"I must mention that before we were persecuted, this kingdom was inhabited by witches, we had our own magical academy and a large public library where all the knowledge of magic was promoted to all corners of Sorenberg, everything ended when the missionaries arrived Christians, especially one named Franz. They commanded persecutions of the town's witches, they destroyed the academy, turning its bricks into ashes, they burned all the books except for one that I still have saved and that is because fortunately I managed to rescue it from the ashes.
When the priests burned all the books in the library, they left the ashes for three days as a symbol of victory against magic and witchcraft. On the third day I approached the ashes and managed to see a book slightly burned in one of its corners, it was completely whole except for that small burn. So he decided to rescue him. That is the only book in all the known earth about magic and sorcery and I have it in my hands."
"Melissa, if it's not too much trouble you could lend me the book, any magical artifact will be useful to me in my mission to build the magical civilization."
"Of course your majesty, follow me."
At that, Melissa opens the door to her cabin and we both enter, heading to a small rustic room. Melissa approaches the ground and pulls a small yellow rope from the ground. A hatch opens and a book full of gray dust comes out.
It was just that book that Melissa had mentioned, as it had one of its corners charred by the fire, but it was still useful, the book was safe and sound, miraculously the flames did not manage to destroy it completely.
"Here you are your majesty, just be careful that the church authorities do not find out because they will burn you and who knows what they will do to you, maybe they will execute you at the stake."
"Nonsense Melissa, I am a prince, I rule this kingdom with my wife Bartolomea, if I want I can send anyone to the stake but no one can send me. Don't worry, that book is safe and sound in my hands, I will take care of it with my life if possible."
Back in my office, I took the book with both hands and proceeded to remove the dust from it, shaking it and blowing on it with great force.
Then I proceed to open the book which is titled only as Alchemy. I begin to leaf through it and discover that some paragraphs of the text are written in a strange language which I cannot identify, however other parts were written in my language, so I proceed to read one of the paragraphs, especially one of the parts that most caught my attention. my attention and it says like this:
«The energy source of magic comes from the Bering crystals. These crystals arise naturally from the earth, generally in underground caves where sunlight cannot illuminate, as complete darkness is required for these crystals to be generated naturally. They are almost always places close to copper, iron or sulfur deposits, although this is not always the case. Once these crystals are generated, they can even emerge from the earth over small streams from which these crystals can be collected, although the larger crystals and therefore of greater power are usually obtained directly from the subsoil. .»
Clear! I said in my mind, how had I not thought about it before? Magic also needs a source of energy. Just like in my world, we use sources like coal, oil, and natural gas to power our civilization. The Magical Civilization will be based on the production and mining of Bering crystals.
I continued reading
"Magical energy can be of great help for the movement of objects as this process is known as levitation."
Levitation? I thought. This magical power will be really useful as it would speed up many of the tasks. Otherwise, the works would require too much manpower, especially in a small kingdom like ours where there is not so much manpower available.
Now he had to think about what were the relevant works that the kingdom needed, especially for the defense of the ferocious beasts of winter. The first thing that occurred to me was the reconstruction of the great wall that surrounds the entire citadel of Sorenberg. For some reason that I still don't understand, Sorenberg had a fairly damaged wall, I suppose it was due to the past invasions of the mammoths that mercilessly attacked the citadel. Now it was only necessary to repair said wall and strengthen it so that it could withstand even more attacks from ferocious beasts and other enemies that would be willing to invade us.
At that moment, I started rummaging through all the papers I had on my desk. Specifically, I was looking for documents about the kingdom's finances to calculate how much money we would need to build a new wall which would be built using Bering's crystal harvest. I had to know how much budget we had to begin the work.
To my surprise, we were absolutely bankrupt. There were barely any profits during the year. Everything was being wasted on expenses of the nobility, on parties, luxuries, sporting events, jewelry and decorations for the castles.
It was a disaster. But who is in charge of the finances of this kingdom, I wondered? Was it me? I started to reflect and finally, the memories of my new body came to me. It turns out that all this time, I was the new person in charge of finances, I started doing it from the first day I arrived in this kingdom and apparently it was terrible.
The truth was that he did not give the slightest importance to the financial health of the kingdom. The nobles only cared about taking care of their comforts. What do I say about comforts, they only cared about the waste of resources.
It was unheard of, he had to reform Sorenberg's financial plan. So I took on the task of eliminating all those unnecessary expenses. I decided that upon arriving at the castle, I should write a new decree to eliminate these expenses and then deliver them to the committee of royal advisors and explain that we were bankrupt due to excessive spending on trifles.
There was not even a budget for such basic works as sanitation, road maintenance, and painting the walls. The only thing that was spent that was useful was on the protection of the kingdom, on the salaries of the soldiers, on ammunition, on weapons and armor for the military, but even that was poorly allocated because some troops that I had seen with my Their own eyes were devoid of sufficient weapons since they did not have armor.
How then was it possible to start with the relevant work for the magical civilization? I had to think about how to generate income, but that would take too long and we might not have a budget surplus until after the long, cold winter, so for now I had to think of a way to build the fortress without the need for a large budget, I had to use the little I had, and the best way I could think of was to use levitation. With that power, it would require very very little manpower, perhaps only the help of the witch Melissa who would help me mix the clay and move it from one place to another, as well as the materials necessary for the work. Maybe I would need some workers but only as Melissa's assistants. Thinking about it and looking at the budget numbers again, we had enough to pay a few workers and Melissa to build the wall. Now he only needed to obtain the magic crystals as a source of energy for the power of levitation, but how would he obtain them?