Herald of Steel

Chapter 315 New Paper Plant

Alexander was greeted by a waiting Takifz the moment he entered the boundary of the estate.

"Welcome my lord, welcome," The old man bowed at Alexander, to which Alexander smiled and replied, "Takfiz, it's good to see you. How are you, my man?"

"Good, good, all by the grace of milord," The old man with a head full of white hair repeatedly nodded to emphasize his answer.

The two then continued with conversation for a while, making small talk as Alexander asked about his caretaker about various things like the general situation of the workshops, the extent of the ongoing renovations, and lastly about his personal life and his grandson Kala.

"Kala is good, thank you for asking your Grace." Takfiz was excited when the topic of his grandson was bought up, as he quickly informed, "He can talk a bit now and even do some simple maths,"

Alexander noticed how Takfiz's eyes sparkled with joy and pride as he said so, the old man's heart ballooning with happiness as he reminisced how much the boy had improved.

Kala of course could not talk as Takfiz stated.

But only use some simple sign language to perform a few basic communications.

Alexander was also pleased about this, though for different reasons.

He was happy not specifically because of Kala's improvement, but because of the love Takfiz had shown for his grandson.

For it meant that Alexander would have even more leverage over the old man, and thus he would feel even more secure about letting him supervise this site.

"Hahaha, good," Alexander softly replied, and then moved on to the real reason why he was there.

"Takfiz, I want to tour all the workshops and see how things are going," Alexander announced and then gestured, "You lead the way."

"Yes, yes, my lord, right away," Takifiz hurriedly replied and he quickly strode ahead of the group to lead the way, with their first destination being the paper-making shops.

While Alexander made his way through the huge, busy, enclosed estate, he took some time to observe all the changes that had taken place in the month and a half under his directive.

He noticed that the most eye-catching change to the estate was the much-reduced presence of greeny, as much of the one square kilometer hunting ground was cut down and cleared to make space for all the new workshops and lodgings for the workers who worked in those workshops, with the wood gotten from those trees being used to make those very lodgings.

This cut wood was also being used for another major construction effort, which Alexander could see the presence of all around him, and that was the wooden walls.

These large, tall walls were not just placed along the perimeter in a single ring, but, as per Alexander's order, there were also several smaller wooden walls constructed inside the larger outer wall, forming several, almost concentric circles inside the premises.

And on each of these wooden walls, was painted a number painted, with the lowest number on one of the walls being 1 and the highest being 5.

This numbering procedure had come about when Alexander had decided to separate each of the workshops into independent zones, constructing a wooden palisade around each of the workshops to enforce such boundary and then designate each workshop with a security clearance level corresponding to the amount of importance Alexander thought that workshop was to Zanzan's future economy, with 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.

For example, the paper workshop that Alexander going to visit was deemed to be of ordinary significance and as such placed lowest in the security level bracket, which was 1.

In Alexander's mind, the reasoning was that though paper might be a revolutionary invention, its manufacturing was very labor intensive, but contrarily had low-profit margins.

This meant that to make large profits, one would have to rely on large volumes, hence making papermaking mainly a quantitative business as opposed to the more lucrative, profit-heavy qualitative businesses like glassmaking.

Hence, as Alexander had the alternative to use his workers to produce things with far greater profit margins, thus he downgraded papermaking to a level- 1 craft, and was willing to sell its manufacturing procedure to certain people at a price.

While Alexander observed all the changes around him, and saw all the workers and slaves running with a determined purpose, his feet soon carried him to near his destination.

"Good morning, Lord Pasha, Sire Takfiz," As the group approached the walls that barricaded the paper workshops, the two men guarding the entrance greeted them, and then performed a slight bow.

They both were in full armor and wielded spears, and were tasked with overseeing the traffic in and out of the gate.

After accepting the two men's bow, Takfiz stepped formed, mechanically took out his ID card, and then handed it to the guards with the gruff utterance, "Here."

The guards also accepted the ID card with the same kind of mechanical rigidness, perhaps because Alexander was there and they wanted to show him their best side, and then performed the same routine that Galipsos had performed with Alexander, noting down everything about Takfiz on a roster, taking his thumbprint, stating that his reason for visiting the paper workshop was to accompany the Lord Pasha, and finally, only after doing all that, did they allow the group to enter the papermaking workshops, with their last words being, "Please enter my lord and have a nice day."

Tafkiz as the chief caretaker was given the security clearance code, CC-A3-6, in which the CC stood for Chief Caretaker, A3 was Access to All Available information, and 6 was Level 6.

This was almost identical to Alexnander's own card, with A3 and Level 6 allowing free access to all the information about all the workshops, and the only restriction for the old man was that he could not bring guests to a tour without Alexnader's prior permission, as his security clearance was that of a Caretaker and not the Pasha.

Consequently, other than Alexander, only Cambyses was given that privilege, as evidenced by the 'P' in her clearance level.

As Alexander entered the peened enclosure, he laid his eyes upon the once small shed he had designated to make the paper in, he found that it had been demolished and replaced with several huge workshops sprawled all over the huge area, with each of them seemingly dedicated just one step of the paper manufacturing process.

Homes

Alexander first observed that in one corner of the clearing, a huge pile of small branches and twigs was being dumped into huge barrels filled with water, after a while of soaking, once they had become soft enough, they would be taken out by a bunch of womenfolk, who would then very expertly use a carving knife and their nails to separate the barks from the branches, thus cleaning them.

These cleaned bits would then be taken to a clearing a bit further ahead, their fate to be pulverized, which would occur by using a new, innovative kind of wooden device invented by Alexander.

This wooden device was just like a seesaw, with the only significant difference being that one end was attached to an iron stump, which acted as the hammer, while the other end was operated using the feet.

The way it worked was that a person would press down on his end of the device and cause the hammer end to rise up, after which the man would let go of his feet and the iron mallet would come crashing down due to gravity, and thus splattering anything beneath, which was, in this case, the branches and twigs.

This was the basic idea, to which a few life-convenient additions were made.

First was the design of the feet end of the special seesaw, which was shaped almost like a slipper, thus allowing the feet to be inserted inside, and preventing the legs from moving around too much during the operations.

Next, was the shape of the iron mallet, which differed from the traditional cylindrical shaper to look more bulbous, made such to maximize contact with the twigs and branches.

And lastly, to prevent the twigs from scattering all over the place after each strike, a small pit was dug underneath the mallet end of the wooden seesaw, allowing for quick and efficient breakdown of the twigs.

After Alexander had installed these special seesaws, a few days later Ajijak had come running to him, singing its praises, in which he had said, "My lord, this special seesaw that you designed is amazing. Not only can it smash the twigs faster, but it can also even be used by women. We have tripled our output using it!"

Such a jubilant reaction from Ajijak was reasonable when one understood just how cumbersome the previous way of doing things was.

Before, to smash the literal tons and tons of raw materials to wood pulp, a sledgehammer needed to be used, which was slow, tiring, and even dangerous.

Slow and tiring because to use the hammer one needed to raise it high up and then bring it down again, and repeat, tiring one's arm and back muscles.

While it was dangerous because smashing one's toe caused by inattentiveness or just fatigue was a frequent occurrence.

Two problems that this device simultaneously seemed to solve.

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