While a technological revolution was ongoing on Neues Reich, James was busy completing his initial phase of his trading platform.
After the war, the speed of recovering Collective Energy had slowed down considerably, however, the living conditions for people in the defeated nations had significantly worsened compared to before the war, so he was still gaining a lot of Collective Energy from them.
With the steady stream, he completed a significant portion of the Trading platform, connecting around 22 Race spirits within his star Sector.
A star cluster was an area of space designated by the system, which contained between 40 and 50 stars, each holding multiple planets orbiting them. A Stat sector contained anywhere between 10 and 15 star clusters.
Although the trading system had not reached all race spirits within the region, James was satisfied that it had reached all those willing to give their locations to him. Looking at the total number of race spirits still alive within his star sector, he frowned, noticing only around 50 present.
Of the present 53, only 22 had accepted his trading system, with not much trading going on. Everyone had indeed sent and received a few small items in order to verify if the trading system worked, but then it returned to almost complete silence.
But since he had time, spare collective energy, as well as the fact that technology was progressing smoothly on Neues Reich, James began optimising the structure of the trading platform.
It was not an optimisation for efficiency, but rather security. Instead of connecting each location to the others, he built a ring in the star sector. It was not built at the centre of the sector, nor at the edges, but somewhere in the middle, passing through roughly all the various star clusters.
Then he split paths from the central ring that would act like an elevated ring road for the star sector, heading to various central nodes for each star cluster. Then the different star clusters branched out normally to the various locations of each individual.
This way, if any world god or race spirit found their way into his trading system using either faith, collective energy, or something else, he could simply close off their connection to the central nodes of each star cluster. If that failed, he could simply close off that star cluster's connection to the ring-road for the star sector.
After finishing this, James finally returned his attention to his world, realising quite some time had passed.
looking at the situation, James found his heart sink as he realised something. War was already being waged, and it was another world war!
'How much time passed since I last looked at the world?' James exclaimed as he quickly went through the thoughts of the various leaders of the nations to understand the current situation.
…
To understand the current war, one needed to return almost 200 years in the past, when the steam engine first began spreading through Hohenzollern and the German Reich.
Armin II had only just instructed the German Reich to implement such technological advances into the infrastructure of the German Reich.
However, this technology, was not solely kept secret within military facilities, but used on a large scale across Hohenzollern as well as the German Reich. This resulted in the various technologies to be passed onto the neighbouring nations as well, each of whom took action to implement it to varying effects.
Hohenzollern still maintained its lead compared to other nations, since it was entirely focussed on technological progress and implementation, compared to other nations which also had to worry about the effects of mana and magic on technology, and visa-versa, before implementing anything.
The Independent Kalmar Republic; that small 1/6th of the original Kalmar Union, maintaining independence due to the rebellion led by the then president to help the invaders take over the nation, was not far behind. After losing its main families, and most of its land, the Kalmar Republic was left with little.
As such, they took notes from the surprising war potential of the purely technological nation of Hohenzollern and began on this path themselves. With such a small land area, they rapidly reached second in terms of implementing steam engines and other related technologies.
A similar scene occurred within the three nations derived from the remaining 3/10th of the original United States after it lost the war. They reached third place individually, but their standing rose and fell constantly due to a constant war and skirmishes amongst each other over the months and years following the Great War.
As a result of the Great war, all three of the successors to the losing nations, somehow ended up accepting the path of almost pure technological advancements. Only the victors maintained an amount of balance between technology and magic.
The Dual Monarchy of Austria Franz, which its king had renamed as such from the original Triple Monarchy after they eliminated all those previously in power in the region of Hungary, also implemented the steam engine.
However, they took their time analysing how it would affect the population, and magic progression. The result was a rather muted use, since some of the philosophers in charge of analysing impacts of technology on magic and culture, depicted a grave result of losing all magic and culture for technological progress; like Hohenzollern.
These originally dismissed ramblings were brought to light after all the successors of the defeated nations turned out this way. Although the cause and effect were not the same, since those nations only wished to rapidly rebuild national strength in front of the powerful nations they were surrounded by, the monarch of the Dual Monarchy finally gave in and decided to restrict the implementation of steam engines, keeping it a national secret to be used solely by the military for military productions.
