Chapter 2
What is the strength of the mages in this world?
I had always wondered about that.
Because, as is typical in a romance-fantasy novel, there was little detailed description of power balance.
So I trained in magic diligently.
Even though I had been exiled to the boonies, Kyle Leopold was, after all, an imperial bastard.
He belonged to the mage bloodline known as the 'Bloodline of the Sun,' the strongest in the setting. I had the talent to see the peak of magic.
And as a result of never neglecting my magic training, I was able to achieve excellent results.
[ Explosion ]
The explosion spell, fueled with all my power, formed a massive mushroom cloud. The deafening blast rang in my eardrums, and the violent pressure spread outward.
What remained after the shockwave passed was a disaster.
The area for hundreds of meters around had been completely scorched clean.
My adjutant, Lucilla, had said this to me.
"Congratulations, Lord Kyle. At this level, you would easily qualify as one of the world's ten ninth-tier mages."
A top-ten mage at the age of twenty. It was a glorious title more than enough for an imperial exile brat, yet for some reason it didn't sit right with me.
"...Only that?"
It was certainly absurd firepower for something that came from a single person's fingertips. That blast had the power of artillery being fired across flat ground.
A single person being able to strip a mountain bare is definitely impressive.
By contrast...
"All-out power, and it's only about how many cannon shots?"
Which meant that, for a reincarnator from some country in the East who insisted 6 million shells and over 6,000 missiles were a week's worth of ammunition, it was absurdly middling firepower.
Maybe that was when it began.
The thought of building a warship, an existence that embodied the very word firepower.
***
Of course, slapping cannons onto a ship made of roughly forged iron did not instantly create a battleship.
The legendary battleship called the 'Dreadnought' required three elements.
Large-caliber turrets, armor, and a high-performance engine.
If you strip away all the fancy terms, it simply means you need enormous naval guns, insanely thick armor, and a very good engine.
So what does that mean in the end?
"This ship called the 'Dreadnought' will devour an enormous budget."
It means money.
A lot of it.
"So it's only that problem. That's a relief."
And money was more abundant than could ever be spent in the South, the holy land of commerce and industry.
The engine was no problem either, thanks to mana stones. Mana stones and magitech made impossible designs possible in this era.
Unlike the other regions of this medieval romance-fantasy world, the South was in the middle of an industrial revolution and had more than enough capacity to produce steel alloys.
Because any lack of durability could be compensated for with magitech.
Thanks to me, who knew both magic existed and future technology, there was no need to go through trial and error.
The biggest obstacle, as expected, was designing the weapons to mount on the ship.
In this world, even in the age of industrialization, machine guns and naval guns did not exist. That was because of the mages in power.
The ones who first realized the potential of guns and cannons were the mages.
So, they banned them.
It was obvious their own positions would be threatened.
Could you really stop technological progress for such a reason?
Surprisingly, you can.
Just look at Japan, which invaded its neighboring country with matchlock guns in the 16th century. After the Imjin War, firearms development had even been halted until the 19th century under pressure from the samurai.
After I took office as the Southern Grand Duke, I restarted firearm development, and thanks to that I succeeded in creating production lines for machine guns and field artillery over the course of seven years.
But machine guns and field guns were completely different things from naval cannons.
On top of that, the construction of the ship had to be kept strictly secret.
Because of that, it took a full three years to build the Dreadnought in this world.
Even that time had been shortened thanks to magitech and the existence of magic.
If I were on Earth and were told to toss a blueprint down and build a Dreadnought from zero, it would probably take even longer.
On top of that, once one ship was completed and we started building two more, a staggering 10% of the territory's annual budget went up in smoke.
"If we do something this crazy one more time, we'll go bankrupt, Your Grace."
"Heh, that's true."
However, I felt no worry at all.
Because the enemies would be so shocked the moment they saw this ship.
"Hoo... ships can even look like this..."
"You mean Lord Kyle Leopold designed this ship all by himself?"
"My goodness..."
"To think humans could create such a massive weapon..."
"This is the first time in my life I've ever been glad to be a southerner."
...Even my closest aides were unable to keep their composure at that overwhelming majesty.
Right now, there was no country in this world with industrial power as excellent as the South's. Even if they somehow obtained the blueprints, they had no shipyard that could build a ship like this.
If there was any region with a chance, it would be the North, the Empire's second-largest industrial region.
But the North was busy holding back monsters right now.
So this was a strategic weapon that only we possessed.
And when a nation with battleships fought a nation without them, the outcome was something the countless countries on Earth that had suffered under gunboat diplomacy had shown firsthand.
You’re asking whether it’s okay to dump 10% of the territory budget into a few ships?
"Of course it's fine."
[ My lovely lady... ]
[ Her Ladyship wants to enjoy a boat ride... ]
[ She says the Southern Admiral may be plotting treason... ]
Crunch-
I replied while crumpling the letter in one motion.
"Now I just need to squeeze that much back out of them."
All I had to do was take it back and settle the debt.
That was the way of running an economy shown to me by a mustached art student from Earth in my previous life.
What? You think that's crazy?
If you turn 180 degrees twice, you're right back where you started.
In a world gone crazy like this, another crazy person like me was what made things normal.
