Sky City

"Kill! Kill them! Everyone, charge! We have to take this tribe today.

We've fallen too far behind Kalia Island. We need to seize more sky islands to win that lord's favor."

Watching the soldiers of Cloud Spider Island continually land ahead,

Tobiah, the God of Cloud Spider Island, waved the spear in his hand as he rallied their spirits.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

As the soldiers of Cloud Spider Island raised their Flintlock Guns,

the clash between cold weapons and firearms

displayed its brutality to the fullest at that moment.

Scorching bullets shot from the barrels met tribal natives wielding machetes and spears.

When the two sides began their first exchange,

the charging tribal warriors fell in swathes like cut wheat.

"Try to take them alive. They'll all be valuable laborers in the future, so don't cripple them."

As his soldiers crushed their way into this stubbornly resisting small sky island,

the power of firearms was astonishing no matter how many times he saw it.

If they had tried to conquer this sky island tribe using only cold weapons,

Tobiah's men would certainly have suffered heavy casualties.

But after that lord brought a large batch of muskets and cannons to the sky islands,

under the crushing advantage of technology,

conquering these fierce but underdeveloped Sky Islander tribes

had now become as easy as harvesting chives.

Every sky island above the heavens was an independent region.

The products and technological development of each place also differed enormously.

The sky island above Red Copper Island had clearly not yet developed firearms.

Although the Shell Technology they used was somewhat troublesome, faced with an assault from Cloud Spider Island, whose Sky Islanders possessed even more advanced Shell Technology,

the battle lasted only two short hours.

The entire sky island below surrendered outright.

As prisoners were bound at the arms and escorted onto the modified War Island Cloud floating above the Sea of Clouds,

once all the wealth had been collected and every prisoner brought aboard,

Tobiah went directly to a raised platform on the War Island Cloud. As he pressed the button in his hand,

huge sails rose above the War Island Cloud, while a propeller behind it slowly began to turn.

Once the War Island Cloud, which had originally relied solely on wind power, gained technological enhancements,

the small sky islands around the Five Sky Islands had been suffering a bloody streak of rapid conquest lately.

Large numbers of prisoners were swiftly transported to the newly built Sky City.

It was an aerial city centered on Puka Island, with the other four islands serving as satellites connected by Cloud Bridges.

Roy was currently seated within a lavish grand hall at the very heart of Sky City.

Clouds surged around him and flowed into the enormous pipe beneath his feet.

The clouds slid through the pipe and mixed with the sea clouds in the Sea of Clouds, then underwent further processing by slaves to become processed clouds that could serve as special construction materials.

As craftsmen and slaves put these processed clouds to use, more and more building materials were swiftly created, while increasing numbers of prisoners were transported here from outside.

For a time, the entire sky island city fell into an extremely busy state.

The palace where Roy resided was the central hub of this newly built Sky City.

From here, he could use the Photography Shells hanging before him to observe construction progress across the island.

And as the clouds created by his power continuously merged into Sky City,

Roy's control over the city below steadily grew stronger.

Large numbers of slaves were continually transported here by the forces led by the five Gods of Sky Island.

In the past, the Gods of Sky Island might have worried about food when taking in so many slaves.

But with Roy's arrival, feeding no more than a few thousand slaves

was nothing more than a trivial matter to him.

Unlike the barren skies, the Blue Sea below was filled with treasures everywhere.

Not to mention the Sea Kings in the ocean, each of which could easily weigh hundreds of tons,

even with the authority Roy currently held in his hands, obtaining basic food supplies was still a trivial matter.

Therefore, feeding the slaves in Sky City and the citizens of the five islands was not difficult for Roy.

As vast quantities of food, along with soil regarded as treasure by the Sky Islanders, were transported up to Sky City,

the slaves who had resented being conquered, as well as the Sky Islanders from the five islands,

were faced with such abundant resources and such an environment.

Just as Roy had expected, he was once again revered as the one and only true god.

Some tribal Sky Islanders who had been doomed to die because of the Locust Fish Swarm's attack

survived after Roy's arrival, even though they had lost their freedom.

Sky City's infrastructure continued to expand.

Because Roy intended to make Sky City his future base, while public infrastructure was being built, the rudiments of factories were also continuously taking shape.

After all, Roy had no intention of supporting these slaves in the sky for nothing.

If these slaves wanted Roy's protection and wished to survive in Sky City,

then in the future, they would have to generate sufficient profit for him.

The base in the sky would become a fortress for both war and daily life.

A fortress like this required a large number of factories as a fundamental necessity.

Thus, the people who would live in Sky City in the future would all become beasts of burden on Roy's factory assembly lines.

Regarding Roy's decrees for the future,

to his surprise, the people he called slaves on the sky islands did not seem particularly opposed to his plans. Instead, they were exceptionally delighted.

Perhaps, in their eyes, having a powerful master who could provide protection and enough food was a dreamlike life for Sky Islanders living in poverty.

The barrenness of the skies surpassed Roy's expectations.

Perhaps among the skies above this sea, the region ruled by Enel was merely an exception.

After all, not every place had an Upward Sea Current capable of lifting an entire island into the sky.

Poverty and hardship were the true norm of Sky Islander life.

So after Roy, a man capable of producing vast quantities of food, came to rule this place,

it was like the work hours of Megatron from the absurd videos Roy had seen in his previous life.

The ideas he proposed might have seemed somewhat cruel to him, but to the Sky Islanders, they were extraordinarily tempting.

Thus, within this strange balance, the people of the sky islands were instead remarkably enthusiastic about building the assembly-line factories that would bind them in the future.