Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Chapter 25: Establishing a Factory

Box after box of coins was moved out from the estate's storeroom, and one building after another rose on Castel Island.

The islanders of Castel were surprised to find that their lord, for some unknown reason, had gone mad and started recruiting workers to build workshops.

Oh, they called it a "factory," but to the islanders, it was just a larger workshop with a slightly strange layout.

The Scribe led the engineering team in surveying the plains and marking land.

In just a few days, a factory building could be erected.

Previously, the islanders had to hand over their fish catch and homemade fruit wine as pirate taxes, but now, that suddenly stopped.

Most of the freed-up manpower was recruited into the engineering team.

Besides factory buildings, it was said that a school was also being constructed, and for a time, almost the entire island was under construction.

Many islanders felt a bit uncomfortable.

The small island where their families had lived for generations looked unfamiliar after just a few days of absence.

So many factories, what were they built for?

The islanders didn’t know, but they didn’t mind either.

Although the lord had forcibly conscripted them, he was actually willing to pay them!

There was almost no commerce in Castel, and the primitive barter system met most of the islanders’ needs.

But if they wanted to earn even a few lio coins with their own hands, that was incredibly difficult.

No one knew when they might need money, so the islanders eagerly put down their original tasks and became the lord’s hired workers.

With wages in hand, the islanders suddenly felt wealthier. Even the fishermen who went to sea noticed that more and more people were willing to spend money to buy fish.

Money began to circulate on the island, and the speed of circulation increased.

Everyone felt richer, and once they had money, they gradually became willing to spend it.

The islanders of Castel became increasingly motivated, feeling that their lives were improving.

"Money only has value when it circulates; otherwise, it's just rusting scrap iron."

The first time Alexei heard the lord say this, he didn’t understand. Now, he realized the wisdom behind it.

The lord was not at all stingy with gold coins. His municipal office also took out all the stored building materials, and with the extra manpower available since they no longer had to pay taxes to pirates, these three factors combined like a chemical reaction, efficiently mobilizing the entire island of Castel into a thriving, prosperous state.

So this was the lord’s plan.

For a moment, Alexei seemed to see Rhine, the capital known as the Empire’s Jewel.

That place was also so prosperous, no, perhaps even Rhine wasn’t as lively as this island.

He sighed in admiration and looked at the construction site before him.

A few people were peering over curiously.

The workers were all islanders, mostly fishermen. They didn’t understand factories and simply focused on their labor.

But some of them were conscripted brewers who had spent a long time in workshops. The factory before them felt somewhat... strange.

"Sir, what’s this empty space for?" A craftsman, wearing a broad smile, cautiously asked Alexei.

"This... is just a regular passageway," Alexei glanced at the blueprint.

"A passageway?" The craftsman was stunned. "Why make it so wide?"

He gestured with his hands. "It’s completely unnecessary, isn’t it?"

"This is a factory. Every building dimension follows strict requirements. Do you think it's some randomly built small workshop?"

Alexei shook his head. He had initially thought these dimensional requirements were excessive, until he started transporting the oil-pressing millstones inside.

The standardized passage was just wide enough to accommodate these tools.

A passage even slightly wider would be wasted space, while a narrower one would be impassable.

At first, he thought this was just a coincidence, but as such "coincidences" happened more and more, Alexei gradually realized that the blueprints Hughes had given him were meticulously designed.

Hughes had established several standardized dimensions.

These standards seemed excessive, but when needed, there was no need for on-site measurements to determine the correct size.

For instance, Hughes remained in the estate, yet he could precisely calculate how much cargo his factory could transport in and out daily, what size of boxes could just fit through the room doors, and if new equipment were added, what dimensions would be required.

Alexei had once asked Hughes about this, and his lord had smiled and told him, "This is called standardization."

Standardization—a fascinating term. There was nothing in it beyond Alexei’s understanding, yet it made everything instantly orderly.

Sighing in admiration, Alexei refocused on the construction site before him.

The olive oil factory was nearly complete.

The process itself wasn’t complicated; stone mills would be used to press oil from the olives.

Alexei noticed that not all the factory buildings contained oil-pressing equipment, some were completely empty.

He guessed that the lord intended to use them for other manufacturing purposes.

As for what exactly, he had some guesses.

Hughes' task for him wasn’t just to build factories but also to survey for minerals, though he had no knowledge of minerals at all.

Alexei went to the blacksmith shop.

Although the blacksmith wasn't a mineral expert, he definitely knew more than Alexei.

However—

“No, I’m too busy here. I won’t have time in the next few days.”

The blacksmith flatly refused him.

“This is for Lord Hughes.”

“That’s Lord Hughes’ order, and so is this!”

The burly old man huffed, glaring at him.

“Two days ago, Lord Hughes sent someone over, asking me to forge some part for a boiler or something. Look, that one.”

Alexei followed the blacksmith’s direction and looked inside the shop.

“Hiss—”

He inhaled the heat from the forge, startled by what he saw.

There was a pile of seemingly random, useless components, but even as an outsider, he could tell their craftsmanship was exquisite.

“Lord Hughes' drawings are quite detailed, and the dimensions are marked clearly. But these things are just too strange!”

The old blacksmith frowned at them.

“And he needs a lot, in a hurry. I’ve been working my forge to the limit these past few days, it’s about to smoke up! I don’t have time to go inspect any mines with you!”

Alexei could only return disappointed.

He decided to focus on setting up the factory first.

The newly built oil press factory was fine, but the renovation of the sweet fruit wine workshops encountered quite a few problems.

Most of those workshops were old, cluttered, and some were outright filthy, disgusting to look at.

Hughes personally inspected them.

After much hesitation, he ultimately gave up on them.

From his experience, it was sheer luck that these places hadn’t caught fire all these years.

If he turned them into large-scale factories, he genuinely feared a single spark could burn everything to the ground.

For now, the workshops would remain.

Once Castel was fully developed, he could dismantle them later.

Besides—

Hughes knocked on the crude walls.

The island had plenty of mineral resources.

If he was lucky, he might even manage to produce cement.

That would make construction speed leap forward compared to now.

The current factories were just a transitional phas, they would eventually be demolished.

And cement had another advantage: it wasn’t particularly afraid of seawater.

Pirates, huh?

‘Guess how fast I can build fortifications?’

Once industrialization began, its momentum would only accelerate.

A well-functioning system would naturally optimize and innovate, driving Castel’s entire development.

By then, he would only need to set the general direction.

He could sit back and watch his territory flourish while the tide of iron and fire flattened this so-called fantasy world.

As long as he provided a healthy path for advancement, the reformists would even drag him forward.

Even the Empire was nothing more than a bigger ant.

Would they become enemies?

Heh, people who had never witnessed industrial explosions would probably lose their minds at the sight of this mechanical giant.

He wouldn’t even need to send an army, just flooding them with cheap goods would be enough to make them collapse.

Oh, maybe they would struggle in a desperate final counterattack.

Watching them shatter beneath the wheels of progress would make for quite the entertainment.