Steamship?
Golden Fleece Guild, head office.
Aila was humming a cheerful tune as she sorted through the mountain of gold bills and wholesalers' advance order contracts piled on her desk. The plain cotton fabrics pouring out of the Carnoble factory were devouring markets not just in Peluah but across neighboring countries at a terrifying pace.
"Elpanso, check this out. The merchants from the Southern Alliance sent word—they're contracting for next year's full output, with a premium upfront payment. We'd need to expand our warehouses tenfold and still come up short!"
Her emerald eyes sparkled with ecstasy. Even the peak earnings from Theodore Carnoble's heyday as Peluah's legendary grand merchant looked pathetic compared to the colossal wealth she and Elpanso were raking in now.
I lounged long on the sofa, testing the tensile strength of a freshly spun cotton sample, and replied indifferently. "Why expand the warehouses? Ship the goods straight to the wholesalers' wagons as they come off the line. Inventory's just fixed costs wasting away. In, spin, out—that perfect rhythm keeps us printing money just by breathing."
"I know, I know! At this rate, we could buy the Peluah Commercial Council chairmanship with cash in a month!"
Aila crowed triumphantly, reaching for a champagne bottle—right then.
BAM! The heavy oak door to the office flew open as if it might shatter, and the guild's logistics manager and materials procurement chief burst in, faces drained of color.
"Ma'am! Grand Merchant! Big trouble!"
"How the hell do you even open a door like that? What's got you in such a panic?"
Aila snapped, furrowing her brow, but the two managers were trembling in outright terror.
"Cotton... the cotton's cut off!"
"What? That doesn't make sense. We wired double the raw materials payment to the southern plantation owners just yesterday!"
"W-well..."
The procurement chief gulped dryly and thrust forward a trembling sheet of parchment with shaking hands.
"Last night, someone went around to every southern plantation owner, offering five times our purchase price in hard cash and cornering the entire year's cotton harvest! They even covered the full penalty clause to unilaterally void our contracts!"
"Five times?! Are you insane?! Buying raw materials pricier than finished retail cloth? What kind of lunatic eats that loss...!"
Aila snatched the document and checked the sender's seal—her voice cut off dead.
Her emerald eyes widened to saucers, blood draining from her cheeks in an instant.
"...Obsidian."
The word of despair slipped from Aila's lips.
"Obsidian? Who's that?"
I sat up, asking. Aila's hands shook violently around the paper as she answered.
"Valerius... the real monster gripping the continent's southern trade routes and capital by the throat, beyond Peluah. Not even in Muller's league—the guy who's ruled Peluah like a king since your father's death."
No sooner had Aila finished than the logistics manager threw himself to the floor, wailing.
"It's not just materials! This morning, hundreds of wholesalers' wagons loaded with our factory goods for the continent are turning back at the borders and major checkpoints!"
"Why? The goods are solid—why can't they cross?"
"Foreign lords controlling the gates and border guards jacked up tolls overnight. For wagons stamped with the Carnoble mark only—demanding twenty times the usual fee!"
"Tw-twenty times...?"
"Wholesalers are swarming the factory, screaming refunds don't add up—they're on the verge of rioting! This too... Obsidian Guild bribed those foreign lords with massive political funds to seal the borders!"
Silence.
An icy hush blanketed the opulent office.
Obsidian's chief, Valerius. He didn't play petty games like Muller with red tape or fire inspections. Overwhelming capital. A vulgar tower of gold so massive and violent it crushed market logic itself.
"H-haa..."
Aila staggered, clutching the desk. Her merchant's mind painted the catastrophe in vivid strokes.
"Elpanso... we're done."
She muttered in a dazed voice.
"No raw materials? In three days, every machine grinds to a halt. Machines stop? Wages for hundreds of workers vanish into thin air."
"..."
"And no outlet. Tens of thousands of bolts of finished cloth piling up in warehouses, blocked at the gates. Wholesalers demand refunds, storage fees skyrocket. Goods overflow, cash dries up like blood from a slit throat!"
The infamous black bankruptcy. The factory's gears crushed perfectly between a predator's jaws. Blocked intake, sealed exhaust—the beast bloats beyond capacity and bursts.
"We need to send someone to Valerius right now! Beg for a negotiation table, kneel if we—"
Aila shrieked in panic—then.
"Kh... heh."
A deflating wheeze leaked from my silent lips.
It turned to a low chuckle.
"Kuhahaha! Ahahaha!"
I doubled over, roaring with mad laughter that shook the office.
Aila and the two managers gawked like I'd summoned a ghost.
"Hey, Elpanso! Have you lost it?! Laughing now? The guillotine's dropping on our necks!"
"Ahaha... sorry. It's just... too perfect."
I wiped tears from my eyes and rose slowly from the sofa.
Fear? Despair? No shallow shit bubbling in my chest.
It was the vicious thrill of a starving beast finally spotting true prey.
