The More Advanced, the More Backward

With the Blue Cat Tribe chief's submission, Lynn had the chief contact everyone he could reach, and then began discussing matters step by step.

Having a claim was useful. Negotiations over many matters proceeded quickly, and the process and outcome were more or less the same.

Of course, there were still a few thorns who refused to submit.

"We were prepared to fight to the death! Why did Your Highness surrender first?!"

The Tiger demi-human chief stood over two meters tall. He knelt on the ground and wept bitterly, clad in a muscle-shaped suit of bronze armor. His soldiers had already laid down their weapons and were surrounded.

Many of the Cat demi-humans nearby had been frightened badly.

While Lynn was continuously negotiating, he went to the Cat demi-human tribe that had taken in the Tiger demi-humans. The Tiger demi-humans refused to submit, so they fought. Grenades directly blasted dozens of Tiger demi-humans, leaving some dead and others wounded.

Everyone witnessed their power.

"Everyone, the humans are defiling Her Highness the Princess!"

"Don't you have any reaction at all?"

The surrounding demi-human chiefs looked at one another, none daring to speak.

"Submit, or die." Lynn had temporarily learned some demi-human language.

A mixture of kindness and authority was best. There could not be kindness without authority.

"Lilim, raise the symbol of your kingship. Hurry and make them submit to you—I will help you punish the disloyal." Lynn said righteously as he held Lilim in his arms, looking every bit the loyal minister.

Yet to outsiders, it looked no matter how one saw it like an evil human was coercing the demi-human princess.

"Tiger demi-human chief, I did not surrender to the humans. We are integrating, because we are all People of the Land of Extreme Cold. What you are doing is racial discrimination."

"Chiefs, do any of you have objections?" Lilim swept her gaze over the chiefs around her.

"No, no, no."

"Good. Those willing to submit will become local officials and village chiefs. Then we will establish Commissioner jurisdictions, form councils, and collect taxes. In return, Aningsbe will provide you with technology, such as food cultivation techniques. At the same time, we will begin mineral extraction."

Lilim said to the Tiger demi-human chief, "I think this Tiger demi-human chief has caused the deaths of so many Tiger demi-humans that he no longer deserves to be chief. Therefore, the Tiger demi-humans should elect a new chief, shouldn't they?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

The Tiger demi-human chief was then taken away. After that, the rest of the meetings became much easier to discuss, and the process was basically smooth throughout.

After all, this was not colonial exploitation. It was Her Highness the Princess reclaiming lost territory.

Having a claim really was useful.

After all that, along with reasonable calculations, there was no longer any need to worry about iron ore output. Allocated according to the excellent production relations of the industrial age, a few hundred people could meet the demand for fifty tons of iron ore per day.

Magic Beasts would be used for transport in place of trains. There were no Railroad Tracks for the moment, so they would use Wooden Tracks. Perfect.

Once all that was done, the next piece of the diplomatic puzzle was selling Artificial Silk.

Artificial Silk was easy to sell. Any merchant who touched the fabric would buy it immediately, so there was no need to fear a shortage of funds.

As for making firearms and cannons.

After putting it into practice, Lynn discovered that there was only one real difficulty: primers. Everything else was no problem. Because they used electric arc steelmaking, the performance of his steel was excellent. In other words, making drill bits was especially easy.

High Carbon Steel drill bits.

Lynn remembered that in the eighteenth century, people would add tungsten ore powder and chromium ore powder during steelmaking to produce Alloy Steel. This could also be slowly tested—for instance, by building a particularly small electric-arc blast furnace for experiments. There was a direction to follow anyway; they could simply use the exhaustive method.

Using manual drilling to make gun barrels was fine. Once they made a hand-operated drilling machine tool, the real limitation on drilling was cooling.

After drilling for a stretch each time, they had to cool it for fifteen minutes. Fortunately, Lynn came up with a way to use magic for cooling. The Dwarves could not use Magic Runes, but what did that have to do with Lynn and Lilim, the two magic geniuses?

Those two useless ones were the dregs among geniuses, because they were astonishingly alike: whenever someone above them had their backs, they had absolutely no desire to work hard.

In truth, both of them learned magic-related matters very quickly. For example, developing Magic Runes was effortless for them.

After the drill bits were inscribed with Magic Runes and combined with the Elves' nature-magic method—absorbing magic power from nature—it became much easier to dissipate heat, though it was not dramatically stronger.

Lynn tested water cooling combined with intermittent drilling. A single gun barrel could be made in just three hours.

If they used Magic Rune cooling, it could be made in one hour. Correspondingly, however, rune masters would have to painstakingly inscribe the runes.

As for Lynn's Dwarf craftsmen, they truly were the sort to speak plainly. It was not that they could not afford to learn runes—they simply could not learn them at all!

Training a rune master was not as worthwhile as training workers.

As for the flintlock mechanism, that was manageable too. The Dwarves could handle it.