Brat / Suppressant

Kazdel was already caught in this kind of crisis: Ursus's Rubles. From a certain perspective, Kazdel currently held Lungmen Dollars, which could also reduce the proportion of Rubles in circulation. But Rubles were Ursus's national currency. Even if Ursus worked its printing presses overtime, it would still be affected, while printing more Lungmen Dollars would barely cause a ripple in the Yanese homeland.

"This is the price of grain exports from Yan. In Lungmen Dollars. What do you think?"

Wei Yenwu wrote down two figures, one in Rubles and the other in the so-called Lungmen Dollars, then placed an equals sign between them.

Theresica took one look and was astonished to discover that it was only one-third of Siracusa's grain import price!

"What do you think?"

Wei Yenwu asked with a smile. Kazdel lacked food, but food was the one thing Yan had in abundance.

"That works, but I'd like to make one request."

"Go ahead."

"I'd like to import Yanese crops and agricultural techniques."

Theresica spoke solemnly, but Wei Yenwu laughed when he heard that.

"I may hold a minor official position, but I've also set up a vegetable garden at my own residence. Whenever I have free time, I tend to it with my wife. I can say with certainty that Kazdel's soil is far too barren for cultivation."

"So what? We can try on a small scale. Even growing a little would be worthwhile."

Seeing Theresica's firm attitude, Wei Yenwu nodded. "This is nothing. If you want it, consider it a gift."

"Thank you."

The two sides then began signing the agreement. Kazdel would export airships to Yan and provide after-sales maintenance, while Yan would settle the payment in Lungmen Dollars and export grain to Kazdel at the agreed-upon price.

After finishing the official business, Wei Yenwu returned to the test-flight site. He seemed genuinely interested in the airships. Madam Wen Yue, who was accompanying him, even said she wanted to take a ride herself and look around.

That startled Theresica into hurriedly advising her, "Madam Wen Yue, this is a newly manufactured product, and we still lack sufficient experience with its use. You should wait a little longer."

"It'll be fine, it'll be fine."

Wei Yenwu pointed at the airship and said with a laugh, "It's not high enough to kill us if we fall."

Theresica: "..."

An airship that had already been test-flown for some time slowly descended. Wei Yenwu led the excited Madam Wen Yue into the cabin.

The airship rose again and began circling Kazdel's urban district. Watching from the ground, Theresica was extremely nervous. Only after Madam Wen Yue was thoroughly satisfied did the two of them return to the ground.

"This is an excellent invention. With this, the people's livelihoods in the Shangshu Region will improve tremendously."

Wei Yenwu was delighted, while Madam Wen Yue asked something rather unusual.

"Seeing the ground from the sky is so thrilling! It's just too slow. Can it go faster?"

"Uh... We'll find a way to improve it."

Theresica humored her. As far as he was concerned, being able to take off safely was already impressive. And she wanted it to go faster?

The next day, at a materials staging point on Yan's border, the airships slowly rose into the sky with construction materials aboard, under everyone's astonished gazes, and headed toward their designated destination. Ursus was delayed by two days because of the snowstorm, but it began smoothly afterward as well.

One airship after another formed a long line in the sky and moved forward slowly, creating a rather spectacular sight. At the departure points in Ursus and Yan, many residents and newspaper staff came to take pictures. Some refugees in the desert even worshiped this as a miracle.

Without weather interference, the airships' transport efficiency far exceeded Ursus and Yan's expectations. They had originally planned to wait until the mobile land platforms reached the meeting point and formed settlements before preparing for construction. But now, the construction materials had outrun the mobile land platforms!

The Ministry of Works in Yan was both frowning as it urged the mobile land platforms to speed up and grinning from ear to ear. When they had first calculated the materials needed, they had added extra costs for long-distance transport losses and bandit raids. Besides, there were no factories in the desert, so Yan would probably have had to send over replacement materials for anything lost. Now, with airships, there was hardly any loss at all. At most, something might go wrong during unloading. They had saved an enormous sum of money!

Sarkaz's service for Terra's two rogues had left them extremely satisfied. Ursus stated that it would push forward the plan to return the Wendigo to Kazdel as soon as possible, with completion expected within half a year. Yan paid all the transport fees up front and even used Lungmen Dollars to pay a twenty-percent deposit on ten airships.

Theresica did not dare keep the Lungmen Dollars in his possession for long and immediately used them to buy grain from Yan.

However, the joint reports from Yan and Ursus made Kazdel's airships known throughout Terra. The dukes of Victoria, Iberia, and Columbia all sent representatives to express their intention to purchase them.

Columbia's order, in particular, was astonishing.

The country was in a crucial period of developing its western regions. The roads there were practically nonexistent, and the cost of transporting supplies was frighteningly high.

