20th April 1574"Hanseatic League you say…"
This name was enough to awaken the memories of the great time I had when reading quite a popular book that spoke about the characters that happened to find themselves in quite a similar situation that I currently am, despite the fact that they would be reincarnated not in Poland, but in the Danish occupied Norway. The other differences lied in the fact that instead of simply appearing in the different timeline, they were killed during the apocalypse and kind of remade from the super-ultrfuturistic hard drive that the alien responsible for said apocalypse created to rebuild their bodies and psyche in another timeline for the sake of making them find some kind of artefact.
But with how I was transported to this time with not even a hint of a clue what might be the reason for it, could I maybe find the traces of their existence during my own endeavours?
Yet before my mind could be flooded by the memories of the good old days where my greatest worry was nothing else but the incoming math test, I realised that after dropping this vague mention of this powerful organisation, the governor expected me to follow up with something else.
"That means if we could rope him to our project, making him the main outlet for all the wares that will be produced in the mining area… Then wouldn"t our influence overwhelm the entire baltic and northern sea regions?"
The Hanseatic League was nothing else but a powerful merchant company, that not only held the lands in various coastal cities in the eastern and northern Europe, it was also one of the most influential organisations, not bound by the country, but that also existed in the current age!
If not for the trends of the western part of the continent to focus more on the exploration of the faraway lands, their strength could remain a deciding factor for far longer, which would, in turn, keep Polish trade far stabler than it was after the downfall of the Hansa and the rise of the national fleets of both the Russia and future Swedish empire.
But what if instead of failing to compete with more western-oriented merchants, I would give them the tool to promote Commonwealth as the centre of the modernisation for the entire world? With their money, creating multiple, portable steam engines would be as easy as wrecking an entire island from the hands of militaristic Teutonic order - something they accomplished by pus.h.i.+ng both the Poland and Lithuania, yet to be united at that time, to the war that ended up with the greatest medieval battle that ever happened!
"It"s not me that you should be asking those questions. When you will get this steam horse prepared, I will make sure to invite him so that he could take a look and judge its worth himself."
Seeing the serious expression on the governor"s face, I realised that this matter was slowly turning far deeper than I initially thought it would be. While it was obvious that something as grand as inventing a d.a.m.ned steam engine would change the course of the history, but I only believed that any real change would happen when anyone could see their influence on the prosperity of my territories, giving me far more time to prepare for the storm that this invention would cause in the entire world!
But on the other hand, if I could prove to the governor and Dantan the true worth of modernisation, then wouldn"t I have far more resources at hand than necessary to make the development drive explode in the entire country?
With proper financing, instead of building a silly road between the cities that I owned, I could connect all the major cities with proper tracts. By turning the traditional mining and smelting into highly industrialised projects, even creating the very first train in the entire world didn"t seem all that impossible!
"The look on your face has changed, what happened?"
Instead of waiting for me to reply to his words, Governor used his years of experience of dealing with people to see right through the anxious look on my face. Only when I heard his question did I realise that under the immense joy of turning the country I loved so much into a powerhouse even greater than it already was, but most importantly - giving it a way out of the quagmire its system would soon put it in, my actions would most likely lead to an all-out war where industrialised commonwealth would have to face all its neighbours, worried about its sudden development spike!
"Sir… I just realised what my inventions will lead to. And I"m not sure if someone as small as me can handle the consequences that this change will bring not only to this country but to the entire world as well."
Speaking those words, I fully opened myself to the governor. While I grew up in the future and speaking about the matters concerning the entire world should be far easier for me, when faced with the fact that I would be at the forefront of this change, not only sparking the fire of development in the country but also being its main fuel with all the inventions I had in store, I realised that I simply had no way of protecting myself against the wrath of all the people whose ages-long traditions would be tackled and destroyed by the movement I created!
"There is no point in worrying about it, brother. Just like you got overwhelmed by how complicated some of your ideas are, to the point where I don"t really understand whats their point myself, now you are just anxious about exactly the same thing. But rather than trying to take it a step at a time, this time, I need to give you different advice."
Suddenly approaching me, the governor put an amiable smile on his face, only to suddenly reach with his hand to the back, only to slap me straight in the face with all the might that this veteran had!
"Stop being so f.u.c.king arrogant!"
With the slap making my face sting all over, governor"s words only added the insult to the injury. Initially flaring up against this unfair treatment received for the honest worries I had, when the pain in my cheek subsidised enough to let me think straight, I realised that rather than following up his initial attack with the next round of beating, Jan was simply standing a single step away, with an expectant look on his face.
Stirring my mind to its highest spin, I did my very best to understand what did this man meant by both his actions and words. It wasn"t like him to just slap someone in the face for no good reason. What did he mean by calling me arrogant?
"Ah, I get it."
With the sudden realisation finally pus.h.i.+ng all my worries and anxiety aside, I straightened myself back to the normal position, before bowing deeply to the man in front of me.
"Thank you for your advice."
Just like the governor said, I was truly arrogant. Not only I have yet to build a single steam engine, but I was also already worrying about the matters that would turn into reality only if everything would go exactly as I planned it to go.
But what if the blueprints I had turned out to be faulty? What if the materials would turn out to be not resilient enough to handle the stress that the engine would put on them? What if literally anything happens that would prevent some of the other projects I had in my mind from succeeding?
That alone showed how defiant I was to the fact, that rather than the creator of my own fate, I was just a small ant in the eyes of the G.o.d that created this world and that I, despite transmigration to a different timeline, still choose to believe in. Yet even if my faith was directed in a wrong place, what did I meant to someone who managed to transport me here from my original place?
And to top it all up, even if everything would go just as planned, the responsibility wouldn"t rest on my shoulders alone! If I got the backing of Hansa, along with all the help that the governor already offered me, wouldn"t they be here to share this burden with me?