Chương 18: Securing Materials

The next day, Alicia immediately met with Lucille at the Adventurer's Guild. There, Lucille gave Alicia a complete list of people selling specialized machine parts for the steel mill's steelmaking processes, alongside reliable suppliers of cement, wrought iron, steel, and glass for the buildings themselves.

All in total, Alicia could visit and talk to more than a dozen businesses situated in the Greater Lorienval Area, so even if she had to leave Lorienval itself, Alicia would know which places to search for in the cities surrounding Lorienval.

"Also, if you do visit these establishments, show them this." Lucille handed an insignia bearing the golden coat of arms of the House of Mirenoire.

"This should let them know that you're a part of the Imperial Family's network of friends and associates. They will thus place your orders in the priority docket and give you preferential treatment, lest they inconvenience someone connected to royalty."

"... I seriously doubt that this is something that's just handed out like candy," Alicia cautiously said, a little bit suspicious about how friendly Lucille was acting toward her.

"I am glad to receive this, but this might be a bit too much."

"Oh, not at all. You're my most important business partner right now. It would be outrageous if you didn't receive this. Not to mention, it's to my benefit."

"How so?"

"Simple. The easier you solidify your position here in Lorienval, the easier it will be for me to keep sourcing monster cores from you." So that's why she's acting all friendly. Any disruption to my business will be a disruption to her supply. She must really, really need my monster cores, huh?

"Well, if that's the case, then I'll do my best to remain here for a long time," Alicia said.

"I look forward to that," Lucille smiled, before shamelessly adding something.

"I also hope that I'll have your backing one day if I need it, even if it's not direct."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Wonderful. Thank you so much, Ms. Kasperska." Alicia forced a smile before giving the insignia one last look. After that, Alicia secured it in her bag, and she bid goodbye to the crown princess before leaving her and her knight in the Adventurer's Guild. By the time she came back to her house, Alicia had another gigantic task in her hands. She compared the list of businesses that Lucille gave her to the requirement draft that Maxim wrote. Everything did line up well.

Lucille's list had two or three businesses that sold every line item on Maxim's requirements. As an addition, Lucille gave Alicia a full technical manual for the management, construction, and operations of the Lorienval Steelworks, acquired directly from the corporation managing it. Naturally, though, a lot of the trade secrets and metalworking formulas for more advanced types of steel weren't on the manual, but most of the basic and intermediate information was on it.

Besides, Maxim was a professional metallurgist trained and educated in Hessen. She had no doubt that he would be able to improvise or derive more advanced processes when he was more motivated to work. Alicia barely had time to eat lunch as she focused on picking which items were to be prioritized. First of all, she cut the number of mobile cranes that Maxim demanded on his requirement. She was going to acquire them later when she had more money.

Instead, Alicia was to buy only two of them to support construction, as Alicia planned to use her magic to aid in moving heavy equipment and construction materials around. Second, she was only going to buy parts and blueprints for the blast furnace for now, alongside other tools necessary for producing wrought iron. After reading the technical manual earlier, Alicia believed that she could bypass the need for producing actual steel for now, when she could later expand the steelworks in stages.

If they could produce wrought iron, that was actually largely enough for most construction needs she might have while building up Orevogorsk. Third, Alicia planned to figure out how to use her magic to reduce carbon from pig iron without an open-hearth furnace. That thing was just too damn expensive to build, and Alicia was short on ducats.

She thought about selling her personal items in her inventory to make up the shortfall, but unfortunately for her, the only thing left was her legendary items that she wouldn't ever sell to humans in a potentially hostile kingdom. So, she thought about using a stopgap solution for now until she had enough capital for the more expensive parts of the steelworks.

Considering she already had a lot of spells that involved manipulating elements and even bending metals, she imagined that with Maxim's directions, she could probably melt pig iron and limestone using her powerful fire magic and then blast it with pure oxygen. That should only take a few experiments to do so. Finally, Alicia needed to acquire the warehouse near her. It was the only place that could hold heavier and larger items like the mobile cranes needed for construction.

