A man was reading two letters in front of a burning fireplace.
Reports sent across the sea, written respectively by an uncle and his nephew.
—“...The level of the various technologies handled by the natives was extremely crude, differing greatly from the claims of the English. Were Your Majesty to see them in their nakedness, you would be unable to think of any word but ‘savage.’ Furthermore...”
This was the content of the report sent by the uncle, François Gravé.
—“...Their level of civilization could by no means be dismissed. Each and every tool they used was exceedingly refined, containing many technical considerations. Their fruits were large and sweet, and their livestock were fattened. Anyone who reads ‘savagery’ from this is a fool. Moreover...”
This was a passage from the report of the nephew, Samuel de Champlain.
The two reports truly contained only conclusions that were strangely, utterly opposite.
—“...Everything was an ugly fabrication by the English. They have won over or detained the savages’ so-called ‘emperor,’ creating a false empire and exploiting the local savages...”
Here, it said this.
—“A powerful bond could be seen between the savages and the English. The English here became extremely angry when the local Indians were called savages, correcting the term to ‘natives.’ The ‘natives’ here send luxurious gifts to the English...”
There, it said that.
“Hmm...”
These were conclusions each reached about the same place, on the same day and at the same time.
Was one of the two lying?
That could not be. There was no reason for it.
Then there was only one conclusion.
Both of these contained the sincere observations of the reporters, and both had simply examined different sides of the same coin.
Even so, for the reactions to be this contradictory.
And there was a part even more interesting than those contradictory reactions.
—“The so-called ‘native emperor’ kept by the English has...”
—“The spiritual leader who guides the ‘natives’ of this place has...”
“...Hah.”
—“There is clearly something about him.”
—“Something could be glimpsed.”
They overlapped in that one area.
There was a monarch whom both the natives of a different religion and the English simultaneously respected and admired.
Their opinions differed as to whether he held actual power or whether he was Baron Raleigh’s puppet, but at the very least, they agreed that he exerted some powerful influence.
‘...I envy that.’
As Henri IV, the lawful and legitimate monarch of France, he could not help but feel envy.
He had only just recently begun to bring this country’s religious disputes to a close. Yet the war between him and his enemies was still not over.
He remained excommunicated by the Pope of Rome. That was only natural. Until the year before last, he had been a Protestant. Now he was a Catholic excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
In any case, the French Wars of Religion, which had continued for the past thirty years or so, were only now racing toward their end.
It had been two years since he entered Paris. His enemies would be destroyed, and he would be victorious.
But the war had lasted thirty years.
Catholics, royalists, Protestants—every one of them alike had borrowed every debt in the world and still lacked money.
At the moment, even he himself was held by the leash by Queen Elizabeth of England. And besides that, there were countless debts he had to repay.
That was not all.
A powder keg.
The kingdom had been impoverished, and royal authority was more fragile than ever. Great lords who sought not merely to diminish the king’s authority but to covet the throne itself were everywhere.
Untrustworthy potential traitors who had been pointing swords and guns at one another until moments ago were sharpening their blades on all sides.
In order to survive, in order to restore royal authority...
He needed money.
And what he needed was a new source of funds that he could draw upon without any burden.
That money had to come from outside. He could not take on further risk by incurring yet another debt to someone within or outside the country.
He needed gold, silver, and luxury goods. He needed luxury goods in such vast quantities that he could extract money from the domestic upper class at any time.
He needed a source of funds. A source of funds to build an army for the king alone, a bureaucracy for the king alone.
A source of funds for royal authority.
He, too, wanted an alliance like Elizabeth’s, one that spewed forth aluminium and furs.
Because he desperately wanted the power to lightly trample the many great nobles within his country beneath his boots, just as she did.
‘But... that is an achievement I will not accomplish within my lifetime.’
For now, however, he had to refrain from actions that might provoke England, his ally. Henri de Bourbon, monarch of France, let out a sigh and looked at the map of America lying on the side table.
He would not extend his sphere of influence beyond a certain degree. So as not to provoke England, it would be better to establish only a few trading posts where a dozen or so people would reside.
According to the explorers, the fur trade did not seem bad even farther north, so that much would be just right.
Someday, he too would swagger as loudly as Elizabeth of England.
But that time was not now.
Suppressing the immense interest blooming in his heart, Henri IV carefully folded the two men’s letters and placed them in a drawer.
And he did not forget.
Beyond that Atlantic, there might be a wealthy and powerful monarch.
