Road to the Crown

3rd November 1574

In the short span of just four days, the changes that happened to all my lands would be unimaginable if not for the fact that I could see them with my very own two eyes.

Starting with the trains, instead of carrying all the wounded back home and continuing to resupply both the army that remained in the place to secure it and all the settlers that took the opportunity to start their lives anew on my lands. With the space in the train previously reserved for the provisions now freed for the sake of building materials, those damned four days alone were enough for seventeen of the designed outposts to have their baseline areas well under the construction, with a set of an iron mine, coal mine, processing plant and housing area already nearing their finish!

After all, even with the train, all the resources that I required in the former Ostros land had to be transported over a relatively long distance. Adding all the limits of the current train system starting with only a single track connecting all the major points, if two supply wagons would arrive every day, most of the logistic department would end the day by going to get their drinks in order to celebrate!

"Sir, the second stage of fourth-order is finished!"

"Sir, the fourth stage of the nineteenth order requires more steam engines in order to conclude!"

One by one, reports continued to flood my area no matter how far I would attempt to escape them. This was one of the points that made me unable to enjoy the fact that all my plans were finally coming to the fruition. 

The momentary relief when the news about the muscovites retreat arrived fell short on the insane workload that I had before the news. With the increased progress of the development on all fronts, what I considered to be an entire day worth of work, was nothing more but a small part of what I had to do now!

"Mike, aren't you a bit too hard on yourself?"

As soon as he finished registering the pieces of information that various messengers continued to busy me with, Al stood up from his desk before slamming his hands right on my workspace. 

"What do you mean?"

Raising my eyes at one of the two oldest and most loyal retainers, I couldn't really understand what was going on through his head. With the rapid change that happened to the military force that I operated, Al no longer could find a place in it. Despite several attempts, it looked like if he just couldn't adapt to the new way of conducting warfare, quickly leading to rather depressing thoughts and extensive drinking from his side.

Despite how busy I was with all my matters, finding a job for him was one of my priorities. That's why, when Elemo actually brought this matter to my eyes, I quickly arranged for some of the officers to take this trusty friend of mine to a trip around all my lands, hoping that some job would catch his eyes.

To say that I was surprised when Al finally came to me and asked to be my secretary, would be akin to comparing a small pile of potatoes on one's plate, to the highest mountain in the entire country!

"Sir, with all due respect, but what will be the point of achieving so much, if you were to collapse right here and now? Let's not forget how the mourning could influence the pregnancy of the lady Elia…"

Even back in my times as a manager of the company, I never had an actual secretary for myself. One could even say that this kind of role turned obscure with all the progress that humanity made ever since advancing to the information era. Outside of the absolute biggest fishes, no one could really care about spending a small fortune on the wage for a secretary, if the same work could be done even better by an AI designed for it from the very beginning!

But right now, I couldn't just ask someone to go and program an artificial intelligence specialised in client reception. In fact, even if someone could handle the coding, there would be no computers or even machines that could work based on the code to do the bidding that I required in the first place!

That's why, as surprised as I was by Al's proposition, giving him the role of my personal secretary came at the slight cost of breaking all my childhood dreams of what having a personal secretary meant.

And with all honesty, given the situation I found myself in right as Al joined the office, I couldn't care less for a long-legged, big-breasted and always willing beauty. 

"I think you are right… But it's not like those matters can wait…"

In the short period of just a few days, Al managed to come up with a system of grading the news and reports, nearly eradicating all of the work from my office for a moment. Sadly, as people got used to this new organisation of the work, every minor officer of mine seemed to be enchanted with the possibility of putting his request right on my desk rather than going through the department of officials especially designed to fulfil this work!

"If you mean all those reports, then it's another trick of mine. You can actually ignore all of them. Do you remember the group of people that I asked for? The number of the stage that the report is marked with actually means the department that the report should go to, while the number of the order means that this particular piece of news will come to the group bearing the same number. While everyone outside of this building thinks that those numbers are just for the sake of future archives…"

Stopping his small lecture only to look at me with a huge smile, Al proved that all those times when he saw me building up the tension in the crowd listening to me proved to be beneficiary to him as well.

"They are actually the places where those orders will be taken care off!"