It was practically the main prerequisite to acquiring everything else. She couldn't just teleport the stuff she bought to Orevogorsk out in the open, after all. While the crown princess's backing meant that there would be much fewer eyes and questioning aimed at Alicia's operations, she still had to keep a certain level of stealth away from prying eyes. And so, without even taking rest, Alicia rushed out of her house to get to work.

Two weeks passed since Alicia left Orevogorsk on a mission to satisfy Maxim's requirements. Today was Monday, and Alicia was nearly dead from overwork. For the past few days, she had been working day in and day out, visiting, inspecting, haggling, and buying everything she needed to start a steel mill in her village. Surprisingly, it was quite easy to get what she needed from the establishments she visited.

The princess's insignia meant that they easily approved her requests and didn't ask many questions as long as Alicia gave them the ducats for it. Even acquiring the warehouse proved not too difficult. Alicia didn't even have to meet the nobleman who owned it; she only had to meet his property manager, who was rather eager to get rid of useless property for a few hundred ducats. In the end, the main issue Alicia had was logistics.

Demand for steel, iron, and cement was too high in Lorienval, so much so that even after being placed on the priority docket by her partners, Alicia still had to wait for them to produce and get it to her warehouse. Usually, they were brought over by rail, then moved by heavy drake-drawn wagons that could easily carry tonnes of cargo. After being dropped on Alicia's properties, she had to do the arduous work of using her magic to move them around and organize them inside without attracting attention.

It was especially hard considering some of the workers bringing in wrought iron rods would ask questions about how she moved them well overnight without hiring workers. Finally. Alicia ticked off the final checkbox on the first batch of shipment materials she needed to bring to Orevogorsk. Everything that Maxim would need to start the project was here.

Even the tools that the workers he would hire were already prepared, and Alicia even acquired axes, ploughs, and shovels so her villagers could work the land as winter ended. All in all, once everything was done, Alicia only had two hundred ducats left from her previous transaction with the princess, yet, based on her calculations, she only had 1/8 of the materials that Maxim required. That meant she would have to do all of this over and over again eight or nine times just to finish the steelworks.

This project was truly capital intensive. Her shoulders sagged. I really want a good night's rest after this at the palace. While Alicia wasn't that physically tired, the constant work and reduction of sleep meant she was very much emotionally and mentally drained by all of this. It was so much dreary work that she had never done before that Alicia whined about it to herself many times. She was someone used to academics or shuffling documents around after all, not levitating steel beams at 8 o'clock in the evening.

She sat on a chair near the entrance of the warehouse to briefly stare at her work. Immediately, she felt a measure of satisfaction in her accomplishments. The warehouse was so well organized that she imagined it would only take her half an hour and a few return trips to move all of these to Orevogorsk. Just looking at everything she acquired, placed on neat rows or stacked on top of each other, was truly an art to behold. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent.

Report it. One day, this warehouse was going to be the conduit to construct so many ambitious projects Alicia had for her domain, and while she imagined it would all soon be manned either by Vaelrin workers from Lorienval or by her artificial spirits, everything started with Alicia manually doing everything. That was something to be proud of, Alicia thought. I should finish my errands now before leaving for Orevogorsk.

And so, Alicia left her house to take care of the last thing that she would need to firmly solidify her position in Alsatia. The Oracle Network. The Oracle Network was one of the most important groups in Worldfall Online, somewhat tied in importance with the Adventurer's Guild. The Oracle Network back then functioned as an underground organization that spread information about obscure events in the world, actions taken by royalty, nobility, or the church, and many more.

It was where Alicia received quests and raid targets back when she played the game, and she even had such high-importance contacts within it that she received news about important events days in advance. This meant that Alicia was always the first batch of players to join critical quests or dungeon raids, securing her a lot of XP and high-quality loot. Secondarily, the Oracle Network also included people who could be hired for private investigations, assassinations, and other covert operations.

