Elven Heavy Equipment
"Easy—easy!"
"A little farther?"
"Yeah! Just a bit, a bit, a bit... there!"
Thud—!
The elves were shifting neatly severed timber with wind magic. With the logs blocking their view, they worked in step with the human laborers.
A few days after my business talk with Calius, the factory expansion—carried out on the Elf Unlimited Pass—was proceeding without a hitch. One plant turned out about six hundred servings a day, so I meant to raise three more on the same plan. Cranking hardtack production up fourfold might look like overkill, but you never knew. For now the only contracts were with the Silbaerin knights and the academy, yet other groups might well sign on later.
Against that future, and quite apart from the factories themselves, I was clearing the grounds far wider than strictly necessary. Kalian Forest stood thick with massive trees. Ordinarily the job would have called for chainsaws, excavators, dump trucks—the whole parade of heavy equipment.
Your heavy equipment has been replaced by elves.
The elves sheared trunks with Wind Cutter and ferried the logs on wind magic, and they put a respectable excavator to shame.
Slash—!
"The tree!!!! Get clear!! Off to the side!!"
"Aaaah!!"
Crash—!!
Whoa. That one had actually been dangerous.
"Hey!! Look around before you cut! Want me to report you to Lord Elioren?"
"Eep. I'm sorry!"
I barked at the careless lumberjack and put a little fear into him. House Sildiel was part of the reason the Elf Unlimited Pass existed in the first place, and their people were suited to dangerous work besides. Spirit affinity and mana efficiency, wasn't it? The blessing they had laid on me had been of that kind, so the house's particular gift was probably the same. Compared with elves of other families, they would be that much more practiced at labor like this. Which was why nearly every elf on the site belonged to House Sildiel.
"Don't goof off just because I'm not watching. This has to be finished today."
"Eep. It's too hard! How are we supposed to do all of—"
"Finish the lot and I'll double the pizza."
"Hurry, hurry, cut every last tree down! Move!!"
A reward really did lift the pace. I handed out carrot and stick in equal measure, then headed for the existing Factory One.
Clearing and construction would be done within the week, so the Factory One staff mattered enormously. Until the other plants settled into a rhythm, Factory One had to carry every last hardtack order—and sure enough, the workers were turning them out without a moment to breathe.
The biscuits rattled down in a crisp cascade, finished in the final drying and tumbling into great tubs. In the warehouse at the corner of the plant those tubs stood stacked in neat, overlapping rows. Mm. This crew had become an elite unit, and it showed. I'd already optimized every step on my last inspection, and their know-how was outstanding.
"Everyone, stop what you're doing and gather for a moment."
I called the whole staff to the center of the factory. Once even the people midway through work they couldn't simply abandon had assembled, I laid a new opportunity in front of them.
"You all know we're adding three more factories. Right?"
"Yes. They've been hammering away over there all day."
"It's so loud I could die."
The aunties' chatter broke out in that particular bright clatter of theirs, answering me at once. I went on.
"Once there are four factories, we'll be hiring people to work in them. If you know anyone nearby who needs a job, bring them along. We'll welcome them with open arms."
"Oh? Truly? Business must be booming, boss!"
"Goes without saying. We stamp out thousands of these every day. So, boss, is that all?"
"No. The important part starts now."
Their faces itched with the prospect of dragging home the sons and husbands who did nothing but eat the household out of house and home. The moment I mentioned something important, they focused again.
"From now on, you'll be working as managers of the new factories. You'll train the newcomers and look after the production lines."
"Us... in management?"
"Really? Is it all right to put commoners like us in charge?"
"Of course. The pay goes up too. About fifty percent more than now?"
"Haaah!!"
There was no law against commoners holding management posts, and if not them, there was no other talent to be had. Where K-hardtack was concerned, these factory aunties could have appeared on a masters-of-everyday-life program and still had skill to spare. My request that they put that know-how to work as managers set off an explosion.
"Aigoo, this job already pays more than enough. What am I supposed to do with this..."
"Oh my, then don't take it, auntie. I'll do your share as well!"
"Don't cross the line."
"Our Boss Kang really is Silbaerin's lucky charm. A lucky charm!"
"You're telling me! Handsome as anything, too... if he just dyed his hair a little!"
Huh. And what exactly is wrong with my hair color?
In any case, the reaction seemed entirely positive. I'd worried someone might refuse a management role, but they were cooperative, and that was a relief. A senior's handover and hard-won know-how were a secret manual no amount of money could buy. Securing them was the only sensible course. With that, production at the new factories was one worry off my plate. The rest, the staff of the Calius Merchant Guild would handle. The aunties called me boss, but wages and the day-to-day running of the plants were left to the guild. It was work they had been doing all along, and Calius himself had told me not to fret and simply leave it with him.
The journey to the imperial capital, academy visit included, was a week away. With the elves' magic, the factory grounds would be cleared before the day was out, and once that was done the rest of the construction would fly. Calling them factories was generous. There was no modern equipment, so what need was there to run power? Run it to what? A sturdy tent, a fence, an oven, and a storehouse, and the job was finished.
We had a single goal. On this trip to the capital, take at least five thousand servings of hardtack—one hundred and fifty kilograms. The academy order was the minimum. If we could also secure stock to sell on the open market, so much the better. A full week remained, so meeting the quota would be comfortable enough. Hardtack production and the factory expansion were both problems time would solve.
Which meant...
I should go home and make pizza.
