I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

【“Saints, gods—their existence can completely transform the ecology of an entire region. Extreme individual power can outright negate everything you stand for!”】

On the lawn of the school park, Curtis spoke these words.

Someone immediately retorted, “But the people are the foundation of everything! Elves, dwarves, demons—they are all people. Mages are people. Ordinary humans are also people.”

“If the price of individual strength is the weakness of the entire civilization, then we would rather have no gods at all!”

Curtis shrugged: “But the current situation is that not only do gods exist, there are quite a few of them~”

“Hey, why are you discussing this again?”

A frivolous female voice entered everyone’s ears. Curtis looked toward the source of the voice and saw a tall girl standing not far away, holding books. Her appearance was ordinary, but her figure was strikingly attractive.

“Senior!”

“Hello, Senior Qin!”

Curtis rubbed his nose. Although their values and ideologies often clashed, he had to admit that the Alliance’s design of women’s clothing truly possessed a unique aesthetic advantage.

The girl’s long, slender, and taut legs were wrapped in semi-transparent black stockings. Something that should have served as mere concealment instead stirred endless imagination about the skin beneath.

The girl nodded at the students who greeted her, then her moist eyes turned toward Curtis. “You’re an exchange student? Mm, then it’s normal for you to think this way.”

“I… I’m an exchange student, so what? Could it be that you can make everyone become gods or Saints? According to your theory, that’s impossible!”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean. It’s that you don’t understand enough yet.”

“Equal distribution is an ideal vision, but perhaps you didn’t hear it completely. Equal distribution does not mean distributing everyone’s achievements equally. It means that when productivity reaches a certain level, all needs will be satisfied and distributed without distinction. There will be no driving force of greed or ugliness—you can do whatever you want, entirely based on your preferences.”

Curtis opened his mouth to speak, but the girl raised her hand to stop him. “This is the ultimate ideal—the final form of society as we imagine it. You must first understand this before you can grasp what I say next.”

“In the past, the feudal enfeoffment system and imperial rule taught us to measure a person’s value by bloodline and talent. Most people have accepted this idea since birth, even until now.”

“Using whether someone is a noble or whether they have magical talent to measure their labor value—many people have been poisoned by this exploitative theory without even realizing it. This is exploitation of the entire race.”

“As long as a person produces, they have labor value and成果. Everything nobles eat, use, and wear—are they not produced by the labor of others? The same goes for mages. Yet they all believe this is something they are entitled to. So why?”

“Why do the fruits of others’ labor belong to you, while your magical achievements are considered the result of your own effort? And then you turn around and use that magic against others—what kind of bandit logic is that?”

“I am not denying your effort, because your effort is also your labor value. Your achievements in magic are indeed the fruits of your labor.”

“I only want you to understand the logic of how the world operates. A person’s existence is a process of creating labor value and exchanging it for the成果 of others. Your survival is not solely your own achievement.”

“What Seris calls equality is the equality of recognizing and respecting labor value. No matter what you do—whether you are a student, a street sweeper, or a soldier on the battlefield—you are creating labor value.”

At this point, Senior Qin glanced at the Alliance university students. They stood tall, clearly filled with pride.

“And an individual’s labor value will produce a surplus. What the Seris Alliance does is redistribute this surplus labor value of the people in a reasonable way, further enhancing individuals’ gains from their labor.”

“Because it is the shared surplus labor value of all citizens, we vigorously build schools, infrastructure, welfare institutions, provide medical subsidies, distribute daily necessities for free, and so on—returning that surplus value back to the citizens.”

“It must be admitted that different people create different amounts of labor value. So the surplus may be more or less, but the intention is the same. That is why Alliance citizens like to call each other ‘comrades.’”

“Because everyone is contributing value to this collective, the Alliance must make the best possible use of this surplus value.”

“Everyone contributes their surplus value to the collective—so that those who are struggling can live better, and those who may make the collective better in the future, the talented and the geniuses, can receive more investment of surplus value and continue to give back to the collective.”

“When you can sort out the chain of cause and effect, I will now answer the question you raised earlier.”

“Strength or weakness does not conflict with our ideology. We make the strong stronger and the weak better—we are one whole.”

“Do you know how many parts a firearm has, and how many hands it passes through? Do you know how many people are involved in making a piece of clothing from raw materials to the moment it is worn by you?”

“Can’t solve individual differences? Why should we solve them? If I remember correctly, on the Main Continent, a kingdom has on average around 15 to 20 magic academies, each with a few hundred students.”

“We don’t have magic academies, but we have categorized magical disciplines. A single Alliance university has about 3,000 students, with around 500 to 800 students majoring or minoring in magic.”

Senior Qin said with a smile, “And there are nearly 160 such universities across the entire Alliance—on average two to four per state.”

“We have never said we would eliminate individual differences. What we want to eliminate is class differences. These are all children of commoners— in your countries, most of them would never even live to the day they could display their magical talent.”

Curtis’s face changed upon hearing these numbers: “N… no way! How could you possibly support so many mages? Where do you get so many resources and instructors? Where do you get so many magic crystals?!”

Training a mage required far more than just talent.

Mental strength training, understanding of elements—these required not only a quiet environment, proper nutrition, and guidance from mentors…

But also a large quantity of corresponding elemental magic crystals. By observing the flow of energy within the crystals, one could understand the principles of elemental manipulation and become familiar with the energy signatures of specific elements.

Not to mention the need for systematic spell manuals and diagrams. Thinking about it carefully, every aspect required money. Otherwise, why would nobles monopolize the mage population? The resource supply of their families was no less important than magical talent itself.

“You see, everything I said before was wasted—this is the power of the collective!”

“An ordinary citizen may be weak, but they can still support someone strong—perhaps just a piece of clothing in the cold, a bowl of food in hunger, or the figure sweating in a mine.”

“Individuals in a collective may seem insignificant, but when they unite and gather like sand forming a tower, they can unleash miraculous power. Even if this number were multiplied tenfold, we could still support them!”

“They are all lifted up by the collective strength of Alliance citizens. They know clearly who gave them everything. They have longer lifespans, their faith is firmer—because they themselves are witnesses of miracles, and will become the guardians of the next miracle!”