A potential ally who could help place the royal authority of France upon solid rock.
It felt as though he was beckoning to him.
***
Hahh... huff...
“F-for now, the roster registration for four hundred people is finished. Now you just need to go over there and complete the land register!”
At Huet’s words, my joy came to an end.
This is insane... I worked for seven hours straight, walking around without a break, and the work still isn’t done?
This is all because of those French bastards. They came here for no reason, making a fuss about wandering here and there, getting in the way of work, and thanks to them, the work that was already backed up piled up even more, and more, and more.
I won’t forget this grudge...
“Um... are you all right?”
No.
“I’m fine, Mr. Huet. So where should I go now?”
“That western settlement over there. It is where the Occohannock and Accomac tribes have newly settled.”
“...”
And so, after fourteen hours of labor again that day, I collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.
The next day, I worked for thirteen hours.
The day after that was fifteen hours, and the day after the day after that was twelve hours...
Is this... life?
Strange. Still, the other people who know how to work with Excel don’t suffer this much. Why is all the work coming only to me?
Let’s briefly summarize my daily routine.
After I do Excel work, I also have to push dirt and break rocks with the excavator, cut down trees with the chainsaw, plow fields with the cultivator, and manage the consumables that come out of the house. On top of that, I have to supervise whether the other people working with Excel are doing it properly.
Wow! One person doing office work, production work, and management all at once!
...I figured out the problem.
‘There are too many things only I can do.’
That day as well, I lay down on the bed completely exhausted.
If there was one difference from other days, it was that I had only worked about twelve hours.
Thanks to that, instead of passing out immediately, I was able to think before sleeping.
‘Only I can handle the cultivator, only I can drive the Damas and the forklift, and the chainsaw, mixer, and pesticide sprayer all won’t run without me.’
And now, the settlement’s population had increased by more than 70,000 percent in seven years from the original thirty people.
The population of our settlement now exceeded twenty thousand.
But the way it operated was exactly the same as before.
It ended with me rolling around, and rolling around, and rolling around some more.
This... isn’t right.
Just like with Excel, I needed to devise a method.
‘For example, teaching others how to use some of the tools...’
Yes. That’s it!
At the brilliant idea, I unknowingly sat up.
For example, wouldn’t it be better to pick three or four people and have them run one cultivator for sixteen or seventeen hours a day, rather than have one person—me—run one cultivator for two or three hours a day and then do other work?
If, in the meantime, someone operates the chainsaw, someone drives the Damas, and someone sprays pesticide, wouldn’t that be perfect?
In any case, I had already built a boat and even a greenhouse out of plastic. There was no need for me to cling tightly to every tool by myself, saying, “I have to hide that this is modern civilization!”
If I passed on various technologies like that to a few trustworthy people, productivity would not only rise by dozens of times, but my work-life balance would also recover!
Barely calming my swelling excitement, I began organizing this genius idea in my notebook. Yes. Let’s start slowly for now. From the easiest to teach, the least strenuous, and the safest...
***
“This is called a chainsaw.”
Yes.
I started with the hardest to teach and the most dangerous.
The reason was absurd. It was because logging with the chainsaw was the hardest work.
I... want to be liberated from hard work.
“Ooh... a ch-chainsaw!”
“That’s right, Oitotan.”
The fellow in front of me now was not trustworthy at all, but at least he had status and a name. As conditions for entrusting him with a tool of the “angel,” they were not particularly bad.
I took Oitotan and a few other candidates for “chainsaw users” to the nearby forest.
“Oitotan, hold it.”
“Y-yes!”
Perhaps because of the tension of possibly handling an angel’s tool from now on, cold sweat streamed down Oitotan’s face.
I tapped his shoulders to ease the tension in his body, then handed him the chainsaw.
“Now... what did I say?”
“You touch this here to start it, and to start it you touch here...”
“Wait. You have to engage the brake first.”
“Ah!”
Tsk... Somehow, this makes me uneasy.
Still, I trained him for several days and nights, so it should be fine.
After giving Oitotan one last bit of encouragement, I said,
“As I told you, when working with a chainsaw, rather than stretching your arms out long, always keep it close to your body and apply force.”
“U-understood! I will try it exactly that way!”
Wiiiiiiiing!
G-good. At least it started safely.
It was only a matter of trimming tree branches. I had thoroughly given safety education, so there shouldn’t be anyone getting hur—
“A-ah! You mustn’t work with the tip of the blade—”
Clang!
