Merovic was training by himself in a field outside of the city. He chose a small clearing near a forest to keep his actions relatively nondescript to the local denizens; while some of the tribes have become suspicious of booming sounds in the woods, he hoped to keep the matter as close to under wraps as manageable. He first exercised and practiced his sword swings until his arms grew sore; then he tested and practiced with one of his fire lances. He loaded the first shot of the day and aimed for a nearby tree, he grabbed a lit piece of coal with a small pair of bronze tongs, and carefully lit his weaved hemp fuse. He stared at the slow burning wick, its ponderous embers slowly entering the touch hole. It took a few seconds to ignite the powder, and he was soon rewarded with the thunderous boom of the bell barrel; a round piece of cobblestone was launched out and shattered against the bark of the targeted tree.

Merovic admired his shot. He proceeded to clean the bell barrel with a smooth stick which had a piece of hemp wrapped around it. He repeated the process of loading, aiming, igniting, shooting, and cleaning; with a small collection of projectiles that he had prepared for the occasion. Some of his shots hit well, and others scattered far from their target; sometimes the load that was fired reached its objective, and others fragmented before they reached their final destination. He took note of what was successful and what wasn't, and considered how he would source the projectiles for his weapons.

"It would be nice to have some standard rounds for shooting, the problem is how expensive the ammunition is to acquire, standardize, and manufacture. Firing refined lead, bronze, or iron rounds is a quick way to expend all of the resources that I have painstakingly gathered. For example to make a pound of iron rounds it would take 2 pounds of ore + 1-2 pounds of charcoal + and a few hours of standing around feeding the fire: The amount of effort in the process scales up depending on the amount of charcoal that needs to be broken down and sifted for size consistency. Sometimes the process needs to be done twice, because outside of human error, the fuel has an issue, or the blowers were unable to force enough air into the bloom. Its a time and labor expense that be difficult to recoup. However, if we have the product we need to deal with competing interests on its usage, namely a military vs civil purpose, and we need to justify every claim to get it; recycling is less an environmental concern and more a necessity of life.

Granted, we can always search the field and retrieve the spent rounds after shooting; it's a time-consuming process and I don't see my men searching a battlefield after combat as a cost-effective measure.Outside of metal rounds, these hard river stones are relatively cheap and easy to acquire but finding them with a consistent density is a pain to outsource; most that are found also need to be reworked and shaped to fit the barrels. Work, work, and work; it's all question of labor. I can design and roughly build the machines necessary to simplify all of the repetitive tasks, but gathering all the raw materials has become the problem; meaning that my output in this system is greater than my input."

"The worst part is that I can't just throw money at this problem. The outsourced labor that I can hire, only works within a very narrow scope time, it's all seasonal work and money by itself doesn't have the persuasive power that it had in my old world. Don't get me wrong, money is always nice, but it's treated like another commodity as opposed to a currency; people reserve the right to refuse a transaction, and they will if they have more money than goods. The ability to exchange is thereby dependent on markets existing at the time of payment. If they cannot immediately spend the money, they would rather not work. Foodstuffs and hard goods are bartered at a higher value because of their immediate utility, but that's another issue, I want the goods too."

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Merovic sighed "I can see why the ancient romans relied so heavily on slave labor when they had hydro-power and primitive steam designs; they simply couldn't acquire the raw materials from distant sites with any regularity. Everything depends on fluid environmental conditions where a machine cannot be easily utilized, or the raw materials are too disbursed across a region to use anything other than manpower to gather them. There are no concentrated sources in easy reach, and everything depends too heavily on the skill of natives in sourcing the raw goods. Worse yet, I can't wholesale expend resources in training people to get what I need, because the infrastructure for agriculture is still too weak. If I can't feed highly skilled craftsmen, I won't have skilled craftsmen. Food production and distribution has become the gate by which everything must pass; So how best to improve our food power? I have two choices, I can produce food products, or I can preserve the foods that already exist; currently our ability to manage the soil has improved with the addition of nitrified soil and a fallow crop rotation."

"The only way I can really improve on the crop front is to somehow improve how we rotate crops; currently I have the system designed in a simple manner: Root plants -> legumes -> leafy plants -> fruit bearing crops; and every fourth year if the soil is drier, we fallow the field, and if its wetter we apply a forage cover crop in the form of clover. Legumes like clover, will fix nitrogen into the soil; leafy plants like lettuce or herbs eat up a lot of the nitrogen and the waste becomes future compost; fruit plants love the phosphate rich compost, they also like pollination, and require some nitrogen; while the root plants require the least nitrogen of the crops, aerate the soil which helps the legumes in return, and the cycle repeats. There are more precise methods of grouping plants for crop rotation but it's a little beyond my ken, and I doubt I could teach the tribes anything beyond this level. I conclusion, it's not feasible to focus on improving how we cycle our crops at this point. Maybe after a few years, we create some detailed records, then we might be able to make something more efficient."

"Preservation is the only thing that I haven't directly approached, this might be our way forward on the food front. We had a strong source of regular salts from a Gossic tribe to the east, but they have since departed to serve Odokar. We have a stable supply of saltpeter, which is the better food preservative, but the taste leaves me a little disappointed. Overall, salt is not a problem, and adding more salt will not increase what food we have. The people of the Gauntal are hardy and creative in how they create their meals, given the limited variety available, they have learned how to manage their resources well. They have impressive smoking operations; they also know how to sugar and use fermentation to aid in preserving food. Vinegar is not exactly a rare thing in this world, but pickling requires a lot of vinegar and salts."

"Vinegar is a byproduct of alcohol production. For me to improve our yields of vinegar, it will be necessary to increase our capacity to produce wines, meads, ales and other alcoholic beverages. I think creating some presses, and with Matilde's cultivation talents we can produce fruits and grains that are more catered to brewing and distilling. Beyond that, the only way to really ramp up production is to get more manpower. Labor shortages are rapidly becoming a reoccurring theme in all of my projects, however on re-inspection, making booze might be the easiest project to get new workers for. Currently, I am monopolizing a tenth of the available labor in the tribes around the capital, the elders have been making quite the fuss about it; lubricating the wheels of commerce so to speak, might be the best win-win scenario."

Merovic pondered that last point: "They say that alcohol is not the answer to your problems, but in this scenario, it is the solution... at least chemically so."

The teenager stopped his musings when he heard a strange sound erupting from the woods: "It sounds like people are singing... but who could it be outside of the city?"