Chapter 752 — Growth

Whatever change had befallen the Storm Lord's divine seat, Gao Yang clearly had no way of getting an answer out of this Abyssal Harmonizer currently fiddling with the tip of its tail.

In fact, it seemed the entire siren race was still in a state of bewilderment.

He could not help but pinch his chin, lean back in the high-backed chair, and let his roiling thoughts wander where they would.

The news Tyr had brought stirred in him an urge he could scarcely suppress—an urge to journey into the deep sea, to the far side of the Endless Sea, to look with his own eyes upon the sirens' realm, or upon the Storm Lord's corpse, and to verify certain judgments of his own.

Yet he could not do it—not only because he could not casually abandon the empire so recently founded, but even more because the Cecil Empire did not yet possess the maritime technology to cross the Endless Ocean.

And at the words "maritime technology," Gao Yang could not help but recall another matter that troubled him: the Cecil Empire currently had no suitable outlet to the sea.

Most of the Cecil Empire lay inland; its southern, eastern, and western regions had no coastline at all. The only coastline lay in the Far North, beyond the mountains of the Northern Territory—and that was undeveloped land. Its savage climate, the barrier of the mountains, and the perils of the ocean itself had kept the old Kingdom of Anzu from even considering its development for hundreds of years.

But that place could not be left to waste forever.

Gao Yang lifted his head, his gaze passing over the tip of Tyr's swaying tail to settle on the full map of the continent not far away.

Beyond the mountains of Anzu's Far North, farther north than that coastline, there was not simply emptiness.

Across a narrow strait, one first saw a vast island, and upon that island stood the Violet Kingdom, renowned as the nation of mages. East of the Violet Kingdom, the territory of the Holy Dragon Duchy jutted out from the Loren Continent into the shape of a horse's head, then folded back westward into a peninsula whose tip likewise gazed across the distance at the mountains of the Northern Territory.

In the bygone Anzu era, the northern nations had been all but synonymous with mystery and remoteness. The closed nature of the feudal dynasties themselves, compounded by the objective inconvenience of travel, had left connections between the northern states exceedingly thin; border nobles maintaining basic exchanges plus a trickle of private merchant caravans had already been the limit. The so-called "international activity" of the old era amounted to no more than that.

Take the Violet Kingdom: between that mysterious nation of mages and Anzu lay only the narrow "Northern Strait." That stretch of water itself belonged to the "safe zone" of the Endless Sea, free of storms and magical turbulence, yet the two sides still had no fixed "routes." Exchange between the two nations depended solely on a handful of adventurer-like captains making a limited number of "private voyages," or on transcendents simply crossing the sea by their own power.

As for the Holy Dragon Duchy, matters were somewhat better—after all, that nation still shared a land border with the Cecil Empire. But the Holy Dragon Duchy exceeded even the Violet Kingdom in conservatism and secrecy, so that despite the land connection, strangers from the Holy Dragon Duchy were almost never seen within old Anzu's borders. Instead, it was among the various mage organizations, great and small, of the royal capital that one occasionally encountered traveling scholars from the Violet Kingdom.

Most of those mages crossed the strait directly by virtue of transcendent power; a small number came to the Loren Continent by private ship.

In the old days, all of this had been the norm.

But in the new order Gao Yang had planned, in the coming tide of international trade, the boom in studying abroad, the layout of a northern-continent transportation network—such a state of affairs would be broken sooner or later.

He had already tried laying railways in the Augrey Tribal Lands to the west, and in the future he intended to pry open the tightly shut doors of the Holy Dragon Duchy. The Violet Kingdom, too, was a target of the Cecil Empire's trade activities, to be hauled aboard the great ship called the "Cecil Settlement Zone."

Magitech trains could solve the problem of overland transport; reopening the circumnorthern-continent routes of seven hundred years ago was another problem Gao Yang had to consider.

And even setting aside the Cecil Settlement Zone plan, setting aside the need to connect with other nations by sea, challenging the ocean was a step the Cecil Empire must take.

People could not confine themselves to land forever—all the more so since the existence of sirens and dragons constantly reminded Gao Yang that this world was still very large.

……

"The world outside is huge!"

Byron sat at the dining table in his home, addressing the young girl across from him with a somewhat exaggerated expression. A bit of bread crust still clung to the corner of his mouth, and as he spoke he looked smug, tinged with a hint of showing off.

"From Boulder north along the Gorgon River toward the old royal capital, the plains out that way are nothing like the Southern Territory...

"...I was busy fighting back then—monsters everywhere along the east bank, so I just directed the warships to hit them with shells and beams. You've seen the cannons on the training ground, right? The main guns on Dad's ship are bigger than those...

"Saint Sunil has tall walls, and outside the walls there are angled bastions—much taller than the walls of Tanzan and Kant. I saw with my own eyes the Cecil banner raised there... Don't you believe a word of what your Uncle Philip says. I really was there on the spot—sure, the flagship was anchored a bit far from the walls, but I could still see it..."

The girl seated across the table smiled faintly, leaned forward, and wiped the bread crumbs from the corner of Byron's mouth with her fingertip, making a sound of "mm-ah."

The sound signified a small reproof.

More than four years had passed, and the once scrawny, unremarkable little mute girl now had something of a graceful, slender figure. Good nutrition and training under her knight father's guidance had made Pea shoot up rapidly; her once coarse skin had grown healthy and rosy, and her messy, withered yellow hair now hung soft and smooth over her shoulders. Sitting there, she was almost unrecognizable as her former self.

Yet she was just as she had been back then: she loved hearing Byron tell those embellished, self-glorifying stories.

"Oh, it's fine—no need to fuss over details when eating at home," Byron said, waving his hand carelessly. "I finally get some leave... Oh, right, Pea, how did your final assessments go last week?"

Pea smiled with a touch of pride, reached over for a writing slate, and swiftly wrote a string of words on it, holding it up for her adoptive father across the table.

"Overall... A plus. Hey, not bad at all," Byron said, and once he had made out the words he happily slapped his thigh—then, rubbing his leg, he looked at his adopted daughter. "What reward do you want?"

Pea thought for a moment, wiped the slate clean, and swiftly wrote another line, holding it up again:

"Come home safe from now on."

Byron stared at the slate, froze for a moment, and then could not help but burst out laughing.

"Haha, you don't need to worry about me. I may not know much, but I'm very good at staying alive. It's your Uncle Philip you should worry about—he's still out at Long Wind Fortress miserably helping build the defense line. That fellow wears a look of noble self-sacrifice all day long; he's bound to die before I do..."