"Lucilla."
Yes
"Deliver our final ultimatum to the Count of Sarsen."
Of course, I had no intention of throwing away a strategic asset that had cost 10% of the estate budget without a single test.
While secretly testing the Dreadnought, I was going to give them one last chance.
"Within a month, abolish the Sarsen Fortress toll and guarantee free passage for Southern merchants."
Seeing Lucilla quickly pull a notebook from her chest pocket, I continued.
"Otherwise..."
There was no more hesitation.
If you let them extort money right in front of your eyes and did nothing, then it wasn't the same country anymore—it was a colony.
And I had no intention of letting the South I loved be reduced to a mere colony.
"I'll blow the Sarsen Fortress off the map."
Bwooo-
The horn of the departing gray monster echoed through the secret harbor.
***
Unexpectedly, the County of Sarsen and the South had actually been on good terms for a long time.
Because the interests of Sarsen County and those of southern capitalists overlapped quite a bit.
The South, in the middle of its industrial revolution, needed a great deal of cheap labor.
From seven-year-old children to thirty-year-old adults, countless people headed south in search of new opportunities.
But the South, which was mostly islands and factory districts, lacked the food to support such a massive population. That shortage was imported from the neighboring County of Sarsen.
The Count of Sarsen did not miss that opportunity.
He kept raising food prices and lowering quality, reaping huge profits. At the same time, he showered bribes to ensure people kept buying food from Sarsen County.
At first, that was fine.
There was nobody here, beyond the center's reach, who would complain about such things.
The hardening lives of ordinary people were none of the Count of Sarsen's concern.
He had thought he could keep a straw stuck into the South's growth forever.
"Ah, this is what they call the 'Labor Standards Act'."
"A law that defeats wicked capitalists and lets workers live like human beings."
Until the Southern Grand Duke, who had fallen like a comet, normalized all those rotten capitalists.
After Kyle's appearance, there were only two kinds of capitalists left in the South.
Those who submitted to Kyle, and those who resisted and were thrown into prison.
Having cleaned up the South, Kyle Leopold first dealt with the food situation.
He stopped importing the overpriced food from the County of Sarsen, which had been inflated by corruption, and started looking for other sources.
"Count! Southern Grand Duke Kyle Leopold says he's going to stop food imports!"
For Kyle Leopold, it was a rational decision... but for the County of Sarsen, it was as if a bolt from the blue had struck them.
The straw they thought they would be able to keep stuck in forever had snapped.
They hurriedly lowered food prices, but Kyle Leopold, having already lost trust in the County of Sarsen, did not resume trade.
Seven years passed like that.
The Count of Sarsen, who only remembered the days when he had been siphoning off the South for decades, did not reduce his own consumption even as exports fell.
"Count, at this rate we'll go bankrupt."
Pushed to the limit, the Count of Sarsen made a reckless move.
"If only I could extort money from the merchants passing through my territory..."
And so the Sarsen Fortress construction plan was born.
The West Duke gave the Count of Sarsen a permit without hesitation.
The first reason was that the West's cottage-industry market had been devastated by the South's massive offensive of cheap manufactured goods.
The second was that West Duke Charles hated Southern Grand Duke Kyle Leopold, who had been thrown out after making advances on his fiancée.
[ Go ahead and do as you please ]
After all, nobody among the Empire's high ranks looked favorably on the South.
A rich region with no military power and no political influence was nothing more than a cash box.
There was nobody left who could stop the Count of Sarsen now that he had the West's approval.
"Ha, if we build a fortress here, what can those southern bastards do?"
"As expected of Count Sarsen!"
"Your Countship's foresight is exactly what politicians of this era should emulate..."
Two weeks after the Sarsen Fortress was completed.
The Count of Sarsen ignored all the Southern envoys who came to visit and began deploying troops to the fortress.
No fewer than one 8th-tier mage and two 7th-tier mages were stationed there. It was enough manpower to crush the South's makeshift army and wooden sailing ships.
With that background, the Count of Sarsen laughed when he saw the ultimatum that arrived.
"Kwahahaha, so the southern merchants have finally lost their minds. What can the southern bastards do, with no proper mages to speak of? Blow up the fortress?"
The Count of Sarsen was too busy enjoying the revenue flowing through the fortress without any precautions.
His attitude remained unchanged even on the day before the deadline Kyle Leopold had given.
"Count, since yesterday the number of merchants passing through the Sarsen Fortress has dropped sharply. They might really be trying to start a war!"
"Ho ho, that's all bluff. What army could a 25-year-old brat possibly have?"
Even with D-Day approaching, the Count of Sarsen still did not think a real invasion would happen.
Instead, he tried to play a battle of nerves.
"Send a letter to that brat Kyle Leopold. If he really wants to negotiate over the Sarsen Fortress, tell him to send a negotiation team to Sarsen in two days."
Negotiate the day after the ultimatum.
In other words, he knew you were too scared to hit back anyway, so he was saying to come quietly and negotiate the next day.
Thus, on the dawn of the day with no preparations whatsoever.
Pushing through the thick fog settled over the sea, a 20,000-ton steel monster slowly began to reveal itself.
The rising morning sunlight shone on the Dreadnought's massive main guns.