Rice (1): The Benefits of Civilization
The benefits of civilization.
There was no three-day, three-night free-for-all debate over the price of soap.
Part of that was because Mr. Zeros, who had recognized soap's true worth, had obligingly flattened himself and done his best to meet the price halfway—and the rest was simpler still.
Strip out the labor costs and this is basically scavenging trash and selling it. No matter how you cut it, the profit is pure gravy.
Seaweed, once branded a devil's plant. Animal fat, once so worthless it was hauled beyond the castle walls and dumped. Combine the two and sell them, and the return rate soared toward infinity.
It was money printing, pure and simple.
Having secured a thoroughly satisfying profit, I gathered the cooks and praised them.
"This revenue was earned through your efforts. It wouldn't be proper for me to pocket it all alone. Here—performance bonuses."
"Wooooooah!!"
"Long live the Young Master!!!"
Of course, empty praise alone was never this officer's style. A handsome round of bonuses followed, and a festival broke out among the cooks.
Nice.
Watching the scene, Max approached with a question.
"Was it truly necessary to give them that much?"
"Pardon?"
"You distributed half of the advance payment received under this trade agreement among them."
Where the needle goes, the thread follows. Max had sat in on the negotiations with Zeros himself, so he knew exactly how large an advance I had taken and how much of it I had earmarked for them.
In his eyes, my reward to them clearly looked excessive.
But… it wasn't quite that simple.
"I didn't hand out bonuses for free. I bought their hearts with them."
"Their hearts, you say?"
"Exactly. When I first summoned them, they gathered readily enough—but most of them treated it as some dilettante who knew nothing about cooking ordering them around, and they showed no real drive. They figured if they produced something vaguely novel and presentable, the whole affair would blow over like any other fleeting event."
I had glossed over it lightly, but the first few days of the Northern Cuisine Contest with that lot had been a pure festival of irritation.
Then I scattered a little bonus money, proved I was serious, and they began to participate with genuine zeal.
"From now on, though, it will be different. They will remember that outstanding execution of the orders I issue brings real rewards. They will no longer follow commands passively—they will strive actively to complete them."
"Like… those you called the Engineering Battalion?"
"Precisely. They became the Engineering Battalion. These will become the Commissary Battalion."
In effect, I had sown influence along with the bonuses. Max grasped that as well and let out a quiet murmur of admiration.
"Then do you intend to dispatch them across the entire North the way you did the Engineering Battalion?"
"Mm. That part is still under consideration."
The Engineering Battalion had already left to spread ondol culture through the North. Word was they had already succeeded in hanok-terraforming three additional villages. Part of it was rising proficiency from repeating the same work; the rest was that good news travels fast. Neighboring villages, having already heard about ondol, had been waiting for their turn—and the moment the Engineering Battalion arrived, they threw themselves into the work at once.
Thanks to that, an unseasonable hanok craze was apparently sweeping the North.
At this rate we'll be filming the founding of Joseon up here.
And with that same spirit, sending a supply battalion touring the whole region the way the Engineering Battalion had did not seem like a bad idea at all.
Treat the people raised in the Grand Duke's domain like an officer corps.
They themselves were already skilled in the practical work—but rather than drop them straight into the labor, you send them village to village to train others. Each unit becomes an education battalion, masters of its specialty.
"True enough. Most of the new techniques you've developed, Young Master, are aimed not at the upper ranks but at the lower ones."
"The absolute majority of the Grand Duke's domain is the lower ranks."
As I looked into it, other noble houses—once they reached the higher ranks of duke, marquis, or count—tended to have clusters of lesser noble houses, viscounts and barons, gathered beneath them. In the North, even a common baron was rare as hen's teeth. The structure was overwhelmingly commoner.
Looking at it this way, we really are the water-poor Grand Duchy.
Given that reality, aiming the technologies I developed at the lower ranks who made up the vast majority—and rotating the officer corps trained in the Grand Duke's domain across the whole North as a traveling technical mission—was simply the most efficient approach.
"Still, spreading cooking concepts requires far fewer people than building hanok. I mean to take my time and watch how it develops."
In truth, the place that needed a supply battalion most was not the villages but the Great Wall.
The northern villages had already managed to get by somehow, and once I normalized trade with the merchant houses their revenues had risen sharply. By their own standards, they were eating and living well enough. The Great Wall, by contrast, remained desperately poor. If I was going to intervene anywhere, that was the priority.
