Preparing for War
War preparations.
"Huh? Is this for real?"
"Yes. They seem to have lost their minds."
Whoa. We almost became the first casualties of a world war?
"Hmm. So it's bound to blow up eventually?"
"The discussion came up, after all. The possibility is definitely there."
"What about the War Department?"
"They're reviewing the plans."
Hm. So the system is running smoothly.
It was a shock to learn that they weren't just thinking of localized skirmishes—they were contemplating a full-scale war with a coalition force.
"Hmm? But where are they even getting the money for this?"
"Hard to say?"
"Cut back on arms sales for now. A little at a time."
"Will that be enough?"
That alone won't cut it...
"Tell the research labs to try developing weapons—anything and everything. Something's bound to stick."
I can already picture them raising hell about building steam tanks, but what can you do?
They'll pile up know-how doing it, and when the internal combustion engine finally comes around, all they'll need to do is swap out the heart.
"The real problem is Qajar..."
"Qajar?"
"There are three routes the Europeans could use to invade. One is across the sea to the Eastern Continent. One is through Qajar into Daehan's western territory. And one is conquering the New World and pushing north from there."
Crossing the sea to the Eastern Continent is a non-starter from the get-go. It would demand an endless supply line, and they simply don't have the shipping capacity to punch through our navy yet.
And conquering the New World and supplying an advance northward from there? Technically possible, but it's a plan that would take a few hundred years.
"Qajar is the most likely route."
"Hmm... Now that you mention it, you're right. The other two would take forever or are just hopeless."
We'll need a plan. The defense of the concession zones is part of it, too.
"Have the mainland review this in detail and draw up a plan. And have them organize a fleet to defend the concession zones."
"A fleet?"
"This is exactly the kind of situation where every punk with an axe to grind decides to rise up at once."
The Ottomans who despised the Suez Concession, India with its grievances over Calcutta and Mumbai—the list went on.
As for Vietnam, they could hardly betray us now that they'd struggle to survive without us.
"Huh?"
"What is it?"
"Now that I think about it... if the Europeans whisper in the Ming's ear, couldn't they squeeze us from both sides?"
"Does the Ming even have that kind of power?"
Not the power to attack us, no. But there are other directions they could go.
"They'll attack Vietnam. That would give them a fresh base to rebuild their strength."
"Pushing south, you mean..."
Japan is already quaking at the mere sight of gunpowder weapons, so they're fine—but a Ming that has absorbed Vietnam could at least play the role of a needle to our thumb.
"For now, reinforce all the overseas fortresses. Have them build shelters in the basements especially—enough to hold out until we come to the rescue."
"Yes, Haneul-nim."
Anyone who shows up, we'll blow to pieces.
Or maybe we'd pay them a visit first.
The time when Daehan worried over war and began preparing for it was what history would come to call the Little Ice Age.
It had begun roughly two hundred years prior—a period when the Earth's temperature was slowly but steadily cooling.
"Haah... Why is it so chilly this year?"
"The harvest's failing..."
As crops failed, more people starved to death, and with malnutrition spreading, infectious diseases began circulating more easily than ever.
It had been the same in the past with the Black Death—those in poorer nutritional shape had fallen to it in far greater numbers.
"This is all the fault of the witches and the Jews!"
People desperate for an outlet for their fury pinned the blame on Jews and witches and massacred them—which was precisely how Daehan ended up recruiting so many skilled pharmacists and administrative talent.
Especially the alchemists and pharmacists who had been branded as witches.
With them gone, Europeans now suffered from every manner of obscure disease without anyone to treat them.
"Could it be that this land is a land forsaken by God?"
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
"Why not go find a land that's actually livable?"
Amid such longing, many set out to settle the New World. Though of course, scraping by there was every bit as hard.
"Damn it all... It's the same there as here..."
Plenty came trudging back. Or died trying.
"Ha... What do we do now?"
So people agonized. How are we supposed to live? Most would have settled for nothing more than a full stomach.
"I hear Daehan has food to spare?"
"How?"
"I wouldn't know the details. But they say every last beggar in Portugal and Spain is flocking to Daehan's ports!"
Just how much food did they have, that they could feed even outsiders like that?
People grew more and more curious.
"Then shouldn't we just ask them to take us in?"
He wanted for little. He only wished his wife and children waiting at home could eat their fill, even for a single meal.
"And how would you get there, genius? Do you even know where it is?"
The problem was that nobody even knew where their land was—no one had ever been.
"Ah... Then should we at least head for the port?"
"They say there's plenty of work there, but it's so far."
"Is there anything here?"
"No..."
How far could a peasant of this era even hope to travel? Merely crossing into the neighboring fief could get you branded a fugitive and dragged off as a slave.
"Couldn't it be that there are people who hate seeing folks eat well and live well?"
"Who?"
"The nobles?"
According to someone who worked in the castle, the lord himself tore into meat every single day and threw away the leftovers. The resentment of the common folk had only one place to point.
"Filthy bastards. Makes me sick..."
"We're going to starve to death at this rate anyway—should we cut the lord's throat and raid the storehouse?"
The farmers talking were gaunt from malnutrition, their lips cracked and bleeding.
