Enlightened Empire

"Alright, that's enough of that." Corco clapped loudly to drive away the sullen mood in the room. "Was there anything else left to report?"

Although the king was eager to get work done, Fadelio's head was still down. However, when he heard about the report, he gripped his notes tighter, and began to read. For once, Corco didn't interrupt him and waited until his friend had composed himself once more. Thus, the two just sat in silence, one of them buried in his notes, the other watching. Finally, when Fadelio's head popped up again, his expression was firm. Maybe he had composed himself, or maybe he had put on his mask to fool Corco, but he really didn't have the time or energy to care anymore. All that mattered was that his attendant had returned to work mode once more.

"There are two more matters left to deal with," Fadelio said while holding up his notes, as if their previous argument had never existed. "First off, we've received a first quarterly report from our officials out in the newly occupied territories."

"I'm guessing that there were a few problems, huh?" Corco joked.

None of them had expected the locals in the newly occupied estates to welcome the forces of the central government with open arms. However, Fadelio's frown told the king that they might still have underestimated the problem.

"More than just a few," he said. "In general, many of our officials have been marginalized. They often get no access to any papers, or other documentation at all. Most local officials simply pretend that the documents never existed in the first place. It's an absurd tactic, but the few officials sent to every estate can't just search through every room on the territory on their own until they find the relevant documents. In the end, their hands are tied, so they've achieved precious little. In most estates, our officials still don't know how many taxes have been received there the previous year, how many people and warriors are living in the territory, or much farmland is being worked. Essentially, they don't have any relevant figures, so they cannot refute whatever bogus claim the local officials are making."

"It seems like even without their masters, the local loyalists have taken matters into their own hands," Corco commented. Of course, the local interest groups would try to retain a hold on power, but he had expected their resistance to be weaker. After all, it hadn't been long since their defeat in the war, and the miracle king's prestige was still in full swing.

"Some of our officials have even been attacked by bandits, which they suspect have been working for the local officials."

Fadelio's words completely shattered Corco's illusions of a peaceful takeover.

"Wait, an attack?" the king asked in shock, and jumped out of his seat. Would he have to deal with another rebellion right after he got done crushing the last one? Luckily, Fadelio's next words alleviated Corco's worst concerns.

"Don't worry, no one has died. In fact, no one has even been injured so far," the attendant said. "It seems like they all understand that the army will thoroughly clean up their estate as soon as you give us an excuse to do so. In consequence, they've never harmed or directly disobeyed our people. It's all just been intimidation and passive disobedience so far."

"Okay, so what's the problem then? Just send some people out to solve it. As soon as we have some muscle down there, those officials won't be so brazen anymore, right? Intimidation will no longer work if we have strong forces, at least not unless they want to fight us openly, which would not end well for them. And if we can show enough strength, we can probably win over some ambitious or cowardly locals, who'll work with us and give us access to the data we need to take control."

"Sure, we've been trying exactly that, but it's not that simple," Fadelio replied. His sigh sounded tired. "It takes days until messages from those remote estates reach Saniya, and sending back reinforcements takes weeks more. By the time our men arrive, whatever was an issue at that time has already been resolved. Documents have reappeared, bandits have vanished, etcetera. However, our troops can't just stay there without reason, or we'll receive pressure from the lords, even from our allies. So in the end, the reinforcements have to go back without doing anything. Essentially, our main problem is poor communication and transportation between Saniya and these remote estates. At this rate, we're just wasting resources chasing shadows, and it's not speeding up our takeover any."

"What do you mean, bad communication and transportation? What about the roads we're building? And the beacon towers?" a confused Corco asked. Hadn't they wrestled over the cost of those things not too long ago, just to get these infrastructure projects done as quickly as possible?

"Those are far from finished," Fadelio explained the core issue. "And it seems like the local officials understand the cause of their current advantages, and are not eager to give them up. As a result, progress on infrastructure projects in those estates has been even slower than the progress on anything else."

"So we need more support to improve infrastructure, but we can't send support because of poor infrastructure. What a mess," Corco concluded. "I'm guessing you've already workshopped a plan with the relevant departments?"

"Yes, though I wasn't too sure about the solution, because it would need your express permission," Fadelio prefaced, before he presented his ideas. "I was hoping we could get permission to build and send out a few more radios. This way, our communications problem would be solved right away, without the need to wait for the construction of the beacon towers. Additionally, we could also set up forts for smaller troops further inland, which would speed up our response time even further and tighten our grip on those areas."

"But the forts have to be built just the same as any other piece of infrastructure," Corco argued. He really wasn't happy with this solution at all. "And this is essentially what the beacon towers were meant to do anyways. Inside every tower, we can park a few soldiers who can respond to local emergencies. But if we can't build the towers, we obviously can't build the forts either."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a temporary camp, like during a military campaign," Fadelio explained, which made Corco pause the rant he was about to unleash. Finally, the attendant had come up with a useful proposal.

"In that case, I think it's a good idea. Each of our old military squads already have all the supplies and training they need to set up a camp independently, so just send out a few squads and park them on the edges of those rebellious territories," Corco decided, before he criticized the second half of Fadelio's plan. "But it's still a no on the radios. Those are state secrets, and they give us a decisive edge in intelligence work. I won't risk their discovery over something relatively minor like this. Plus, we couldn't make many more radios even if we wanted to. Our technology is too bad for now, so we can only blast the radio waves across a stupidly broad frequency to make sure they arrive on the other side. Since we can't make separate, stable communications channels yet, we simply can't have that many radios, or it'll all just be constant noise on there."

