Chapter 35: The Great Anomaly and the CEO’s Ambition

The night air over Dian Village was thick with the scent of pine and the distant, metallic tang of the cooling blast furnaces.

For the first time since their arrival in this world, the three Kazuha brothers were not sleeping in a drafty inn or a makeshift tent. They were sitting on the wide wooden balcony of their newly constructed private residence.

It wasn’t an opulent mansion, but it was perfectly tailored to their needs. The ground floor housed Takuya’s private executive office, insulated against the noise of the village. The second floor was divided into two distinct halves: Inori’s heavily ventilated chemical laboratory, filled with glass beakers and raw minerals, and Kaguya’s private study, immaculate and sterile, housing his most sensitive medical texts and rare botanical samples.

Tonight, however, the blueprints and ledgers were put away.

Takuya leaned back in a heavy wooden chair, a cup of warm, spiced tea resting in his hands. Beside him, Inori was absentmindedly tapping a piece of charcoal against the balcony railing, while Kaguya sat perfectly still, his jet-black hair blending into the night, nursing a glass of Clear-Water.

“So,” Inori began, breaking the comfortable silence. He pointed his charcoal toward the distant glow of the industrial sector. “When do we break ground on the high-capacity fractional distillation tower? The demand for Kerosene and Asphalt is going to skyrocket the moment the Duke’s caravans start using the paved roads. The temporary boiler we built can’t keep up with the crude oil output for much longer.”

Takuya took a slow sip of his tea. “Patience, Inori. We cannot flood the market before the market exists. Right now, only the Duke knows the true value of our products. I need to market the Kerosene and the medical-grade alcohol to the external provinces first. We create a desperate, burning demand. Once the orders pour in and the external nobles are utterly dependent on us to light their cities and heal their soldiers, then we build the massive refinery.”

Takuya smiled, a sharp, calculating gleam in his eyes. “By controlling the supply flow, we dictate the price. We won’t just participate in the kingdom’s economy; we will monopolize it.”

“And the rubber?” Kaguya asked smoothly, his dark eyes shifting to his older brother. “My surgical gloves are deteriorating. I need a steady supply of vulcanized latex.”

“The agricultural sector officially kicked off the Hevea brasiliensis plantation this morning,” Takuya confirmed. “Samuel has assigned thirty farmers exclusively to cultivating the rubber tree seeds you brought back. Once those trees mature, we will hold the only functioning rubber monopoly on the continent.”

A quiet hum of satisfaction settled over the balcony. They were no longer just surviving; they were conquering.

“Speaking of survival,” Kaguya said, his tone dropping an octave, becoming cold and clinical. “I saw Vane enter your office earlier this evening. He looked entirely too pleased with himself. The Red Cloth spy?”

Takuya nodded slowly, his expression hardening. “Caught. Vane and the Black Vanguard had a rather… thorough interrogation session with him in an empty warehouse. The operative finally broke. He spat out an entire list of sleeper agents across the eastern towns and the names of the nobles funding them.”

“What happens to the spy now?” Inori asked, leaning forward, a slight frown creasing his brow.

“He is currently secured in a subterranean holding cell Vane excavated beneath the Vanguard barracks,” Takuya replied flatly. “He will be executed. Just not tonight.”

Inori recoiled slightly, his eyes widening. “Executed? Takuya, we have him contained. Is it truly necessary to kill him?”

“He was carrying incendiary charges, Inori,” Takuya said, his voice devoid of any warmth. “His primary objective was to locate the armory, the refinery, and the medical storehouse, and burn them to the ground. He intended to incinerate Kaguya’s clinic and your chemical lab while our people slept.”

Kaguya took a calm sip of his water. “I agree with Takuya. The enemy must be removed.”

Inori stared at his younger brother in genuine shock. “Kaguya? You are a doctor. You took an oath to preserve human life. I thought you valued living things above all else.”

Kaguya slowly lowered his glass, his dark eyes locking onto Inori with absolute, terrifying clarity.

“I value functional life, Inori,” Kaguya corrected coldly. “My duty as a physician is to protect the health of the organism. Dian Village is the organism. That spy is a pathogen. A disease. When a limb is infected with necrotic rot, you do not pity the rot; you amputate the limb to save the body. I draw a very strict border between my patients and my enemies. If a threat seeks to bring destruction to my sterile zone and the people within it, their termination is not just acceptable; it is a medical necessity.”

Inori fell silent, absorbing the brutal logic. He looked at Takuya, who simply nodded in agreement. Takuya felt a deep, unspoken pride in his brothers. They weren’t soft. They possessed the exact ruthless pragmatism required to build an empire in a medieval world.

Inori sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Fine. You two handle the shadows. I’ll stick to the periodic table. But speaking of our people… have you two noticed something incredibly strange about the villagers?”

“Elaborate,” Takuya said, leaning forward.

“They are anomalously intelligent,” Inori said, his scientific curiosity taking over. “I am not talking about basic street smarts. I mean their cognitive retention is staggering. I explained the concept of pressurized blast furnaces and carbon-slag separation to Jenoah exactly twice. I handed him a complex mechanical blueprint. By the end of the day, he and his blacksmiths had completely memorized the structural engineering and were building it flawlessly. Back on Earth, that level of comprehension would take months of specialized vocational training.”

