Time under the tutillage of the Great Rank 3 Mage felt like a raging river, unceasingly travelling forward. Eric yawned as he closed another book his mentor had forced him to read, before stretching his hands.
*Thwack*
A piece of chalk found its way onto his head. The chalk flew through the Rank 2 barrier he kept on at all times, despite having an offensive spell as his passive spell.
As it turned out, his mentor was indeed right; Eric had a talent for magic. He had a strange innate ability to convert the mana he absorbed into a higher form of mana, allowing him to utilise what he called ultimate mana for whatever Rank he was in, which was currently Rank 2.
With this ability, he was able to constantly keep his Rank 2 defensive spell active all the time, just like his mentor instructed him to keep.
But the chalk did not stop at the barrier. It did not break it either. It simply passed through it as though the barrier did not exist.
'No, this must be the space runes mentor is studying. That meant the chalk likely existed in a space beyond the ordinary space…' Eric rubbed the back of his head indignantly before opening the book once more.
The room returned to silence, and Eric continued to absorb knowledge, forcefully shoving more and more magical information into his mind that desperately tried to forget everything.
…
While Eric became an adult physically, crossing the age of 25, his heart remained that of a child.
Elsewhere, the heart of industry was beating rapidly…
In the capital of Hohenzollern, a nation originally built on the wealthy preying on the weak, while forcing a puppet monarch to perform to their wishes, later destroyed and rebuilt as an entirely puppet nation to the German Reich, an industrial revolution was rapidly spreading.
Once the German Reich took over, they removed the royal line in the nation, while also dealing with all the oligarchs and just about anyone who held any power within the nation. This left a power vacuum, which would have otherwise resulted in the creation of organisations like gangs and a powerful underworld to develop.
However, the German Reich mobilised its military logistical departments into Hohenzollern, rapidly taking control of the nation from the ground up.
But they did not change much, just ensuring people, money, and military were firmly in their control, allowing for the nation to develop naturally.
And this freedom resulted in multiple rapid innovations, one of which was the cornerstone for the industrial revolution it was currently undergoing; the steam engine.
Unlike Earth's development, the technology on Neues Reich was fundamentally skewed in the direction of warfare. As such, despite having weapons like guns, they had not invented steam engines or fertilisers yet, resulting in rather poor conditions for individuals.
Although this was good for the collective energy James earned, he had realised through the war that those Rank 3 Magi who died on the battlefield gave him significantly more collective energy than normal individuals. Rank 1 to 2 did not give any substantial extra benefit, but Rank 3 definitely gave more.
And for more Rank 3 to appear, pressure needed to be put on all the nations once again after a period of recovery. And for this, a technological nation was vital, as magic naturally took time to result in higher ranks, and oftentimes led to stagnation.
As such, he was overjoyed when the sole purpose of ensuring the survival of the technological nation proved its success in the form of the steam engine, and how rapidly the nation was utilising the invention.
Its first use was in a piston, but it was used in a very different way, cooling steam inside a cylinder to pull a piston using vacuum rather than the other way around. But it was still something, and these were used in mines to help speed up draining of water from mines and allowing the miners to collect resources faster.
Within 10 years, the rotary steam engines became popular, and well refined, allowing for steam engines to move out of remote mines and into textile mills, flour mills, and iron blast furnaces.
Factories could finally be built anywhere instead of relying on waterwheels in fast-flowing rivers. This resulted in an explosion of industrial production within Hohenzollern, drastically reducing prices for textile, milled flour, iron, and many others.
Along with this discovery were quite a few others, like improvements in steel-making technologies, but the steam engine was still some time away.
Still, James expected that the manufacturing prowess of Hohenzollern would allow it to rapidly rise to at least third place among the various nations, if not second, just purely on their gross domestic product.
Speaking of value, James discovered that although the various nations had their own currencies, they were mostly coins in precious metals, but after the Great War, the collapsing economies of the losing nations; the Kalmar Union, and the split nations from the previous United States, as well as the complete puppet nation of Hohenzollern began utilising the German Reich's Marks for all transactions.
…
Back in the German Reich, in the throne room…
An aged Armin II sat on his throne while a metal device was brought into the room after being disassembled and scanned by guards and researchers, before being reassembled for security reasons.
"So… this is the 'steam engine' that is causing Hohenzollern to improve its productivity so rapidly?" Armin II raised a hairless eyebrow at the seemingly inconsequential-looking device.
The researchers simply bowed without saying anything.
The monarch waved his hand the the group of researchers immediately began lighting a fire inside the device, and then feeding it coal, as the device began billowing ash from the burning coal.
Thankfully, there were plenty of Magi present in the room, as they funneled the dark black smoke out of the window, preventing the room from becoming filled with it.
Armin II turned to his magical technological minister, "Can it be used as a power source in Magic tools and artefacts?"
"Perhaps. It would not need Magi to input magic power all the time, although it cannot entirely replace them, it can allow the same number of Magi to keep many more artefacts active…" The minister responded after thinking for a while.
Armin II then turned to his technological minister, "And what about mortal technology?"
"We can follow the example of Hohenzollern and use it to allow us to create magic-less factories anywhere without the need for waterwheels. Hmm, other than what they use it for, we can also use it to speed up printing of things like newspapers. I have an idea, but if it works successfully, it could be of significant help to the Reich. I will personally take the lead on this matter, my Keiser!" the elderly man had his eyes lit up.
"And what would that be?" Armin II chuckled at the excitement in the old man who was about his own age.
"Transportation! The steam engine allows circular movement, which would then have to be converted via mechanisms for other types of movements used in production. But we can use the circular movement directly to move the circular wheels of carriages to eliminate the need for horses, perhaps even allowing us to carry more than one carriage in linked chained with a single powerful engine!"
The Keiser nodded his head, allowing the old man to pursue his direction, but soon a smile appeared on his face as he turned to the financial minister, "Use the steam engine to produce a back of high-quality and difficult to copy paper notes, like the ones the United States was utilising before we destroyed them. With the steam engine, the cost of producing much higher quality notes should be possible. Make a batch to see just how difficult we can make them to counterfeit. I want it ready by next year. Also prepare economic plans for a shift from direct gold and silver coins to a paper currency backed by gold only."
"We would need a lot of gold for that…" the financial minister frowned, then realised something, "If it is backed by gold, we just need to get everyone to exchange all the gold Marks they have for the paper Marks. then we would have enough gold."
Armin II nodded and turned his attention to the two younger people in the throne room, siding quietly in one corner.
"My two sons, I hope you are learning. This is what you must learn to do. Not only must you quickly understand things from conversations with your ministers and others, but you must also be capable of making rapid yet decisive decisions based on facts."
"You must plan for what is difficult, while life is easy. When it becomes difficult, it is impossible to plan for it," Armin II smiled at his children, both near the same age as he had two wives, giving birth to two children.
Then he turned to his ministers and dismissed them to begin the various plans he had set into motion. There had been enough time to recover from the previous war, and now it was time to push the German Reich further in strength, as the technologies created in Hohenzollern would naturally allow it to rapidly improve its own strength.
'I will not allow the German Reich to wither into mediocrity in my lifetime!' Armin II solemnly swore in his heart as his ministers quickly got to work.
Word count: 1593 words
[AN: I am back writing this due to a few people actually reading it. I had stopped writing it because it seemed like nobody was writing it. Though my irl life is now a lot more complicated than before, so the speed of uploads will be quite slow. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter.]
[AN: Please leave comments on what plot points you wish to see, or ways I can improve the story without rewriting everything. I know my writing is quite flawed, but I doubt I can improve it significantly without investing years of time like other full-time authors. Thank you!]