...

Days Later, Alexander's mansion, Dining Room

Inside the dining room, three people sat silently at the table, reading through piles of documents stacked into large towers. The paper-made towers surrounded them, looking like small fortresses, as if children had built them to play some self-invented game.

While looking amusing from the outside, with every servant giggling when entered to service them, they repurposed the dining room because Alexander's office was getting too cramped for his meetings, especially with a giant like Bartholomew.

This was one of many aspects that showed that this group stopped caring about etiquette, as it was frowned upon to use other rooms not for their original purpose. However, there were other distinctive signs. Several roughed-up metal buckets were beside them, one full of ink from which a string was connected to an ink ball floating beside Alexander. The others were empty, only with some dried-up residue.

Alexander stopped being fancy. Instead of using fine ink bottles made of thin glass, he directly filled buckets with ink, mainly from batches he discarded because of the color.

He didn't care for appearances anymore, or rather, he couldn't. He had drawn and written thousands of pages, sometimes multiple ones simultaneously, so he could finish the perceived never-ending workload much faster, straining numerous skills to the extreme and leveling them up massively. These ridiculous tasks had deprived him of sleep since the previous week, making him incredibly exhausted.

Fortunately, the contraption floating in the air made the process easier or even possible, as he couldn't imagine how to do it without it, 'At last, done!'

The string broke, and as he finished the last page, the ink ball sank fluidly and beautifully into the bucket like a river flowing into a sea, with him hoping the hell he experienced would soon end by all means necessary. At this point, he would take even another assassination attempt.

Alexander leaned back, sighing and trying to relax his strained mind, 'I really need to invent something like a typewriter for my assistant... and I need an assistant.'

Everything was done by himself because it was time-sensitive since Nila and Bartholomew wouldn't stay here much longer. There was another option: He could later send those documents to them, but discussions and reviews would become cumbersome like this. Overall, it was easier and quicker to work through it while they were at the Leonandra estate.

A positive was that he got a new skill after not sleeping for a night and day, [Sleep Resistance]. However, skills weren't a good solution for those bottlenecks where he needed to rush things. For this, he required multiple assistants, mainly scribes, so he wouldn't need to write everything by himself, but sadly, he didn't have those for various reasons.

First, his contraption writing style and multiple skills made him write incredibly fast, probably around the same speed as five to seven scribes, while using his fountain pens. Second, if he had them, he would send them quickly away to his other projects, which also needed more workers.

Because of this, he was already thinking about designing and building a typewriter so that such bottlenecks wouldn't appear and so that he could hire less skilled scribes for less skilled work like documentation. Yet, he would need at least a few months to realize this invention, for which he would need highly skilled blacksmiths to whom he didn't have any access. Ironically, he required highly skilled labor to make less skilled ones workable for him.

'Well, thoughts for the future.'

Alexander brushed through his hair, feeling he needed to use the cleaning spell later. He looked at Nila and Bartholomew, sitting opposite him and reading through the stacks of papers at a snail's pace.

"Can you actually read, or what is taking you so long?"

Bartholomew looked up from the stacks of papers, his face stoic, but Alexander could feel the hate coming from him, "Are you serious?"

Alexander couldn't blame his annoyance. Usually, multiple teams of assistants and scribes worked on the first review and summarized it. Still, because Nila and Bartholomew came with minimal personnel who would only serve them with their daily needs, they needed to do all this work by themselves.

Alexander smiled at him, trying to lighten the mood, "What? With your reading speed, we will be here till the next mating season."

Alexander's charm didn't work, but fortunately, Bartholomew ignored what he said, voicing his annoyance while tapping at the stacks of papers before him, "You know, the recipe you gave us for cement is very complicated, and looking through it, I feel like studying nature's philosophy again..." He leaned back, rubbing his eyes, "...you can't expect us to understand it this quickly."

They were reviewing Alexander's cement manual. From what he could see, it was better than the cement they were currently using in their territories. Still, his recipe was also somewhat vaguely written down since, like with every invention before, it was a different world with different variables and thus needed a lot of fine-tuning.

Besides that, Alexander had no fucking idea what the exact formula was. He only knew the ingredients and mixture in a middle school-project-kind-of-way. Consequently, his recipe was unprecise, with wide-ranging parameters for the mixture, temperature, ingredients, etc.

Alexander didn't have the time, resources, and manpower to research and develop the recipe. Therefore, he decided to give the project to others to figure it out.

There were many other reasons for such a decision, but most importantly, the agreement he made with Bartholomew, Nila, and the Cold-Snout girls who would give it to his uncle would all profit from this, in one way or another.

However, the manual was also somewhat technical and challenging for those who did not understand elemental chemistry or basic engineering. Because of that, Alexander had already prepared himself to simplify many parts by rewriting them, but before that, he needed to know what was too complicated for them, thus the meeting they held to answer any questions and note down what he needed to change.