"This is exactly what I've been waiting for."
My eyes blazed steel-blue. Aila flinched back.
"W-waiting? For your leash to snap?"
"Leash? Aila, credit where due—Valerius gets capitalism. Monopolies, hoarding fundamentals, textbook."
I strode to the window, gazing over Peluah at the endless dusty trade roads snaking across the continent.
"But he made one fatal mistake. Judging engineering by merchant rules."
"Engineering...?"
"Yeah. He choked our raw mats, sealed the gates, killed the land routes? Answer's simple."
I turned, grinning like a predator.
"Just don't step on the land he's guarding."
"Don't step on land?! Wagons fly now? Lords' domains, border gates—all locked by Valerius's cash..."
"Who said wagons? Lords' turf? Border gates? Screw 'em. Load up at the factory by the Rene River, punch straight to the free trade port through sea."
"River to sea? You're nuts! Downstream drift's one thing, but hauling that volume against rapids and headwinds? Sails or galley slaves rowing—impossible on those brutal waters in time!"
"Sails? Oars?"
Aila, you site-haul like that? I snorted and headed to my private safe in the corner.
The heavy iron door swung open. I pulled out a thick stack of parchments—months of secret all-nighters, ink poured into blueprints.
Shrrk!
The unfurled plans smothered Aila's desk. Her emerald eyes froze.
"Wh-what's all this? Giant iron tube... those massive waterwheels on the hull sides—what the hell?"
"Told you before. Gonna build a monster of steel and fire."
Steam engine. Why invent it? Industrial Revolution's gift to humanity—what changed most?
Logistics revolution. Steam and industry shrank the vast world like warp tech collapsing planetary distances. England and France neighbors; England and Qing another galaxy. Steamships bridged them.
This blueprint. Grotesque, incomprehensible by this world's logic—a cross-section of overwhelming ship machinery.
Cylindrical boiler. Tube-packed innards. Heavy crankshaft converting piston thrust to paddlewheel spin. Hull to carry the iron behemoth slicing waves.
The absolute force leaping civilization dimensions. Heat to mechanical miracle.
[Steamship].
I jabbed the blueprint's core at stunned Aila.
"Listen up. Boil water, gets steam, right? Steam wants to explode 1,700 times water's volume. I'll cage that blast in this steel drum, spin those side paddles like mad."
"Boil water... to move a ship? No wind mage, and that's possible?!"
"Greater and truer than magic—physics."
I slammed hands on the desk, thundering at the trio.
"Wind's fickle, rowers tire. No wind? Dead in open sea for days."
In my mind, Kang Woojin's memories ignited—steel-and-steam era's great inventions.
"But my iron ship? Ignores wind! Storm or adverse tide—devours black coal, gulps water, belches endless fire and steam, conquers nature, charges ahead!"
Aila's jaw quivered at the plans. Her merchant instincts screamed: this mad scribble would upend global trade like a devil's tome.
"This beast skips Valerius's dirt roads. Lords taxing borders? Who cares! Load riverside at the factory, shred wind and sea straight to free port!"
"Th-then... cargo capacity?"
The logistics manager stammered, swallowing hard.
I grinned, spreading my fingers wide.
"Five large galleons? Ten?"
"Nah. Stuff hundreds of wagonloads of cotton into this one beast, cross sea lanes in half a day that took weeks."
"Hundreds of wagons... at once... half a day...?!"
Stifling hush.
Brains choked by Valerius's capital now seared with the iron monster surging up the Rene River and sea, shredding every snare with brute force.
"Aila."
I extended a hand to her frozen form.
"Enemy predator cuts land food chain? We rule the water ecosystem, birth a new apex. Commercial war? Nah—from now, it's revolution."
"Ha... haha."
A mad cackle leaked from despair's pit. Aila swept her face with both hands, eyes igniting with venomous greed as she looked up.
"Fine. Let's roll. That old bastard Valerius wants to choke me? Good. While he guards tollbooths choking dust forever, we'll blacken the seas with smoke sailing past!"
Aila slammed her fist, bellowing at the managers.
"Halt thirty percent of weaving lines now! Funnel every saved labor and maintenance coin into Elpanso's blueprints! Escort Peluah shipwrights and northern mountain dwarf smiths under mercenary guard to the Rene riverside—all of 'em! Buy up every cheap lump of black rock in the markets—whole stockpiles!"
"B-but ma'am! Cash is tight right now..."
"Pawn my mansion, guild carriages, furniture, necklace around my neck—everything for cash!! Launch this iron ship before Valerius starves us!"
The two managers bolted from the office at the she-wildcat's frenzied command.
I gazed out the window at Peluah's crimson sunset.
Somewhere south, beyond, Valerius doubtless toasted victory, awaiting my crawl.
"Wait up, Valerius."
In my head, the harsh steam whistle from Woojin's memories already pierced my eardrums.
"I'll show you a real monster—smoking black to your seas."