Still—
"Come to think of it, how is the situation at the Great Wall?"
"It remains difficult, but thanks to you, Young Master, the volume of supplies we are sending up this quarter has roughly doubled from the last. We expect conditions to ease considerably."
Surprisingly, Max's stance on the Great Wall was quite optimistic.
"Casualties still occur, don't they?"
"That much is unavoidable."
Hmm.
How to put it.
Every time I hear something like that, I feel how thoroughly this place is another world.
In the modern world, human life was a value placed above all else. Even if expensive equipment was wrecked, so long as the pilot's life could be saved it was a profitable trade—and we poured special care into those safety systems. Here, a human life was simply another commodity, ranked alongside steel, timber, and grain. Not something you could expend as needed, but something that was naturally expended as needed.
Well. This is a place where commander-grade officers fight on the front lines in person and minister-grade officers are out in the DMZ with rifles in their hands.
For someone who still carried a soft modern sensibility, it remained hard to adjust.
Perhaps that was why, as I listened, another thought surfaced.
"Hmm. As expected."
"Yes?"
"I may need to go up there myself."
That place—I might have to go stamp it with my own feet once.
"What?!"
And of course, the moment Max heard that, he pushed back hard.
"What are you saying? How long has it been since you woke?"
How long?
It had already been more than a month since I opened my eyes in this world. Which meant it had been more than a month since I woke.
"I'm a scion of House Wintershield. Shouldn't I visit the Great Wall at least once? And I haven't seen Father's face in quite some time either."
"His Lordship himself told you there was no need for you to come to the Great Wall!"
Well. That was true.
I had never even met this father of mine, but in the body's memories the man had declared to me in person: You… need not fulfill the duties of the house.
And it wasn't merely because the woman who had been this body's mother was not northern-born.
"You know how dangerous the road there is."
"True. As I am now, I might well die on the way."
With this body, pure physical issues made reaching the Great Wall impossible.
"Even so, to say such a thing…"
But he wasn't wrong. Just getting to Asbil Village—three days on horseback for a normal northerner—had been that exhausting for me.
"I was only thinking out loud."
I had no intention of going right now either. Ordinary northerners covered Asbil Village in three days on horseback; I couldn't ride, so it had taken me twice as long. The Great Wall, at the far northern edge of the North, would stretch that time out by some unguessable factor. Time was money now. I could not sink that much of it into a single sightseeing trip to the Wall.
And having other people's time wasted on my account is just as much of a loss.
Which meant, circling all the way back around, the only thing I could do for now was sit here and pour myself into maintaining combat power.
I was turning that over when—
"Young Master. You need not think so urgently. You are already doing more than enough."
Out of nowhere, Max offered words of comfort.
Huh? Suddenly?
I blinked at him. Max looked back at me with eyes as clear as a cow's and went on.
"This old butler cannot presume to fully understand your heart, Young Master. But ever since you woke, you have seemed to be running rather hard."
Ah.
I had been grinning and stirring things up ever since I woke, thrilled at the thought of managing my own unit. From the outside, it must have looked like I was being chased by something.
Somehow I had earned a misunderstanding—
"Already, with what you have done, a warm wind rather than a cutting gale is blowing through the North. The rice brought in from the continent alone is expected to do a great deal toward solving the northerners' food shortage, is it not?"
"Well, that's true… wait. Rice?"
Just as I was about to clear up the misunderstanding, something brushed past my mind.
Rice… rice, huh.
I had meant to return to the office and get back to administrative work, but Max's words had sparked something.
I could not go to the Great Wall myself just yet—but there was a way to give the Great Wall massive help.
"Butler. There are still a few Engineering Battalion members left in the castle, aren't there?"
"Surely you aren't thinking of inventing something else again?"
He had just told me to rest, only to realize his own words had set me moving once more. Max's face twisted in dismay. A moment later he let out a long sigh and nodded.
"Shall I summon them?"
"Please. There's something I need to find. And if it turns out we have it, assign them some extra hands. We'll need to gather a large quantity."
I preferred to keep the manpower light when I could—but a true commander also knew when to put subordinates to work.
Max wore the resigned look of a man who already knew I was about to start something again, but curiosity still pulled a question from him before he left.
"What do you intend to create this time?"
I answered lightly.
"I mean to make rice."
"Rice? Don't tell me you plan to farm in the North?"
"Ah—the rice I'm talking about isn't the kind you eat."
It was only a metaphor.
"I mean to make the rice of the construction industry."