New Weapon Concept

The punishment Edward would receive was no different from Charles Raymond's.

He would be confined to a wheelchair so that he could never appear before the people again.

There was one more thing I needed to do.

Compared to Charles Raymond, Edward at least seemed capable of thinking things through.

Since I had no idea what schemes he might devise while sitting quietly, I intended to leave him with no justification whatsoever for plotting anything.

"Extract the traces of Edward's mana left at the scene as evidence."

"Yes, sir."

"Frame him as a heinous traitor who murdered the elders and grand nobles of the Empire's sacred Seventeen Families. Make him out to be a criminal who rebelled against the Imperial Family."

That settled Edward's fate.

He would be put on trial, battered by every kind of political attack, and then spend the rest of his life in prison, reduced to a wreck.

As far as the Eastern Grand Duke was concerned, the matter was effectively over.

What remained was the question of how to deal with the East.

With Eastern Grand Duke Edward gone and the Center having relinquished its claim to the East, the region was effectively ours.

So I had to think about how to handle the East.

The easiest and simplest method was, naturally, something resembling colonial rule. We could seize all the ports in the name of colonial governance, squeeze the people dry, and rule by the sword.

But... even if the pen was powerless before the sword, a sword alone could not govern.

That was because human beings were creatures that resisted all the more when they were pressed down.

'The same thing happened to Germany in World War II.'

Even while fighting all of Europe, Germany never carried out total mobilization. Not until its crushing defeat at Stalingrad, that is, when 1.5 million men were ground away.

Then how had it mobilized such enormous quantities of materiel?

It had mobilized them by plundering its occupied territories.

And in return, the German army had to be beaten from every direction, from the Yugoslav partisans to the French Resistance.

If we ruled the East by force without giving it proper thought and a rebel faction suddenly sprang up, we would have a headache on our hands as well.

If the Center or foreign great powers intervened on behalf of the rebels and destabilized the region, our army would have to be worn down there all over again.

With the decisive battle only a few years away, continuously exhausting our army was absolutely not a good choice.

So as soon as I returned to the Southern Grand Duchy, I focused on stabilizing the situation.

"First, let's seize the assets of the Eastern grand nobles."

I fed the assets of the Eastern grand nobles into the engine of the great train called the South, which had to keep moving endlessly forward.

The wealth amassed over a hundred years by the grand nobles who had controlled the Empire's seas was far from insignificant. With it, I could stabilize our precarious finances and secure the funds needed to expand the army.

"All those who turned their swords against us have knelt. The Southern Grand Duchy will end its total-war footing as of July 16."

I could also put an end to the total-war footing, which was beginning to risk provoking discontent.

There was some opposition from the grand noble houses in the process, but I ignored it without a second thought.

The greatest enemy of industrialization was the entrenched interests that held vast amounts of land. For the sake of the Empire's future, the grand nobles had to be purged at least once.

In any case, their heads had all been wiped out by Edward. The East had no army, and the Center had abandoned it.

The grand nobles who had held the East in their iron grip for a thousand years thus fell into ruin.

The next place my sword reached was the side of the new nobles and the commercial and industrial guilds, which were already half-dead.

They had controlled the Eastern market until Southern goods arrived. Their productivity itself was incomparably low compared to factories, yet they desperately clung to their monopolies so they could keep selling their wares.

Bringing them down was not particularly difficult.

All I had to do was pressure the new Eastern Grand Duke, who had become half our puppet after Edward was gone.

"What do you think about abolishing the tariff barriers the East has maintained against the South until now?"

"T-tariff barriers, sir?"

"Are we not all subjects of the Empire? I've never heard of one region of the same country imposing tariffs on another."

And so I erased the tariff barriers.

"Hmm, I don't think it is fair for the Eastern Grand Duchy to provide support only to commercial and industrial guilds that have no productivity whatsoever."

"B-but the Southern Grand Duchy also provides support to Southern companies..."

"We provide support strictly based on performance. Why not take this opportunity to change the East's system of support to work the same way?"

I cut off the Eastern Grand Duchy's support, which had been the lifeline of the commercial and industrial guilds.

The commercial and industrial guilds, which had already suffered considerable damage from the conflict between the East and the South, could not endure it.

October 25.

On the day every protective shield guarding the commercial and industrial guilds was finally removed, the Southern companies launched a massive offensive.

Artisans who painstakingly made their goods by hand could not withstand the overwhelming output of the factories.

