Chapter 80

A new chapter begins.

In the capital city of Vizer of the Romanas Kingdom, summer was coming to an end.

The harsh sunlight that had been scorching the skin of people walking on the streets had softened a little, and the occasional breeze now carried the hint of autumn.

Jessica, who worked at the Unius breeding farm, sat in front of the new loom created by former head weaver Mikaela and loom manufacturer Sotirio, and began to operate the loom.

This loom was special, as it included a special thread called pile yarn in the warp.

As Jessica operated the new loom, the pile yarn formed small loops that covered the surface of the fabric.

Jessica used a reed, a part of the loom that beats the weft threads to tighten the weave, to strike the weft threads with her right hand. Ricardo, Mikaela, and Sotirio watched her.

"It seems to take more time than weaving regular fabric," Ricardo commented.

Mikaela replied, "It can't be helped. There's an additional process to form the loops with the pile yarn."

Mikaela informed Ricardo that a weaver could produce seven to ten schrels of plain fabric in a day. A schrel is a unit of length, roughly equivalent to one meter in Ricardo's understanding.

"Hmm, how much with patterns?" Ricardo asked.

Mikaela thought for a moment, "It depends on the pattern, but for simple ones, about two to three schrels a day."

Incidentally, the process of forming the pile yarn loops was performed using a magical tool.

At first, they tried to achieve this with mechanical ingenuity, but since Ricardo had no knowledge of weaving, they chose to use a magical tool to manipulate the pile yarn.

After about an hour, a towel about thirty centimeters long was completed. Mikaela took the towel fabric from the new loom and checked the weave and texture.

"It feels completely different from the fabrics we've made before," Mikaela noted.

The towel fabric they made this time had shorter pile loops, so the texture wasn't very good, but it was durable and had good water absorption.

When they tried weaving a towel with longer pile loops, a fluffy towel was completed.

"This is good," Mikaela praised.

Since towels didn't exist before, people used handkerchiefs to wipe their faces and wash their bodies. The idea to make towels started when Ricardo, dissatisfied with a towel-less life, asked Mikaela if there was anything like a towel.

After Mikaela heard a detailed description of what a towel was, she concluded that it didn't exist in this country.

"If it's that good, why don't we make it ourselves?" Mikaela suggested.

Ricardo provided the funds and information about towels, and hired Sotirio, the loom manufacturer, to start the project.

If they had tried to develop the new loom without using a magical tool, it would have taken years. While creating a magical tool to form the pile loops wasn't easy, Ricardo's knowledge of factor letters had significantly improved, allowing him to create it in a short time.

"Are we going to make towels for a living from now on?" Jessica asked Ricardo.

Ricardo hadn't intended to make a business out of towels; he just wanted one.

"Do you think this towel fabric will sell?" Ricardo asked the weavers, and they all agreed.

"It will definitely sell."

"The nobles like rare things."

"If we make sheets from this fabric, they will sell."

Ricardo decided to start mass-producing the towel fabric. He ordered three more new looms from Sotirio.

The towel fabric produced at the breeding farm was made into regular towels, towel sheets, and towel blankets and began to be sold.

Lorenzani, a friend of Bernardo, handled the products. He was a merchant who traded in fabrics and tailored clothing, with many noble customers.

Theo, the wife of Viscount Margario, who was a regular customer, visited Lorenzani's shop.

"Is the item I ordered ready?"

"Yes, it's ready," Lorenzani replied, bringing out the ordered dress. After Theo checked the dress and handed it to her female servant, she looked around the shop.

"Oh, what's this?"

Theo picked up a towel made from the new towel fabric.

Lorenzani smiled, "This is a new fabric that absorbs water well."

"What is it used for?"

"It's used to wipe off water after washing your face or after a bath."

Theo checked the texture of the towel and decided to buy it.

Back at her mansion, Theo used the towel after a bath.

"This is good," she said, pleased with the high absorbency.

The towel fabric products gained popularity through word of mouth, first among the nobles and then among the common people a few years later.

