Country of Eruchea:-

Harry walked into the magnificent looking building in front of him.

This was the most well-made building after the royal palace.

And naturally, the only organisation it could belong to was the masonry guild.

Near the door, a young boy spotted him and shouted, “Everyone, hurry up! His majesty has arrived!”

And within a few seconds, an old man came running outside towards Harry.

The 50-something man had completely white hair and a somewhat rough look with a short beard.

The white hair was probably more due to stress than age.

Because even after being in his 50’s, his body seemed well-toned due to all the manual labour he must have done throughout his life.

“Welcome, your majesty!

How may we help you?”, asked the old man as he bowed with respect.

“Oh, nothing much.

By the way, how’re things going in these winters?”

“Oh, they’re going great, your majesty!

With everything that those alche- I mean chemists and you have given us, there is no way we could complain!”

“No, no, elder Lao, it’s nothing much!

And even so, if you want, you guys are free to complain about any problems you have!”

Harry joked around a little before coming to the real topic.

“But, keeping that aside, I do have a new job for you guys…”

“A new job!?”

Everyone with earshot had their ears up and faces turned towards Harry the moment they heard the words “new job”.

“Oi! You guys concentrate on your work!

I’ll fill you guys in with the details later!”, elder Lao shouted back on seeing everyone stop their work.

“Don’t mind them, your majesty.

Please come to my office. We can discuss it there…”

Once the both of them sat down in elder Lao’s office, Harry began explaining his plans.

“Schools?”

“Yes, schools.

I want you guys to build one big school building near the royal palace that can hold around 200-300 students.”

“But, your majesty, isn’t it more common to just call a tutor to the royal palace for education, rather than building a whole another building?”

“Why?

Oh, right! You must be thinking that one of my family members want to get educated or something…

But, you see, that’s not what I want to use the building for.”

“What else would you use a school for then?”

Elder Lao’s confusion was natural.

In this era, only the rich received a proper education.

And even then, for such purposes, tutors were called home to give personal guidance to the students instead of grouped classes like those on Earth.

The only academies here belonged to the mages, the knights and the cultivators.

And these worked like boarding schools.

The students were forced to live on-campus if they wanted to join, especially so with the cultivation sect.

So, there was never a need to build school buildings for providing education.

“Well, you see, I plan on educating everyone in this country!

And I need the building to teach the first batch of teachers!”

“Teaching everyone? What do you mean, your majesty?”

“Oh, you know, I plan on personally teaching the initial batch of teachers and as they graduate, they can start teaching other people alongside me!”

Elder Lao looked quite shocked by this declaration.

This was unlike any ruler that he had seen so far.

All the things that Harry had done so far could be seen only as somewhat abnormal for royalty.

There had been rulers and nobles who liked to take an active role in the development of their territories.

Many even donated money and other things to help the poor.

So, whatever Harry had done in terms of developing the country was crazy but not too crazy.

But not even the most philanthropic of the nobles would go and teach commoners themselves.

And here was their king, proudly declaring that not only will he allow all his citizens to have an education, but will also teach many himself!

“Why the shocked face?

There isn’t anyone except for me who can teach most of the things I plan on teaching.

So it’s natural that I’ll have to do a lot of the work myself, right?”

With this, Harry pulled out the blueprints for the school buildings without waiting for elder Lao to reply.

Elder Lao also decided to not reply and instead focused on the designs in front of him.

The designs looked like a modified version of a regular noble mansion.

The only difference was that it had two storerooms, two large halls designed for taking classes and one large office.

“This is just the initial design.

Once the first batch graduates after about six months of classes, there will be a need to expand upon the building to accommodate more students and also construct more such buildings.”

Elder Lao nodded at Harry’s words.

“Now, my only question to you is, can you do this while simultaneously constructing the factories and also finish all the projects without much delay?”

“Yes, your majesty!

This building is much simpler than the designs you gave for those ‘factory’ things.

And with all the new recruits we’ve had since Freedom Day, I’d say just those recruits should be enough to finish this project under the supervision of one or two senior guild members.

I have to again thank you for that as well, your majesty.

If not for all those metal carria- I mean, those construction vehicles, just making those factories would have been too much for us!”

This was a good sign.

The vehicles and other things were being readily accepted by the people.

‘As long as things keep going like this, that 10-year mission should be a walk in the park.’

Harry thought as he started explaining the various parts of the blueprints to elder Lao.

The entire thing was designed in such a way that, if needed, the walls could easily be knocked down and the building could be extended as much as one wanted, especially if the extension were also designed similarly.

This was to be built in a part of the royal garden since Harry felt that the large thing was an utter waste of good land.

And once all these explanations were done, Harry quickly rushed out and left explaining others to elder Lao.

For now, he had another important appointment with the scribes.

Harry needed copies of all the course books he had written so far and he didn’t want to waste time doing it himself.

Normally, he would have gone for a photocopier but this was the era of scribes and not photocopiers.

‘I’ll need to make that Gutenberg press at the very least!’, Harry thought as he travelled in his carriage.

Thankfully, scribes were trained in the art of copying things by hand, so there shouldn’t be too many errors in the copies made by them.

After spending an hour at the scribes to explain to them what exactly they had to do, he left after placing an order for about 450 books of each type.

If all went well, then Harry would receive the required number of books by the time school could start.

So, five hours after lunch, Harry was free from all the travelling for the day.

