I became a witch, but I started the industrial revolution

Lalor covered his mouth and chuckled: "It's okay, leave it to me. Little girls are more innocent."

"It's a bit of a pity. If it wasn't for Miranda... her status would be suitable for marrying our brat as a princess."

"So do we need to meet her request? What's Videl's background like?"

"Okay, he and Ackerman were sworn enemies when they were young, and they have been fighting for half their lives since school. Otherwise, I wouldn't have arranged for him to go there."

At this time, Medea, far away in the border territory of Astor, received a group of special refugees, forcing her to change her plan temporarily.

"How did you manage to get across the border? Didn't the Palia army find you?"

Medea looked curiously at the group of um... dwarves... no! dwarves who were eating and drinking.

They look no different from humans, but their height is generally about 1.34 meters, which looks very strange when paired with the mature faces of uncles and aunts.

Although she had seen photos of other ethnic minorities when reading mainland history books, when she actually saw the ethnic minorities in real life, she still felt that her worldview from her previous life had collapsed.

"Respected Lord, we dug a tunnel to cross the border, and the patrolling Palia army didn't find us, hiccup."

A very sturdy dwarf in the crowd answered Medea's question. He should be the leader of this group of dwarves.

Through his oral narration, Medea roughly understood the whole story.

These hundreds of dwarves are all slave craftsmen of Marquis Lausach of the Kingdom of Paria. They have no names but only numerical codes, and are specifically responsible for making weapons and armor for the Marquis' army.

The drought that spread across half the continent naturally affected the territory of Lausach as well. Slaves were just consumables, so the Marquis simply cut off their food supply.

The dwarves, fully aware of the status of slaves, gave up their fantasies early on and successfully escaped by digging a tunnel in the middle of the night while they still had some strength.

There were about five hundred of them when they came out. Most of them died of starvation or fell behind on the way, and only about two hundred of them survived to reach Medea.

It was just a coincidence that they came to Astar Territory. Perhaps because Palia lost a lot of manpower in the last exploratory attack, the patrol density on her side of the border was the lowest, giving them the opportunity to dig a hole and cross the border.

Medea was somewhat delighted. She had been worrying about the insufficient number of craftsmen before. Now, with two hundred more dwarves who were famous for their skills in blacksmithing, many things could be started right away without waiting.

After they had eaten their fill and rested for a while, Medea took out the blueprint of Watt's steam engine and gave it to the guy in the lead.

Well...Medea gave him a name, Agruna, which was her bad taste.

Agruna was very interested in the big thing on the blueprint. The mechanical principle of the steam engine was actually not complicated. The most difficult part was the change in thinking.

The power plant Medea made modifications using the system's capabilities, using water and fire magic crystals instead of coal to generate steam.

The coal reserves in the Magic Continent are very low. Reducing coal consumption can also reduce the loss of energy conversion, which is really a good thing.

It didn't take long. Almost as soon as it got dark, Agruna had led his tribesmen to hand-knead a small prototype using the materials provided by Medea.

The ignition test was successful, and the rumbling of the Watt steam engine made Medea's heart beat faster, which was rare. The source of all industries had finally arrived.

With the addition of these two hundred dwarves who are very knowledgeable about machinery, mass production of steam engines is no longer a problem.

The steam-driven forging machine will have greater, more balanced and lasting force. The hydraulic forging hammer that was previously shut down due to drought and water shortage can now be swept into the trash.

With it for pumping operations, the mines in Astar Territory can be drilled deeper and are no longer limited to surface mineral deposits.

The most important point was that she could build blast furnaces and converters in batches, which increased the output of wrought iron used to make steam machine tools and steel for gun barrels and rails, laying the foundation for large-scale industrial manufacturing.

The magic potions in this world are too powerful. Ordinary wrought iron and pig iron cannot be used to make gun barrels, and the output of steel produced by traditional methods is too low.

Now that the steam engine has come out, all problems will be solved.

Chapter 9: Complete Unification, Covet Bones

A major issue that had been weighing on his mind was resolved, and Medea finally found an opportunity to go back and deal with those territories that had temporarily fallen into chaos due to the riots.

Her plan was simple. With her secret intervention, the riot was successful, and now the small leader, who was in a state of being leaderless, would adopt a one-size-fits-all approach of not holding everyone accountable and not pursuing past mistakes.

In extraordinary times, she did not dare to easily order her troops to search civilians' homes for the money they had looted from the castles of minor nobles.

In case someone under her command uses chicken feathers as a token of authority and ransacks all the houses of civilians, then the whole family will start a riot against her.

However, she still had to take back the remaining grain except for what was eaten, and the free people would buy it back at the standard grain price.

In this regard, she is not afraid of the scope of the crackdown expanding. Most families now have difficulty in maintaining one meal a day, so there is no possibility of doing anything wrong.

After the Kingdom's army intervened and set up garrison, most of her strength was withdrawn, enough to overturn the table.

So she issued an ultimatum to the small nobles whose castles had not been breached by the mob.

They demanded the return of the fiefdoms granted to them during the Ackerman period, accusing them of serious dereliction of duty in managing the common people.

Only the noble title will be retained, the territory will be taken back, the money can be taken away, but the food must be left behind.

This matter is not negotiable

All the young soldiers stationed in Uruk, an important frontline city, were called back to be responsible for the implementation of this matter.

The so-called alliance of nobles before has become empty talk under the watchful eyes of the mob. Now, as soon as they dare to send their own people out, this group of mobs will dare to steal their homes.

Although after this was implemented, Medea's reputation in the aristocratic circle was basically ruined.

But she didn't care. She had never intended to have too much interaction with these grasshoppers in autumn.

