Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 1 The corpse you ordered is out of stock

Late at night, in a gloomy manor.

Harvey got up and opened the window. A night owl fluttered into the house, rolled on the ground a few times, and quickly rotted and weathered, leaving only a handful of ashes.

Harvey brushed away the ashes, picked up the envelope hidden inside, and read the contents in the bright white light of the study.

"Dear Master Harvey, regarding the batch of corpses you ordered, due to the recent frequent activities of the Church's Inquisition Army, we are out of stock. We are very sorry for this..."

Harvey took a deep breath, and a green mist emerged from his palm, crushing the letter into powder. "Damn the Church's Inquisition Army!"

Ever since the Inquisition went to the battlefield in the Evil Moon Mountains, the large number of corpses used by the necromancers in their daily experiments have been out of stock.

The reason is very simple. After the church's requiem mass, the corpses cannot be resurrected by resurrection magic.

The corpse driver didn't want to carry a cart of heavy corpses all the way back to Saint Valen to sell them.

Thinking of this, Harvey stood up irritably and paced back and forth in the study.

Since the Spellcasters' Union enacted a law prohibiting necromancers from stealing or purchasing corpses for use in spell experiments without the consent of the deceased and their families.

In this situation, most necromancers can only buy expensive experimental materials from corpse collectors, and the source is often the victims who died on the battlefield and had no time to be buried.

"This is blatant academic discrimination!" Harvey couldn't help but curse in a low voice.

Unexpectedly, just after being promoted to a junior necromancer, he immediately faced the dilemma of shortage of experimental materials.

It’s not that Harvey attaches so much importance to and is obsessed with the magical experiments themselves.

But without corpses, he wouldn't be able to generate enough zombies to work for him. Once the production line stalled, his business would plummet.

Without business, there would be no money. Without money, how would he repay his high student loan?
After all, among the seven wizarding kingdoms, only the Academy of the Undead allows students to apply for student loans and repay them on time after graduation.

Putting aside the fact that the Academy of the Undead does have difficulty recruiting students.

This is also the only spellcaster school that Harvey, a time traveler without much spellcasting talent, can normally get into.

Unlike ordinary elemental mages and arcane mages, necromancers cannot be hired by noble lords or magic academies with high salaries and become respected magic consultants.

They are even more hostile to divine spellcasters such as church priests, although the establishment of the Spellcasters' Union has reconciled the conflicts between the two to a great extent.

As for alchemists, without generations of family wealth and formula accumulation, ordinary people simply do not have enough capital to embark on this career path.

……

Arriving at the crude production workshop, Harvey examined the few remaining zombies with missing limbs standing beside the production line with some distress.

Use zombies as workshop workers, responsible for the assembly line production of the soap workshop.

This is the first entrepreneurial project that Harvey founded after graduating from the School of the Dead, using his business acumen as a time traveler.

However, the R&D cost of this production line is not cheap.

Harvey was originally burdened with student loans and could not afford it at all. Fortunately, he joined an interest club while studying at college.

Several wealthy "second-generation French" people in the society are very interested in Harvey's unique ideas that come up from time to time.

Only after graduation did he generously invest in his first entrepreneurial project.

But Harvey now regrets developing this startup project.

The zombies who never sleep, eat or drink are indeed the trump card of "007"'s assembly line, but Harvey overlooked the most important point.

Whether it is a living person or a dead body, it is far less sturdy and durable than those metal parts.

Not only do the zombies gradually rot, but they also often conflict with other equipment on the production line because their response to spell commands is too slow.

Last week, due to slow operation, three zombies with healthy limbs mixed themselves into the blender, adding many inappropriate ingredients to the finished soap product.

Coupled with the sudden shortage of corpses, Harvey had no confidence in the delivery of the first order in a month.

Buying second-hand stock from other necromancers might be a solution.

Harvey slapped his forehead and decided to test the waters of other necromancers first. In Jackdaw Town, where he was currently, there were several colleagues who were so engrossed in their research that they never left their homes. Returning to his study, Harvey eagerly fetched some stationery and began writing.

[Hello, Master Anthony. Due to the recent shortage of corpses, my experiments are currently at a standstill. Do you have any extra zombies for sale? Mutilated ones are fine. The price is negotiable.]

After folding the letter, Harvey snapped his fingers and used magic to summon a messenger night owl. He watched it swallow the letter and fly out of the window with its wings flapping.

Anthony's wizard tower is in the valley east of Jackdaw Town. It is working hours now, so we should get a reply soon.

Sure enough, about an hour later, Night Owl delivered Anthony's reply.

Unfortunately, the content was not as good as Harvey expected. The other party not only coldly rejected the second-hand transaction of the zombies, but also subtly mocked Harvey for being a noble spellcaster but doing the low-level job of making goods for mortals, which was simply trampling on the dignity of the necromancer.

Harvey casually burned the reply letter and muttered, "What outdated ideas of an old-school wizard! All they do all day is study immortality, souls, and the power of death..."

"Do you know what it means to reach out to the people and address their needs? Why is manufacturing products for mortals considered a lowly job?"

"If you can't make money and enjoy life, what's the point of eternal life? Do you think you can live to see the day your wizard tower is demolished?"

Of course, it is impossible to say these words to Anthony face to face. After all, Harvey is only a junior mage, while Anthony was already an intermediate mage ten years ago.

Since traveling through time, Harvey has discovered that the spellcasters in this magical world are completely disdainful of the life enjoyment and food, clothing, housing and transportation of ordinary people.

Most spellcasters only maintain their most basic physiological needs with bread and water, and devote all their time to the fanatical pursuit of magic research and life levels.

Even alchemists were reluctant to invent and create commercial products, and were completely immersed in the delusion of being creators who could give life to dead objects through alchemy.

After complaining silently for a while, Harvey forced himself to cheer up and started thinking about how to solve the current dilemma.

He dug out from the drawer the first draft of his graduation thesis that he had written during his time at the Academy of the Undead, the one that his instructor had rejected as a fantasy.

——"A Feasibility Study on Soul Transfer and Mechanical Undead Creation"

Harvey still clearly remembers the scene when his tutor threw the entire manuscript in his face in anger after reading the first draft.

Indeed, experimental research on the soul is not uncommon in the magical world, but so far there has not been any substantial progress.

Because the truth that most people believe in is...

The gods as the creators really exist.

The soul does not appear out of thin air, nor can it be separated at will, let alone transferred.

This is also the main reason why the Alchemical Exploration Society's Creator Plan has always been regarded as blasphemy by the church and as delusion by spellcasters.

Harvey took out his experimental creation from the safe in the study and placed it solemnly on the desk.

It was a mechanical prosthetic limb produced by the Alchemy Exploration Society, a defective product that was eliminated due to model errors.

After carefully connecting the end of the mechanical prosthesis to a blue crystal, Harvey took a deep breath and injected a small amount of magical energy into the crystal.

The inside of the crystal instantly shone with light, as if a living thing was wriggling inside.

A moment later, the rough metal fingers of the mechanical prosthesis at the other end suddenly flickered as if they had been electrocuted.

Then, the metal prosthesis seemed to come alive, and its five fingers instantly opened, gripping the surface of the wooden desk, and slowly moved forward a distance.

Then it twitched for a while and then became completely quiet.

"The soul energy of ordinary insects is still too weak..."

Harvey sighed softly as he looked at the blue crystal, which had become dull and lifeless after its energy was exhausted.

But... this also fully proves...

The souls of living things can really be transferred into metal creations...

And drive them!

(End of this chapter)