Alexander allowed himself to get a little cheeky, "Didn't you mention that you were pretty good in nature's philosophy?"

Bartholomew looked down at the manual again, "Never mind."

Nila, who sat beside him, still looking at her copy of the manual, sounded exhausted, not taking her eyes off it, "It's very comprehensive, but who could actually make it? You would need so many workers, and because nothing is specified, the time we would need to figure everything out would be enormous."

Bartholomew nodded, propping his head with his fist, "Nil is right. I just came from a coup, and getting this many workers will be a stretch for something like this."

Alexander leaned back, looking at them more intensely, with it, the atmosphere suddenly changing, becoming much heavier, "I didn't give you the loan and recipe just for shit and giggles. With the new cement and your unused resources, you would quickly recoup everything and make a good profit, especially with me buying most of it."

Of course, he expected some pushback, but he became somewhat touchy because of the accumulated stress over the last weeks. It was too much for him, and he even made some serious blunders that went against his morals, making him more sensitive to other matters.

For example, the Cold-Snout sisters somehow made him contemplate marrying them, something he only realized after they were gone. Even the thought that he even considered marrying three juvenile girls made him convulse. He did not like it at all, either because he was manipulated or because he was so tired that he just gave in, accepting his fate, only to be saved by his lingering emotions.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

As such, his temper slowly flared up, with him continuing, "What you don't also understand is that it is an investment which almost always will make a profit, even for the most bump fuck rural town. Investing in their infrastructure, even by only building bare streets between every town, village, and city, will increase trade, communication, and security, ultimately benefiting us."

This was one of his other reasons for giving them the cement recipe for nothing. The faster he could create it and start building everything out, the quicker his household could collect the additional taxes from all the implicit positive effects that would materialize.

Alexander stood up, leaning forward on the table and looking at them more intensely, "For everyone to develop, we need interconnectivity. Forget taxes for a moment and consider what it means to travel faster from one town to another..." He straightened up and started counting on his hand, "... fewer guards with centralized posts, schools could be built for multiple villages and towns, even educating farmers wouldn't be a pipe dream anymore, which means more..."

Nila interrupted him, sounding intrigued but skeptical, "I get it. All great positives, but do you get that we need, as mentioned before, a massive number of workers to make it happen?..." She looked for something specific in the jungle of papers, which Bartholomew found and gave her. She nodded and smiled amiably back to him, only to then show it to Alexander, "...in this amount of time."

Alexander leaned forward, looking at the number he had written: He wanted to connect the Teeth cities in about two years. This endeavor was only possible if he included everyone else in this project, which was another reason he gave the recipe away since he had no manpower for the research or production.

He sat back down again, sighing, "Listen, you don't need to do anything if you don't want to, but..." The atmosphere became weighty, his voice almost threatening, "...I will then look for other friends who have the same goals as me."

Nila flinched slightly, smiling at him, baring her fangs slightly, "Is this a threat?"

Alexander shook his head, "Threat? No. A threat would be me saying that I would do everything in my power to get Patricia into the Lady position or just find someone from the North or West. But I have a clear goal in mind: Developing the East. If you don't want to help me, it's fine, but there will always be someone else who wants to benefit from what I offer."

It was suddenly silent, with Alexander and Nila staring at each other, with him not having any qualms about threatening her ass indirectly. Large-scale construction and production was a hellhole he couldn't entertain for the next ten to twenty years.

His papermaking was only possible because his parents somehow scraped together the most loyal workers. Couldn't he again take his estate's workers to make it happen? A big no would be the answer.

While papermaking was complicated, only a few people were needed to make it happen with the amount he made, but if he wanted to develop and produce cement on a large scale, he would need hundreds of workers.

Even if he could somehow persuade his parents, it was practically impossible. Manpower was stretched thin because of the Demon Run in the east, which came in waves and increased every couple of months. Even his Father wrote that it was slowly getting irritating since they couldn't find the blood demon parent controlling everything, making it a game of whack-a-mole.

Thus, Alexander's Mother only promised that he could get some workers and guards for the construction, but that's it. Aurum, Ariana, and everyone else had their hands full, and they wouldn't have time to recruit construction workers. At the same time, Salyna basically rode his ass the moment he asked her for help, making him feel humiliated, but he understood her.

Recruiting personnel in the name of the estate was cumbersome. They couldn't just get anyone because they had a lot of face to lose. They could only recruit loyal ones without any too severe blemishes on their CV, and later on, because it was their policy, they couldn't just throw them out but needed to give them another position. Fortunately, in the end, she promised to recruit more people for him, understanding that he did it to better the fief.

Bartholomew suddenly interrupted Alexander's thoughts, making him and Nila flinch as they had an intense starring contest, "Okay! That's enough!..." He straightened up, looking around the table, "...both of you, don't drag this meeting into some nonsensical discussion..."

