Chapter 132: Without Slave Labor

January 13, 222 AD.

Octavia sat upright at her desk in the central administrative hall of Lugdunum, her eyes scanning rows of logistical ledgers.

These documents were not treaties; they were brutal statistics compiled by the various new industrial departments...

Because she possessed a flawless eidetic memory, a rare genetic trait that had previously relegated her to being a mere parlor trick for a Roman patrician before the Syndicate liberated her, Octavia used her limited free time to memorize in case the Forge Master required immediate recall.

This had recently become the primary focus of her daily work, as the Ministry of Audits had finished their quarterly taxation assessments and would not initiate another sweep until the summer harvest.

Having worked under Lucius for over a year, she had quickly learned that the Forge Master was deeply obsessed with numerical statistics.

He frequently utilized alien economic terms such as ’per-capita output,’ ’year-over-year inflation,’ and ’logistical supply curves.’

Subsequently, every single clerk and bureaucrat in the administration had adopted this clinical habit to appease him...

As the population of Lugdunum exploded, the related statistical burden increased exponentially.

Therefore, Lucius had entrusted this specific archival work entirely to Octavia.

The Forge Master had repeatedly described her role as the most critical pillar of the state.

With the help of her memory, he confidently claimed he could forecast the growth of the next decade and calculate exact military supply lines.

"Chief Statistician..." A young Gallic boy dressed in the gray wool of a junior clerk pushed open the door.

After offering Octavia a bow, he handed her a stamped requisition form. "Greetings. Dominus Decimus from the Ministry of Engineering urgently requests the exact clearance records of all refugees who passed the residential security verification within the past seven days."

"Hold on a moment," Octavia said, her eyes briefly glancing at the wax seal on the application to verify its authenticity.

She picked up an ink stylus and transcribed a long list of names. "Here. Deliver this directly to the Chief Engineer."

"Th-thank you, Dominus." The young boy carefully took the parchment, staring at her with wide eyes, as if she were a Gallic witch pulling knowledge from the ether.

"Do not worry, I am merely reading from a mental book," Octavia couldn’t help but laugh softly.

Most of the newly integrated plebeians wore that exact expression of terrified awe when they witnessed her eidetic recall.

"Ensure you hand this directly to Decimus. According to the Syndicate Constitution of Confidentiality, you are forbidden from letting anyone else read these names."

"Yes... of course, Chief."

The clerk bowed and retreated.

As he pushed the door open, Octavia briefly saw the hall beyond.

It was a veritable sea of gray-clad bureaucrats, and a roar of chattering voices instantly rushed into her quiet office, cutting off the moment the door clicked shut.

Today was the weekend, a day traditionally reserved for rest and religious observance in the Roman calendar, yet the building was just as frantic and populated as any weekday.

Everyone was incredibly excited about the upcoming expansion of the city, working with a terrifying fervor.

With the revolutionary introduction of "overtime pay" a concept implemented by Lucius that offered time-and-a-half wages for weekend labor... absolutely no one was willing to sit idle at home!

Initially, Octavia had not fully understood the Forge Master’s logic.

To her mind, the labor of the factory workers and blast-furnace operators was grueling, whereas sitting at a desk drafting reports took vastly less effort.

Yet, these jobs were compensated. Lucius only had to issue a military command, and the fearful plebeians would have easily complied without question!

There was no traditional Roman need to inflate the administrative salaries...

Compared to the stingy patricians of the Senate, the Forge Master appeared to be foolishly benevolent.

Truthfully, Octavia had thought Lucius did not act like a true Roman Lord at all.

Yet, it was exactly this bizarre benevolence that had elevated the entire Gallic populace to this unprecedented stage of prosperity, which was nothing short of a miracle...

She did not arrive at this profound conclusion due to blind religious faith or respect for Lucius

Compared to just twelve months ago, when only veteran legionaries and merchants had a stable flow of silver, the base wages of the miners, masons, and handymen had doubled.

Some of the specialized, emerging occupations had seen their wages skyrocket by an impossible factor of eight, and the number of employed citizens was still climbing!

The changes within Lugdunum were so incredibly drastic that if a Roman Senator who hadn’t visited the city in a year were to arrive today, he would find it impossible to believe such wealth was generated without slave labor...

Octavia touched the dried ink on her ledger.

"Chief Octavia," the door was pushed open, and a guard stepped into the room. "The Forge Master requires your immediate presence in the praetorium."

...

When she arrived at the secured, third-floor study of the central keep, Octavia saw Lucius standing over his desk, organizing a stack of manuscripts.

"Do you require me to archive these documents, Dominus?" she asked, stepping forward and tying back her hair, which had been blown out of place by the Alpine wind in the courtyard.

"Yes, please. It required at least half of my remaining brain cells to reconstruct this textbook," Lucius sighed. "Even for the advanced mathematics that were universally common in my... past studies, I could only remember the general theorems. I had to painfully re-derive several of these complex formulas from scratch."

Octavia had long ago gotten used to the Forge Master’s erratic behavior.

She ignored his weird terminology and picked up the manuscript.

She immediately noticed the title pressed onto the cover in sharp lettering:

*Principia Mathematica: Calculus*.

She flipped through the first few parchment pages, finding it impossible to grasp what the title even meant...

She then simply detached her logic and focused on her eidetic memory, recording the ink patterns.

Compared to the standard algebraic equations she had recently learned, she found these new formulas didn’t even utilize standard numerals.

Instead, they relied on a series of alien symbols that looked like an entirely new language.

They looked exactly like the kind of nightmare that only geniuses like Gaia or Decimus would ever genuinely enjoy reading.

"By the way," Lucius asked, rubbing his eyes, "what is the exact median income of the civilian residents in the lower districts?"

"The minimum wage sits at 10 silver denarii per month, and the maximum for standard labor is 40," Octavia answered, "But to calculate the precise median income down to the decimal, I would need to aggregate the entire ledger, which will take me several hours."

"That is fine. You can provide me with the finalized report the day after tomorrow." Lucius waved his hand. "The subterranean radiator project is scheduled to initiate operation in one week. Upon its completion, the residential blocks of this city will be as warm as a spring afternoon, even through the dead of the Gallic winter."

A city without the primal fear of winter frost. This was yet another miracle that could only logically exist within the Forge Master’s territory...

"I will have the exact result for you by tomorrow afternoon," Octavia promised.

"Tomorrow..." Lucius sighed, shaking his head. "It would be incredibly helpful if you possessed the ability to recite a romantic stage play or a fictional epic instead of just tax ledgers."

"A fictional story?" Octavia was slightly startled. "Ah. Tomorrow is Lady Valeria’s..."

"Her twenty-first birthday," Lucius nodded.