The most precious liquid in the world is blood.

It is the vital substance that sustains life from within, drives the physical body, and quite literally makes living possible.

That metallic, viscous fluid is the ultimate symbol of vitality. To bleed is to let one’s life force slip outward—a tangible step closer to death.

Conversely, because of its inherent sanctity, blood has frequently been utilized throughout history as the ultimate sacrifice for a greater cause.

Among all forms, human blood was treated as something beyond precious; it was utterly sacred, revered like the rarest jewel among mere stones.

In both the Bible and the Quran, Abraham, the father of faith, demonstrated his absolute devotion by willingly offering to sacrifice his young son, Isaac, to God.

Furthermore, according to Christian theology, the most supreme being in the universe sent His only Son—who was both fully divine and fully human—to shed His blood upon the cross. All for the sake of saving humanity.

That is how unimaginably precious and revered blood has always been.

Yet, there are times when it is treated with less regard than filthy ditch water.

A crowd of people was trembling in sheer terror. The ‘Priest’ opened his mouth, desperately trying to calm them.

Please, calm yourselves. Everyone, remember the Word. Their oppression cannot last forever. The lives of the righteous shall endure for eternity, so if we etch this into our hearts… Bang. A body crumpled to the floor alongside the deafening gunshot.

The Master stepped forward, planting his heavy boot squarely upon the chest of the gasping, bleeding Priest.

The garrison at Santa Lucia is nearby, so the soldiers will be arriving shortly, the Master sneered. If you stay exactly where you are and don’t move a muscle, you might just live. But if any of you make a single wrong move, it’s high treason. Do you understand? I have already reported your demonic worship rituals to the authorities. Tell me, do you happen to know of any demon worshippers impersonating ‘Priests’ or ‘Bishops’? A sickening ecstasy gleamed in the eyes of the Master holding the smoking gun. It was the distinct, feral madness unique to those who had clawed their way to a lawless frontier like Florida for the sole purpose of indulging their darkest desires and dominating others with absolute impunity.

The Master spoke again.

All you have to do is tell the soldiers the truth when they arrive. If you do, I will allow you back under my protection. You have absolutely nothing to fear. The Priest writhed beneath the Master’s boot, weakly opening his mouth. He seemed to be trying to say something.

He’s lying, the Priest gasped.

Bang. 

A second bullet buried itself squarely in the Priest’s head, cutting off his words forever. Several people shrieked in horror, while others curled into tight, trembling balls.

The Master and his cousins, all brandishing firearms, began whispering among themselves. Sickly, cruel smiles played across their lips.

Should we have a little fun before the authorities get here? Who’s going to care if we kill a few slaves? Come now, Brother, let’s not go that far. If we provoke them too much… Bah! What are these wretches going to do? If anything, making an example out of a few more will keep the rest of the flock docile… 

They deliberately whispered just loud enough for everyone to hear. They fed their vile, sadistic satisfaction by watching the terrified slaves wet themselves and shudder violently at the horrific sensation of being visually preyed upon.

Knowing that human beings were trembling beneath their boots, knowing that people were desperately begging for their lives—it clearly brought them immense, twisted pleasure.

Precious blood pooled and seeped into the mud beneath the Masters’ boots. They were casually standing upon the most sacred substance in the world, ruthlessly trampling it into the dirt.

They were stepping on the literal lifeblood of another human being.

Terrified out of their minds by the gruesome display, the slaves frantically scrambled to their knees, weeping and pleading at the top of their lungs. They had no choice but to grovel pitifully before the very man who had just murdered their ‘Priest’ in cold blood.

Demon worship?! No, Master! We were only trying to study the Gospel together! I don’t know anything! None of us know anyone besides the Priest who just passed away! We don’t know anything about other Priests or Bishops! We only attended the prayer meeting! Please… Bang. Bang. Bang. A few warning shots were fired into the air, instantly allowing screams, flinching, violently trembling bodies, and absolute terror to dominate the enclosed space. Everyone cowered in fear at the deafening crack of the gunfire.

The Master fired wildly, completely intoxicated by his own power.

He seemed drunk on the realization that every time he twitched his finger, he held the power of life and death over another human being. He fired a few more rounds into the ceiling and the walls, until his finger carelessly slipped.