Judging from the speed at which her plan is proceeding, these nobles can still leave if they leave some food behind. If they continue to do so, they will probably lose their lives.

All territories that can be taken over will be taken over by the territory’s army and put into a wartime military control state, responsible only for the most basic management, stability maintenance and population statistics work.

Those who had become bandits in the mountains would be surrendered if possible, and those who could not be surrendered would be quickly crushed to death by Graf's cavalry regiment.

When this policy was implemented, all local grain reserves were checked and reported one by one by the army, and then transferred back to her for overall planning.

Finally, the supply will be quantified based on the actual population statistics of each territory, and if there is enough, it will be transferred to nearby territories based on the principle of proximity.

In this way, the food reserves will be sufficient to support the next season's harvest.

During this period, she can also purchase some reasonably priced things through other channels, so that she can get through this difficult six months safely.

In order to simplify management, Mediah also renamed all of its small counties as townships, making advance preparations for the future reform of the township system.

The slave Medea set a set of thresholds for gaining freedom.

As long as the amount of grain handed in reaches the required amount, they can be removed from the slave registration and become ordinary refugees.

And she has already planned for them the channels for obtaining extra food, so they are the best source of workers.

Time passed quickly, and the orders issued by Medea were being implemented in an orderly manner and read out loudly by soldiers in the center of each territory.

The civilians around cheered loudly, "Long live the lord!" The situation was out of control for a while.

They didn't understand anything else, they just understood that Medea was going to distribute food to them. Nothing else mattered, this alone was enough.

The minor nobles complained bitterly about being oppressed by Media's policies, but with the army approaching and ordinary civilians eyeing them covetously, they could only swallow their anger and leave.

When he was packing up his belongings to leave, he was stabbed again by Medea. She could not guarantee the personal safety of these small nobles. Anyway, if you have money, take your private soldiers with you. I can't control whether you will be robbed on the way.

Anyway, there is a high probability that I will rob the rich and help the poor.

Of course, I can also send a team to escort you, but we are short of manpower, so you have to be very considerate.

The territory has basically been unified, so her basic industrial plan can be carried out.

Her subordinates standardized the division of labor in processing and adding points to hand-make steam engines. In less than a week, the first batch of steam engines had rolled off the production line.

Thanks to the fact that her previous drawings of Watt's steam engine were the final version, with the flywheel, lever and valve made in advance, the dwarf craftsmen were able to understand the benefits of the steam engine and even draw inferences from it and use it in combination with tools in the magical society.

The most direct beneficiaries of the steam engine's long-lasting and surging power are the dwarves, a race that naturally loves dealing with molten iron.

If you want to bring a different route to this new world, you absolutely cannot do without the steam engine.

Its greatest impact is not the technology it contains, but the all-round industrial growth it brings as the core foundation.

Industries that used to require a lot of manpower and were time-consuming and labor-intensive can now reduce the intensity and demand for labor, and significantly increase output.

As for the purpose of these steam engines, Medea has already thought of a place to go. In a sense, the Territory of Astar is a perfect place.

The end of its left side is the sea, and the front line bordering Palia is a plain. The surrounding area is mountainous and has rich reserves of various minerals and stones.

The reserves of iron ore are quite abundant, but there is very little iron ore in the surface layer, so it could not be mined before, but it can be mined now.

Since these stone resources are abundant, an industry with great money-making potential naturally appeared in Medea's mind.

【porcelain!】

If she wants to make porcelain, the most basic problem of the source of raw materials does not exist for her.

Clay, Quartz, Fusion Agent

Astar has a large amount of illite, which is the main material for making clay.

She had seen crystals in her mother's jewelry. Crystals themselves were quartz with a good degree of crystallization, and the fusion agent feldspar was everywhere in the mountains.

The biggest problem in firing ceramics is actually the temperature. It requires a furnace with a high enough firing temperature. 800-1100 degrees can only produce pottery, and it can only reach above 1150 degrees.

That is to say, porcelain can only be fired at about 1200-1400 degrees. Now these are no longer a problem.

The mortal enemy of Ovinia, the Kingdom of Palia, is a semi-nomadic country. Their massive cavalry is the nightmare of all the surrounding countries, but Medea's focus is not here, but on coveting their bones.

Bone meal is the most important material for making high-end porcelain "bone china". Countries like Palea must have plenty of cattle and sheep bones and even various monster bones.

In the past, they could only throw away the bones, but now she must have spent money to buy them, and the surrounding lords of Palia would be very happy.

She would then make these bones into porcelain and sell them back to them at high prices as middlemen, thus winning twice.

Medea looked at the hundreds of dwarves working hard in the open air, with a happy smile on her face.

Blast furnaces, porcelain, and mines are the core of Astar Territory's short-term plan for this year.

Chapter 10 Grandma said we are worse than cattle and horses

Steam engines can be used to build more blast furnaces, and blast furnace steel and iron smelting will produce more high-quality materials.

This way, enough wrought iron is produced to build rails, and the mines can then lay wagon tracks to increase transportation capacity.

This in turn will speed up the production efficiency of steel and wrought iron, and the scale of steam engine manufacturing can continue to expand.

When it became possible to produce high-pressure steam, trains came into being. The innovation in transportation speed and quantity made the conditions for industrial large-scale textile production mature.

The large iron ship project can be launched and goods can be sold to all neighboring countries.

The porcelain industry can get a share of this cycle and generate income for the territory in the interim.

As for muskets and cannons...these things are just by-products of industrial advancement.

All of this will proceed very, very quickly if the goal is clear, because what is stuck is not the technology tree, but the environmental factors and the breakthroughs and improvements of materials that take time to settle.