The first was a fire safety inspection.
The next morning, three fire inspectors dispatched by the Pellua municipal office entered the factory on the banks of the Rene River, accompanied by armed guards.
“Now then, let’s have a look at the factory that turned Pellua upside down.”
The inspectors’ gazes were openly hostile and arrogant.
In their minds, along with the hefty pouch of gold coins Muller had slipped them, there was surely an image of a dreadful, filthy slum-like workshop where cotton dust flew everywhere and it would not be strange for a fire to break out at any moment.
“We have received a report that the risk of unexplained fires has increased exponentially at a large-scale powered facility. If it falls short of standards, factory operations will be halted immediately.”
“Is that so?”
I nodded calmly.
“How fortunate. This factory was designed on the assumption of the worst possible fire from the very beginning.”
“……What?”
Bewilderment flashed across the faces of the inspectors, who had been about to sneer.
With an air of deliberate courtesy, I personally guided them into the factory.
The moment we opened the heavy iron doors and stepped inside.
The inspectors stopped dead in their tracks as if by agreement.
Acrid cotton dust that would ignite at the slightest spark?
Flammable rubbish strewn everywhere?
No such things existed.
A wide, straight central passage secured through the building.
Fire-resistant partitions perfectly sectioned off with red brick and steel frames to prevent flames from spreading at the source.
Huge firefighting water tubs painted red and lined up between the machine lines, along with manual compression pumps.
Above all, the massive forced ventilation structure filling the ceiling and walls was constantly sucking the airborne dust inside the room out to the exterior.
On top of that, every high-speed gear section that might generate friction heat was covered with sturdy iron mesh safety guards, and evacuation routes drawn in pigment shone brightly across the workshop floor.
The inspectors’ faces grew paler and paler.
The crude “safety checklist” they had brought with them was nothing more than a child’s scribble before this overwhelming modern safety design.
“Wh-what on earth is this…….”
“The greatest enemies of a textile factory are dust explosions and spontaneous combustion caused by the accumulation of airborne dust. We have reduced that possibility by ninety-nine percent with the large ventilation openings in the ceiling, and as for the friction heat around the shaft axis, which is the main cause of fires…… please look here.”
What is he talking about?
The inspectors’ pupils went unfocused. It was obvious they could not possibly understand what I was saying.
After all, the only thing they had been thinking when they came here was a medieval-level inspection.
They had clearly come intending to nitpick and lecture us if they saw anything flammable.
I opened a ledger packed with approval stamps right before the unfocused eyes of one inspector.
“We have the person in charge keep daily records of lubricant management every two hours. The parts replacement schedule and the signatures of the night patrol team are all listed here as well. And in the unlikely event that a fire does break out, we have established a fire-extinguishing system that forcibly opens the sluice gate of the Rene River and draws water from the external storage reservoir into the factory’s internal piping all at once.”
I smiled gently at the chief inspector, who was trembling at the unbelievable thoroughness.
“Are there any more items left for you to check on your list?”
The chief inspector barely managed to keep hold of the parchment in his hand before he dropped it, and muttered with a vacant expression.
“As far as I know…… no, even if you searched every top-class handicraft workshop in Pellua. There is no place that has built this level of insane safety…….”
At his muttering, which was no different from a declaration of defeat, Ayla, standing behind me with her arms crossed, let out a deadly sneer.
“Then please go back and tell Chief Merchant Muller.”
Ayla’s voice rang through the factory.
“Tell him the one charging into the fire with an oil barrel on his back won’t be us, but Muller himself.”
That afternoon.
Instead of an order to close the factory, the city hall sent over a notice stamped with a strangely heavy seal.
[The Carnoble Factory on the banks of the Rene River is hereby designated as an exemplary case for Pellua’s powered facility safety standards.]
Ayla read the document and stared at me.
“……Insane.”
Watching the municipal fire inspectors scurry away in a daze, Ayla let out a hollow laugh.
“This is only the beginning.”
I answered leisurely, stretching.
Muller’s institutional pressure did not stop.
The second thing to fly in was a petition from the Pellua Handweavers’ Guild.
