"Welcome to the Tarnow."
After departing from Wieliczka, the next city that was incorporated in the royal slat company was Bochnia. Located a bit less than thirty stais (about 25km/17m) away, we had to travel for most of the day before reaching the city walls.
With the great fire devouring it whole along with an immense amount of salt deposits, the city was only a shadow of its former glory, having only ten years to rebuild after this catastrophe. Only the amount of money that royalty continued to invest in this crucial business to the crown prevent the total eclipse and collapse of the city, saving it from losing its city-rights.
I used to visit this place back when I was a kid in the modern world since one of the more popular swimming parks were located there, but obviously, that site wasn't even included in the borders of the town in the current point of the time. With how little remained of the old town and how both I and my men had to frequent through this place while going to the Krakow, so instead of getting all excited about the chance of surveying the site that had the chance of leaving its name in the annals of the history, I used that time to enhance the image of how well I was getting along with Elia.
And to be honest, that task wasn't really that hard!
The better I got to know her, the more my opinion of her improved. As someone with an actual academic background - albeit connected to the field that would become relevant only after humanity would invest a fucking nuke bomb, or strictly speaking, create computers capable of more operations per minute than hand calculator I could buy for some spare change in the first shop on the street - I couldn't help but be surprised how keen her observations about the world were and how much information she was capable of deriving from it.
Starting with the math, a subject that was considered useless outside of the basic calculus required to not be cheated on, on the market, she actually learned the advanced form of multiplications, going as far as to understand powers and roots of the numbers!
While it doesn't sound as much with this level of knowledge being covered in the early years of the high school in the future when one realised that it actually meant that she managed to learn the stuff that only people with seven continuous years of focusing fully on learning would have the chance to know, made calling her capable, quite an understatement!
And yeah, I can hear some of you arguing that kids in schools have a huge variety of different subjects they need to learn at the same time in order to obtain minimal general knowledge about the world… But I wonder how many of them learn the Latin, entire ceremonial of the mess in that language, ethics, manners, spear and sword fighting, horseriding… This list could go on and on. Even without getting started on various aspects of daily life that most of those school kids would master before being forced on the deep waters upon reaching the university or job-hunting period of their life.
After leaving the Bochnia city, we actually had the chance to let our horses rest a bit, because the next and the last pitstop on our journey to my hometown, was a small city of Brzesko(Bsheshko, don't worry, it most likely won't appear until way later), that I only knew about because one of my middle-school classmates used to live there.
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If not for him being historical reconstruction freak, making him THE MAN who actually opened my eyes at how complicated and different from popular belief a period of medieval times was with a simple fact that there was a gambeson going under a proper knight's armour. This simple discovery started my journey of uncovering the secrets of one of the longest period in the European history, that due to some conflicting viewpoints of the later ages, was pushed aside as worthless time with lack of any progress.
As if humanity could remain stale for over a thousand years, and make a big leap out of nowhere in just a single, fewty years! The growth of knowledge was a geometrical one, but it only really kickstarted with the start of the information era, not the renaissance as most of the people believed!
After spending the night in this city of my childhood friend origin, we could finally enter our final stretch. And that's when this one day of relative rest came in handy, with the need to cover over thirty-five stais! (30km/18m) that separated us from the centre of my power and the city I was born in. Or rather, the place where the former (future) military hospital that experienced my birth would be built… was more than ten stais further to the east, way past the outskirts and the farmland area of the town!
"I don't want to be rude or something… but this city doesn't look as great as I imagined it to be…"
With Elia hugged to my arm, I had to hold myself from a shrug. Who she was to say this when someone who experienced this city being over one-hundred thousands of souls big had to see its state with barely five thousand onboard?
"Outside of being on top of this popular trade route, there isn't really much going for it yet. But that's something I wish to change soon."
With how long we spent riding beside the carriage filled with various materials that I would use to prepare my beverage, there was no way I could hide my plan from this smart girl. Instead of that, I lied to her about the first batch of beer already waiting for the testing, and those resources being directed for the creation of the second batch.
I knew it was quite risky to produce such bold statements when I had no idea what the effects of my system crafting tool would be, but just like with how I made her agree to act as my fiancee, it was better to hold the initiative and fail rather than hold oneself back and never achieve anything in the first place!
"I still can't really understand how do you plan for such a simple thing as a beer to change the entire economical landscape of your lands, and my city through the trade deal we agreed on. Even if it will be better than the one served by the jews or city brewers, won't it just become another luxury product? While that gives the potential of earning quite a few ducats a week in a prolonged perspective, but I don't really think it will impact the world in such a grand way as you described it!"
From what I could see on the map and in my memories, my life as a transmigrator from the future wasn't going to be easy. With no direct access to either coal or iron right in my lands, I had to start all my plans with actually getting rich enough to import an immense amount of those resources.
Everyone knew how important a steam engine was for humanity's progress. This was the evolutionary stage that was insanely hard to jump over, but with the current state of my access to the resources, my best bet would be to get enough raw ores to just skim through the necessary steps and develop oil-based production and extraction, since not only I had more than abundant reservoirs right on my land, it was actually far easier to extract, process and use than propane that was the absolutely most important natural resource of the entire area… but only in the far-off future!
"Let us rest at the castle tonight. We can go for a walk around the city tomorrow."
As we reached the crossroads where we had to pick whether to go for the small, dual castle on the nearby hills or for the actual fortified city on the plain. Even though I had a small palace inside the city itself, it was rather a small mansion than a proper noble's place of living.
"As for your question, dear, everyone has to start with something. With no resources to exploit in the area nor influential family backing up my efforts to grow and enrich this place, I simply found a thing that can help be exert pressure on the slackers, punish the tax cheaters and coax the productive people into my service. And you got one thing wrong, the beer I have created is aimed to be freely distributed amongst the folk, not as a high-class product, but as a commodity for everyone!"