As the game description once said about the Oracle Network, 'The network sees everything, hears everything, and will tell you everything with the right price.'" Unfortunately, Alicia hadn't been able to pick up on their presence. Somewhat, considering the changes that happened in the Adventurer's Guild, a lot of their usefulness must have declined. Considering the propagation of newspapers and rail travel, she imagined that the Oracle Network lost many of its day-to-day clients as well.

But of course, the press was hardly a good source of reliable information. If Alicia wanted to find out potential partners to work with throughout the human realm, the Oracle Network was the only reliable option. She took hours scouring through Lorienval, checking places she hadn't gone to yet in the previous days when she did the same thing. She feared that the reason she hadn't found or even gotten any clues about the Oracle Network was that they had just gone defunct.

Either because they had been truly outcompeted or perhaps because the Alsatian state cracked down on them. She did hear that Alsatia, for example, hated independent adventurers enough that they just disappeared. The Oracle Network might have met the same fate, at least in the borders of the Imperium. Maybe they offended someone high up by leaking sensitive information, and then they got booted out.

It was something that was all too common even back during Worldfall Online, when Alicia once had to take a quest to free an Oracle Network agent who got caught by a hostile feudal noble who was practicing necromancy. Back then, the Oracle Network had enough power to maintain their footing everywhere. The difference was that this time, the Alsatian state was much more powerful than the human countries depicted in the game.

As afternoon arrived, and the sun began to set, Alicia had come to a grim conclusion that this was a deadend. So, she began walking back to her house. She planned to teleport everything she acquired to Orevogorsk so Maxim could start working. As for the Oracle Network, she was placing that on the backburner for later investigation. Suddenly, she saw a young boy shouting, 'Extra! Extra!' on the streets. He was holding bundles of newspapers, and upon seeing Alicia, the boy ran toward her.

She noticed that the newsboy had two small horns protruding from his eight-panel cap. He was a Vaelrin, a young imp to be specific. She wasn't surprised to meet one because she was looking around at the shadier part of Lorienval to find the Oracle Network, so she just smiled at the boy as he enthusiastically showed the newspapers to her.

"Miss, look at this. Newspapers from The Enterprise, fresh out of the presses!" the boy said.

"They're just one ecu each!"

"One ecu?" Alicia asked, before taking a good look at the front page of the newspaper shown to her. She froze. The logo of the newspaper caught her eye. It was basically the same logo used by the Oracle Network, except it was integrated with a scrollwork that said 'Enterprise Daily Herald' below. This must be it! She immediately looked at the back page of the newspaper, taking note of the address of the local branch of The Enterprise, which was in the wealthy downtown district of Lorienval.

They must have rebranded to a newspaper. Strange. I need to investigate this further. She turned back to the Vaelrin boy who was patiently waiting for her to buy the newspaper on her hands. Luckily, one ecu was basically pocket change to Alicia. With two hundred ducats left in her bank, she basically had two hundred thousand ecus with her, which was the basic coin used by commoners in Alsatia.

And so, even if Alicia had no need for the newspaper since she already had a lead on where to go if she needed to find the Oracle Network, Alicia took the newspaper and gave the boy a livre, worth ten ecus. The boy stared at the livre with wide eyes, and worriedly, he tried to give it back to Alicia out of fear of taking too much from a seemingly wealthy human lady, but Alicia was already walking away, a smile on her face as she waved goodbye to the Vaelrin newsboy.

After receiving the newspaper, Alicia disappeared on a dark lane before teleporting to her [Warp Gate] set inside her house. Now that she knew where the Oracle Network might be without going to them directly, Alicia decided that she should go there later once she had more money and if she really needed to find new partners for new projects. For now, she was going to focus on getting the materials she bought back to Maxim so that he could finally start work on the project.

It had already been two weeks already since she left for Alsatia, so Alicia was starting to get worried about Orevogorsk. She believed that Vittorio and Moshan were managing the village well, but still, she had to check already. And so, starting with the mobile cranes she acquired, alongside the magic crystals used to fuel them, Alicia teleported out of the [Warp Gate] set inside her warehouse, straight to the lawn of Wintervale Palace. Before she knew it, she was standing on top of a road that didn't have snow.

