Black Iron's Glory

Claude took a deep breath. The worst-case scenario he had imagined had appeared. The trading fleet was no more. That wasn’t only the failure of Morssen and the others. It also meant that hundreds of families in Whitestag lost their family members.

Maria wrote in her letter that the news was still under wraps because the royal court was in turmoil over the matter, especially in the case of the strategy regarding their naval forces. The kingdom’s royal navy was of the opinion that they should follow the original strategy they employed, that is, to work with the ground forces to launch an attack on the nations of the anti-Aueras alliance in a strategic strike.

As long as they could occupy the key port cities of those kingdoms and force the enemy to stop the fights and cede the port cities to Aueras. That way, they would have an opportunity to greatly expand their influence at sea. Each port city would have a fleet stationed and they would no longer have to worry about their seven colonies being cut off from the motherland by enemy nations.

Though the kingdom’s royal navy’s strategy seemed like it would work out perfectly, it was still filled with uncertainty and didn’t account for any accidents. Mainly, nobody could make sure whether the kingdom would really win should a war of such magnitude break out.

The most criticized part of the plan was that it required a sacrifice that was far too large to work. To ensure that the war didn’t drag on, the kingdom and the anti-Aueras nations would both be drained horribly and neither would emerge victorious. Should that occur, they wouldn’t be able to achieve their original target in the first place.

The military strategies of this age were mostly drafted on the fly by the elites and carried out by their subordinates accordingly, and the largest weakness with them were that they often underestimated the enemy and overestimated their own capacity. They thought of their own armies as fearless swarms that wouldn’t cover even in the face of countless cannons and guns and thought of the enemy troops as tofu. Most oftenly, the disparity between how it was planned and how things played out was so large that it almost produced the opposite intended effect.

For instance, the plan set by the royal navy wasn’t approved by the ground forces department in the first place. After all, if it really were implemented, the ground forces would be the one that would pay the largest price. With only a single army, they had to fight off a coalition force of five other nations, take their port cities, and hand them to the navy. In other words, the ground forces would be the one who would bleed the most only for the navy to swoop in to claim credit.

Even though the navy also had to face the allied naval force of five nations, the ground forces believe that it was far too ridiculous to go on all out war against five nations just to take their port cities. Did the navy think that the ground forces were invincible? While it probably won’t be a problem for them to take on up to one or two nations, taking on all five at once was out of the question.

The one who opposed this plan the most was the prime minister of the kingdom, Duke Cryus Man Dengkin. His father was none other than Invincible Commander Dubok Man Dengkin, the right-hand man of Stellin IX. That was why he didn’t fear the powerful navy and berated them directly in front of Stellin X. Was the navy drunk? Why did they take it as granted that they would defeat the allied naval forces of the five nations? The allied navy’s number was double that of Aueras’s alone!

The prime minister ripped the strategy the royal navy put forth to shreds before Stellin X and all the other ministers in court, angering the Minister of Admiralty, Count Andreak Feng Carlos, to the point that he tossed his glove to the face of the prime minister publicly. He drew his sword and challenged him to a duel and almost caused a huge commotion in the court.

Stellin X seemed rather torn between the two of them. Andreak was his staunchest supporter ever since he ascended to the throne and helped him develop the kingdom’s naval capabilities to move forward with his plan to expand on Nubissia. He was the one credited with the great achievement of founding Fearless and was one of the king’s most trusted advisors.

But the prime minister, Cryus, was correct. The royal navy’s strategy was full of holes. First, they assumed that the allied navy of the five nations was nothing more than a guard dog that didn’t dare to take the initiative to attack. That was why the navy believed that if Fearless maintained the stalemate, no fight between them would break out, which is why it was taken for granted that the enemy navy would stay put and let surrender after the Auerasian ground forces took the port cities, allowing Fearless to emerge unscathed and expand by collecting the remnants of the enemy navies.

Stellin X didn’t understand why the royal navy was so certain that the enemy navy wouldn’t take the initiative to attack. Andreak’s explanation was that the five nations formed an allied navy and were definitely in a state of disunity. They would want to protect their own navies and wouldn’t be willing to lose any of their own forces by attacking Fearless, so they wouldn’t take the initiative.

Though the reasoning seemed sound, it didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Placing one’s hopes on the enemy’s disunity was a little too optimistic. Stellin X believed that Cryus was right. Since they had found a new route to Nubissia, they should act immediately to route some more of the kingdom’s naval forces there.

Cryus’s plan was for the navy to be separated into two parts. One-third of the fleet would defend Port Neru and maintain order around the eastern waters of the kingdom. Two-thirds on the navy on the other hand would be stationed at Lake Balinga near Whitestag and make the town into a military base administered directly by the kingdom. It would be elevated to city status and a new fleet, Storm, would be formed there to eliminate the pirates along the new trade route and keeping it safe.

