Chapter 33

It was a fine day in April, in the year of our Lord 1592.

The tumultuous end of the 16th century! The dawn of capitalism and the bourgeoisie! The beginning of imperialism! A world on fire! A day when the Siege of Pusan, the first battle of the Imjin War, had just begun! A day some five months after King Henry IV of France had launched his siege on Rouen, which was occupied by Spanish forces!

Ah, on such a momentous day, how does the day of the Angel of Croatoan Island, Nemo—the proud Korean man, Kim Lee-sang—begin?

Ding-a-ling-ling.

—“Your delicious mixed-grain rice is ready. Please stir well before serving.”

…Nothing special, really. It starts with slow-aging rice.³

I don’t even age anymore. I have a body that wouldn’t show a single blemish even if I shoveled down white rice, gorged myself on meat and fried foods, and chain-smoked and drank with abandon. And yet, here I am, eating slow-aging rice.

This is like Captain America taking steroids.

I never thought the ‘Nutrient-Rich 17 Grains’ mix my mother left behind would be used like this. I only tried planting it as a test, but out came barley, millet, foxtail millet, oats, sorghum, chickpeas, and more.

…Right. Everything but rice. As if cursed, only the rice varieties, like sweet rice and brown rice, failed to grow.

Therefore, my daily meal is slow-aging rice. The alternative is boiled potatoes and bread (not white bread, obviously; it’s disgustingly bland).

Once the rice was done, I cracked a (mandatorily) organic egg onto a frying pan, made a fried egg, and moved it to a plate. I set the table with braised potatoes and a medley of seasoned greens: perilla leaves (organic), lettuce (organic), napa cabbage (organic), and all sorts of wild plants (all-natural) I’d gotten from Manteo’s tribe. Manteo had sworn these greens were delicious, but I still have no idea what their Korean names are. They probably don’t have any. My sesame oil ran out the year before last, so I just boil them and toss them with roasted sesame seeds and salt, but…

“Hm… the seasoning is just right.”

It’s better than I expected.

So, to recap. Slow-aging rice, braised potatoes, seasoned greens, and a fried egg.

…Can you even call a life where you eat this crap a life? Where is my dwaeji-galbi, my Andong jjimdak, my dubu-kimchi, my doenjang-jjigae, my braised cutlassfish, my sweet and spicy fried chicken, my bulgogi pizza, my pasta, my pho, my jjajangmyeon, my fish cutlets, my curry rice?

Of course, they all vanished the moment ‘The Delivery Tribe[1],’ which had a fucking nonexistent delivery area to begin with, stopped working entirely. Why were dishes like Jeonju bibimbap or cucumber sandwiches considered upper-class food in the past? Come to the past yourself, and you’ll understand everything.

“Heh heh…”

There is but one solitary hope in this horrific, pre-modern health food hell.

“Heh… heh heh heh…”

Homemade butter.

I dropped a generous dollop of my ridiculously delicious homemade butter into the slow-aging rice, which was closer to livestock feed than human food, added a pinch of salt, and mixed it all together. Finally, it started to smell something like a proper dish.

I finished my warlike meal, shoveling down the butter rice with the greens and potatoes, and did the dishes. Only then did my day truly begin.

After a breakfast that teaches me the value of butter and salt every single day, I go to check the water pipes for our agricultural and domestic water supply without a moment’s rest.

“Aish… the hose came off again.”

Naturally, the water runs 24/7. It’s not to prevent the pipes from freezing or anything like that. It’s April; what’s going to freeze? This isn’t the insane climate of the Republic of Korea, where it can snow in April. When you have an infinite supply of clean water being copied into existence, it’d be weirder to let it go to waste.

The water from my house is immediately diverted, with clean water and agricultural water separated, into a water tank behind the farm, and from there it is distributed to the villagers’ homes and fields. Thanks to this, there are no water shortages on Croatoan Island. In fact, a drought is a welcome event.

We actually had a drought last year, and the sugar content of the grapes went through the roof. I shed tears of joy at the miracle of the beautiful American climate, which produced a harvest exceeding 25 Brix per cluster. Seriously… the Korean peninsula is a living hell for grape farmers. I think I finally understand why a certain rabbit princess (a.k.a. Dan-gun) chose to settle there 2,500 years ago.

