterior.
Fat melting soft within.
The fragrance that flooded the air set the soldiers’ throats working again and again.
Gulp.
Fortunately the soldiers assisting with the cooking were Rodriguez men; there was no real trouble.
They had eaten meat like this many times before.
Had soldiers from the former ducal castle been assigned the work, hunger might have made them fumble.
Tears ran down the faces of the citizens.
“Th-they’re grilling meat.”
“I think I smell bread too.”
“Ah… the smell… it’s art.”
“Sob…”
The cooking did not take long.
Bread and cheese needed only cutting; the meat was grilled by ten mages giving their full power.
On one side soldiers received the finished meat and carried it; on another, soldiers lined up holding plates.
Orderly, as though they had practiced it a hundred times.
“Meat delivery!”
At first the citizens had not understood why ordinary people who were not soldiers had been made to form lines merely to gather.
Now they understood why they sat in such neat rows.
A food-distribution line.
Food for a hundred thousand.
A large-scale event that simply could not function without order.
A soldier held out a portion.
“Here you go.”
“Ahh… thank you.”
“Take it.”
“Oh my, sir. Thank you.”
Then a child dropped the food just received.
The distributing soldier shouted at once,
“You there! Don’t eat that!”
“Ah…”
The child, fingers still clutching the dirt-smeared scrap of meat, froze.
Tears welled in small eyes.
Don’t eat it.
Even though the mistake had been the child’s own—don’t eat it.
Wronged, pitiful, and sorrowful, the tears came of their own accord.
Then the soldier said,
“From now on, food that has fallen to the ground is not eaten. Take new food!”
Tears spilled down the child’s cheeks.
Eat new food.
They had never in their lives been treated this way.
When every last person had received a portion, Illys raised her mana and spoke once more.
“People of the territory!”
Every face turned toward her.
“Today’s meat is only the beginning! Anyone who works at the worksite will be able to feed both themselves and their children until they are full.”
The citizens’ eyes went round.
“Not just ourselves—our children too?”
“Sniff…”
At the promise that children could be fed as well, voices grew even thicker with emotion.
“Long live the lady!”
“Long live the Castle of the Creator!”
The roar of the people rolled on for a long time.
The next day.
Illys directed the construction of the factory.
Tap-tap-tap!
As a 5-Circle mage she moved almost as if flying, so that scarcely anyone—knight commander included—could keep pace with her.
“Here.”
At that single word the knights following her planted flags.
Whoosh, whoosh.
The marked ground was considerably wide.
Illys moved with the swiftness of someone laying out an entire new village.
A short while later the construction overseers, arriving late, bustled into motion.
“First, take this road as the central axis.”
A roadway was drawn along the long line of flags.
“That blue flag line is the semiconductor summoning point.”
“This road is hereby named Semiconductor Road 1.”
Soldiers erected signboards.
Shining letters were carved into black panels.
“From here cut a road that intersects Semiconductor Road 1. The first will be LPU Repair Road 1.”
“Yes!”
Technicians immediately assembled wood and metal and drove the road signs into place.
“This is the collection zone. Widen it so carriages can pass.”
“Designate that side as the inspection warehouse.”
Flags and signs multiplied, densely filling the endless grid of roads that now covered the plain.
Once the overall zones had been set, Illys began the summoning.
“Summon!”
Rumble—!
A massive building appeared.
Cube-shaped, ten stories high.
Beside Illys stood the dwarf Ralph, serving as work foreman.
“Ralph. We need to erect copper pillars connecting each floor.”
“Leave it to me.”
Ralph was the dwarf who had produced the Blue Tower—the twenty-layer HBM.
A ten-layer HBM, a downgraded version of the Blue Tower, was no difficult task for him.
Moreover, every floor was already complete; only the pillars between floors needed to be added.
Ralph trained both the dwarves under his command and the territory citizens.
The dwarves had moved en masse with Ralph to the Castle of the Creator.
They were a race of technology.
They had no choice but to follow the semiconductor factory.
“Alright, alright—you stick the pillar between this upper floor and the lower one. Positions are marked with circles like this.”
The citizens nodded.
“The pillars are heavy, but four people together should manage. Erect the pillar and nail it down solid. And we’re implementing a real-name work system.”
“Real-name work system? What’s that?”
“Look here.”
Ralph signed beneath a pillar.
“As you see, you write your name on the pillar you worked on.”
Some of the citizens raised their hands.
“Um… I can’t write.”
“Me neither.”
“Me too…”
Ralph considered for a moment, then offered,
“Then draw a picture.”
“A picture? What kind of picture?”
“Your face, or some mark of your own, and draw the same thing on the roster. I’ve run large-scale jobs many times. Results are very different when people are made to take responsibility for their own work.”
“Yes. Understood.”
“Also—see these branch-shaped pillars? You fit them while looking at the diagram. Not a single simple post, but one side connecting to one point and the other side to several.”
“That sounds a bit hard.”
“Skilled workers will go around and guide you.”
Ralph pointed to a group of citizens.
Blue epaulets were fixed on their shoulders.
“Those people are skilled workers. They did a great deal of this kind of work back in Rodriguez.”
“Yes.”
“For reference—once you’re recognized as a skilled worker, your ration increases.”
“Oh!”
Do the work well and you eat more.
Simple words, yet they kindled real hunger for the task.
Bang, bang!
Click, click!
Countless citizens set the semiconductor factory into motion.
“Lift!”
“Erect the pillar!”
“It’s a real-name system! Anyone who sets a pillar crooked gets no strawberry jam with their bread later!”
“Slurp… strawberry jam!”
Work that involved nearly fifty thousand of the territory’s people.
The former Randolph Ducal Castle.
The wide plains before the new Castle of the Creator.
The vast, drought-withered grasslands had transformed into a massive industrial city.