What was war?
Theus no longer had the energy to ponder such philosophical questions. To him, war meant endless meetings, endless documents to approve, and endless affairs to handle.
He remembered having designed a civil service system to help share the workload. What were they all doing?
Oh, they seemed to be working overtime too. Rumor had it that even Chloe, that corpse, had been so exhausted that she fell asleep in the Tribunal—
—and fell off the table.
Everyone was busy.
Castel had already become a massive industrial nation, with a complete set of intricate and complicated mechanisms keeping it running. Redirecting it was an immensely complex process.
Sorting out production lines and their corresponding workers, transporting and importing or exporting raw materials, allocating and tallying production capacity...
Nearly all of it had to be handled at once, with constant supervision and improvements to prevent mistakes from appearing and spreading.
In his previous life, Theus had only been an engineer. What industry had he worked in again...? He could not remember clearly. In any case, he had never had experience managing an entire country.
Looking at it now, it was fortunate that he had copied over an entire administrative system, barely keeping the whole industrial apparatus running.
Theus stared at the document before him for a long while, yet not a single word entered his mind. The neat rows of text seemed to twist and distort, fighting atop his desk, while his heavy eyelids wanted to descend from above and crush the entire world.
He shook his head, but this time he could not shake off the exhaustion. Theus rubbed his forehead, trying to rouse himself, but it did little good.
He was too tired. He needed rest.
Absentmindedly massaging his scalp, Theus remembered that he seemed to have