Anyway, water management: done. Next up…

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

“Gasp, wheeze… I can’t even delegate this to anyone…”

I transfer various agricultural fertilizers and chemicals into separate containers. Fertilizers, pesticides, and other things like the medical-grade streptomycin sulfate—an antibiotic that Mr. Jeong from the wholesale market pushed on me to mix with my gibberellin (I’m still not sure if that’s legal)—are all treated as Consumables, so they regenerate at midnight.

They’re just going to be refilled at midnight anyway. Obviously, I have to move them somewhere else and stockpile as much as possible. Once I move Mr. Hwang’s experimental chemicals of dubious origin and the agricultural antibiotics that require refrigeration into the cold storage, that job is done, too.

But the ‘Consumables’ in my house don’t end there. I thought the only source of aluminum in my house would be a single roll of aluminum foil. I was wrong.

Paper clips.

Stapler pins.

Various screws.

Twist ties, wires, and so on.

All sorts of seemingly trivial metal consumables are infinitely duplicated. The absolute amount produced each day isn’t huge, but if you scrape them together day after day, it adds up. I dump them all out, run a magnet over them to separate the iron and aluminum, sort the copper, stainless steel, and regular iron into different containers, and then head to the workshop of Mr. Brown, the goldsmith.

“Mr. Brown? Could I ask you for a favor with this?”

“Ah, excellent! Hasun! Wake up all the other blacksmiths! We’ve got work!”

“Yes, Father!”

A 21st-century Ginsu knife is stronger than a medieval legendary sword. In other words, even the most trivial-looking metal consumables are products of highly advanced 21st-century metallurgy. The moment Mr. Brown and his adopted native son, Hasun Brown, struck the anvil, blacksmiths swarmed from every corner of the workshop like a horde of zombies that had spotted a human, carrying away the precious aluminum, steel, and copper.

Aluminum is especially important. In this era, metallic aluminum can only be found here on Croatoan Island.

And, of course, the parade of consumables doesn’t end here.

“Sir Nemo! The people are gathered here!”

“I’m coming, Eleanor!”

The multivitamins in my house are treated not as food or drink, but as medicine… which means they are also ‘consumables.’ In other words, even if I hand out hundreds of pills, the bottle will be full again tomorrow.

“Please take only one pill each. Taking two or more is actually harmful.”

“Hey, you there! Don’t be greedy, just take one!”

In the early days, before the first potato harvest, I started handing out vitamins with Eleanor to keep people from getting malnourished, and it somehow became a daily routine. Well… thanks to this, not a single person here has starved to death or fallen ill, so I’m keeping it up.

Once the vitamin distribution with Eleanor was finished, I returned home.

Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh!

I emptied all the first-aid kits and packed the medicine using the vacuum sealer my mother used to store kimchi. When she bought this… this thing, I remember my father asking her in disbelief, “Are you opening a butcher shop?” Seriously, the man was so cautious about buying a single electronic appliance, yet why he blew his retirement money on a 4,000-pyeong Shine Muscat farm is still a mystery.

Dad, Mom, I am fruitfully enjoying the harvest of all your crazy endeavors, so please watch over me from afar.

Anyway, what do I use the vacuum sealer for?

“Miss Lawrence! Miss Margaret Lawrence!”

“Ah! I’m here! Goodness, there’s so much today?”

“I’ve been busy for a few days and couldn’t stop by. For now, please put the painkillers in the box first.”

“Got it! There are hardly any patients today, so I’ll start organizing the medicine!”

I use it for the ‘clinic.’

Here’s another thing I learned after coming to this era. In an age where the standard treatment involves giving someone opium instead of painkillers before amputating their limbs and cauterizing the wound with fire to disinfect it, I’m a pretty competent doctor with just a first-aid kit and basic emergency skills. When I first got here, I taught Miss Lawrence, who had treated Mr. Hewitt’s leg, some simple first aid and how to use the medicines. The result was a clinic that was better at healing people than most hospitals in Europe.

…What is this? I can become a renowned physician just by using Tylenol and aspirin correctly? People on the verge of death can be saved just by using distilled water during treatment and sterilizing instruments in boiling water? I can’t even begin to imagine how much blood and how many bodies were piled up to create the medical knowledge of the 21st century.

Thank you, always… Why? First Aid. I will live my life forever grateful to the Korean educational comic book market of the 2000s…

By the time I get home, it’s about 12:10 PM. My morning schedule, which started around 5 AM, is finally over. I turn on my phone, put on some music, and turn on my Nintendo Switch.

