Pellua’s Second Commercial District.
Before the splendid three-story building of the Golden Fleece Trading Company, which had been expanding its influence at a ferocious pace of late.
“Young Master Elpanso… no, Mr. Elpanso. What brings you here?”
“I’m here because I have business. Did I come somewhere I’m not allowed?”
I pushed through the gatekeepers’ contemptuous stares and strode inside with my head held high.
As I entered the company building, a red-haired woman carrying a bundle of documents down the corridor stopped dead in her tracks.
Ayla Winchester.
A childhood friend who had grown up with me since we were snot-nosed brats, and currently the factor in charge of the Golden Fleece Trading Company’s Third Division.
In modern terms, she was a capable figure who had risen to the position of a branch manager.
“…Elpanso, you piece of trash. What are you doing here?”
Upon seeing me, she greeted me warmly.
“Long time no see, Ayla. You’ve gotten even prettier, haven’t you?”
“If you’re here to spout bullshit, get out. I’m working.”
Ayla shot back coldly.
When we were young, she had been an adorable little thing who used to trail after me everywhere. But ever since I’d started behaving like a wastrel, she had treated me like a bug.
Even when the Carnoble Trading Company had gone completely under, she had merely clicked her tongue and reacted as if it had been inevitable.
“Don’t be so heartless. For old times’ sake, can’t you at least serve a cup of tea to a childhood friend you haven’t seen in ages?”
“Old times? You drove the continent-class trading company your father left behind into the gutter in a single year, and you still have the nerve to show your face in front of me? I thought you’d already starved to death in some back alley.”
Her tongue was sharp indeed.
But I shrugged as though her words had no effect on me whatsoever and barged straight into Ayla’s office.
“Hey! Aren’t you getting out?!”
“Just hear me out for five minutes. I brought an incredible business item that’ll inflate your company’s performance this quarter by more than three times.”
It was unfair.
Honestly, even though I hadn’t really wronged her in particular, this was the attitude she showed me.
If I had at least tried something shady with her, I wouldn’t have felt wronged.
I had treated her as a friend, so why did she treat me with hostility?
‘How unfair. How truly unfair.’
Therefore, I decided to be shameless.
At my brazen attitude, Ayla let out a hollow laugh, as though she found it absurd.
“A business item? You? What a load of hot air. You’re here to borrow money to pay off your gambling debts, aren’t you?”
“Oh, exactly. I am here to borrow money.”
“What?”
“A thousand gold coins. No, invest at least five hundred in me. I’ll let you completely dominate Pellua’s textile market.”
In the end, she was a merchant.
We were people who talked money.
If I was saying I’d help her make money, she would never refuse.
‘You like money, don’t you?’
With my eyes gleaming, I approached Ayla’s desk.
Recalling the laws of thermodynamics I had learned as Kang Woojin, the meshing of gears, and the overwhelming productivity of the steam engine, I smiled with brimming confidence.
“Ayla. How many days does it take for the craftsmen to weave one bolt of cloth on a loom right now? The machine I’ll make can turn that out in just a few hours. And with far more uniform, softer quality at that. If you provide me with the capital, you’ll become the greatest merchant lord on the continent.”
I thought it was a perfect briefing that hit only the key points.
Even knowing how stupid I had been in the past, I believed she would waver at least a little before my eyes, filled with such conviction, and my logical proposal.
A heavy silence flowed through the office for a moment.
Ayla set the bundle of documents down on her desk, rested her chin on her clasped hands, and stared at me.
Her emerald eyes narrowed, as though measuring something.
Had my persuasion worked?
“Elpanso.”
Her red lips parted.
“Yes. Have you made up your mind?”
I answered, swelling with anticipation.
Ayla gave me a smile that was very beautiful and, at the same time, very cold, then opened her mouth.
“Get lost.”
“…Huh?”
“Guards! Drag this lunatic out of here at once!”
*
“Ow, ow, ow…”
I was thrown onto the cold stone pavement of Pellua’s Second Commercial District.
Two burly company guards dusted off their hands on my clothes and threatened me viciously.
“If you so much as loiter around the factor’s office one more time, don’t expect to walk away with your bones intact, you wastrel lord.”
Clack. The company’s front door shut.
Passersby murmured as they looked at me, but I did not even have the leisure to blush.
‘I can’t give up here. I’m so hungry I’m about to die.’
I brushed off my backside and stood up.
If I had been the Elpanso of the past, I would have flown into a rage from humiliation. But for me, who had gone through all kinds of hardships and even possessed a body in another world, petty pride was a luxury.