Nor was their quality any better, for that matter.

Until now, the commercial and industrial guilds had fought the easy kind of battle where victory came as easily as swimming while touching the bottom. The quality of their goods was inconsistent, and compared to factory production, which could turn out uniform-quality products in a steady stream, they had no meaningful advantage.

It took only a few months for the commercial and industrial guilds to collapse completely.

Meanwhile, new businesses were beginning to emerge in the East to appease public sentiment and increase employment.

The shipyards.

Of all the industries the East had engaged in, shipbuilding could be modernized the fastest and would produce the greatest employment effect once modernized.

Moreover, as incomes rose, wages in the South were rising as well, so moving the labor-intensive shipbuilding industry to the low-income East was also beneficial for Southern companies.

"Huh, it looks like they're always building something these days."

"I heard they're overhauling the shipyards in the South. Apparently, they're going to build new ships here."

"Didn't our East have shipyards with a history stretching back a thousand years? Do they really need to change them?"

"Those Southern bastards are trying to destroy our history!"

At first, the citizens were divided in their opinions of the new shipyards.

The East had shipyards that had continued for a thousand years. Being a people of the sea was a matter of pride to them.

Completely overhauling shipyards that had operated perfectly well for a thousand years and remaking them in the Southern style even looked, at first glance, like an act of disregard for their traditions.

"Hey, man. Once the shipyard is finished, it'll create jobs for us too, won't it?"

"Yeah. Now that those commercial and industrial guilds are gone, we won't have to get overcharged by them anymore."

"Things have already been tough lately with all this talk of war and everything. Isn't it good if more jobs become available?"

"Do you know how much work a single shipyard creates for our neighborhood?"

There were also people who supported the construction of the shipyards.

The East had once ruled the sea. Naturally, many people there had maintained exchanges with the South across the water.

These people knew very well how much labor the Southern shipbuilding industry consumed.

While the citizens of the East remained divided, all sorts of things began arriving in the region.

Wherever there was shipbuilding, there also had to be steel. The South's leading steel companies also began eyeing the East as a new land of opportunity.

The companies from the South's equipment industry took the place once occupied by the commercial and industrial guilds, which had handled relatively high-end manufacturing.

Companies engaged in advanced manufacturing, producing marine horsepower engines, fitting valves, heat exchangers, control systems, and so on, began taking over the commercial and industrial guilds' position in the East.

Naturally, manpower was also needed to build those factories and modernize the outdated infrastructure.

The key personnel were brought in from the South, but the East provided the unskilled labor, and the region began to come alive as well.

"If fourth-quarter performance remains at this level, the East's economic indicators are expected to show positive growth next year for the first time in a while."

This was clearly a good sign.

The West, followed by the East. As the performance of the regions incorporated into our sphere rose visibly and people's quality of life changed, they would gradually develop a favorable opinion of us.

"Once the shipyards are complete, we'll be able to turn out fleets faster."

Moreover, we would be in a far more advantageous position in the battles to come over the sea.

Our shipbuilding speed was much faster, after all.

Unless something unexpected happened, we would continue modernizing the East. Now, it was time to start preparing for the land war.

'The fighting will definitely be different from the war against the Western natives.'

The Center must have seen enough of the potential of the firearms we had demonstrated.

And the North, which could still be considered firmly on the Center's side, had been carrying out something resembling an industrial revolution in the meantime.

There was only one reason the North's technology had survived while the Center suppressed it: to fight the monsters of the north.

Moreover, if the plot of the 'original story' continued as it had, it was about time for the North to start breathing easier.

On the surface, it would look as though the northern monsters were declining in number and their strength was beginning to wane.

The truth was that they were preparing a great invasion to finish off the Empire... but people who knew nothing of that would proclaim that peace had arrived.

If the North's breech-loading firearms entered the Center, an advance as easy as the one we had made so far would clearly become difficult.

In other words... it was time for a new weapon.

"Lucilla."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"From now on, we're going to develop a new weapon. Gather the engineers from the Design Bureau and summon the heads of each company."

Of course, I had no intention of openly announcing that we were developing a new weapon. A weapon impervious to firearms only showed its effectiveness when it suddenly appeared in the middle of a battle.

"The cover codename for the new weapon will be... right."

The codename to be used here was practically decided already.

There was a name on Earth that boasted history and tradition.

"Let's call it a transport water tank (Tank)."