The music I listen to is CCM and hymns.

The games I play are Animal Crossing and Zelda.

…Why, you ask? If I started listening to heavy metal and playing Doom again, wouldn’t that make them the ones who aren’t acting like decent human beings?

Anyway, I get tired of managing my real-world island and get absorbed in managing my cyber-island (Creditor: Nook Inc.). This bizarre activity continues until it’s 2 PM.

Now that it’s 2 PM, it’s about time…

Thump! Thump!

“Sir Nemo! We’re here!”

Right. That’s the voice of Vicente Gonzales. When I open the door, Vicente grins and bows his head.

“We’ve come for the transparent shields and iron bars.”

Right. Time to get the PC sheets for construction materials and the copper and steel pipes for heating. I am wringing every last drop of value out of this farm. I pass every copper pipe and every aluminum clip to the blacksmiths, and I carefully collect every last Tylenol pill and send it to the clinic. On top of that, Mr. Hewitt keeps saying he’s short on paper, so I take copier paper from the printer for him, and I extract ink from my fountain pens for Shakespeare and Bacon, who complain they’re running out.

Even after busting my ass like this, I’m still stuck eating slow-aging rice for all three meals. If I want to maintain a 21st-century lifestyle and feed the people around me, this is the level of effort required.

“Let’s go, then.”

“Understood, Sir Nemo! Alright, everyone, get ready! Hook the carts up behind the Damas!”

Here on Croatoan Island, the only vehicle for transport is my Daewoo Damas.⁶ But as you know, the Damas is a microvan, so its loading capacity is limited.

Clank! Clank!

But we found a way around that, too. Well… it’s a bit crude to call it a ‘way.’ We basically just chain a bunch of carts to the back of the Damas, like an ox-drawn train, and pull them along. Doing this should obviously wreck the Damas, but of course, this isn’t just any Damas! This one gives itself a car wash at midnight, so even after doing this for over a year, it’s still perfectly fine!

Vicente and I get into the Damas, and the Spaniards who went into the materials warehouse grab the PC sheets and steel pipes and load them neatly onto the carts hitched to the back. Then I turn the ignition, and the inline 3-cylinder engine begins its ferocious roar!

Go, Damas! Show them your power!

Putter-putter-putter…

…The engine starts with the sigh of an old man on his deathbed and finally begins to inch forward.

“It’s amazing every time I see it! This carriage is so powerful! To think that a carriage that moves by eating oil and burning it for power even exists! It’s so fascinating!”

“…Is that so?”

Well, even this is a huge improvement over the latest vehicles of this era (ox-carts). It’s true that this one little guy does the work of several oxen at once.

We moved slowly along the well-paved road towards the coast. Soon, the new vineyards and greenhouses began to come into view. They were all built with this. The amount of materials we can transport like this every day is enough to build about one greenhouse every few months.

When the Damas stopped at the coast, the Spaniards rushed over and began unloading the PC sheets, steel pipes, and various insulation and subsidiary materials, carrying them to the coastal battery that doubled as a logistics warehouse.

“Phew, it must be around 5 o’clock now. Dinnertime.”

“Excellent! Sir Nemo, I was thinking of having a company dinner with my men. Would you perhaps care to join us?”

“Ah, I have something I need to do now. I’m afraid that will be difficult.”

“Pardon? The sun will be setting soon. What could you possibly have to do?”

“Ah… I…” I gazed out at the distant horizon with melancholic eyes and said, “I intend to survey how the kingdoms of this earth and the future of humanity will spend the next few hundred years. Is that not the duty of one who possesses even a little more power and knows a little more?”

“As expected… Sir Nemo…!”

Vicente looked up at me with eyes that were, for some reason, sparkling. Don’t look at me like that… It’s unnerving…

In any case, I wasn’t lying.

—Europa Universalis 5

—Crusader Queens 4

…Since I’ve been dropped into history, this isn’t being addicted to games or killing time. It’s unavoidable ‘studying.’ I’m simply ‘studying’ world history. Of course, in the game, Poland might suddenly form Germany, and France might get invaded by the Aztecs, but… that’s just a tool to cultivate flexible thinking for someone like me, who has been thrown into the butterfly effect of history.

That’s right. I’m not wrong…

My playtime for those two games has increased by at least 1,000 hours each since I got here. But I—I’m not wrong. I’m…

And just like that, it’s 1 AM.

My day comes to an end.