"Did you meet the Alliance's Administrator?"
"I did... but they didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about us."
Ideal Hotel.
Inside his guest room, Free State Foreign Minister Noreg gave Mayor Aldo a detailed account of everything he had seen and heard at the banquet.
To be honest, the Alliance's strength had exceeded his expectations somewhat.
He had originally assumed this was merely a settlement cobbled together by wastelanders and scavengers, but he had not expected them to build a clean, orderly city-state amid the ruins at a visibly rapid pace.
Building something from nothing was the most remarkable stage of all.
The Free State had once gone from having nothing to a skyline full of high-rises. Noreg knew very well just how difficult that had been.
So he would not naïvely judge a settlement's potential by the number of concrete high-rises it possessed, nor would he underestimate Dawn City simply because it was still developing.
These people possessed sufficient technological reserves, the productive capacity to turn those reserves into products, the ambition to push society forward, and the cohesion to resolve their differences.
While residents of every social class in the Free State were still endlessly arguing over whether to side with the Legion or the Corporation, these people had already firmly set foot on their own path.
If the Alliance maintained its current rate of development, then as long as it had enough population, it would soon shoot up to their level as though riding a space elevator.
Especially now that they had mastered the technology to manipulate slime mold fruiting bodies!
In fact, the Alliance's population growth had already reached an astonishing level.
More and more wastelanders who had had enough of chaos and yearned for order were joining the Alliance and becoming assimilated into the social ideals it