After learning about this special invention, all the major Colombian companies engaged in transportation came to buy airships. Because of the order queue, these businesses, despite belonging to the same country, even started a price war. Each one offered more than the last, essentially competing to pay an outrageous stupidity tax.

Couldn't they just buy them normally? At the price they were paying for one airship, Yan could buy five!

Then, somehow, one airship ended up in the hands of the Colombian Federal Army. It was sent to the Sargon rainforest to drop food to besieged troops.

One day, a Federal Army caster on an airship spotted Adaklis tribesmen attacking the besieged forces from high above. He promptly hurled an Originium Art down, killing quite a few enemies.

The senior officers of the Federal Army, who had looked ready to die because of the disastrous state of the war, immediately perked up. They deliberately sent troops out and deliberately waited for the soldiers to be surrounded, then sent an airship carrying a caster over to provide support. This gave them their first favorable exchange ratio since the war began. The Colombian newspapers that had been cursing them for nearly a year made an unprecedented effort to praise them at length. Even the president of Columbia personally visited the soldiers who had used the airship.

This brought the Colombian senior officers almost to orgasm. After discovering that the new tactic worked, they hurried to Kazdel to buy more. They hoped to use airships to strike the Adaklis tribesmen from above.

As for Ursus's claim that airships were fragile, they did not care about it at all.

Can those primitive tribes even hit something that high? It's not like they're proper nations like us! And even if they shoot one down, so what? A few people die. Is that more than the number dying right now?

What had originally been nothing more than a small workshop producing airships was forcibly expanded by demand, increasing its output and transforming into the Kazdel Airframe Manufacturing.

Stubborn Brat

The booming airship sales brought Kazdel a second source of income besides high-purity Originium exports. They also reduced the proportion of Rubles on its books, but Rubles still accounted for a considerable share.

Dead money could not generate benefits. To spend the money as quickly as possible, Theresica began looking for places to put it to use.

The first people he thought of were the Sarkaz veterans. In the past, the country had been too poor to care for them. Now that he had money, was he really going to let them continue to shed blood and tears?

Theresica ordered the Planning Committee to compile a list of every veteran who had taken part in a war and provide subsidies for them and their families.

They would receive better daily food rations, be assigned better housing, and receive priority treatment if they fell ill. Their children would also receive priority placement in schools.

Although Terra possessed Originium Arts that could help wounded soldiers quickly reattach severed limbs, many soldiers still suffered disabilities for various reasons. Theresica personally handled these cases one by one, doing his best to assign work they could manage.

There was also a small number of veterans who could not live independently and had no one to care for them. Following the example of the former Gaul Empire, Theresica established a veterans' home and assigned dedicated staff to care for them.

To comfort these veterans emotionally, Theresica personally took action. Following the style of Earth, he instructed a factory to use a small amount of precious metal to produce a batch of medals, and ordered that this design never be used for any other purpose.

After receiving a pile of metal pieces, Theresica personally summoned the veterans to the Sarkaz Palace. There were several thousand of them in total. He received two groups each day for several days in a row, personally awarding every veteran a medal, pinning it to their chest, solemnly recounting their military achievements, and then handing them a written record of their merits.

Most of these Sarkaz were already advanced in age. Yet when Theresica approached them with a medal and a record of their merits, their bodies showed every sign of age, but they straightened their backs. Their salutes and eyes still revealed a glimpse of what they had been like in their prime.

Many of the veterans who received medals secretly bit their lips and began to cry. This kind of system had not been absent among the Sarkaz; it had simply vanished completely a century ago. Back then, everyone only remembered fighting and killing mechanically. New enemies appeared every moment, endless and impossible to kill. Who would care about a group of retired soldiers?

As time passed, they had truly believed that Kazdel had forgotten them. But now... they had been wrong.

Looking at those veterans shedding tears over a metal piece, Theresica's nose also began to sting. They had silently endured everything until today and asked for nothing. If he had not taken the initiative to do this, they would not even have received this metal piece.

What a bunch of simple idiots.

After completing several improvements for the military, Theresica turned his attention to the workers engaged in production.

When most of Kazdel's factories had been built, everything had been rushed. Getting them into production as quickly as possible had been the priority at the time. Now, Theresica specifically had Mel redesign the factory layouts, optimize production, and improve the working environment.

The living quarters of all production workers were also upgraded uniformly, with lighting, hot water, sanitation, and a series of other essential facilities improved.

After doing all this, Theresica suddenly realized that he could no longer stroll around the square in front of the Sarkaz Palace. In the past, walking there alone and spacing out had attracted little attention. Now, whenever he went out, many people stared at him, their expressions especially excited.

He... was a little thin-skinned and not used to such an environment.

Moreover, he could no longer wander freely around the outer perimeter of the palace's uncontrolled office area, because there was always a female Sarkaz watching him like a guiding head locked onto a heat source.