He turned to Nila, "Alexander is giving us the recipe and will even buy the cement we produced for slightly above the cost, with which we will make even profit by using useless resources..."

At first, Alexander wanted to get all the materials in the Silver-Tail territory so he could make it himself, but he quickly gave up on the idea. Besides the horrendous manpower problem for development and production, he would also need too much stuff to create it, like sand and gravel en masse, which again would require an army of workers and more sophisticated logistics.

As such, he made a deal with Bartholomew and Nila: They would sell it to him and everyone else slightly at a price above the costs, making the territorial development process much faster.

Bartholomew seemed not to care, seeing that he could sell it to others and profit by using useless resources in his territory. Nila seemed to agree, too, but the Nine-Fire territory had fewer resources than the Silver-Tail region, around the same as the Leonandra had.

Either way, even if he put all his energy into it, the profit would be useless for Alexander since even his massively discounted mana ink would make in four months more than he would make with thousands of tons of cement in a year. However, he would still want to experiment with the cement, trying to develop something much different, but this was a project for the future.

Bartholomew turned to Alexander, looking at him grimly, "And you. Show some damn humility. While you can choke us out, can you find people that easily who are even interested in your grand ideas? Trust me. Most Lords and Ladies need much more persuasion and would never accept your insane ambitions."

It was silent but only for a moment, until Alexander threw his hands in the air, "Okay fine!..." He smiled at them cheekily, "...wanna continue the day after tomorrow?"

Alexander was done for now. He recognized he was too tired and too sensitive, needing at least a day to calm down before continuing. He would rather make them stay a little longer than escalate the situation because he couldn't get his shit together. Besides that, looking at them, he noticed they also seemed dead tired and on edge.

Nila nodded, sighing in relief, "Fine, but we need to talk about alternatives, and why not use the river, for example."

Alexander stood up, feeling the tiredness slowly seep into his bones, 'I need a nap.'

He wobbled to the door while ignoring Nila's words, "Yeah..." He looked at them, his eyelids becoming heavier, "...you can easily buy a boat with the gold, don't worry..." He yawned, "...now if you excuse me, I need to sleep. Have fun reading."

...

A Week Later, Inside the carriage toward the Nine-Fire/Silver-Tail Estate

Nila leaned toward Bartholomew, who was reading through the documents, interrupting him since he had a permanent frown, "What's wrong? Are you still salty? Because I am, but I don't look like a dried-up peach."

He rolled his eyes, put his arm over her shoulder, and slightly patted her head while not looking away from the papers in his hand, "I like peaches and obviously. The last week was Outer Circle."

Nila sighed, cuddling closer to him, "I can't believe that I didn't kill him immediately..." She frowned, "...there is something about him..."

Bartholomew interrupted her, chuckling, "You mean that he brings out the worst out of you? Yeah, I remembered the first meet-up where I became enraged."

Nila suddenly opened her wide, "That's right! His aura is so weird! It's making me want to forget for some reason all manners and act by my emotions, right?"

Bartholomew nodded, "What do you expect? Kairo's aura is odd, too, with him giving the impression of more like a trusted drinking buddy than a Lord or a Druid..." Nila continued for him, shivering slightly, "...and Mari felt like a beast, constantly watching me, wanting to rip me apart."

Bartholomew looked at her, "What is my aura like to you?" Expecting a comforting answer.

Nila looked up to him, tapping her cheek with her index finger while her tail mischievously swung around, "Hm..." She snapped her fingers, "...like a misunderstood puppy who destroyed the teaset?"

Bartholomew frowned, and she laughed, smiling lovingly at him, "Haha, it was a joke, but no. You have one of a kind, which I can't honestly put my finger on, but I love it!"

He rolled his eyes, looking away, yet he couldn't suppress his smile despite being somewhat annoyed.

After a moment of silence, where he read the documents, he became more annoyed again, "I want to know where all this arrogance comes from..." As Nila wanted to say something, he interrupted her, "...don't. I get him, but such an attitude will get him killed."

She shrugged, "You really think so? I think he is just stressed."

After another moment of silence, where Bartholomew thought about the last days, seeing how Alexander was always busy, he nodded, "Fine, I will let it slide."

Nila chuckled, "Of course, you would; otherwise, I would be angry with you."

Bartholomew raised an eyebrow, confused, "Why so? I remember you being so aggressive after that one meeting..." She blushed, interrupting him, "...don't you dare! But..." She gestured with her hand slightly while falling into his lap, wanting to change the topic, "...he brought us together, and with a little bit of luck, we can make it happen."

He nodded, smiling at her lovingly, "Right you are..." She interrupted him, smiling mischievously back, "...but before that, you need to announce it to my parents."

Again, silence invaded the carriage, with him sighing, "I would rather have another sparring session with Mari."

She shook her head, "Oh, don't worry about that. You will probably have one, but with Mother."

He frowned, "Hm, just great."