I flashed a smile and cheered on the civil servants and my adoptive father as they cast desperate looks toward the Chief Priest. "Good luck with your work!" Then I left the Chief Priest's and the Lord's office together with him.
We headed straight back to the
...Seriously, master and servant are way too alike!
I remembered what
"If you want to work so badly, why not do your work here at the Temple instead, and while you're at it, train some successors? If the blue priests are hopeless, you could always train gray priests, you know."
If the Chief Priest, now with some spare time on his hands, seriously devoted himself to training successors out of sheer boredom, expectations would be spread more evenly and my own workload would surely decrease. A voice somewhere in the back of my mind warned that it wouldn't be that easy, but I chose to ignore it.
At the same time, the idea of training successors reminded me of something
"Chief Priest, I've been told that despite holding the titles of orphanage director, Workshop Head, and High Priest, I have fewer attendants than I should. What do you think?"
"...Whether operations are running smoothly is for you to judge. If you need more, hire more. If there's no particular problem, there's no need to increase them. You earn your own income, and in addition to the funds granted to you as High Priest, you have the maintenance stipend your adoptive father provides. If you want more attendants, you can afford them. Consult Fran about it."
Since the money issue was resolved, it really did seem to be entirely up to my own judgment.
The moment I returned to the Temple, I promptly asked Fran.
"...So the Chief Priest said I should ask you—what do you think about increasing the number of attendants?"
When I relayed what Wilma had told me and the result of my consultation with the Chief Priest, Fran narrowed his eyes slightly.
"I am in favor of increasing the workshop managers. Right now,
If more workshops were added, the
"I'd like to take one gray priest as an attendant. Choose from among the gray priests working in the workshop, Gil and
"I think that arrangement for the workshop is fine, but there's no need to increase the orphanage management staff.
We had only placed an attendant to watch over the children because the Gray Priestesses who raised them were gone—Fran said it was to maintain appearances. And when I was no longer the orphanage director, having multiple managers in the orphanage would cause problems for whoever succeeded me.
"What about the High Priest's office?"
When I asked about the area that seemed most in need, Fran produced a very complicated smile.
"If we could poach an attendant from the Chief Priest who's already capable... that's where I'd really want one. But we don't need any more attendants who still need training. Honestly, I'm at my limit just handling the daily operations and training Monica and
Fran also said Monica was a very hard worker, so it was fine to wait until she was properly trained. If it would be a burden on Fran, I should hold off on adding more.
"Rather than increasing the High Priest's office attendants, I'd like you to consider hiring more cooks. It's too much for
What was urgently needed was actually more cooks. Still, watching Nicola happily head to the kitchen made me feel that a cook's assistant might suit him better than being an attendant.
"Hmm, since Nicola loves cooking and seems to be enjoying his assistant work immensely, I could transfer him to the kitchen and consider bringing in a different attendant..."
"I'll leave the logistics to Rozemyne-sama."
I considered asking
"Rozemyne-sama, I received this from Lutz."
During the evening report before bedtime, Gil handed me a letter.
Lutz usually worked in the workshop, and I often had him come to me with requests like, "Next time it's convenient, could you also bring Benno along?" More often, it was Lutz who relayed my schedule through to others. Since I rarely received letters this way, I tilted my head in puzzlement.
I rustled the letter open and read through it. It was a formal meeting request from the Gilberta Company—ingo wanted to speak with me about improving the printing press.
Since I couldn't wander around the workshop as the High Priest and have a conversation there, the letter proposed meeting in the hidden room. I groaned at that.
The fewer people who knew my true identity, the better. I hesitated slightly at the idea of letting
"Gil, before I write a reply to this letter, please tell Lutz that I'd like to have a detailed discussion first."
"Understood."
The next day, Gil had Lutz come over, and I held the meeting in the hidden room.
First, I brought up the matter of taking one gray priest from the workshop as an attendant.
"We'll be increasing the number of printing workshops going forward, which means Gil will be absent more often, right? So I'd like the two of you to discuss it and recommend a gray priest you both trust. They need to get along well with the Gilberta Company, and it wouldn't work if they didn't get along with Gil."
"
"
Lutz and Gil, who had been thinking it over after my words, each named someone they had in mind. The common name between them was Fritz, so it was decided he would become an attendant.
"Then once the room and daily necessities are ready, I'll make Fritz my attendant. ...Getting to the main topic—why did Ingo say he wanted to talk to me? I thought the plan was for him to improve things together with the gray priests?"