She was a member of Hedley's mercenary group and seemed particularly fixated on Theresa. Shining had once considered expelling her outright, but Theresica had taken into account that she had been one of his sister's former subordinates during the civil war, so he allowed her to move freely outside the controlled area.

This time, however, Theresica went directly to her and asked, "Why do you always stare at me? Is there something on my face?"

She tossed her head to the side. "Tch. Stubborn brat."

Oh? Someone among the Sarkaz actually called him that?

It happened to be his free time, and Theresica became interested. He threatened her, "I'm the king of Kazdel. Aren't you afraid I'll have the guards arrest you for calling me that?"

"King? Kazdel has only one king! His Majesty Theresa!"

She curled her lip. "You're just a brat. If you weren't His Majesty Theresa's younger brother, I'd drag you down from that throne myself. It isn't a place you should be sitting. Come on, call me big sister."

"Big sister."

Theresica called her that with a smile, but she suddenly froze, because the pommel of a sword with tree-shaped patterns was pressed against the back of her head.

"Your Majesty?"

Shining had gone to retrieve documents for Theresica. She returned at that moment and happened to witness the scene.

"It's fine. I was just relaxing a little. Thank you, unnamed big sister."

Theresica took the documents, waved to her, and turned to walk into the office area. Shining remained where she was, looking at the female Sarkaz crouched on the ground.

"Guards."

The guards had been waiting for a long time, but had never heard His Majesty call for them. They immediately surrounded the woman with grim expressions.

Although they had been far away, their hearing was quite good.

W: "Fuck."

Theresica had Shining bring him two documents. One concerned Oripathy.

Common diseases in Terra were no longer much of a problem for Kazdel. Improvements in living conditions and the development of medical resources had made these diseases seem insignificant. Oripathy, however, had seen no progress at all.

Terra did have suppressants for Oripathy, but they were simply too expensive. Covering Kazdel's entire population would be impossible even if the entire treasury were invested in it, and it would leave everyone else with full bellies.

The other document concerned the cultivation of Yanese crops in Kazdel.

The result was equally troubling. Kazdel's soil simply could not keep these plants alive! Wei Yenwu had been right.

Does Kazdel really have to keep importing grain in such massive quantities forever?

It was frustrating. He actually knew how to solve the problem. Earth's elementary school textbooks had already provided the answer. They could develop hybrid crops adapted to the environment, or combine greenhouses with soilless cultivation and completely replace the environment.

The key problem was that he knew nothing about any of it. His textbooks back then had contained only a few sentences. Who understood the technology involved?

I should have studied agriculture.

Theresica scratched his head in frustration. There really was not a single person on the Sarkaz side who knew how to handle plants.

After thinking it over, Theresica ultimately decided to visit Columbia. There were many problems that, for now, could truly only be solved there.

This time, he did not take only Shining. He also called Warfarin, Salus, Jian, and a whole group of Shapeshifters.

Some things could not be done, but had to be done anyway.

Suppressants

After the landship traveled through the desert for some time, Theresica and his group finally arrived at the Colombian mobile city of Trimount.

However, there had been a small change in their numbers. Theresica had additionally brought Ptilopsis and Mel. Both were native Colombians, and the Colombian New Year holiday was fast approaching. Ptilopsis and Mel had worked in Kazdel for over a year. If they did not get even one vacation, he would be utterly inhuman.

Theresica directly gave them a month of paid leave. In accordance with Colombian customs, he also gave them an additional holiday allowance and bought a gift for each of their family members.

"Mel, Joyce, I hope you both have a pleasant vacation."

Theresica smiled as he instructed them, "Mel, remember to look after Joyce. Don't let her fall asleep on the road."

"Yes, boss."

Mel was visibly excited. In Kazdel, she had her own assigned workshop, fully equipped with facilities and assistants, as well as ample funding. It was monotonous there, but it was where she pursued her dreams.

This was her home, where she could enjoy life.

Ptilopsis mechanically waved several times at a fixed angle and frequency before Mel pulled her toward the pedestrian street.

"Come on, Joyce. We haven't gone shopping at a supermarket in ages. Maybe they've released something we haven't seen before."

"I must remind you that this is not Kazdel. Under the Colombian Infected Management Act, we..."

The two gradually disappeared into the distance. At the same time, Ferdinand and Saria were walking over from nearby. They had come specifically to welcome them.

"Long time no see, Mr. Ferdinand, Ms. Saria." Theresica waved to them.

"It's wonderful that you're all right. We couldn't reach you for so long. If you hadn't sent us a letter earlier, we wouldn't have known what to do."

Ferdinand looked relieved, and Saria also nodded.

"Yes. We heard that a disaster suddenly broke out in Kazdel, followed by a war with Kazimierz. We were very worried."

"Don't worry. I value my life."

Theresica smiled and introduced the two to them. "This is the advisor I brought with me this time, Warfarin."