I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

The riot lasted the entire night.

Apart from the dozen or so noble territories that, like the Astal lord, had previously distributed food to maintain the livelihood of their people, all other territories suffered varying degrees of attack.

Nearly thirty small castles were breached by the disaster victims, with entire families exterminated.

The rest managed to withstand the assault, suffering little damage apart from the corpses strewn across their gates.

According to rough calculations afterward, this round of uprisings—officially named a ‘riot’—caused the population of the entire Astal domain to suddenly decrease by more than twenty percent, nearly thirty percent.

For the Astal domain, whose total population was just over four hundred thousand, this was undoubtedly a heavy blow.

Of course, on the surface, the numbers were not that high.

The official record of deaths stood at just over ten thousand.

After all, only freemen with their own land had official registered files.

The vast majority of the dead were slaves and tenant farmers, who were not counted in population records.

The more people died, in a sense, the more it alleviated the pressure brought by the famine.

Death and slaughter had always been, since ancient times, the simplest method of disaster relief.

If one could not solve the problem, then one solved the people causing the problem.

The next afternoon, Ovinia III, while drinking afternoon tea in the royal capital, received an urgent report from the border domain of Astal.

Mitia briefly described the course of last night’s riot and its outcome.

As the first heir of the Marquis of Astal, she pleaded guilty before the King, requesting that the auxiliary defense forces stationed outside the Astal domain be allowed to enter the city to assist in quelling the unrest.

Though she was apologizing, between the lines she emphasized that it was only because she had no authority to mobilize the estate owners beneath her to relieve the disaster victims that this tragedy had occurred.

“Hehe, look at this letter. Someone is complaining to me.”

The young Ovinia III finished reading the letter, chuckling helplessly as he placed it before the Queen Consort.

Queen Consort Lalor put down her teacup, took the silk handkerchief handed to her by a servant, gently wiped her lips, and then picked up the letter to read.

Finally, she looked at the signature:

“Mitia Ackerman Astal… Ackerman’s granddaughter? She should only be in her teens, right?”

“Though it is indeed difficult for someone her age to handle such matters, the number of civilian deaths is still far too many—and even so many nobles died!”

The Queen Consort shook her head, a trace of disappointment in her eyes.

“It seems that the wisdom of that old Ackerman has not been inherited by his descendants.”

“This may not be a bad thing. But I heard that Ackerman’s granddaughter has awakened the bloodline of her mother—she’s a witch with an exceptionally strong gift for magic.”

At these words, Ovinia III’s eyes flickered with unease.

“A witch… to be honest, I don’t much like those long-lived races. Every time, they make me think of how unfair the Goddess is.”

Lalor covered her mouth and laughed softly.

“It’s fine, just leave this to me. Young girls are usually rather simple-minded.”

“It’s a pity, though. If not for Miranda… her identity would have made her quite suitable to marry our useless son as Crown Princess.”

“Then shall we meet her request? How about Videl’s background?”

“That will do. In his youth, he and Ackerman were mortal enemies, feuding since their academy days and battling for half their lives.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have arranged for him to go.”

Meanwhile, far away in the borderlands of Astal, Mitia received a group of unusual refugees, forcing her to temporarily alter her plans.

“How did you manage to get across the border? The army of Paria didn’t discover you?”

Mitia curiously studied the group that was wolfing down their food.

Mm… dwarves… no, really, dwarves.

They looked no different from humans, except that their height was generally around one meter thirty or forty, paired with the faces of mature uncles and aunties—it was quite strange.

Though she had seen pictures of other races in the history books of the continent, seeing real ones in person still shattered the worldview she had carried from her past life.

“Respected Lord, we dug a tunnel under the border. The patrolling army of Paria didn’t notice us—hic.”

One sturdy dwarf among them answered Mitia’s question.

He seemed to be the leader of this group.

Through his narration, Mitia pieced together the whole story.

These few hundred dwarves were slave craftsmen under Marquis Lausach of the Kingdom of Paria.

They had no names, only number codes, and were tasked with forging weapons and armor for the Marquis’s army.

The drought spreading across half the continent also struck the Lausach domain.

Slaves were mere consumables, so the Marquis simply cut off their food supply.

Knowing well what the status of a slave meant, the dwarves abandoned all hope early.

While they still had some strength, they dug a tunnel one night and successfully escaped.

When they escaped, there had been around five hundred of them.

Along the way, many starved or fell behind.

By the time they reached Mitia, only about two hundred remained.

Arriving in Astal was also a coincidence.

Perhaps because Paria’s last probing attack had cost them many men, the patrol density on this stretch of border was the lowest, giving the dwarves the chance to tunnel through.

Mitia was somewhat delighted.

She had previously been fretting over the lack of craftsmen.

Now, with two hundred dwarves—renowned for their skill in blacksmithing and forging—many things no longer needed to wait.

They could begin at once.

After the dwarves had eaten and rested, Mitia handed the leader a set of Watt steam engine blueprints.

Mm… Mitia gave him a name: Agruna.

It was her little wicked amusement.

Agruna was extremely interested in the great machine on the blueprint.

The principle of the steam engine was not particularly complicated; the hardest part was the mental shift in thinking.

For the power device, Mitia had modified it with the help of the system, replacing coal with water and fire magic crystals to generate steam.

The reserves of coal on the magic continent were very low.

Reducing coal consumption not only saved resources but also reduced one layer of energy conversion loss.

Truly delightful.

It did not take long—by the time night had just fallen, Agruna had already led his people to cobble together a small prototype using the materials Mitia provided.

The first ignition test succeeded.

The roaring Watt steam engine made Mitia’s heart race for the first time in a long while.

The source of all industry had finally arrived.

With these two hundred mechanically gifted dwarves joining, mass production of steam engines was no longer a problem.

Steam-powered forging machines would strike harder, more evenly, and more durably.

The water-powered hammering machines that had ground to a halt due to drought could now be tossed into the scrap heap.

With it handling pumping work, Astal’s mines could be dug deeper, no longer restricted to surface ores.

Most importantly, she could now mass-produce blast furnaces and converters.

With these, the output of wrought iron for machine tools, as well as steel for gun barrels and rails, would soar, laying the foundation for large-scale industrial manufacturing.

The magical potions of this world were far too powerful.

Ordinary wrought iron and pig iron could not withstand them for gun barrels, while traditional methods yielded far too little steel.

Now that the steam engine was here, all these problems would be solved.