There was nothing left for me to put my hands to, so home it was, and pizza. The laborers were working hard; they deserved something good to eat. Come to think of it, did the people of Silbaerin even eat tomatoes? Even out of season I had never found a tomato dish, not so much as a sun-dried tomato, so it was safe to assume they didn't. And that meant I couldn't resist introducing something new. The Silbaerin laborers would be tasting it for the first time, and something hearty seemed the better choice.
"Chicago deep dish."
A crust two or three centimeters thick, packed with generous, punchy toppings—a pizza far closer to a pie than to what most people pictured when they heard the word. The perfect meal for people who had burned through a mountain of calories on hard labor.
The flavor and the look were entirely different, yet the dough for Neapolitan pizza and Chicago pizza was quietly similar. Both used cake flour, the low-gluten kind prized for its crispness. A Chicago pizza was nearly a pie; at a glance it could pass for a great round loaf. So why cake flour? Paradoxically, because of the shape itself. Formed and baked in a deep pan, it stood at least three centimeters high, sometimes five. To hold moist fillings and keep that height, a crisp, cookie-like texture beat a soft, bready one. Firm and crunchy, it held its form even after drinking in moisture—and there was a charm, too, in the contrast between a crackling crust and a tender filling.
"Anyway... time to work the dough, I suppose."
Same as last time: cake flour, yeast, salt, and warm water. That was enough. The only real difference was that there was far more of it, which was why my forearms were shuddering like a motorcycle engine.
"My... my arms feel wrong..."
Human greed knew no end. Processed foods could be exchanged now, but at this point I wanted a food processor too. Dump everything in, one click, done.
I'm actually going to practice wind magic. For real.
Spirit arts or ordinary magic, I truly needed to practice. A medieval kitchen was far too cruel to a modern person.
Somehow the dough got finished, and all it needed was about ninety minutes to proof. Of course I couldn't rest in the meantime. The tomato sauce still had to be made, along with the toppings that would go inside the Chicago pizza. Today, though, I was making the sauce a little differently.
The classic way to drive moisture out of a dish is evaporation—boil it off, or sauté the ingredients dry. Today, I was not sautéing.
"What stripped the traveler of his cloak wasn't the gale, and it wasn't the sun. It was salt."
Osmosis: liquid moving from the lower concentration toward the higher. I meant to use it to draw most of the water from the tomatoes without cooking them down. Someone might ask why I would bother straining them and waiting for the liquid to drain when a simple sauté would be easier. Els Kitchen had driven the point home again and again—every step in cooking has a proper reason. Low heat is low for a reason; high heat is high for a reason. Osmosis was no different.
Heat and a sauté drove off water quickly and gave you the savor of the Maillard reaction, but they also stole a vegetable's freshness, its aroma, its brightness. Today's menu was Chicago pizza. Once everything was assembled, it still had to be baked a final time, so even if I didn't cook the sauce down beforehand, a heating stage remained. And given how generously cheese and sausage went into a Chicago pizza, a heavy-bodied tomato sauce on top of all that could make the whole thing a burden to eat. Better to keep the sauce as bright as osmosis allowed, and let the cheese and sausage carry the body.
I blanched the tomatoes in boiling water, slipped off the skins, and cut them into rough chunks. I was drawing the moisture out the way you salt something down, and if I chopped them too fine they might collapse into a slurry, so I was careful. The pieces went into a strainer. Salt, a little sugar, and chicken stock powder, mixed through well. Leave it until the dough finished proofing, and the result would be a fresh tomato sauce with the water wrung clean out of it.
The filling was simple enough that there was no need to rush. Mozzarella and Parmesan, and some salt-cured sausage I'd bought at the Silbaerin market. The sausage carried a bit of a smell, so I brushed it with World Tree sap. The moment the sap touched it, the offending funk washed clean away. I tore the spinach into generous pieces as well. Just before assembly, I would mix it all and layer it in.
By the time the rest of the ingredients were ready, the dough had swollen fat and round. Start baking now, and it ought to land right around the laborers' mealtime. I pressed a thick-rolled round into a wide, deep cylindrical pan.
"Whew. I'm full just looking at it."
Go from a margherita to a pizza whose bread stands three centimeters thick, and your stomach fills before you've taken a bite. When you put something in a plastic bag, you turn the mouth inside out so it all goes in cleanly. Same idea here: to hold the fillings properly, I draped the dough up and over the rim of the pan. Then the topping—finely chopped sausage, spinach, and the cheeses, mixed together—went in layer by layer from the bottom, with the fresh tomato sauce flicked over it in spoonfuls. I repeated the process, then covered everything with the dough I had set aside, like the lid of a pie. That lid I pinched together with the bottom crust I had folded over earlier, sealing it shut. Not a gap left anywhere.
A cross cut in the center so the steam could escape, the top finished with tomato sauce and cheese, and then?
"Is this Silbaerin, or is this America?"
It waited in silence inside a thick, crackling crust, ready to flood out the instant you took a bite—the dish that lets you feel your arteries clogging in real time. The Chicago deep-dish pizza had finished preparing for its debut in another world.
"Jinwoo, I'm back!"
"Oh. Perfect timing."
Eilenna returned at just the right moment, before the pizza went into the oven. The food was ready with time to spare. Tasting it ourselves first wouldn't hurt.
"Are you quite prepared to die, Lady Eilenna?"
"H-huh? What are you talking about?"
She had come from helping the construction with her plant-growth ability. I fully intended to pack her with far more calories than any amount of encouragement could provide.