Bang. 

Someone was accidentally, insignificantly shot, collapsing to the ground.

As the metallic stench of fresh blood rapidly filled the air once more, a dark realization dawned upon the Master.

Even if I kill a few more of these things right here and now… it probably won’t matter at all. Murderous intent swirled in his eyes. It was the gaze of a deranged killer heavily intoxicated by violence. No, it was the gaze of a malicious child about to break his toys. He did not view the ‘things’ cowering before him as human beings.

Everyone’s minds instantly flashed to the Spanish military that would be arriving at any moment.

Given that they were not far from Santa Lucia, and that fully armed Spanish soldiers were already marching over to violently suppress a supposed slave ‘rebellion,’ resisting the Master now meant certain death.

Faced with the choice between guaranteed slaughter and the slim, uncertain chance of survival, the slaves tightly squeezed their eyes shut, silently praying that the next bullet wouldn’t pierce their own bodies.

And then…

Thud. …Huh? The Master exhaled his final, ragged breath and collapsed face-first into the dirt.

The back of his skull had been cleaved cleanly in half.

His cousins whirled around in stunned disbelief, only to find a single slave trembling violently, clutching a freshly sharpened, bloodstained axe.

It was the man they had sent out earlier to chop firewood.

He was also the younger brother of the ‘Priest’ they had just murdered.

His hands were dripping with gore.

In that fleeting fraction of a second, the cousins realized they had crossed a line. They had crossed it far, far too late to ever turn back.

As they frantically fumbled to reload their weapons, the slaves—who had been cowering like a docile flock of sheep just moments before—lunged at them like rabid beasts.

Bang. Bang. Bang. 

Silence fell.

***

My personal knowledge of economics?

Don’t you need to be good at math to understand economics? Math was literally my most despised subject back in school.

I couldn’t even properly remember how calculus worked anymore.

It had been ages since I completed my mandatory education. Honestly, my mathematical proficiency had probably steadily regressed back to a middle-school level over the years.

So, asking me to formulate macroeconomic policy? That was absurd. I couldn’t do something like that.

“We don’t really have any large-scale factories… yes, that much is true,” Raleigh had admitted. “There are a few sizable whiskey distilleries, but…”

“Why would anyone willingly break their back working under someone else when they have their own land?” Oitotan had pointed out. “Especially now that everyone finally has the freedom to live as they please.”

But I have to do this. Cold sweat poured down my face. A horrifying myriad of underdeveloped, third-world economic structures constantly flashed through my mind unbidden.

Well, I suppose ‘third-world’ wasn’t entirely accurate. Weren’t these structural pitfalls common in any nation blessed with abundant natural resources but cursed with a small population, like certain Northern European or Middle Eastern countries?

But this wasn’t Europe or the Middle East. This was the Americas.

This was a continent vastly more massive than Europe. This was the Americas, where millions, perhaps tens of millions of Europeans would eventually flood in and establish their roots. This was the Americas, where hundreds of thousands to millions of Native Americans currently resided.

And our community was destined to absorb all of that land and population.

We simply could not be compared to small-scale, resource-rich nations with tiny populations.

Hah, what the hell am I supposed to do about this? Why was my community’s economy functioning like this in the first place?

…Actually, I knew exactly why.

Distributing massive tracts of free land to every new settler? That was perfectly fine. That was exactly how the United States had expanded in original history.

However, there was one massive, glaring difference between original history and our current reality.

Original history didn’t have the Agricultural Knights.

Back then, the government simply handed out raw, untamed wilderness and told the settlers to go figure it out themselves. Weren’t those the legendary pioneer farmers of early American history?

But here? We practically spoon-fed them from step one to ten. Land reclamation, sowing, harvesting, and even exporting—the Knights handled absolutely everything.

Simply put… every single citizen in our community was living like a landed aristocrat. Naturally, none of them had any desire to work as wage laborers under someone else.

Consequently, they only actively participated in public works or religious ceremonies that offered prestige, desperately seeking ways to elevate their personal names and earn the community’s respect.

They only wanted to do those kinds of jobs.