As usual, talking helped Corco think. Thus, while he thought, he slowly developed a solution to their issues at the same time. Though of course, today's solution didn't require all too much creativity. All he had to do was draw from the wealth of knowledge in his head. Maybe, he thought, it was high time for another large step forward.

"So the radios are a no-go then," Fadelio concluded. Surprisingly, he didn't fight Corco over the decision. Though apparently, he had already guessed his friend's thoughts. "From the way you're looking, you already have a solution, right, Laqhis?"

"You're not wrong," a satisfied Corco shot back. "If we need a way to speed up communication and troop movement, then we just have to invent one. Our city is getting too large to traverse on foot anyways, so this is the perfect time to transform our transportation and jump ahead a few hundred years."

Finally, Fadelio put down his notes again, and stared at Corco. While the king was still feeling self-satisfied about his clean solution, his attendant looked frustrated again, for some reason.

"If we were faster with releasing these kinds of innovations, we wouldn't have to deal with all these problems all the time," he huffed. "I just don't understand why you don't simply reveal this stuff earlier, and only show it off once we're approaching a catastrophe."

"That's because progress is a weapon," Corco patiently explained. Though of course, he really wasn't impatient. After all, he was always happy to start a lecture, and show off in the process. "Every piece of new technology can potentially solve a problem like this our of nowhere. And every time we do that, it will catch our enemies off guard. Not only that, progress can even be used to avert an economic crisis, or to dismantle private monopolies legally. Like, for example..."

The king fixed his posture to sit more comfortably, in preparation of a lengthy tangent. "Imagine if we just introduced a more efficient way to print paper. In that case, only the larger printing shops would be able to afford the new technology, and then they would use that new tech to price out and swallow up the smaller shops. All we wanted was reduce the cost of printing to spur some progress, but we've essentially created a private monopoly in the process. And then that monopoly starts raising prices — because who's gonna stop them? — which essentially undoes all our hard work. However, if we wait until such a monopoly forms on its own, the same technology can remove that company's monopoly status. All their old equipment would suddenly be obsolete, so new competitors would have the chance to enter the market catch up, so long as we give patent authorization to those new companies."

Once his tangent was over, Corco reached for his drink to take a sip. Only half-way through did he realize that his glass had been kidnapped. Thus, the king had to finish up his explanation with a dry throat.

"Plus, it's a smarter long-term strategy if we don't rush ahead of our enemies too much," he continued. "Rather than jump into the atomic age, it's better if we make slow progress, to guarantee that we're always only a step or two ahead. That way, even if they try their best to catch up, we'll retain our technological advantage for a long time. In comparison, if we jump ahead to the end of the tech tree straight away, our enemies will still catch up eventually, and then we won't have any advantage left. Rather, if they just copy everything we put out, they'll catch up much faster if we're way ahead from the start. And from a strategic perspective, it makes no difference how large our technological advantage is. So long as it still exists, the edge we get in international conflicts will basically be the same."

Once Corco was done with his satisfying lecture, he leaned back. Whenever he got to talking, he had a hard time trying to contain himself. Thus, he only noticed now that everything he had said had been a bit pointless.

"But you should know all of that," he thus said towards his attendant. "We've talked about all of these things before. Not that I mind explaining it again."

"I mean, I know," an awkward Fadelio replied. "I'm just frustrated, and venting at all the pointless work I had to do. Just ignore me."

"In that case, let's talk about that final issue on your notes and get our pointless work done for today," Corco joked. "I think we've both earned some time off, if only for an evening."

"Right, let's get this over with," Fadelio said. Finally, the two of them were in agreement over something. "Brym has requested official permission to temporarily leave his positions as finance minister and head of the central bank to travel north. Though he'll probably talk to you directly about this, he still wanted to go through the official channels first."

Although Corco was looking forward to his well-deserved time off, the last issue of the day still aroused his vigilance. What was so important that Brym had to go north in person?

"Is something wrong with the businesses?" he guessed. After all, their 'Wonders of the World' shops in the two northern kingdoms contributed to a considerable portion of their yearly revenue by this point. Maybe Corco's decision to start using the shops for intelligence gathering had been too hasty. However, Fadelio's head shake alleviated the king's worst fears.

"No, it's about the bond matter again," the attendant explained.

"I thought his reconstruction bonds were selling well enough?" Corco wondered. Although he hadn't received the first major report on the issue yet, he had still felt the light-footed attitude coming from the finance people these days. For the first time in a while, it seemed like the kingdom didn't have any money problems.

"Yes, progress has been slow at first, but the aggressive advertising has helped a lot," Fadelio explained. "Many warriors from the destroyed territories have bought bonds out of a sense of duty, and some commoners with too much money and no idea what to do with it have followed as well. All in all, the project has been quite fruitful so far. However, Brym said he had a plan to sell even more bonds up north, which would obviously be a good thing, for various reasons."

"Then let him go."

"You don't wanna check the plan first? What if it's a mess?" Fadelio asked, with one brow raised. However, Corco waved away his attendant's concerns.

"Nah, Brym knows what he's doing," he said, and stood up, ready to leave for an evening with his wife. "Neither of us is even just half the salesman he is. If we meddle, we'd only make things worse. So just let him do it, and give him whatever support he needs. I think the two of us are better off taking a break for once, I feel like we both need it."