"Ingo came to the workshop and we were discussing improvements..."
The printing press currently in the workshop was built in the simplest form possible.
Movable metal type was arranged to form a page, and a box-like device was made to hold the composition in place. You'd apply ink to the type, set the paper, then place the box under a pressure plate to press. It was essentially a modified juice press—both in form and in everything else, it really was just a press.
A side table was set up nearby for the ink and paper, and ideally, the table holding the composed type should be pushed or pulled into position under the pressure plate, but even that was done by hand. From a printing press standpoint, it was extremely crude and inconvenient.
The plan was to listen to improvement ideas from the gray priests who had used the printing press and make incremental changes. But Lutz, apparently, had also described the somewhat complete version I had vaguely outlined.
"...I thought maybe the master carpenter would understand some parts of what you described."
Ingo had listened with an "uh-huh, uh-huh," but when Lutz finished, he reportedly glowered and said, "There's someone around who actually knows what you're talking about, isn't there?"
"Since we're improving it, if there's someone who knows what a more finished version looks like, have them give their input. Do you want to waste our time with pointless trial and error?"—that's what he shouted at me, apparently."
Lutz sighed as he recounted this.
I didn't think the trial and error would be entirely wasted—after all, the printing press I knew of was more advanced, and the end result might be better for it. But when a craftsman says he wants a reference to work from, there's no room for argument.
"I did explain that as High Priest, I can't go outside anymore and it's not easy to talk openly, but he said that since I was the eccentric young lady who used to wander freely through the lower city, anyone there could arrange a direct conversation if they really wanted to. He even pointed out that I was supposedly talking about the printing press with you right now, and I couldn't really argue with that."
Apparently Ingo had been quite persistent, saying that if Lutz and I were discussing the printing press, then I could surely talk to Ingo, who actually built them.
Ingo knew me as the young noblewoman who walked freely through the lower city and placed orders together with Benno and Lutz. Even though he was from the lower city and should have understood the dangers of nobility, he recognized me as someone who could casually talk to craftsmen. It was unusual for a lower city craftsman—someone who should have known better—to push this hard.
"I'd think most craftsmen would normally avoid getting too involved with nobles..."
"That's true, but Ingo is dead set on this. According to him, every order from you absolutely has to result in a satisfactory product, since there'll be more work down the line."
Lutz explained that Ingo was a young master carpenter who had established his own woodworking shop. Young was relative—he was thirty-three, slightly older than Benno. Considering that most master carpenter titles went to people over forty, being in his thirties was still considered young.
Because of that, he was still near the bottom of the woodworking guild's hierarchy and didn't get many big jobs. If the guild officially recognized him as the exclusive craftsman of the High Priest—the real deal who could bestow true blessings, and the talk of the lower city—his status would change completely.
"Huh? Isn't Ingo already supposed to be my exclusive craftsman?"
He'd made the winter handicraft orders and the printing presses, so I'd assumed Ingo was my exclusive craftsman. I'd even unilaterally lumped him in with our
"That's the tricky part. When you ordered the large-scale work for the Hasse temple as High Priest, you prioritized early completion above all else, right? You didn't prioritize Ingo as your exclusive craftsman. Normally, the order would have gone through Ingo first, and then Ingo would have distributed the work among the craftsmen."
Since I, as the High Priest, held the most authority, the commissions for the Hasse chapel were placed under my name. In reality, it was the Guild Master and Benno who arranged the commissions, but the listed client was me, with the two acting as agents.
So normally, I should have assigned the work to Ingo as my exclusive craftsman, and everyone would have shared the load. But that structure had broken down. I'd been delegating all my lower city commissions to Benno and the Guild Master, and since they prioritized fast completion, they'd bypassed any exclusive arrangement and submitted the order directly to the woodworking guild.
In short, there wasn't even time to negotiate who handled what from start to finish, so the whole thing was dumped on the woodworking guild. As a result, the Hasse chapel was finished on time, but Ingo's standing had become ambiguous.
"He's apparently been evaluated as someone who received commissions from the High Priest before but failed to satisfy—which is why he hasn't been given exclusive status."
That was a reputation that could make or break a craftsman's career. It wouldn't be strange for him to risk danger to win exclusive status.