Its justification sounded very plausible.
The monstrosity called machinery was stealing the jobs of traditional skilled weavers.
It was an antisocial factory destroying Pellua’s textile ecosystem by recklessly hiring unskilled laborers.
*
A few days earlier.
A shabby tavern in a back alley of Pellua.
“Everyone, empty your mugs. This may be the last beer we ever drink in this tavern.”
The faces of the dozens of weavers downing cheap ale were shadowed with deep despair.
They had spent their entire lives sitting before looms, competing fiercely enough to shave their bones away.
They were people who had lived with a more realistic understanding than anyone of the workings of a trade city, where competition between merchant companies raised quality, and that in turn fattened the city.
But this time was different.
Carnoble’s factory was a disaster that had far surpassed the realm of competition.
“No matter what, there should be limits! The cloth those machines produce in a single day is more than what we weave in an entire month until our backs break, and it’s cheaper too…… This has broken the rules of the market!”
Amid the enraged shouts, Barton, an agitator who had infiltrated after receiving under-the-table money from the Muller Merchant Company, quietly climbed onto a table.
“Brothers! That scoundrel Carnoble is cutting off our breath!”
Barton began skillfully stabbing at the weavers’ most painful spots.
“Look at old Giles sitting over there! He spent forty years at the loom, and now the fingers that were once nimble are all bent and twisted. Jepeoil! How do you plan to repay the cost of that top-grade loom you bought with this month’s loan? And Thompson over there! Your daughter has a fever, yet not a single bolt of cloth has sold, so you can’t even afford medicine!”
The weavers’ eyes reddened, and their fists trembled.
They were people who had made a living more honestly than anyone, moving their hands and feet.
Barton laid bare, one by one, just how harsh and exhausting the life of a weaver truly was, along with the pain beaded in blood.
“At this rate, all of us will be driven out of Pellua and starve to death in the streets! The cause of every problem is Carnoble, that devilish bastard! Let’s go to him! Let’s go and show him our tears of blood!”
“Let’s go! Drive out Carnoble!”
“Give us back our looms!”
In an instant, the tavern became a gathering place for a mob holding torches and pitchforks.
The agitator Barton smiled wickedly to himself.
In truth, he did not mean to smash the factory right away.
First, he intended to pretend they were going to make a polite protest, cause friction with Elpanso’s mercenaries, and once someone was injured, use that as a pretext to craft the perfect justification: “the merciless Carnoble oppressed peaceful weavers.”
It was ultimately a perfect scenario to make the mayor and council drive Carnoble out of Pellua.
“Lead the way! To the factory on the banks of the Rene River!”
Hundreds of unemployed weavers marched through the night streets, filled with hunger and venom.
In their eyes flashed the murderous air of those who had nothing left to lose.
“Chief! A mob! The weavers are coming to the factory’s main gate with weapons!”
When the mercenary captain Ayla had hired rushed in urgently, Ayla placed a hand on the hilt of her sword and smiled murderously.
“Good. Muller finally let the trash loose. Everyone, arm yourselves! Anyone who puts even a scratch on a brick of this factory gets thrown into the river on the spot!”
“Wait. Lower your weapons.”
When I quietly raised a hand to stop the mercenaries, Ayla turned to look at me as if she could not believe it.
“Are you insane? Those people have completely lost their minds right now. This isn’t a situation that can be solved with conversation!”
“Conversation? Who said anything about conversation? You see, when blood rushes to a person’s head, their ears close, but when their stomach is empty, their nose opens first.”
Imagine driving them out and fighting them.
How great a loss would that be?
Ayla had not realized the potential and value they possessed.
They were not uninvited guests who had come to destroy the factory.
They were new talents who could make our factory even more perfect.
In my eyes, I felt as though I could see enormous amounts of gold in them.
“Light firewood in the front yard, and have them hang the large cast-iron cauldrons. Then fill them with cooking oil and raise the temperature as high as it will go.”
“……Pardon?”
A short while later.
The weavers, who had stormed up to the factory’s main gate huffing and puffing as if they would smash it down, hesitated when they saw that the gate, which should have been firmly shut, was wide open.
