Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 3.3 - Chapter 1

Ingo and Improving the Printing Press 

“Lady Rozemyne, Lutz has brought a letter from the Gilberta Company,” Gil said, holding out a letter once he had finished today’s before-bed report. 

I took the letter, feeling a bit confused. It wasn’t often that I received a proper letter from them; I would usually just ask Gil or Lutz to tell Benno to call me over whenever he had the time, or alternatively, they would approach me to say that Benno wanted to see me. As such, we almost always handled things through direct communication. 

...Did something happen? I wondered as I opened the letter. 

A quick skim revealed that it was an official request for a meeting from the Gilberta Company, and that they wanted to bring Ingo to my hidden room to discuss improving the printing press. 

This isn’t good. I wonder what I should do? 

The fewer people who knew who I was, the better. While I was aware that Benno would only send this letter if he deemed it absolutely necessary for us to meet in person, I didn’t know Ingo very well at all, nor did I feel comfortable bringing him into my hidden room to talk. 

“Mm...” I mumbled to myself, then hurriedly placed a hand over my mouth. Putting on a smile in an attempt to recover from my blunder, I looked up at Gil, who was awaiting my response. “Gil, tell Lutz that I would like to discuss this matter in more detail before replying to the letter.” 

“As you wish,” he replied.

I spoke to Lutz in my hidden room the next day. He had come over as soon as Gil delivered my request. 

“So, Lutz—why does Ingo want to speak to me? Weren’t we going to have him improve the printing press with the help of the gray priests?” I asked. They must have encountered some kind of problem while attempting to discuss it on their own. 

“Ingo came to the workshop, and we talked about improving it, but...” Lutz began. 

The printing presses in the workshop were currently as simple as they could possibly be: The letter types were lined up within the forme, which was locked into place in a box-like structure. The forme was then slathered with ink and paper was set on top, at which point one could place the box beneath the printing plate and press down. We had made these by slightly modifying normal presses, but they still weren’t much different from the ones used to juice fruits and the like. 

There was a generic stand next to each printing press where the ink and paper was placed. Under ideal circumstances, the stand for the forme and paper would be pushed and pulled to slide into place beneath the printing plate. But we had to do all that by hand, which made it a fairly poor printing press, all things considered. As a result, we had decided to have the gray priests think up potential improvements as they got used to working with them. 

During their discussion, Lutz had apparently suggested that Ingo make the printing presses closer to the complete design I had mentioned before. Ingo had listened with a confident grin at first, but by the end of Lutz’s long explanation, he was angrily demanding to speak to whoever could provide more details. 

“He was real mad, yelling about how he doesn’t wanna have to go through loads of unnecessary trial and error if someone already knows what the finished form is supposed to look like. That didn’t bother me, but the gray priests weren’t used to how rough a craftsman can be, so they all got too scared to talk anymore. It was all a big mess. But honestly, I see where Ingo was coming from,” Lutz said with a defeated shrug. 

I personally didn’t think that the trial and error would have been a waste, since they might have been able to make a printing press better than the one I was familiar with, but it was hard to argue when the craftsman himself wanted more details. 

“Believe me, I told Ingo that you couldn’t go outside like you used to, and that it wouldn’t be easy to get him in a room with you for a conversation. But he told me there was no reason that you wouldn’t be able to talk to a person from the lower city if you really wanted to, since you used to walk all around as a weird rich girl. In other words, you’re already talking to me about it, so there wasn’t really anything I could say back.” 

Ingo had apparently been quite insistent that if I could talk to Lutz about the printing press despite him being a commoner, then I could obviously talk to him—the actual craftsman—as well. Ingo knew me from when I had traveled with Benno and Lutz to his workshop to make orders, and in his mind I was a rich person capable of talking to lower city craftsmen without any issues, whether I was a noble or not. Still, it was rare for someone so familiar with the danger that nobles posed to not back down after thinking that. 

“...I would have thought that a normal craftsman wouldn’t prod a noble so deeply. Is this really okay?” 

“They normally wouldn’t, but he’s gotta finish every job you give him to as good a standard as possible. He’s pretty desperate about this, since it’ll play such a big part in his future,” Lutz said. 

Ingo had started his own carpentry workshop at a very young age after getting his beruf certification, and was just a little older than Benno at thirty-three. There were some foremen who ended up in charge of a workshop due to inheritance or marriage, but most who started their own were forty or older. Ingo being in his early thirties put him far below this average, which meant he wasn’t treated with much respect in the Carpentry Guild. No major jobs were ever sent his way. 

That was why he was desperate to earn the guild’s approval here. I was becoming increasingly famous as the High Bishop capable of giving real blessings, so exclusively giving him my business would completely change his standing within the guild. 

“Wait... Aren’t I already exclusively giving him my business?” I asked. I had assumed that was already the case since I had given him all of my orders for winter handiwork wood and the printing presses. At this point, I was already considering him as one of my Gutenbergs. 

Lutz crossed his arms. “It’s a tough call. When it came to Hasse’s monastery, you placed your order directly with the Carpentry Guild through Master Benno and the guildmaster, remember? We didn’t have much of a choice, since finishing things quickly was our highest priority, but normally you should’ve spoken to Ingo first and had him delegate the work to other workshops.” 

I had ordered the carpentry work for Hasse’s monastery under the High Bishop’s name. Benno and Gustav had gone to the Carpentry Guild to discuss the matter, both acting as my representatives, and since they hadn’t even had time to iron out who was giving who exclusive business, they had just allowed the guild to organize everything themselves. 