Finally, came the unfortunate Tsardom. The Tsar, the absolute ruler of the nation, gave the decree to implement the steam engine into the production lines of the nation. Unfortunately, the officials were brutally inefficient, and the final result was an even worse implementation of such technology as compared to even the Dual Monarchy. This was substantially pronounced by the fact that the Tsardom was twice as large and triple the number of Jerries living in it than the Dual Monarchy.
Still, after a few years, the Tsar realised that the actual work and the results delivered to him by the officials were drastically different. But he did not act, like the fury his father had displayed, killing some of the officials, but leaving the rot to fester.
Instead, he immediately got to work secretly building an organisation to monitor all the officials, not only to extract all the crimes they committed, but also the various amounts of wealth they had stored away.
A year and a half of building the organisation in secret, and another three years of having it operate, while simultaneously training a new set of officials to replace the originals later, the Tsar finally swung his blade.
12,000 officials were arrested and had all their own, and familiar wealth and assets seized. Not only that, but all their secretly stashed away wealth was also seized. Many businessmen and capitalists who were gaining political power through bribes were also arrested and had their companies and assets seized.
Out of these 14,000 off individuals, almost 8,000 were directly sentenced to death. The remainder were sentenced to forced labour, but they were all secretly shipped off for secret experiments under the Tsar's orders.
All of this, happening within a fortnight, resulted in immense chaos across the entire Tsardom, but with the newly trained officials taking their place, as well as the secret organisation ensuring nobody instigated any form of riots or rebellion, the nation returned to calm within 3 months!
And with the massive amount of wealth plundered, the Tsar got to work on several infrastructure projects that would boost both magic and technological progress down the line.
He called it the 10 year plan.
…
As such, all the various nations began working on their respective technologies. The German Reich also began work, but fell behind Hohenzollern due to having to integrate Magic into the technology, and technology into the Magic.
Still, with the incredible number of Rank 1 and Rank 2 Magi within the German Reich, they were able to maintain a lead among any of the nations who utilised both Magic and Technology.
But more important matters than the first technology related industrial revolution soon befell the German Reich. The death of the elderly king Armin II.
With an average lifespan of around 80 years, king Armin II having lived until 89 was a significantly longer life than others. Thus, when the elderly king passed away due to old age, it was not a surprise to the nation as a whole.
However, something did surprise them.
Both young princes came out and spoke to the nation, with almost identical certificates declaring themselves the kings of the German Reich. This threw the nation into confusion, but nothing much happened right after.
Meanwhile, a new war broke out among the three successors of the United States.
A few months passed in relative confusion for the Neues Reich, until finally a piece of news dropped that forced the geopolitical situation to turn on its head.
Eric, student and direct disciple to the Great Peak Rank 3 Mage; Main Von Albert, declared that his master, in an attempt to advance to Rank 4, passed away in an implosion of the laws of space and time.
The German Reich, which was already confused as to which king to follow, fell into even more chaos. Originally, only the mortal military and logistics were confused, along with the general public. But the various powerful Magi were able to maintain control over the kingdom while allowing the princes and their subordinates to figure things out.
However, with their sole backing of the Great Grandfather of the current so-called kings, and a peak Rank 3 Mage suddenly passing away, these powerful Magi at Rank 3 and all their subordinate forces were also thrown into chaos.
Within weeks, they were all coerced into picking sides. As the Rank 3 took their Rank 2 subordinates, and they took their Rank 1 subordinates, the powers of the German Reich finally split into two.
Each faction followed a different self-proclaimed king of the German Reich, neither of whom were willing to change their names.
As such, there were two German Reichs who quickly declared war on each other in order to eliminate the false German Reich, while the Tsardom and the Dual Monarchy were happy to sell resources to either half.
Hohenzollern on the other hand continued to improve its industry, before suddenly declaring independence as the Rank 3 Magi there decided they were better off not getting involved in the civil war of the German Reich.
And that was how the current Second World War had come about, with a civil war of the strongest nation in the world.
'What a mess…' James sighed as he realised that the location for the trading system was in one half of the German Reich, while the Seed for the Mana Tree was in the other part, as Armin II had decided to keep is away from the trading system, where in the future potentially dangerous items could be traded away or brought in.
So James could not have either of the two be defeated…
Word count: 1928 words
[AN: Please give comments to support my work. I lose motivation when people are not reading or commenting on the stories. This was why I had originally given up on this story, but when some people were telling me to continue it, I finally decided to pick it up once more. Hope you all like it!]