Uh-oh. What was going to happen to our economy?

What were we supposed to do moving forward? If our population swelled into the hundreds of thousands and this structural stagnation persisted, we were going to be in incredibly deep trouble.

Regardless.

Today was the day of the regular assembly meeting. They had asked me to deliver a brief opening remark, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to address the looming crisis.

I had stayed up all night drafting a simple speech. It wasn’t particularly long, but it contained every single scrap of rudimentary economic knowledge I could dredge up from my thoroughly average South Korean brain.

After reviewing the contents and finalizing the edits, I made my way toward the assembly building. As the heavy doors swung open, the interior was already bustling with activity.

Since the role of chairperson rotated among the council members, Eleanor was currently seated at the head of the chamber, with the other apostles flanking her on both sides. But…

…Hmm?

“Eleanor? Walter’s seat is empty,” I noted.

“Ah, Sir Raleigh sent word that he would be arriving a bit late,” she explained. “He was suddenly summoned by Her Majesty the Queen.”

“Hmm? But the Queen surely knows today is the regular assembly meeting, doesn’t she?”

Something felt off.

Regardless, the meeting commenced, and Raleigh’s seat remained glaringly empty even as every other council member filed in. The attendees’ gazes kept darting from Raleigh’s vacant chair toward Eleanor and me.

Eleanor cleared her throat and officially declared the session open. I stood up to distribute the copies of my painstakingly prepared speech to the assembly members—

Bang. 

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…Ah! It seems I am not too late after all. That was quite close.”

“Walter?”

“Ah… Lord Nemo.”

The man who had just forcefully shoved the doors open was Walter Raleigh.

He strode into the room, his eyes trembling with an intensity I had never seen before.

He didn’t walk toward his empty seat. He walked straight toward me.

“…Walter?”

Leaning in, he bowed slightly and whispered directly into my ear.

“Florida…”

“…”

“…It has happened.”

I completely froze at his words.

A bizarre, heavy silence instantly mixed with the confused murmuring of the assembly members. Seeing my face suddenly harden to stone, a wave of visible agitation rippled through the room, but I couldn’t easily compose my expression.

I slowly… lowered the documents I was holding. The speech I had spent all night desperately cobbling together from educational comic books as an economic layman—none of it mattered anymore.

In this very moment, absolutely none of it mattered.

Tense and utterly speechless, I hesitated for a long moment before finally forcing my mouth open.

“Everyone, please rise from your seats.”

Bewildered by the sudden command, the assembly members slowly stood up. The other apostles leaned in and urgently whispered to Raleigh. Lord Baron? What is going on? Did you hear something from the Queen of England? Come to think of it, why did she summon you on assembly day? Did something happen… Cutting through the rising clamor, I spoke with absolute authority.

“Let us all pray.”

I clasped my violently trembling hands together, gripping them tight enough to turn my knuckles white.

“For our brothers and sisters in Florida.

For their lives, for their peace, and… for their…”

Dear God. 

A bone-chilling cold swept violently down my spine.

***

There were two primary reasons why the notoriously brutal, pseudo-manorial encomienda system took root so deeply in the early Spanish colonies.

First, the Spanish-controlled regions of Central and South America, as well as Mexico, were already populated by massive numbers of indigenous people.

Second, and far more fundamentally, the conquistadors who carved out these colonies desperately desired to secure their own ‘fiefdoms’ and ascend to the ranks of true nobility.

It was an insatiable ambition to become aristocrats, a burning greed to secure their own ‘territory’ and ‘serfs’ so they could act as petty kings within their own borders.

In a Spain where bloodline nobility reigned supreme, the bourgeoisie held little true power, and powerful local lords maintained iron-fisted control over their respective regions, it was only natural for these men to harbor such desperate ambitions.

And in a lawless frontier where the oversight of the Spanish authorities was practically non-existent, those twisted ambitions swelled to infinite, monstrous proportions.

This was precisely the root cause of the horrific massacres and unimaginable depravity recorded by missionaries deep within the jungles of Brazil in original history.

And.

The exact same thing was happening here.

Under an incredibly ambitious plan to control Florida—a territory larger than modern South Korea—in order to check the rapidly expanding power of Virginia to the north, the Spanish colonists had been transplanted alongside countless African slaves.