This was a situation I had caused by being too busy and too focused on efficiency to see what was happening around me. Restoring Ingo's honor was the cleanup I had to handle myself.
"...Fine. Let's talk here. I actually wanted to speak with him directly, if possible."
I wanted to hear from Ingo about what kind of improvements could be made and how things would change. If Ingo was prepared to deal with nobles, I was happy to talk.
I sent a reply to the meeting request letter, and on the agreed-upon day, Benno and Lutz brought Ingo to the orphanage director's office.
Ingo had clearly been thoroughly washed down before meeting a noble. He looked nothing like the sweaty, unnecessarily bearded craftsman I remembered. When I'd seen him in the workshop, he'd had a towel-like cloth wrapped around his head like a bandana, so I hadn't noticed, but his hair was ochre-colored and his eyes were a bright blue. Dressed in Festive Clothing instead of his usual grimy work clothes, he looked like an entirely different person from the workshop master I remembered.
Benno delivered the elaborate greeting customary before nobles, and I returned it accordingly. Ingo, a craftsman unaccused to dealing with nobles directly, simply knelt in silence.
"Then, shall we move over there?"
"I would be grateful."
Once we entered the hidden room and the door was closed, Benno lightly tapped Ingo on the shoulder.
"Ingo, you can speak freely here. You have permission to be informal. I won't nitpick your speech today, but watch your attitude and don't say anything reckless."
"Oh, that's a relief. I came with the boss, but I was worried I wouldn't be able to say a word."
Ingo let out a long breath. Then he looked at me with serious blue eyes—a mixture of tension, anxiety, and fear that came with facing a noble, yet resolved with the determination that he could not flee.
"Miss—no, High Priest. There's one thing I want to ask. It's important. Am I your exclusive craftsman?"
"I consider you to be. ...With the Hasse project, there was a time constraint, so I ended up commissioning the woodworking guild directly, which must have caused you a great deal of trouble. But I evaluate your work as meeting my expectations."
"..." Ingo exhaled with relief, and the tension drained from his shoulders. He had clearly been quite worked up about it.
Feeling guilty for having caused this, I watched as Ingo rolled his shoulders once and then turned to face me with the uncompromising expression of a craftsman.
"Then I want you to tell me everything you know about printing press improvements. I want to build the best possible thing."
If you're going to build something, build the best. His blue eyes spoke volumes: if you know what a better version looks like, spill everything.
The printing press Gutenberg had built from a grape press had been gradually improved over time, evolving into a metal version. The one currently in the workshop was entirely wooden and might not even match the functionality of the one Gutenberg originally created.
How far could we improve it?
I recalled the printing presses I'd seen in images of the Plantin-Moretus Museum—the oldest printing workshop. Ideally, I wanted to bring the press up to that level, but I didn't know enough to draw detailed blueprints.
"Right now, you put paper in the composition box and place it directly under the pressure plate, correct? But ideally, if you added a table like this that could be pushed and pulled in and out, it would be so much easier. The one I know of had a handle on the side that you turned in a circle like this to slide it in and out..."
Whether I drew rough diagrams on paper or pleaded with gestures, Ingo just kept frowning and groaning. It was hard to imagine something you'd never seen, let alone build it.
"Also, since it's currently based on a press, it uses a screw mechanism, but using the 'lever principle' would make printing much easier."
Though I didn't actually know how the lever principle would be applied or how the design would work.
"The lever principle? What's that?"
I wrote on my tablet and explained the fulcrum, effort, and load—the principle of the lever—but Ingo just tilted his head in bewilderment.
Major improvements still seemed difficult.
"Hmm, building a table to slide things in and out might be doable, but wood is heavy. To make it slide, you'd need metal."
"Yes. I think using metal in certain parts would improve stability and speed. Should I consult my exclusive blacksmith?"
If we wanted to use metal for strength and stability, I should bring in
"For now, I understand that there's a much more impressive improved version sitting in the High Priest's head. And that it's too difficult for anyone else to grasp. ...I'd like to talk to the blacksmith too and see what we can make within our means. They're craftsmen who've taken on the High Priest's commissions, right?"
"Yes. Two young men, freshly come of age, who've taken on all sorts of orders. They're my prized craftsmen—as Gutenbergs, they're the ones expanding the printing industry."
When I told Ingo about Johann and Zack, his eyes lit up with interest.
This chapter went on too long, so I've cut it here. Next time: the Gutenberg crew's printing press improvements continue.