Kaguya nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing in thought. “I have observed the exact same phenomenon. The literate women I selected for nursing… I subjected them to a brutal, rapid-fire lecture on germ theory, cellular infection, and complex botanical dosages. It was information entirely alien to this era. Yet, within hours, they were accurately identifying pathogens and reciting dosage measurements without referencing their notes. Their neuroplasticity is terrifyingly high.”

“And the accountants,” Takuya added, a chill running down his spine as he connected the dots. “I handed the Crown Prince and a group of former turnip farmers a Sempoa. I taught them Double-Entry Bookkeeping—a mathematical system that took Earth centuries to perfect. Martha and her team mastered it in an afternoon. Jules balanced a five-hundred-page ledger in six hours.”

Takuya looked between his brothers. “If we established a centralized university right now… the civilization in this world wouldn’t just evolve. It would explode. They would leap from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution in a single generation.”

“Which begs a terrifying question,” Kaguya said, his voice barely above a whisper. He set his glass down on the wooden table. “If the human brain in this world is capable of absorbing and applying complex physics, advanced mathematics, and cellular biology in a matter of hours…”

Kaguya looked out at the dark horizon. “…Then why is this civilization completely stagnant?”

The balcony fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.

“I read the Royal Library index the Duke provided,” Kaguya continued, his analytical mind dissecting the paradox. “The Cynthia Kingdom, the Elven Domains, the Dwarven Mountains—they have recorded history stretching back over eight thousand years. Eight millennia. By all logical metrics, a species with this level of cognitive retention should have invented the steam engine seven thousand years ago. They should be flying airplanes by now. But they aren’t. They are still hitting each other with iron swords.”

“Something stopped them,” Inori whispered, a cold sweat breaking out on his palms. “Something is suppressing their technological growth.”

“A Great Reset,” Takuya theorized, his eyes dark. “Whenever civilization in this world reaches a certain threshold of advancement, something—or someone—wipes the slate clean. They burn the libraries, destroy the machines, and push humanity back into the mud to start over.”

“And it isn’t just science that is missing,” Takuya added, his voice tight. “It’s culture. Think about it. Have you heard anyone pray since we arrived?”

Inori frowned. “People say ‘Oh my Gods’ all the time.”

“It’s an idiom, completely devoid of meaning,” Takuya countered. “Back on Earth, every single early civilization formed around religion. Religion created community, architecture, and culture. But look around this world. There are no temples. There are no grand churches. There is no Holy Kingdom launching crusades. There are no dogmas.”

Takuya leaned back, looking up at the strange, alien stars. “I asked Silas when the village was planning to hold their harvest festival. Do you know what he said to me? He looked at me like I was insane and asked, ‘Why would we waste time celebrating the act of pulling a vegetable out of the dirt?’ There are no cultural festivals here. No winter solstices. No celebrations of life. It is a world entirely stripped of cultural and technological evolution.”

“A terrarium,” Kaguya muttered clinically. “We are in a controlled environment.”

The weight of their realization hung heavy in the night air. They weren’t just fighting a corrupt Earl or a Dwarven army; they were inadvertently challenging the very laws of this world’s existence by sparking an industrial revolution.

“Well,” Inori said, intentionally breaking the grim tension with a loud sigh. He tossed his charcoal into the air and caught it. “If we are going to be annihilated by a mysterious worldly force, we might as well enjoy ourselves first. Speaking of which…”

Inori turned to Kaguya, a wide, teasing grin spreading across his face. “…Are we going to talk about the Princess?”

Kaguya’s eye twitched. He slowly turned his head to glare at his older brother. “I do not know what you are referring to.”

“Oh, please,” Inori laughed, leaning back in his chair. “I walked past the clinic an hour ago. You two were practically hovering over a boiling pot of lye soap like it was a romantic candlelit dinner. You’ve been spending an awful lot of time together, Doctor.”

Takuya chuckled softly, taking another sip of his tea, highly amused by the sudden shift in Kaguya’s stoic demeanor.

Kaguya let out a long, slow breath, closing his eyes for a moment to compose himself. He didn’t deny it.

“I will admit, she is… intellectually stimulating,” Kaguya said, choosing his words with surgical precision. “She possesses a fiery intuition and a complete lack of squeamishness that is highly beneficial in a medical environment. I find her company… agreeable.”

“He likes her!” Inori crowed, pointing a finger at Takuya. “The Ice King is melting!”

“However,” Kaguya snapped, glaring at Inori to silence him. The clinical reality returned to his voice. “She is Princess Aurelia of the Cynthia Kingdom. I am a commoner who materialized in the mud three months ago. The socio-economic and political barriers between our stations are absolute. It is a logistical impossibility, and therefore, an irrelevant pursuit.”

Takuya set his teacup down on the table with a soft clink.

He looked at Kaguya, a slow, predatory, and incredibly ambitious smile spreading across his face. It was the smile of a CEO who had just found a loophole in a corporate contract.

“Then why not become a noble yourself?” Takuya asked simply.

Kaguya and Inori both froze, staring at their eldest brother.

Takuya stood up, resting his hands on the wooden railing of the balcony, looking out over the sprawling, roaring industrial city they had built from nothing.

“We have the wealth. We have the military power. We have the Crown Prince balancing our ledgers, and we have the Duke in our pocket,” Takuya declared, his voice ringing with absolute authority. “The Kazuha Syndicate is already a kingdom in all but name. When this war with the Earl breaks out, we won’t just win it. We will take his territory. We will take his titles. And we will rewrite the hierarchy of this world.”