Chapter 30
Chapter 30
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 30
Chapter Title: Taming Wolves and the Birth of Writing
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The wolf pups mostly kept their wild instincts in check.
It was because the time for their primal natures to fully awaken hadn't arrived yet.
But after about a month, one particular male started causing trouble.
It was the one the scouts called Sharp Tooth.
From a modern perspective, no sane dog ever bites the hand that feeds it.
But since these were captured wolves, they growled and bared their hostility even when being fed.
Eagle's Eye intervened immediately.
"Down."
"Grrr."
"Time for another beating, huh?"
Instead of further warnings, Eagle's Eye picked up his club.
What Sharp Tooth had overlooked was the sheer brutality of primitive man.
They were raising the wolves experimentally from the start, figuring if one died, they'd just make another.
And so the savage clubbing began.
"Kyaaak!"
The other wolves, witnessing this, huddled in the corner, trembling.
You'd think, what kind of maniac dishes out violence like that?
But Sharp Tooth didn't back down.
As if he'd never obey a human even in death, he growled the next day and the day after that too—but each time, the beatings grew fiercer.
By the tenth day, the mere sight of Eagle's Eye sent him into convulsions, rolling belly-up.
And the other wolves?
Having learned what happened to those who rebelled against humans, they wagged their tails but never dreamed of attacking.
Eagle's Eye made his official report.
"Taming wolves seems easier than I thought."
"Does it? Didn't it try to bite once?"
"If it bites, we beat it."
Eagle's Eye stated it with crystal clarity.
Obey, and get a scrap of meat as reward. Disobey, and face the club.
The news spread not just among the scouts, but throughout the entire tribe.
"Wolves obey if you beat them!"
"What? It's that simple?"
Eagle's Eye even called in Yellow Hand to paint the training method(?), depicting a human brutally clubbing a dog.
Once obedience training was complete, they moved on to basics.
Sit, paw, roll over, crouch, and so on.
Hold a piece of meat right in front of them with a "wait," and though saliva dripped from their jaws, they didn't dare touch it.
They'd learned through experience that eating it meant a beating—or death.
A harsh winter arrived.
By my estimate, it was the tail end of a little ice age.
Which meant the Ice Age hadn't fully ended yet, and no other primitive tribes dared venture outside except ours.
Even in the cold, our tribe's progress never halted.
The only thing that stopped was brick production.
Just days ago, we'd been frantically firing the raw bricks we'd stockpiled like mad, but now even those were gone—no more bricks.
That said, the kilns didn't stop; they steadily processed the lime we kept bringing in.
Every household was busy grinding it.
The outer wall was temporarily fenced with wooden stakes.
Being winter, they were quite sturdy, so come spring, we could dismantle them, reuse the wood, and finish raising the walls.
With foundations already laid, completion seemed feasible within the season.
Hunting continued all winter, as did fishing.
Workshops never rested.
Lime production greatly boosted leatherworking.
It couldn't be used on furs, but leather wasn't just for winter anyway.
The bone workshop processed mammoth tusks and leg bones, standardizing sockets for spearheads.
So even if the shaft broke, the head could be salvaged.
The bow workshop developed and recorded twisted sinew standards.
Three strands for winter use, four for hunting, five for war.
Wise Flower and White Sprout affixed the same symbols to every workshop for standardization.
Square for earth, circle for water, diagonal for wood, three dots for house, and so on.
Numerous other symbols emerged, and that's when I felt a powerful temptation.
'Introduce letters and numbers?'
Even in the Stone Age, writing existed in some cases.
In Egypt, originating around 6000 BCE, symbols and script were used early on.
I didn't know exactly when my era was, but development varied wildly by region, so preparing for the worst made sense.
In the modern world, undiscovered civilizations could pop up anytime, right?
To overwhelmingly crush them, letters and symbols were essential, naturally.
Primitive people weren't idiots; I figured they'd pick up phonetic script quickly enough.