Mikaela, who became the factory manager, steadily increased production, and the towel fabric became one of the kingdom's main exports.

Ricardo sat in a chair in the magician's guild research room, deep in thought.

With the towel fabric project completed, he began to think about the Serrato prophecy. The abnormal weather would start in the winter when Ricardo turned fifteen, giving them a three-year grace period including the current year.

Ricardo pondered the first concern, the food supply.

The capital's food supply was transported from the surrounding towns and villages and consumed in the city.

If heavy snowfall made it difficult to cultivate winter wheat, one solution would be to switch to spring wheat. However, spring wheat, which is planted in spring and harvested in autumn, has a shorter growing period and a lower yield compared to winter wheat, which is planted in autumn and harvested the following summer.

If the yield decreased by about 20%, they would either need to increase the planting area or switch to other crops.

Increasing the planting area now would be quite difficult.

"Maybe we should cultivate other crops. Promising options would be molyam, similar to potatoes, or charaimo, similar to sweet potatoes."

Molyam, known as the food of the poor, is the staple food of slum residents. Ricardo, who likes molyam, thinks the name is unfair.

Molyam and charaimo are only produced in small quantities for the poor. Ricardo has heard that farmers don't cultivate root vegetables much because they are cheap and not profitable.

To increase food production, the easiest way would be to encourage the cultivation of molyam and charaimo among the kingdom's farmers, but only the king can do that.

With Crown Prince Gaius exiled to the Yogul territory, it would be difficult.

Crop rotation is common in this country, with fields being used in the order of wheat, turnips, other grains, and legumes to avoid soil depletion.

Integrating other crops into this cycle would be difficult, Ricardo thought.

Ricardo was hoping for Monta's corn tree and seafood.

He was experimenting with the corn tree in his garden, but it would take time to see results.

"Then, it's seafood..."

Ricardo had been thinking about fishing for a while and had commissioned a net maker to create a trawl net. Trawl fishing involves spreading a large net in a circular pattern to quickly enclose and catch schools of fish.

It's an effective method if you have a ship with enough speed to find fish schools, but some people are concerned about overfishing.

However, this is a concern on Earth. The seafood resources in this world are abundant, and the impact of introducing trawl fishing would be a distant concern.

Ricardo wanted to succeed with trawl fishing to secure food in the short term. The target fish was the bocara, which forms countless schools in a certain sea area at the end of summer, as he learned from the fisherman Stefano.

On a sunny morning, two fishing boats equipped with outboard motors set out early. Stefano was operating the lead boat, and his brother Vincio was operating the other boat.

Each boat had four young fishermen on board, assisting Stefano and Vincio. Ricardo was also on Stefano's boat.

The two fishing boats headed southwest into the calm Cetel Bay. The fishing boats, which cut through the sea with their bows, belonged to Stefano and Vincio.

Stefano, who was operating the outboard motor at the stern, called out to Ricardo.

"Is this a magic outboard motor? It's great."

"But, it uses magic power, so it's a hassle to charge the magic power battery."

"I'd like one if we could charge it, but it's probably impossible."

The two fishing boats arrived at the area where the bocara schools were. Ricardo looked into the sea from the boat.

"Wow!"

The bocara, similar to herring, were moving in the sea like salmon swimming upstream, with their numbers easily exceeding ten thousand.

Of course, all the fishermen from the capital were gathered in this area. Ricardo could see about thirty fishing boats in the area he surveyed.

The traditional fishing method here was longline fishing. Most fishermen were lowering lines with many hooks from their boats to catch bocara.

"Stefano, please move as I explained."

"Okay, got it."

Stefano's fishing boat circled the bocara school, deploying the custom-made trawl net Ricardo had ordered.

However, they could only encircle part of the school because they couldn't make a large enough trawl net.

After circling back, Stefano's boat worked with Vincio's boat to close the bottom part of the trawl net, forming a bag to prevent the bocara from escaping.

When the trawl net was hauled up, a large number of bocara were caught inside.

"This is bad," Stefano muttered, stunned. Hearing this, Ricardo asked,

"What's wrong?"