Ah, kickback. A phenomenon in which the chainsaw guide bar suddenly leaps upward.
Fortunately, Oitotan was not injured. That was because, due to the recoil of the chainsaw, he let go of it in an instant.
But that did not mean everyone was safe. The blade of a chainsaw rotates at speeds of twenty meters per second and the like. The saw, flung away by that force, flew straight through the air.
And that flying chainsaw...
“Gyaaaaah!”
“P-pull it out! The chainsaw is lodged in Lord Nemo’s shoulder!”
“M-m-m-my God!”
...That happened.
***
Good.
For now, I realized one thing for certain.
Never, absolutely never, should equipment that could become a murder weapon be placed in the hands of a beginner.
In this era, there was no YouTube, no systematic teaching materials, no proper teacher, and no academy that could provide all of the aforementioned things.
In other words, you had to learn by feel.
I could learn by feel. I had infinite lives, after all.
But other people did not.
This wasn’t some pufferfish sashimi recipe; there was no need for heavy equipment safety rules that would be completed only after people died. I’d rather handle the potential murder weapons with difficulty by myself.
“Damas, chainsaw, excavator, forklift, brush cutter...”
Only after filling out the list of those potential murder weapons in detail could I finally get a sense of it. Wow, so this is why they say not to earn the hatred of your neighbors in the countryside.
Anyway.
Pesticide sprayer, fertilizer spreader, pesticide mixer, cultivator, power sprayer, water pump...
Other people besides me should only handle these relatively “safe” things.
That... was not a matter limited simply to the use of farm tools.
—“A-a-a-are you all right?”
—“...”
—“L-Lord Nemo, your arm has flown off! Y-your a-a-arm...!”
“First, help Sir Nemo up, and hurry—bring the arm too!”
···I’d felt it before, when I asked the blacksmiths to try replicating the engine of a two-stroke brush cutter for clearing weeds. The technology of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was not something crude pre–Industrial Revolution handicraft could imitate.
A twentieth-century tin can surpassed every aspect of the most intricate machine of the sixteenth century.
Never again would I try to replicate dangerous technology with sixteenth-century blacksmiths. Especially not anything with a chance of exploding.
Ugh, when that engine blew, I nearly went straight to the grave.
Whoever it is, I’ll make sure they only handle safe technology. If I don’t, I’m not human.
“Mr. White, watch carefully from now on. I’ll show you how to use this cultivator. You can determine forward and reverse with this gear here.”
“Forward··· reverse···.”
Of course, from now on, even those “safe technologies” will only be entrusted to people I can truly trust.
I don’t know yet, but who’s to say there isn’t a way to kill someone even with a pesticide mixer? A killer I once saw in a movie killed three men with a single pencil.
In any case, seeing John White soon handling the cultivator quite well made me feel pleased. Before taking hold of the cultivator’s handles, White even crossed himself and muttered some Bible verse···.
As expected.
There is one more reason why equipment like this must only be entrusted to trustworthy people.
Authority.
In this world, I am the only one who possesses things like this, and I am the only one who can handle them, so operating modern equipment may look to people like some kind of heavenly authority.
In such a situation, if I were to carelessly grant authority to some ignorant fool, there’s no telling what might happen. In the long run, it’s best to entrust it to reliable people who won’t cause trouble.
···Right. I should create something like a licensing system.
I won’t be issuing many of them anyway, so they can take an examination in front of me, and I can personally conduct a ceremony granting the qualification. As if I were selecting some kind of master craftsman.
What should I call this··· Agricultural Machinery Engineer? But that’s for people who make and repair farm machinery. Something like a heavy equipment operator··· right.
Watching the people respond with tears and applause as White turned off the cultivator, I said to him,
“Congratulations. You have now taken your first step as an Agricultural Equipment Operator.”
“Pardon? Did you perhaps, ahem, say surgeon?”
···Huh?
The high-performance language patch Hwangsuk Soft had made for me immediately sent a signal to my intuition that something was wrong.
The word “Operator,” meant to indicate a “technician,” still only carried the meaning of surgeon.
In other words, I needed to give White some sort of title here.
···What should I call it?
Something suitably authoritative.
Something suitably familiar to people of this era.
Something that made it seem like he was engaged in suitably specialized work···
Uh···
···I’ve got it.
“Ah, I mean a Knight of Agricultural Equipment.”
“Pardon?”
“Knight.”
And so began the investiture ceremony for the New World’s first Knight of Agricultural Equipment.