Ingo, however, hadn’t been among my representatives. It was supposed to be his job to organize the work as the foreman I exclusively gave my business to, but as he hadn’t heard about the task until the guild mentioned it to him, they had started to question whether his really was the only workshop I gave business to. We had been able to finish the monastery in time thanks to giving our order directly to the Carpentry Guild, but as a result, Ingo’s status was being called into question. 

“They think you’ve hired him for work in the past, but either didn’t like the results or just plan on using other workshops as well,” Lutz explained. That was the kind of interpretation that could mean life or death for a craftsman, so it wasn’t strange to think that he’d risk some personal danger to secure my exclusive business. And since this was a problem that had occurred due to me prioritizing speed and efficiency over everything else, it was my responsibility to restore Ingo’s now damaged reputation. 

“...Okay. I’ll speak to him here,” I replied. “They won’t like me meeting with an associate from my Myne days who doesn’t know the circumstances behind me becoming Rozemyne, but I would like to talk to him personally about this matter, if possible.” 

It would certainly be ideal to hear how Ingo intended to improve the printing press from the man himself. Plus, since he was willing to take on the risk of dealing with nobles, I thought it only fair that I repay his bravery. 

I sent a response to the Gilberta Company’s request for a meeting, and on the scheduled day, Benno and Lutz came to my orphanage director’s chambers with Ingo. He had cleaned himself up from head to toe in preparation for meeting a noble, so the person before me was nothing like the sweaty man with a scraggly beard that I remembered. I hadn’t seen his hair back at the workshop, since there had been a towel wrapped around his head like a bandanna, but now I could see that his hair was ocher and his eyes bright blue. Coupled with the nice outfit that had replaced his usual dirty work clothes, he was like a completely different person from the guy in the workshop. 

Benno gave his long noble greetings, and I replied in turn. Meanwhile, Ingo kept kneeling in silence. He had never done business with a noble before and thus had no idea what to say, as would be the case for most craftsmen. 

“Now then, shall we move things to the back room?” I asked. 

“As you wish,” Benno replied, giving Ingo a slap on the shoulders once the door had closed behind us. “Alright, Ingo—you can talk in here. Lady Rozemyne’ll turn a blind eye to whatever’s said in this room so you don’t have to be perfect with your language, but take care not to be too rough or in her face.” 

“That’s good to hear. I had no friggin’ idea what to say back there,” Ingo admitted with a sigh. But then he turned to look at me, a serious glint in his bright-blue eyes. They were strong eyes, filled with the resolve to stand strong despite his fear and distrust of nobles. 

“Now girlie— Er, High Bishop. There’s one thing I wanna ask. It’s something real important. Is my workshop the only carpentry workshop you plan to do business with?” 

“I would like to think so. When it came time to work in Hasse, we were so pressed for time that we went directly to the Carpentry Guild, which has regrettably made life difficult for you. But in general, the work you provide is more than satisfactory.” 

“...Alright then,” Ingo said, the tension visibly draining from his shoulders as he let out a sigh of relief. It seemed that he had really been driven into a corner by this whole situation, and I couldn’t help but feel responsible. But before I could say anything to him, Ingo spun his shoulder once and looked at me head-on, giving the hard look of a craftsman brokering a deal. “In that case, I’m gonna ask you to tell me everything you know about how to improve the printing press. I wanna make the best thing possible here.” 

His eyes made his request clear: he wasn’t going to settle for anything less than the best, and if I knew how to make that happen, then I should just tell him. But my knowledge from my Urano days told me that even the initial printing press that Gutenberg had made from a grape press was improved slowly over time, until it was eventually a largely metal contraption. The printing press in our workshop was made entirely of wood, and it was very likely that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with Gutenberg’s advancements unless that changed. 

How much could we improve the printing press, really? I tried to remember what the printing press in the Plantin-Moretus Museum looked like. It came from the oldest printing workshop that had ever existed, so I wanted to improve our printing press up to that point at the very least. But I didn’t know enough to draw up a detailed blueprint. 

“At the moment, we put paper on the box with the forme inside, then place it directly beneath the printing plate, correct? Well, it would be a lot easier to use if we could attach a stand like this to it, which we could just push and pull. The printing press that I know has a handle on the side that you can turn to slide it in and out,” I explained, drawing a simple design on a sheet of paper and gesturing in the air. 

But all Ingo did was frown hard. It was hard to visualize something that you knew so little about, and that only got worse when you had to make it. 

“We’re using a screw-based design like most presses right now, but printing will be a lot easier if we utilize the (principle of leverage),” I continued. “It’s just that I don’t fully understand how (leverage) is utilized, or how to make a design with it.” 

“It’ll be easier if we utilize what-now?” 

I wrote out an explanation in my diptych, describing the points of effort, load, and so on, but Ingo just shook his head in confusion. It seemed that we were still having trouble making fundamental improvements to the design. 

“Eeeh. I can manage this pushing stand thing, but wood’s real heavy. We’ll need to use metal so that we can get it sliding smoothly, right?” Ingo asked. 

“Correct. Using metal for parts of the printing press will increase both its speed and stability. Shall I discuss this matter with my smiths?” 

If we wanted to use metal for its strength and ease of use, then our best option would be to bring Johann and Zack into this. Plus, Zack had designed a ton of rollers back when we were making the wax stencils; there was a chance that he would be able to make designs for the press based just on my explanations, too. 

“Alright. Now I know you’ve got a much, much better printing press in that head of yours. It’s just so complicated that nobody else gets what you’re saying. I think I’m gonna have to speak with those smiths of yours. They’re craftsmen who’ve done work with you before, yeah?” 

“Yes. They both came of age recently, and they have completed many jobs for me in the past. I consider them proud members of the Gutenbergs, each essential to the spread of the printing industry,” I said in a proud tone. 

Ingo’s eyes immediately sparkled with interest.