I gathered the scribes and taught them letters and basic arithmetic for two hours a day.
Black Stone was amazed.
"The chieftain invented writing!"
"To think such a skill exists! We can record everything we say!"
"And it's not that hard!"
Hangul was like that originally.
If an adult set their mind to it, they could read basic text in about a week.
Hangul was born because Hanja was too difficult, and Joseon commoners were astonished upon first encountering it.
Letters that directly mirrored speech were created, easy to learn—they grasped its greatness early.
"What's this 'numbers' thing?"
Knowledge stirred in the primitive era.
It was something I'd felt repeatedly since arriving here: these people weren't as dumb as one might think.
If anything, survival demanded endless knowledge, making their brains sharper than modern folks in key ways.
With writing born(?), knowledge could pass to future generations without loss.
As long as I lived, serious leaks wouldn't happen, but I couldn't remember everything alone. We needed bamboo slips or similar to inherit and advance knowledge continuously.
Just decimal systems and basic arithmetic would skyrocket efficiency.
This was elementary school level; within weeks, the scribes mastered Hangul and the four operations.
And every evening, I made all tribesfolk study two hours mandatorily.
Unless they were slow-witted, they'd master letters and arithmetic by winter's end.
With writing established, Black Stone and the scribes insisted on stabilizing the system.
I shared my vision.
"Our next goal is to build a nation."
"A nation? What's that?"
"A vast community. A nation protects its people from external threats, and the people provide labor or taxes in return."
"Fascinating."
The city's framework wasn't even set yet, but the tribesfolk dreamed new dreams.
A society of broad lands and countless people.
They sensed that excelling within it could make one a powerful ruler.
As the city advanced both externally and internally at a rapid pace, the wolves grew like weeds.
Raising wolves revealed they had specialties, just like people.
The female called Frost had an exceptional nose, Night Pine was incredibly smart.
Wind was physically superior and incredibly fast, while Sharp Tooth—the one we'd babied like gold—showed strong leadership.
Time for a quick check.
Wolves are pack animals that value hierarchy.
Sharp Tooth was the pack leader, and the one he submitted to was Eagle's Eye.
He flinched at the mere sight of the club, so the training was a resounding success.
Their sizes had bulked up enough for wild instincts to stir, but nope.
Not a chance.
Even growling in complaint triggered visions of deadly beatings, snuffing out any rebellious thoughts.
This helped me understand primitive sensibilities.
If they couldn't tame animals, it was because humans were weaker than beasts.
Even when bitten, they'd laugh it off, grab a club, and whale on them wildly—the wolves were subdued by that sheer idiocy.
The wolves weren't obedient only to Eagle's Eye.
From the start, baring teeth at any human meant torture-level punishment, successfully suppressing their instincts.
Now they understood a good range of commands.
All creatures have crisis detection; when triggered, it unleashes superhuman strength.
For these pitiful wolves, Eagle's Eye himself was the trigger.
Fail to obey, get dragged off for a thrashing—they learned fast.
"Fetch!"
Whoosh!
Eagle's Eye combined fetch with scent tracking.
True to wolves—or canines—they tracked flawlessly.
Especially blood.
Wolf instinct? They'd get excited at the smell, so he'd fetch a bigger club to hammer it down.
Through winter intensive training, the wolves could pursue, assist in battle, and scout prey.
By spring's arrival, they'd grown considerably.
Not yet adults.
Even canines need at least a year to mature, but primitives knew no mercy.
"Chieftain! They're big enough to take hunting and be useful!"
"Are they? Let's test them in the field."
"Got it!"
The scouts marched out proudly with the wolves.
Worried they'd run?
Smart canines would know recapture meant skinned alive—no way they'd risk it.
Besides, raised alongside humans(?), they probably saw themselves as people and wouldn't flee.
Maybe they viewed the hierarchy with humans as master-slave.
Expectations ran high among me and the tribesfolk.
How efficient would these evolving dogs prove?