Aelius in Nicea 3

With my monopoly on various trade goods including glass, glass containers and clear glass utensils, poultry, fresh and dried fruits, various fruit wines, jams, and marmalades, I was able to acquire enough money to import the raw materials that I needed for my experiments and for local production. With that capital, I started papermaking in secret with only a core of workers. Likewise, I had commissioned the dwarven blacksmiths and workers under me to experiment in making steel and iron in bulk in our newly built mini blast furnace, and work on that steel and iron to make weapons and armor in the workshops filled with magically enhanced machinery and tools. The furnace had iron parts outside the brick isolation chamber that I cast the heating magic on, which helped increase and maintain the heat inside as well as heat the air that was cast by magic pumps without the usage of water. We also experimented with steam-bending the wood and drying wood in isolation chambers.

The next biggest project of mine was the development of an institute that could both be self-sufficient and raise talented engineers, architects, artists, scholars, administrators, and soldiers. After gaining permission from my father, I founded a semi-religious orphanage institute that spawned one town and five villages. I pre-build the institution and the homes with the newly invented concrete and cement and prepared workshops for dye making with mushrooms and berries that I specifically modified for this purpose. Near the orphanage, I also started a high-quality flux farm for fibers, clothing, and armor. These two industries started in a symbiotic relationship.

For the orphanage, I appointed the priests that were already in charge of the orphanages of their churches in towns and cities, as well as some of my tutors in the capital. By then, I already started to teach some of my knowledge to my followers. I taught double-entry bookkeeping, ratios, percentages, and modern arithmetic techniques, such as computing with nine numerals and zero, and infix notation. It was extremely hard to pretend to develop and invent these ideas, and I felt extremely ashamed to steal these ideas, but the development of humanity is more important, right? It took a while to obtain the necessary manpower to operate the orphanage school and even harder to adjust the classes to ages and make a viable schedule for everything. It was also important not to overwork the children and benefit from them, after all the whole idea was to help them, so their working schedules were reduced and only the older children worked in harder jobs, and even that with help from magic machinery and workers, while the little children were tasked to help around in lighter jobs. I also commissioned some of my knights to give physical education classes to the children. We had around 2000 children in the orphanage in the first year, but I imagine this number to continue to grow as more and more church orphanages merge with mine, plus I also requested my father to notify nearby governors and town officials to send the orphans in their territory to my orphanage. The influx of scholars and priests was also important, and I plan to take full advantage of that by assigning them to church schools in various towns and villages and connecting them to the orphanage, then maybe I'll open a few universities later on.

During this time, I finally managed to create perfect breeds of horses for labor and war, as bigger animals tend to have longer pregnancy lengths, and can only breed after 2 years, even with the help of magic, I could only downgrade it to a quarter of the original time it would have taken. A good warhorse in England during the 14th century was worth as much as the annual income of 19 big shops in London, so the amount of money I could earn by selling one of these horses would be equal to a fifth of my annual income from trade. However, I won't sell the horses to foreign traders. I need to fully control them so that only my country can benefit them. I developed two types of warhorses and a single type of draught horse. The draught horse I developed was 17 hands tall and, I imagine, close to a ton kg and stronger, tamer, and more durable than any modern species on earth. The first type of warhorse that I developed was 16 hands tall and weighted a bit more than the heaviest destrier I could see, so probably 550-600kgs. It was designed as the mount of heavy cavalry. The other breed, I designed was the horse of light cavalry and the reconnaissance units, which were 15 hands tall and were lighter than the bigger horse of the heavy cavalry, but they were faster and more agile.

One problem we had throughout my stay in Nicea was the lack of food and variety in stable food, as famines and food shortages were usually the results of poor planning and the lack of variety in the diet. I tried to solve this by introducing the four-field rotation system, which was a huge improvement to the three-field and two-field rotation systems that were used as there was no need for fallow, as fodder crops could be a soil fertilizer, additional food as well as livestock feed. I also introduced the magic device, a kg of lead ball engraved with plant-supporting magic, that shortens the time a plant grows. Finally, I experimented and introduced a few kinds of legumes(beans) that were more nutritious than the current ones in use, and a crop similar to corn that I developed from wild cereal grass, an ancestor to rice, wheat, rye, corn, and all the cereals. The weather in Nicea was perfect for growing corn after all.

Just as I was developing my base of power and thinking of what I'll do next, a messenger arrived bringing news from my father that the Koutrigours, a tribe living across the Danube river, decided to push further south than Dacia and was planning to pass the Kingdom of Moesia to raid our borders, so he is preparing an army to meet them in battle and asked me to accompany him.

This will be an opportunity for me to gain real-life experience in leading troops and see the fruits of my hard work, that much is true, but this will also be a test for me to see if I have the heart to be cruel when it is necessary. In my previous life, I experienced small armed conflicts while transporting supplies to regions under warlords, as most of them couldn't care less about international law and morality, however, this time I'll be the one to actively participate in battle, for a cause I wholeheartedly believe to be just.