"There are too many, we can't load them onto the boat."

Ricardo compared the size of the boat to the amount of bocara caught.

"I see, I didn't think that far. We need a transport boat."

Ricardo considered storing them in a storage crystal, but thought it was impractical to store them one by one. Besides, he had never tested what would happen if he stored live creatures in a storage crystal.

In the end, they asked other fishermen to help transport the bocara to the coast near the breeding farm.

Stefano called out to his fellow fishermen.

"What are you doing? This is amazing."

"There are too many, we can't carry them. Can you transport them with your boat?"

"But, that means we have to stop fishing, right?"

"You can take half as payment."

The fishermen, calculating that they would earn the same amount as the payment, agreed to help.

Thirty fishing boats left the fishing grounds, loaded to their limit with bocara. Ricardo and the others, who watched them go, scooped up the remaining bocara with dip nets, loaded the boat to its limit, and released the few remaining bocara back into the sea before hauling up the trawl net.

Near the coast of the breeding farm, Antonio was directing the housewives who had helped him produce large quantities of vulture jerky to process the bocara that had been transported.

They used scrub brushes to remove the scales and slime, cut off the heads, removed the guts, and filleted the fish. At this point, they also removed the bones and sprinkled plenty of salt.

The roe, white meat, and liver were stored separately, while the rest of the guts were used for fish sauce.

At first, the housewives were slow, but they gradually got used to it and became more efficient.

However, the catch was so large that they couldn't process it all in one day.

When Ricardo returned from fishing, Antonio asked,

"What do we do with the bocara we can't process today?"

"We'll store them in a freezing storage crystal and process them later."

Ricardo had a freezing storage crystal made from a green jade fruit crystal he obtained in the magic realm.

That day, the housewives worked late into the night, processing about half of the bocara. The rest were stored in the freezing storage crystal by Ricardo and Antonio.

The salted bocara were dried in a well-ventilated place and became salted bocara. Dried until they were hard, the salted bocara could last for a year as a preserved food.

Ricardo made the salted bocara as a source of animal protein for the capital's winter, which might be closed off by snow. However, the cooking methods for salted bocara were not widely known, so they might need to be promoted.

That day, in the homes of those who participated in the fishing and those who helped process the bocara, bocara hot pot, a seasonal dish, was made.

Although it was early for hot pot in the capital, which still had residual summer heat, many people felt that autumn had arrived after eating bocara hot pot.

The next day, there was no bocara fishing. They needed to prepare transport boats and secure enough labor for processing.

Ricardo, who judged that transport boats couldn't be prepared immediately, went to the magician's guild that day to make some progress on his magic thesis.

While doing some research in the lab, a servant named Robson came to deliver a message from Isarco, asking him to come to Isarco's room.

Ricardo went to Isarco's room and greeted him.

"You weren't in the lab yesterday. What were you doing?"

"I went bocara fishing."

Isarco looked exasperated.

"You're no longer just a magician."

"There's no choice. It's one of the measures for the Serrato prophecy."

"Isn't that the job the king passed to the Minister of the Interior from the Crown Prince?"

"No, there's no sign of the officials moving. If things continue like this, a terrible situation might occur in three years."

"Damn, what's going on? If the officials don't act, the magician's guild needs to take some measures... What measures do you think are necessary?"

Ricardo tilted his head.

"Storing food for the winter and preparing heating are the minimum requirements."

"I see, I'll think about it. ... By the way, the magic research presentation will be held at the beginning of next month."

"Really? I didn't know about such a presentation."

"This is an external event to show the royal family and nobles that the magician's guild is a beneficial organization."

"Are you telling me to participate?"

"Yes, this year's papers are poor, and there are few worth presenting. I called you to see if there's anything you can present from your research."

Ricardo's current paper was scheduled to be completed by next month.

"I have a paper I'm currently writing."

Isarco looked relieved.

"Thank you. Please present it."

Since it was a request from Isarco, Ricardo accepted. Presenting at the magic research presentation was apparently an honor for a magic researcher.