As for the 5-kilometer-long waterway stretching from Lake Balinga to Sharkmouth Bay, the kingdom could expand it into a large transport river so that Storm could enter and leave freely. The kingdom should also pause their semi-annual voyages to Nubissia for a year until the new route to Nubissia was ensured to be safe.

However, the ground forces and royal navy were greatly opposed to Cryus’s plan. If it were taken, then the kingdom would have to invest large sums of funds to develop those facilities and it would no doubt drain the military budget. The ground forces were slated to recruit another 300 to 500 thousand new recruits to expand the standing army in preparation for the conflict with the five enemy nations.

Then again, the discovery of the new route meant that the kingdom would no longer have to get into trouble with the allied navy of the five nations on the way to Nubissia and could instead choose to tone down hostilities and make better preparation before launching into the grand battle. That meant that the recruitment drive of the ground forces could be delayed a year or two with little to no consequence. There was no need for the recruitment to begin immediately and the military budget could be reallocated to elevating the town of Whitestag to city status.

But to the ground forces, that was akin to taking back money that they had already pocketed. Their usual budget was barely enough to sustain their barebones standing army. Just when they were about to be given a treat, it was yanked away from them. There was no way anybody would be satisfied with that. Even so, they didn’t have the final say. If Stellin X went with Cryus’s plan, there would be nothing the ground forces could do about it.

The royal navy objected to the plan for its own sake. Andreak wasn’t willing to split Fearless into two. he had spent all his effort developing it into the main force they would use to face off against the allied navy of the enemies and he believed that splitting it would cause the fleet to lose the threat it posed to the enemy. That would destabilize the current stalemate and the eastern coast of the kingdom would be free for the enemy navy to roam as a result.

Cryus on the other hand was of the opinion that Fearless had to be split. A temporary state of disadvantage didn’t mean that the enemy navy could invade the eastern coast of the kingdom without a second thought. They had to consider the consequences of incurring the kingdom’s rage. Naval superiority didn’t mean that the nations would be able to compete with Aueras in terms of ground forces.

If a war really broke out, the two nations that neighbored Aueras directly would be the first to take the fall, and Nasri was the leader of the anti-Aueras alliance. Given that they bordered Aueras and were weaker than them, they would definitely wish to avoid having a war on land break out. After being pummeled harshly by Aueras twice before, they had remembered their lesson well and learned from it.

Maria told Claude in the letter that thanks to the arguments about Crysus’s plan, Stellin X was still unsure whether to go through with it. As such, word of a new route to Nubissia being discovered was stopped from spreading. According to her, Claude’s father, Morssen, was also dragged into the matter.

She wrote that she had explored the incident thoroughly and would be willing to put in a word on behalf of Morssen. During the new year’s gathering, she had shown Stellin X the letter Claude wrote her and introduce him as her student. Count Andreak was there as well and he was of the opinion that Morssen and his associates should be severely punished for leading the Nubissian pirates through the new route and causing the kingdom to suffer huge losses.

It was then when the finance minister, Elvic Lee Frank, spoke out on Morssen’s behalf. He mocked the royal navy for only knowing how to ask for a larger budget year after year mindlessly while continuing to suffer loss after loss at the old route. Yet, a few small-time officials and merchants from a rural town were adventurous enough to try to find a new trade route, knowing that the kingdom was in need of one, and even succeeded.

Even though the fleet they formed was exterminated by the pirates and led to the subsequent pirate infestation along the midwestern waters of the kingdom, that only proved that the route could indeed be used to connect to Nubissia. Yet, not only did the kingdom not reward these adventurous pioneers for paving a new route, it even charged them for threatening national security. It would definitely be the joke of the century. There was no doubt that there would no longer be people who would take the initiative to serve the kingdom in the future if that was what befell people who tried.

Cryus found the finance minister’s argument to be reasonable and made his agreement known. While punishing the few pioneers was no big issue, the effects of such an action was wide-reaching. Seeking profit was the nature of man. It was only natural that they wanted to make some profit out of the new trade route they found, since they no doubt invested much into searching for it in the first place.

The extermination of their fleet already showed that they were not farseeing enough and couldn’t judge the situation in its entirety. In a sense, that was a lesson enough for them. Additionally, the testimony of Maria’s student also proved that they were going to report the new route to the kingdom after their fleet returned. Their bad luck only prevented them from doing so.

Maria concluded that there was no need for Claude to worry for his father and the others. With the finance minister and the prime minister speaking on their behalf, Stellin X would definitely not punish them. At worst, their deed would only go unrewarded. However, as hiding word about the new route did cause the kingdom quite a substantial loss, Morssen might be fired from his position. However, he would still get to keep his status as a dignitarian.

Additionally, Maria requested that Claude not let word of the prime minister’s plan spread as that would only give people more reason to shut it down. The court might only be able to come to a decision about the matter during the 2nd month, and the three southwestern prefectures and Whitestag would only receive word of that during the 3rd month.

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