It was still frigid cold, but somehow, the stone road leading to the entrance of Wintervale Palace's main building was devoid of snow. Even the areas that were meant to serve as gardens only had a thin layer of snow on them. Right then, she saw a random villager pushing a wooden wheelbarrow filled with snow. The villager froze upon seeing Alicia as well. Then his eyes went completely wide upon seeing the two mobile cranes behind her.

Alicia could only smile awkwardly as the villager ran away, most likely, to report to Vittorio or Moshan. Indeed, later on, upon checking up on Vittorio, who was in the gardens behind Wintervale Palace, they were actually clearing out snow using shovels. More than a dozen villagers were employed by Vittorio from the militia to routinely shovel snow out of the premises outside of the palace itself, which wasn't maintained yet by Alicia's artificial spirits.

Naturally, she talked to him briefly about the happenings in Orevogorsk, confirming that nothing substantial occurred while she was gone. After their discussion, Alicia went back and forth from Orevogorsk and Lorienval to teleport tons of equipment, materials, and other items out of her warehouse. She took another hour to move it from the palace fields straight to the storage wing of the palace, which was supposed to act as an armory, but Alicia repurposed it as a warehouse in the meantime.

When she was done, it was already evening, and she had a few drinks of premium Virelune white wine that she bought with her from Alsatia while talking to Vittorio at her office.

"So, how is Maxim doing?" Alicia curiously asked as she finally relaxed on her seat.

"I take it that he's still isolating himself in his shack?"

"Yes, Your Grace. He's also been rejecting most of the food you ordered me to give to him daily," Vittorio answered, his tone clearly annoyed.

"If it weren't for your orders, I would have beaten him up to teach him a lesson of gratitude."

"I guess he's still not that motivated to work yet."

"He's too slothful. It irks me." Alicia sighed. She could already tell that she was going to have a hard time smoothing out the relations between her security head and her soon-to-be chief industrialist. That, and Alicia was worried that Maxim didn't take the food being delivered to him for free, because he truly looked too malnourished to work well back when she saw him at his shack. Maybe if he sees the mobile cranes, I can restore some life to those empty eyes of his. Alicia stood up.

"Suit yourself up. We're going to visit him today," Alicia said, going to a cabinet beside her desk to grab her jacket.

"Can't we do this tomorrow? You look like you haven't slept for weeks. I think you should rest first before dealing with someone as unpleasant as him," Vittorio advised.

"No. I want to meet him already. Besides, I can't help but worry that he might randomly die in that shack. I need to convince him to leave that place and move into the palace."

"Move in the palace?!" Immediately, Vittorio launched a torrential barrage of protests as he followed Alicia out of her office and palace. Naturally, Alicia ignored everything that Vittorio said, and at a certain point in their journey to Maxim's shack, the draco eventually gave up and shut up. Soon, Alicia reached Maxim's shack. It was as humble as always, the area around it so devoid of light and noise that she felt somewhat sad seeing it.

The fact that this easily forgotten shack could become the final resting place of a metallurgist who built the only somewhat modern steel mill in all of Vael was an idea too outrageous. She hoped that she wasn't too late and that Maxim was still here, waiting for her to come back. Gently, she knocked on his door again. When there was no response, Alicia became more and more worried, her knocks slowly becoming more frantic. Had he died because of the cold? Did he starve himself to death?

Alicia was about to kick the door open at last to check on him and administer aid quickly if needed, but then the door opened. Maxim, still rubbing his eyes, shouted loudly.

"What the hell do you people want again?! I'm trying to have some sleep here—!" He stopped, realizing that Alicia was standing before him.

"Oh, it's just you." A sudden change from his annoyed demeanor, Maxim's face immediately turned neutral.

"What is it now?" Alicia, relieved that Maxim was fine, smiled cheerfully.

"Good afternoon, Maxim. I now have the first batch of the materials you listed on the draft," Alicia said.

"Come with me and I'll show it to you!"