Taking advantage of the moment when the guards changed shifts, I slipped through a dog hole and crossed the company’s rear yard.
Then, in the end, I climbed in through an open second-floor window and once again flung open the door to Ayla’s office.
“Ayla!”
“You—how did you get in again?! Are you really insane? Guards! Guar—!”
Just as Ayla sprang up in fright and was about to ring the summoning bell.
I flattened myself on the floor and begged with both hands.
“Wait! Just a moment! Just hear me out once! Food! Please give me just one meal!”
“…What?”
At my groveling attitude that surpassed imagination, Ayla’s hand froze in midair.
I looked up at her with desperate eyes.
‘If I look at her like this, I’ll seem pitiful, right?’
I acted while recalling an actor from Kang Woojin’s memories who was good at sending out sorrowful gazes.
“I’ve only been drinking water for days now. The creditors stripped the mansion bare, so I don’t even have a place to sleep, and there isn’t a single rat left in the place. If you throw me out like this, I really will die in the street. You don’t want to see the corpse of your childhood friend lying on the roadside, do you?”
At my desperate cry, Ayla’s mouth fell half open, as though she had lost the words to respond.
Her gaze swept over my sunken cheeks and my dusty, torn clothes.
It was probably the first time she had ever seen the pig of Carnoble, who had always worn only the finest silk and eaten only greasy foods, reduced to such a miserable, gaunt state.
“Haa…”
In the end, she let out a long sigh and pressed a hand to her forehead.
“You really are the worst kind of nuisance. One meal. That’s it. Nothing more.”
It seemed the affection of a childhood friend had still remained after all.
A short while later, warm stew, bread, and roasted meat brought from the company dining hall were set before me.
I threw away all dignity, buried my face in the bowl like a beast, and hurriedly shoveled the food into my mouth.
“Eat a little slower, damn it. No one’s going to steal it from you.”
She clicked her tongue as she watched me with her chin propped on her hand.
After licking the plates clean down to the bottom in an instant, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and spoke confidently.
“Thanks for the meal. Then give me some work now.”
“…What work?”
“I should pay for the meal. Just give me anything to do. Organizing ledgers, checking warehouse inventory, whatever.”
Ayla let out a hollow laugh, as though she found this unbelievable.
“You’re going to work? You, who’ve only ever spent money your entire life? Fine. As it happens, the inventory ledger for Warehouse Three is out of order and has been giving me a headache. You can try reconciling it. If you can’t, know that you’ll be kicked out immediately.”
She threw a thick pile of ledgers and an inventory list in front of me.
She was probably hoping I would be intimidated by the complicated numbers and run away.
However.
‘Organizing ledgers? Compared to engineering mathematics and differential equations, this is arithmetic.’
I smiled and picked up a quill.
It was time for the commercial sense I had picked up over someone’s shoulder as the sole heir of the Carnoble Trading Company, the overwhelming mental arithmetic ability I had trained as Kang Woojin, and systematic data classification methods to shine.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
My quill raced across the parchment without hesitation.
I did more than merely reconcile the numbers. I introduced the modern concept of double-entry bookkeeping and neatly charted profit and expenditure, even the causes behind the missing inventory.
Just two hours later.
“Done.”
“What? Don’t lie. Even the company clerks would have to cling to this for days…”
Half doubtful, Ayla accepted the ledger I held out.
But the next moment, her emerald eyes shook wide with shock as she turned the pages.
“Wh-what is this? How did you organize it so… Wait, you’re saying these three missing bolts of wool weren’t eaten by rats, but show signs of embezzlement by the manager? What in the world is this flow of numbers… It’s perfect.”
She looked back and forth between me and the ledger as though she could not believe it.
This was not merely a matter of being better than others.
Even if she brought in the company’s chief accountant, he would not have been able to prepare a ledger more cleanly and insightfully than this.
Ayla snapped the ledger shut, furrowed her brow, and glared at me.
“Elpanso. What on earth are you scheming?”
“Scheming? Please.”
“You’re acting like you suddenly became a different person. You’re showing off such advanced skills just to get one meal? What’s your real goal?”
Leaning my chair back, I smiled.
“I told you earlier. Invest in me.”
“Fuck off.”
A harsh curse burst from her mouth.
“If your head works this well, go get hired as a clerk at another company. I have absolutely no intention of sinking my money into your business.”
A firm refusal.
But without panicking, I took out a sheet of parchment I had secretly set aside and spread it wide on her desk.
