God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 506: You Can Speed Up Without Using Slaves?

When Viscount Roster arrived at the City of Gold, almost everyone on the entire continent with any name or reputation—whether great lords or great merchants, magicians or knights, or clerics and popes—had all gathered together.

If a legendary spell hit here right now... most likely there wouldn't even be a ripple.

Of course, assuming everyone didn't resist, then most likely the entire continent would fall into chaos.

Because all the important people had gathered here.

They gathered for only one purpose—to witness the completion of the first true ultra-high-speed rail transit system!

With the advancement of industrialization, the construction speed of the ultra-high-speed rail transit system exceeded everyone's imagination.

It was built in just half a year.

Even in Ren's past life, this would've been completely impossible.

The famous Madrid–Barcelona AVE, 621 kilometers long, took over twelve years to complete. Later high-speed rails had varying efficiency depending on terrain, but were almost all about the same.

At most slightly faster.

But the ultra-high-speed rail transit system they built only took half a year.

The sheer terror of this left even Ren a bit dumbfounded.

But it wasn't incomprehensible.

Although the machinery in this world was still at a relatively primitive stage, it had unlimited energy and didn't need to worry about many problems. Besides that, there were large numbers of magicians joining production and construction.

In his past life, digging a tunnel required tunnel boring machines. Three to four meters per hour was considered strong performance by industry standards, six meters per hour was a benchmark that only the most advanced engineering projects ever achieved, and ten meters per hour was the absolute theoretical ceiling that Ren had come across in engineering records and technical literature.

But now?

One magician, one night, one miracle.

Digging through a mountain overnight wasn't a problem.

Didn't even need legendary magicians. A mid-level magician could dig one to two kilometers of tunnel per day. A high-level magician—ten kilometers wasn't difficult.

And that was just one aspect of digging.

In terms of building bridges, the power other supernatural beings displayed was even more terrifying.

With these supernatural beings joining in, plus all kinds of equipment, they could just steamroll through.

No pressure whatsoever.

Every segment progressed very smoothly.

This created the situation where in just half a year, they built a rail line spanning the continent from north to south.

Viscount Roster came over naturally to attend this completion ceremony.

These big shots would all board the train to experience traveling from the continent's southernmost point to its northernmost point in one day.

To see just what level this legendary ultra-high-speed rail transit system could reach!

If it really could reach the legendary level, many of them would fully support having the remaining main lines all start construction simultaneously.

Striving to complete full coverage as soon as possible.

Recently, the development of factories everywhere had made quite a few people green with envy.

Before, they hadn't realized this, but after seeing churches starting to make fortunes, they finally reacted.

So the most profitable thing in this world was carrying out all kinds of industrialization reforms!

Before Viscount Roster arrived at the scene, inside the City of Gold's station, many people were already discussing matters related to both sides of the ultra-high-speed rail.

"Didn't expect it could be built so fast."

"Tell me about it! I thought such a massive project would take at least several years!"

"Mainly, aside from Viscount Roster, probably no one else could get so many magicians to go build things, right? Dignified magicians—wherever they go, aren't they high and mighty? But one by one, they were all sent off to build railways."

"How can you say that? Magicians are people too. When there's profit to be made, naturally they'll go. Don't magic experiments need money?"

"That's true. They were originally the kind of people who lacked money the most."

"Forget about money. The Gray Fort side mass-producing magician apprentices and low-level magicians to have them do this stuff—isn't that also a really good approach?"

"Facts. That's really true!"

"Doesn't matter anyway. As long as it gets built, that's good. If it can reach expectations, I'll continue expanding my factory. My factory can only produce 8,000 pieces of clothing per day right now. I feel like there's still a lot of potential."

"What? Your factory can produce 8,000 pieces of clothing a day? How'd you do that? Obviously my factory's about the same scale as yours."

Emmett, who had been happily chatting at first, was suddenly shocked.

The person he was talking to—he wasn't actually familiar with them, but they'd been gathered in the City of Gold for several days already, and everyone had exchanged some experiences.

Their territories were about the same size, they'd transformed around the same time, their territories were now growing cotton on a large scale, and they'd coincidentally chosen almost the same track. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

After all, with that much wealth, their scale was pretty comparable.

Even the number of workers their factories used was about the same.

But his factory producing 3,000 pieces of clothing a day was already pretty good.

How could the other person produce 8,000?

This gap was way too big!

"You're not using slaves, are you?"

The other person paused, but quickly seemed to realize something and looked at Emmett with a strange expression.

"If not slaves, then what?" Emmett was confused. "Even though there's a lot of machinery in the factory, it still needs manpower!"

"Workers, of course!"

"Huh? Then how do you ensure profits? I've got all those slaves sitting around not being used, and I'm going to hire people? That doesn't make sense, does it?" Emmett was completely bewildered.

"How much money can you get from selling your slaves? If you hire workers and pay them a little bit of money, they'll work their hearts out for you. You can also choose piece-rate—give them extra money per piece of clothing, and they'll work like they're crazy."

"How could the output not go up?"

"You still have the old mindset. Even though you've started building all kinds of factories, your thinking is still pretty old. Slaves are always a bit lacking. Sure, they only get food if they work, and they get whipped if they don't, but don't they get the same whether they work more or less?"

"But if you pay them a little bit per piece of clothing, they'll just go crazy and keep working."

Emmett was completely dazed.

He didn't quite understand what the other person was saying.

There were many concepts he couldn't understand at all.

He had no idea what the other person was talking about.

He only knew that in the end, every time they produced a piece of clothing, they needed to give the worker a little bit of money.

Seeing his confusion, the other person smiled and started calculating for him.

In the end, he was shocked to discover that the money from one slave could pay for over a month of production—about 250,000 pieces of clothing.

Under normal circumstances, even if a slave worked until death, they couldn't possibly produce that many pieces of clothing!

He was completely stunned!

Shouldn't slaves be the cheapest production tools?

How had paid workers become more useful than slaves?

Could they really achieve that effect?