They had expected mercenaries with shields to come rushing out.
But what unfolded before their eyes was the bizarre sight of fierce red firewood flames blazing beneath dozens of huge cauldrons lined up in a row.
“Th-those devil bastards! They must be planning to throw us into boiling oil and kill us!”
The agitator Barton shrieked and raised his pitchfork high, but his incitement was smashed into nothing in just three seconds.
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—! Fwoooosh—!
“Uh……?”
The moment something was poured into the vats of boiling oil, an almost violently ecstatic smell began to vibrate through the night air of Pellua.
Salty and spicy seasonings, wheat dough frying to a savory crisp, and the overwhelming flavor of animal meat full of juices being fried!
The ultimate dish that had saved the souls of countless office workers on Earth in the past.
Chicken.
“Gulp.”
The sound of someone’s throat bobbing loudly broke the silence.
The smell of chicken fried crisp in oil carpet-bombed the noses of the weavers, who had been left with nothing but venom.
“You must all be tired from coming all this way.”
Wearing a work apron stained with oil, I stood before them as I scooped out golden-fried chicken with a skimmer.
“People get angry when they’re hungry. Let’s talk while you eat first.”
At my signal, the factory workers pushed out carts piled high with chicken and cold oak barrels of draft beer, freshly taken from the ice storage and beaded with dew on the surface.
“You think we’ll fall for such a shallow trick……!”
“Crunch.”
Barton shouted as if spitting blood, but old Giles, the elderly weaver beside him, had already picked up a chicken leg and was tearing into it as though entranced.
“……Ohh. It’s delicious! The meat is crispy, and the inside is moist! Beer, bring me some beer!”
That was the signal.
In the face of hunger, justifications and whatnot meant nothing.
Torches and pitchforks clattered to the ground, and the hundreds of demonstrators instantly transformed into picnic guests tearing into chicken, gulping down cool beer, and tasting paradise.
“Ahh…… this is the taste of heaven.”
“One more mug of beer! Give me one more wing over here!”
The agitator Barton could only stare blankly, dumbfounded, at the sight of chicken bones piling up in heaps.
His pretext-making had been utterly shattered before the greasy temptation of chicken.
Leading the weaver representatives, whose bellies were full and whose venom had drained away, I headed to the temporary office inside the factory.
This was where the real work began.
Not driving them out by force, but turning them into perfect gears in my system.
I sat across from old Giles, the elderly weaver who had been the first to tear into a chicken leg.
“So, elder. I hear you have worked the loom for forty years.”
“That’s right, ahem. I’m grateful for the chicken, but the fact remains that your factory has cut off the livelihood I’ve had all my life. My eyes are so dim now I can’t even thread a needle, and my back is bent, so I can’t do any other work. What am I supposed to do?”
Old Giles poured out his sorrow.
The other representatives nodded in agreement.
I smiled and took from the desk drawer a stiff piece of cotton fabric that had just been produced, then pushed it in front of him.
“Elder, would you close your eyes and examine this cloth for me? Can you tell what problem it has?”
Though puzzled, the old man ran his rough, callused hands, hardened over forty years, across the cotton fabric.
Then he flinched in surprise and opened his eyes wide.
“Th-this is……! Starting from the twelfth row, the warp tension is slightly off! You can’t tell by looking, but there are signs that very fine fuzzing will occur!”
“Exactly.”
I slapped my knee.
An old man whose eyes had dimmed from working the loom for so long.
But his fingertips, having touched tens of thousands of bolts of cloth over decades, possessed a sense of touch more sensitive than any machine.
The talent the factory needed most: a specialist in QA, quality inspection.
“Elder. You no longer need to bend your back working a heavy loom. Simply sit in a cushioned chair, and when cloth woven by the machines comes pouring out, all you have to do is touch it with those precious fingertips.”
“……Just touch it?”
“Yes. While touching it, if you sense a defect as you did just now, ring the red bell beside you and stop the machine. That will be your new job: Chief Quality Manager. As for wages, I will pay you exactly twice what you earned working the loom.”