“Before you curse at me, take a look at this first.”
It was a design blueprint I had scribbled down even while finishing the work in an instant.
Since I had drawn it from memory, it was certainly not a flawless blueprint.
“What… is this?”
“A machine that will change the world. Namely, a spinning machine and a power loom.”
But it was enough to persuade her.
Pointing at the blueprint with my finger, I began a proper presentation.
“What do weavers do right now when they weave cloth on a loom? They set up the warp threads and pass the shuttle containing the weft through by hand each time. It takes an enormous amount of time and labor.”
The first invention that had given rise to an overwhelming scientific civilization in the modern world.
The three things humans needed most: clothing, food, and shelter.
Among them, this was an object that had perfectly satisfied the shortage and thirst for clothing.
Thanks to the goods produced overwhelmingly by textile machinery, people no longer had to worry as much about clothing.
“This is a flying shuttle and the cam device that drives it. Through the meshing of gears, rotational motion is converted into linear motion. There’s no need for a person to do it by hand. Once connected to a power source, this mechanism sends the shuttle shooting left and right on its own and weaves the cloth.”
In the case of Britain, which had fully improved and applied textile machinery, it became the first in the world to grow its GDP by an overwhelming amount.
As the gross national product increased, surplus goods began to remain, and with those, it could fill its war chest and start rolling a snowball that allowed it to exert ever stronger influence.
Perhaps the vanguard of imperialism had been this very textile machine.
‘Even the blueprint itself is beautiful, isn’t it?’
Ayla’s eyes were drawn into the structure of the intricate gears and levers on the blueprint.
As befitted a company factor, she was instinctively trying to understand what this bizarre drawing meant.
I drove the wedge in.
“The power will come from the waterpower of a waterwheel, or later, I’ll attach something called a ‘steam engine’ that I’ll develop. One of these machines can do the work of twenty weavers. No, if we adjust the gear ratio of the cogwheels, even the work of a hundred people is possible.”
“A hundred… people?”
“Yes. Labor costs will drop to one-tenth, and output will increase a hundredfold. Since the machine weaves with consistent force, the quality will be far more uniform and sturdier than something woven by hand. Ayla, imagine monopolizing the cotton fabric produced by this machine.”
A blueprint of the future.
An object that had turned a mere island nation into the greatest country in the world.
My voice was filled with certainty.
“Pellua’s textile market? No, the entire continent’s fabric market will be swallowed by the Golden Fleece Trading Company—no, by you. Competing companies will all go bankrupt because they won’t be able to keep up in cost competition.”
A heavy silence settled over the office.
As if bewitched, Ayla bent over the blueprint.
The axles of the gears, the shaft transmitting power, the structure of the spring that controlled tension.
It was not a madman’s scribble.
It was the culmination of mechanical engineering, calculated with perfect figures and ratios, and thoroughly feasible.
Ayla knew nothing about mechanical engineering.
‘But at least she can tell it’s not a blueprint sloppily made up for a scam.’
She was more than capable of sensing whether it was false or true.
Her merchant’s intuition was ringing fiercely, as though warning her of the immense golden future contained within this blueprint.
“How in the world… could someone like you come up with this?”
Ayla’s voice trembled.
‘Someone like me? That’s rather hurtful.’
Of course, if it were the old me, those words would have been understandable.
I leisurely shrugged.
“They say a person’s mind only starts turning properly once he hits rock bottom. So, what do you think?”
Leaning my upper body over the desk, I met her eyes.
“Will you invest?”
Ayla gnawed at her lower lip.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leap into the position of the continent’s greatest trading company.
But the other party was Elpanso, the legendary prodigal son who had ruined the Carnoble Trading Company.
Even I could see reason and instinct fighting fiercely inside her head.
‘Choose, Ayla!’
Take my hand.
Even if this road ends in hell, we go there together!
After a long silence.
Ayla violently ruffled her hair and let out a deep sigh.
“Haaa… Damn it. It feels like I’m throwing my gold coins straight onto the ground.”
She shot me a sharp look and slapped her palm down on the blueprint.
“Fine. I’ll invest. However, only on the condition that I see the prototype operate successfully with my own eyes. If you fail, you’d better know you’ll spend the rest of your life working like a slave in my company to pay off the debt!”
Which meant.
‘You’re saying I can develop the prototype with your money, right?’
I grinned and held out my hand.
“An excellent choice, Factor. I absolutely won’t make you regret it.”
The contract was sealed.