However, their total population was merely a few thousand at best. Even factoring in the tens of thousands of slaves, it was an abysmally small number for such a vast territory.

Outside the scattered walls of cities like Santa Elena, Santa Lucia, and San Jose, Florida was nothing more than a sprawling, lawless wasteland dotted with isolated plantations.

Within that lawless wasteland, the only functioning law was raw violence, and the only thing that law protected was the sickening lust for domination.

The slaves, who had endured a hellish existence in a world designed solely to satisfy the repulsive, tyrannical desires of their masters, knew this all too well.

Fleeing was simply not an option.

The overarching principle maintained by the Spanish in Florida and their allied Native American tribes was brutally simple and uncompromising: Any African found wandering without a master was to be killed on sight.

They were hunted down and slaughtered like wild dogs.

This created a surveillance network that appeared loose on the surface, but was ultimately utterly lethal.

The moment they encountered anyone who was not a slave, certain death awaited them. And to make an example out of them, that death would inevitably be preceded by horrific, agonizing torture.

If they somehow miraculously managed to flee all the way to Santa Lucia—the most ‘orderly’ settlement in southern Florida—the most they could hope for was the ‘mercy’ of a swift hanging.

All this time, the only thing that had guaranteed their societal status and held the absolute power of life and death over them was their Master.

And that Master had just been killed.

Furthermore, he had literally just reported them for high treason, meaning fully armed Spanish soldiers wielding muskets and steel swords would be arriving at any moment to slaughter them all.

Weeping uncontrollably, the slaves stared down at the Master. The man whose skull had just been cleaved in half. The man who, mere minutes ago, had possessed the absolute, terrifying authority of a god over their lives.

Because of him, they had suffered agonies worse than death, yet this monstrous colony was structured in such a way that they literally could not survive without depending on him.

Sobbing… howling in utter madness at the inescapable death rapidly approaching them, they surrendered to the surging, blinding lunacy…

And began ruthlessly mutilating the Master’s corpse.

They stomped on his face with their bare feet. They strangled his lifeless neck with their hands. They pulverized his body with their fists.

They unleashed every ounce of violence they had never dared to commit while he was alive.

Within that frenzied explosion of violence, they felt, for a fleeting, intoxicating moment, what it meant to truly be alive.

And when the two or three Spanish soldiers finally arrived.

Driven by sheer, unthinking instinct, the slaves snatched up every heavy object and tool in the house and poured that very same violence onto the soldiers. Shocked by the gruesome corpse in the center of the room, the soldiers reacted too slowly to the entirely unexpected, unified resistance.

Gunfire erupted once more.

The sickening crunch of steel blades and pitchforks meeting flesh.

Screams.

The wet, gurgling sound of men choking on their own blood.

And then…

“…”

The last ones left standing in that room were not Spanish.

Drenched head-to-toe in gore, the survivors suddenly realized exactly what they had just done.

Over twenty Africans lay dead. The Spanish Master and his cousin were dead. A handful of Spanish soldiers were dead.

And they had survived.

With the blood of every single casualty staining their hands.

The blood of the slaves, the masters, and the soldiers had all hopelessly tangled together into a sickening crimson pool.

They were now undeniable traitors. No matter where they fled, as long as the empire’s reach extended there, they were destined to die.

There was no path to survival left for them. The only choice remaining was deciding how they were going to die.

Covered entirely in blood, wielding the very weapons previously held by their masters and the Spanish soldiers, they began to move.

Toward the next plantation.

Gunfire soon echoed from that location as well, followed rapidly by roaring flames.

The fires began to spread.

Drenched in blood, they wandered. They continued to wander endlessly.

Blood is the most precious liquid in the world. And human blood is the most revered of all.

It is a treasure more than worthy of being offered as the ultimate sacrifice for a greater cause.

They ruthlessly, unhesitatingly threw the most precious treasure in the world upon the altar of their rebellion.

Not only the blood of the ‘Masters’ they so intensely despised, but their own blood as well.

They no longer possessed any desire to merely survive.

After all, the miserable existence they had endured up until now could never truly be called a life.