Now he could head home and relax.

‘Wait…

I still got so much work back at my office!’

***

A few days passed since then.

The work had somewhat started when yet another holiday came along.

Namely, the end of the year.

Well, technically.

The thing was that Etheldor was a planet in a binary star system.

Meaning, it had to deal with two suns, causing the crazy temperatures in summer.

Also, it had several other peculiarities of a binary star system.

Like, around 15th June, Etheldor gets the misfortune of coming in between both its stars, Ra and Sol which were a G-type yellow star and an F-type blue dwarf star.

That day is simply called “The Day” since it’s daytime throughout the planet. (It’s usually too hot to be celebrated and the holiday is just there to let people get away from the heat.)

And it’s also the day when Etheldor tends to switch orbits between the two stars. (But it remains in the Goldilocks zones of either star at any point in time.)

The stars are about the same size, so the year durations only change by a few hours at best.

As for the day that most people celebrate as “New Year”, it’s usually when the planet is on the opposite end of each star, farthest away from the other star.

New year celebrations for Eruchea meant that people would come out and put up a large festival of sorts, similar to the Tanabata festival of Japan.

There would be several stalls and lights, just not fireworks. Those were always done using mana or qi since these people never invented explosive powder.

But this year, Harry already had succeeded in mass-producing basic black powder with the help of his chemistry group (EUPAC).

And the fireworks were set up as a little surprise gift from the chemists for the public.

Harry knew about it but hadn’t told the others.

He had also given the servants the day off.

The soldiers, on the other hand, would have to suck it up as usual.

The four of them stepped out of the palace at about six in the evening.

They already had lunch, specially prepared by Harry on demands from Qing and Shin and planned on eating something at the festival for dinner.

The festival happened in three shifts.

One during the 31st daytime, one all through the night and the third for the entire day of the first.

And coming out a little late would allow them to enjoy the first two parts of the festival.

Stepping out, the changes in the country were visible everywhere.

Harry had reduced the prices of many of the essentials by improving their production processes.

He had also increased the average salary from 300 copper coins to 500, leading to a lot of improvement in the standard of living.

And coupled with the better quality products now being sold, the festival seemed extra lively and beautiful.

The food stalls

Qing quickly rushed to one of the food stalls that was selling something that looked like takoyaki.

And seeing what was being sold, Harry also rushed in after her.

Authentic Japanese food was something Harry had always wanted to try in his previous life.

But due to the popularity of Chinese cuisine in his country, all the other types of East Asian cuisine were basically non-existent in the country.

The poor guy had never even tasted proper ramen before his transmigration.

The seller was a bit surprised on seeing their king in front of the stall but decided to play it cool and tried to not show his shock as he sold the takoyaki.

The thing was that that previous meatball of a king never really stepped out of the palace.

His visits for official purposes were like once in two blue moons.

And here was their new king, who was buying local commoners’ food like a hungry child.

But thanks to all the trips that Harry had made around the country, the people were somewhat used to seeing their new king as he ran around a lot.

When the two returned, they saw that Shin and Jeanette had got ahead and bought some fried fish.

And just as the four of them started sharing the food, a voice came up.

“Oh! Hi there! Jeanette!”

It was Brittney from the paper manufacturers’ group.

Apparently, she was one of Jeanette’s childhood friends and also one of her very few friends.

The whole thing had made Harry chuckle when he first found out about it.

What were the chances the first young woman he talks to was friends with his fiancée?

That’s why Brittney and her family had become good friends with Harry and the others too.

“Nice seeing you guys being out here.

So, got any plans, Jeanette? What about you, your majesty?”

They were good friends but unfortunately, the formal speech would have to remain since Harry was the king.

“Oh, nothing much.

We just thought that we’ll go enjoy the new year a little.

What about you guys? You guys have any plans?”, Jeanette replied.

“Oh, we actually have a shop set up right now, selling some handmade notebooks!

David’s parents are currently managing it and told us to go enjoy ourselves it little.”

Brittney’s family had progressed a lot since they started making and selling paper.

They had even moved into the inner district of the country and were living in a much better house than their earlier one which located in the outskirts.

Brittney was still a bit formal with Harry but he had managed to become good friends with her husband, David.

He still referred to Harry as “his/your majesty”, but was much more informal with him otherwise.

So, the five of them started moving around together.

They visited many other stalls that had some games going on like the classic coin hunt game where they had to look for a copper coin buried in a box of sand in one try only and one where they had to drop a coin into a ring kept submerged in a bucket of water.

They even visited Brittney’s stall to buy some of the notebooks.

Harry couldn’t help but be impressed by the quality of the notebooks.

Usually, parchments were so expensive that they were used either as loose sheets or were bound as a book.

But when Brittney’s family saw how cheap and abundant the paper had become, they came up with the idea for notebooks all by themselves!

Once the sun had set, they decided to close the notebook stall for the day and everyone joined Harry’s group.

And after a few hours, one of the timekeepers came along.

He was an astrologer who kept track of time during the entire day and was also responsible for keeping a track of the days.

Once he informed everyone about the approximate time, everyone started counting down to midnight.

Due to spending a long time in their profession, their manual timekeeping skills were pretty accurate with the time shown by the system, as Harry observed.

Once everyone shouted “one”, the chemists got the signal to start their show.

And just as the clock struck midnight, everyone was left in awe by the grand firework display that lit up the night sky as their country stepped into the new year.