Chapter 195 : Orthodox of the Continent? I Can Be One Too
Chapter 195: Orthodox of the Continent? I Can Be One Too
Chernit had been recaptured by the Tsarist Nation after nearly two months of prolonged tug-of-war fighting. A total of 25 Saint Tsar Tanks had entered the battle; 7 were lost due to non-combat attrition, while the remaining 18 were destroyed, resulting in the complete annihilation of the entire unit.
However, before being destroyed, they had successfully thrown the Church Army’s carefully arranged defensive lines into complete disarray, creating an excellent opportunity for the main force’s subsequent frontal assault.
Over the two months of fighting, total casualties on both sides had accumulated to over four hundred thousand soldiers. Most were ordinary troops, but there were also tens of thousands of mages among the casualties, the majority of whom were Mechanical Body operators.
Now, it was instead the Church Army that had been pushed back to Golotsk State, holding their ground and awaiting reinforcements, waiting for more armed civilians conscripted from the homeland to arrive at the battlefield.
Meanwhile, the Tsarist Nation’s envoy stationed in the Alliance immediately rushed to the Seris Alliance General Armaments Department to negotiate the details of new arms trade agreements.
In addition to ordering tanks on the scale of an entire division, he tentatively inquired whether it was possible to purchase tank technology. They were also willing to pay for weapon technologies in any other domain.
The request for tank technology was rejected on the spot by the Alliance officials responsible for the negotiations, with absolutely no room for discussion. However, the Alliance was willing to produce customized self-propelled systems, weapon systems, and the required finished engines for them.
In simpler terms: the Alliance knew that even if they bought tanks, they would dismantle and modify them anyway. So it was better to directly manufacture according to their needs—once they returned, they could produce their own armor plating and simply assemble the parts for use.
With this semi-finished approach, Seris cargo ships could transport more units at once. Due to customization, the price was even several percent higher than directly selling light tanks—yet it remained a highly profitable deal.
As for technologies such as the Maxim heavy machine gun and the LB-11 (optical sight) Rifle, the Alliance did loosen its stance and was willing to discuss technology resale. The asking price was not high—in fact, it was quite affordable—and the cooperation was quickly finalized.
The Alliance had no obligation to help them adapt production to local conditions or manufacture finished products. It only provided technical blueprints; industrial equipment had to be purchased separately.
In any case, if they failed to produce finished products, they could simply buy them from the Alliance—bulk discounts available.
Of course, the price of industrial equipment would certainly not be pleasant.
As for whether selling radial engines and self-propelled tracked chassis separately would lead to technological reverse engineering—the chassis was uncertain, but the radial engine was absolutely impossible.
Even in the industrial field, this kind of engine belonged to relatively sophisticated configurations. Understanding it just by disassembly would already be a miracle—especially for these double- and triple-layer nested multi-cylinder engines. Figuring out how their linkage and work cycles operated would take an unknown amount of time.
No more than a few minutes after the Tsarist envoy left, a representative of the Church entered in disheveled clothes. It seemed he had run into the Tsarist Nation’s people at the entrance, and the two sides had conducted a “friendly and cordial exchange.”
The Church’s purpose was largely the same. They were tired of smuggling back and forth and directly shamelessly came to negotiate with the Alliance, hoping to acquire artillery and tank technology.
Tank technology, of course, was not for sale. However, the Seris Alliance did not mind designing a finished tank tailored to their requirements, with performance roughly comparable to that of the Tsarist Nation.
A situation where evenly matched opponents clashed was exactly what the Alliance wanted to see.
In a certain sense, the existence of the Seris Alliance had invisibly increased the competitive pressure on the nations of the Main Continent.
This pressure was comprehensive. In the past, nations competed in the quantity and quality of mages. With the advent of Mechanical Bodies, they began competing in the number of Mechanical Soldiers. Up to this point, things were still within a controllable range.
But Seris’s large-scale machine production model completely wiped out the previously stable system, dragging everyone onto the same level—whether they were mages or anything else.
A mage’s life was valuable. Training a mid- to high-level mage required more than twenty years of time, along with education and materials.
Mechanical Soldiers also required massive resources for purchase, training, and cultivation.
But did the lives of the lower-class civilians count as lives? Different people had different answers.
Yet regardless of the answer, in a wartime environment, both sides were ultimately nothing more than numbers with different values.
And the vast base population of the lower and middle classes meant that as long as the enemy’s defenses could be broken, they could inevitably be overwhelmed through sheer numbers.
Ordinary soldiers now held little value. To break a high-level mage’s shield with a bolt-action rifle required at least a dozen shots, followed by one or two more to finish the kill—opportunities that ordinary soldiers rarely had.
But a mid-level mage could no longer withstand even two rifle shots.
If one extended the timeline, it became clear that even if weapons never iterated again, even if the exchange ratio against high-level magic was 1 to 100, it did not matter.
The base population, rate of production, and learning cost were simply not on the same level.
Twenty years could allow a well-fed civilian population to grow exponentially—but how many mages could graduate in twenty years?
A bullet fired by an eight-year-old child holding a rifle would not be any less powerful than one fired by an adult. This was the most terrifying aspect of how industry amplified warfare.
And Seris had already opened this Pandora’s box. As long as the continent had not been unified, as long as kingdoms and empires still operated under feudal enfeoffment systems, and as long as wars and conflicts continued to exist—
The survival pressure on mages would only increase irreversibly. What she had done was to strike at the root, severing the orderly inheritance of mages on the Main Continent.
Before Seris was born, even the lowest-level mage was a noble. He could humiliate civilians at will, and they would not even dare show anger in their eyes—otherwise, death was their only outcome.
Yet in just a few decades, a low-level mage could be felled with a single shot; a mid-level mage could withstand two; and even high-level mages would be blown apart under concentrated fire.
This was exactly what Mitia meant by dragging her opponents down to her level and then defeating them with superior experience.
The Alliance’s LB-11 standard rifle had already been promoted everywhere it could be. In the future, she would package and sell the technical data to various nations, along with the 75mm Rapid-fire Field Gun and Maxim heavy machine gun technologies.
She would help them solve all technical difficulties until they could achieve mass production of weapons—even tanks had begun to be exported.
When a nation faced life and death, it would spare no cost to continue existing. Taking up arms for external war was the simplest and most direct method.
Saint-level powerhouses were formidable?
Aside from the existing Saint-level and Divine Rank beings, with capital rapidly developing, internal and external contradictions continuously accumulating, and war accelerating military iteration—how many mages could still live long enough to reach Saint-level?
And which nation—or which lord or noble—could refuse the opportunity to arm themselves quickly at low cost? Even if you refused, what if your enemy equipped themselves with new weapons?
With so many weapons in hand and large numbers of civilians armed into armies, would it not be a waste not to deploy them?
If your neighboring territory saw this, would they not also spend money to equip themselves? And thus, an arms race would begin.
As the situation on the Main Continent grew increasingly turbulent and unpredictable, the Alliance—watching from across the river—remained completely unaffected.
Given enough time, one side would be utterly devastated in war while the other developed steadily.
At that point, who would be recognized as the orthodox power of the continent would no longer be certain.