I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution Chapter 45

“What? Say that again?!”

While inspecting the military factory’s shooting range to watch the mortar tests, Mitia heard some rather unexpected news.

“Ah? Commander, sir, I led my unit to dig wells for the people under Alos territory. In one town, out of fourteen wells, nine turned out to be fire wells. These fire wells ignite with just a spark, flames shooting sky high... The nearby villagers are having great difficulty fetching water.”

The subordinate spoke with a bitter face.

Natural gas? Petroleum layer?!

After asking a few more questions, Mitia sensed from his words that something incredible had been discovered.

The smile on her face grew brighter and brighter.

Mitia immediately returned to the residence, gathered a group of craftsmen and mining equipment, specially allocated a train to transport them, and instructed the stationed troops in Alos to coordinate, accompanying her to conduct exploration and well-drilling.

If it was confirmed to be natural gas, then surely there was a shallow oil field—or perhaps right under that town lay a massive oil field! Otherwise, there was no way that so many wells would repeatedly encounter the same issue.

Crude oil, also called petroleum, was the blood of industry.

Together with rubber, it stood as one of the two great pillars of industrial civilization.

If industry had gods, then these two were surely sacred relics!

If the proven oil reserves turned out to be substantial, then the supply issue that had been troubling Mitia would be instantly resolved.

Until now, restricted by the production and storage of magic crystals, she had always been pinching and scraping when planning their use, unable to fully support all the industrial equipment across the territory.

After all, magic crystals had to be ground into powder for bullets and shells, while also serving as fuel for engines and steam machines.

The demand was staggering.

But with large-scale construction of factories, railways, and steelworks, the Astal Family’s magic crystal mines were utterly insufficient, so she had no choice but to adjust allocations flexibly depending on urgency and importance.

With crude oil, things would be completely different.

The fuel source for internal combustion engines would be thoroughly resolved, and the freed-up crystals could instead be supplied to factories for building more machines.

Natural gas could also replace part of the power demand for factories.

The increase in machinery would, in turn, allow her to manufacture equipment on an even larger scale.

Once internal combustion engines were freed from fuel constraints, naturally, production capacity could also erupt in full force.

Energy was the decisive resource determining how much strength the beast of industry could unleash!

“Has the news been confirmed? Is it true?”

“Pretty much certain. My confidant has already infiltrated that steam train station as a spy. Today she boarded the train heading for Titusburg. There’s a newly opened line connecting there to Alos.”

Inside a castle council chamber at the foot of a mountain in Alos territory, more than a dozen nobles, no longer dressed in such splendor, sat in a circle.

This castle was the private estate of Count Alos.

They had followed him here many times before for outings, so they remembered the place well.

When Mitia’s army conquered Alos, many of them had fled here in time.

The council hall was decorated with extreme luxury—pearls, jewels, gold and silver ornaments everywhere, mere embellishments.

A fireplace built from precious magic-resistant stone radiated warm heat.

But what once seemed pleasing to the eye now, in their fallen and wandering state, only filled them with anger.

“That damn whore, we finally caught our chance!”

The elderly Count Alos cursed with a dark face, then looked at the others: “Where are the assassins and mercenaries we hired from the Holy Continent?”

“They’re already lurking in Alos City. At first we were troubled about how to smuggle them into Astal territory, but now, look—she’s coming herself! Truly the Magic Goddess is blessing us.”

“Excellent! As long as she dies, everything will be over! I will tear those filthy commoners to pieces!”

“That damn slut—death is too easy for her! I’ve lost everything now, all because of her! Truly, no one is more vicious than a woman’s heart!”

Count Alos waved his hand, cutting off the furious nobles, and decided: “Good.

Then have those men ready.

When the time comes, we will assist them.

It must be clean and swift—don’t delay until her soldiers arrive.”

“We understand. Wait for our good news!”

“Kill her! The King of Ovinia will restore our titles, and we will all be remembered in the glorious history of the Kingdom of Ovinia!”

These nobles hated Mitia to the core, because indeed, Mitia’s policies had been poisonous to them.

In the old kingdom, taxes such as conscription tax, corvée tax, land tax, grain tax, and so on were all collected per head.

This model of fixed taxes on commoners, with nobles exempt, inevitably forced ordinary people with little land and many mouths to bear crushing burdens.

But the kingdom could not possibly calculate every commoner’s income, nor complete such an impossible task.

Thus, this power was delegated to local lords.

Local lords, unwilling or unable to count, passed it down again to petty nobles.

These in turn taxed the estate owners and commoners.

Often, tax collection relied on estate owners deeply rooted in the region, who were granted noble titles in return, tasked with collecting taxes from the commoners in their jurisdiction.

Layer upon layer, from estate owners at the bottom to the king at the top, each only had to answer to the level above them—so-called “royal authority does not extend to the countryside.”

No matter how regimes changed at the top, this noble class was hard to shake, for the crown needed them to collect and pay taxes.

But Mitia’s policy of nationalizing land and leasing it back simplified everything—because she no longer taxed people, but taxed land.

She recognized land, not individuals.

Land nationalization cut off the nobles’ reliance on vast estates that sustained their families’ wealth for generations.

The shift from poll tax to land tax, with the focus on factories and commerce, made revenue transparent, vertical, and efficient.

This directly stripped away the very purpose of the nobles’ existence.

Her forced reclamation of slaves and conversion into commoners stripped away their private armed forces.

Her ongoing campaigns of noble purges and confiscations dug up even their ancestral foundations.

It could be said that Mitia was driving the nobles to their deaths, leaving them no chance to surrender or change allegiance.

From face to fortune, everything was stripped bare.

It was an exterminatory policy—so harsh that even in the middle of the night, they had to sit up cursing her a few times before they could sleep.

No wonder they wanted Mitia dead.

This was always a struggle of life and death.

The next day at noon, Mitia, her legs a little weak from sitting too long, stepped off the train and took a deep breath of fresh air: “How fragrant the air is—cough, cough, cough...”

The guards who had stepped out earlier to secure the area all turned their heads in unison, scrutinizing the surroundings more seriously than ever.

They could look anywhere—so long as they didn’t look back~

Anna, who had just been promoted to Chief Guard Officer, hurriedly patted her back with a puzzled expression: “Could it be that the smell from burning coal is... pleasant?”

“Cough, cough, uh...”

Choked by the foul steam, Mitia fought back her cough, glanced at the surrounding guards, and said awkwardly: “No, I was just making a remark...”