Road to the Crown

10th April 1574

Despite still more than a week for the festivities to reach the Tarnowian area, the preparations were already in the full swing. From the Cathedral church where crowds of your women were running all around, decorating the walls with the fresh bound of flowers, through the streets themselves fully occupied by an insane amount of advertisements hanging out from the windows and inviting any exhausted guest to try resting their head in the local house for a small fee of two weeks worth of craftsmen wage, all the way to the countryside, where albeit no preparations could be seen, the happiness of the folk due to the incoming feast on which they would be able to taste the delicacies they never had before was plainly visible to anyone who would bother to actually visit shit-stinking villages in my dominion.

But despite all that, rather than soaking this atmosphere and preparing myself mentally for what was about to come knocking into my life and forever change the way I lived my days, I was fully immersed in completing the annoying routine of tampering with wood, iron and all other sorts of materials, figuring out a way to hang this barrel there and keep that pipe in this exact place.

Compared to the basic beer production, the brewing line for the premium one was a hell of a challenge to complete. While the first brewing line simply required one to go step by step, pouring the liquid from one machine to another, the production that I was setting right now upped the hardship a notch, adding several miscellaneous looking affairs like sprinklers, freezers, juice extractors, fermentation bin and so on.

Thankfully, on the end of the second day, I finally placed the last screw on its place, and received a warm welcome from the system, congratulating me for achieving this mammoth task. With the added experience from creating this whole thingy, not only did my brewmaster level skyrocket by an astonishing two degrees higher but so did my overall class of craftsman, albeit by only one level!

With this, I was finally able to at least access the production for the fused ammunition, unlocking the creation of the reaper guns through the system as an added bonus. But regretfully, rather than using it, I could only treat it as a title of honour, due to the fact that not only crafting those guns required one to possess an immense skill in metalworking, but took time and considerable effort as well. If I ever were to suddenly pull one of those guns from behind my back, without creating a proper backstory for it beforehand, people would be bound to notice that something was wrong!

But with the brewery done, I could finally step in and start working on my concrete factory… Only to be slapped back into the reality by the ticking of the clock, in form of my trusty retainer, Matsu.

"My lord, we received a summons. While it's impossible for you, sir, to travel through the night, even if you set off for the Pilzno the first thing in the morning, there will be only four days left for you to prepare yourself for the grand event, sir!"

While taking on a look of a worried retainer, I could see sparks in her eyes, indicating that first and foremost, Matsu simply wanted to get rid of me from the city. Be it for the sake of finding a reason to stop me from wasting the gold-fertile ground of the former castle's pasture, or just in order to let her roam and rule my own lands freely as she used to do while I was away, in moments like this, Matsu always knew how to make sure it would be her own interest that would remain on top of the chain of priorities, while capable of convincing others that it lied in their own self-interest as well!

"Okay, okay, just make sure to not do anything with the land on the Pasture… Or you know what, outside of those shacks that are already in the process of building, I would love if you could refrain from using any land on the entire hill and on its foothold as well. If everything will go according to my projection, soon, this will be the most important piece of land in the entire country!"

What others would take for a typical for nobles exaggeration for their own deeds, Matsu accepted as God-given truth, considering how insane my exploits were so far. Just the monetary returns from the brewery were enough to not only shut all her complaints about how much it cost to set it up but even turn her into one of the greatest enthusiasts in my court of this project!