As if possessed by something wicked, they kept talking.
"Say... aren't you scared?"
"Of what? Starving to death? That's what scares me."
And so truly countless peasant revolts were erupting, and bandits were multiplying by the day.
While the peasants seethed like this—
"Hasn't this year's yield fallen far too low?"
"They say the cold weather keeps the crops from growing properly."
With harvests shrinking, it was only natural that less coin found its way into the nobles' purses as well.
"Then we simply raise the taxes."
Many chose to solve the problem by squeezing the people harder.
"If you collect more than you do now, people will starve to death!"
"And what business is that of yours?"
Could it have been attitudes like this among the nobles that lit the fuse of rebellion?
Hence the mountains crawled with bandits, all lying in wait to rob the tax collectors hauling their revenue away by wagon.
"It's been a terrible harvest for years now. What are we to do?"
"Forgive my presumption... but what if we seized land from a country where the crops grow well?"
"You mean war?"
"And besides, fewer people means less food needed, doesn't it?"
"Hmm..."
Perhaps the dozens, the hundreds of wars Europe had fought over the ages had all broken out for reasons like this.
Asia, meanwhile, had weathered it all reasonably well. Being close to Daehan, food shipments came easily.
"But Daehan has all that wealth and materiel—shouldn't we be seizing Daehan's land instead?"
"And do you think that's possible?"
They were all waging war to steal each other's land, yet all that came of it was death—no gains, just time slipping away.
It was then that a few voices here and there began to wonder: what about targeting Daehan's land?
"The weapons are the problem, no?"
"Exactly. We've been trying for over a decade now, and we simply can't replicate them."
No matter how tightly they guarded their armories, no one could account for every single musket or handful of cartridges that quietly walked off.
After all, there was no shortage of people who'd do anything for money, anywhere in the world.
They pried apart the smuggled Daehan weapons, tried to build exact copies, and launched attempt after attempt without number.
"Ha... The trouble is, we can copy them, but they're hopelessly inefficient to make."
The only machines they operated were waterwheels. Without a power source, mechanized production was a distant dream.
And what tripped them up above all was the spring.
Both its elasticity and its stiffness had to be precisely balanced, but hand-forging them one hammer blow at a time made consistent quality impossible.
"For muskets, matchlocks seem the more practical route."
"What about ships?"
"Well, we did manage to bolt iron plates onto hulls. There was some effect, I'll grant."
Iron plates riveted onto wooden hulls certainly did something—but the ships grew far too heavy, and nowhere near capable of bouncing cannon shells the way Daehan's ships did.
With iron already scarce, pouring it into plating meant one fewer ship they could have built instead.
"We can't start anything until the weapons are ready."
"Haah..."
"Wouldn't it be simpler to just pay gold and import the food?"
"Well..."
The most rational suggestion of all—the one that could have made everyone happy—was raised.
But for men who believed themselves the pinnacle of creation, it was a hard pill to swallow.
Even as they said it, countless of them stopped by Pyeong-an Naru under the pretext of "surveilling Daehan and gathering intelligence," stuffing themselves with meals, puffing on cigarettes, and playing about the city before heading home.
"In any case, we must arm ourselves first."
"Let us pool our strength."
While the people of Europe wracked their brains searching for cracks in Daehan's armor—
In the year 4010, a new predator ascended in Europe's east: Ivan IV.
As the first Tsar of Russia in Eastern Europe, he began expanding his realm by devouring his neighbors one by one.
After stripping territory from the Ottomans and annexing Astrakhan, Tsar Ivan sent scouts eastward first.
"What in the world is that... Would it even crumble under cannon fire?"
"An iron wall if there ever was one."
The scouts looked upon the fortress walls and concluded this would be no easy conquest. The walls Qajar had reinforced over long centuries were impregnable beyond measure.
No one could even entertain the thought of climbing over them.
"Let's try the mountains this time."
"Agreed. Perhaps there's a way over the range."
And when they reached the mountains, there sat Daehan's Great Wall, sprawled across the terrain in all its glory—far worse than what they'd just seen.
"What is that?"
"You're telling me people built that?"
And so the scouts composed their reports: the east was all but impossible.
"Can we not push further east?"
"I... fear not, Your Majesty."
The scouts' descriptions were so vivid that Ivan IV understood the hopelessness of it all without ever laying eyes on it himself.
"Then we must go to the sea..."
"But every sea we touch freezes solid, Your Majesty..."
The seas Russia touched in those days—including the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic coast—froze rock-solid every winter.
To reach the ocean, they would need a port that stayed ice-free at least year-round.
The south, along the Black Sea, needed only a little further push—but the west was blocked entirely by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
"East, or west..."
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was no pushover either—a formidable power in its own right.
After long deliberation, he finally turned his eyes westward.
And so, with another great war brewing in Europe, the continent's grand plan of forging a coalition army to fight Daehan drifted this way and that, slowly fading into oblivion.
Europe could do as it pleased. Daehan's War Department was as busy as ever today.
"A pleasure to meet you. I'm the head of the Naniwa branch."
"Welcome. We've summoned you here urgently because there's a matter we need to discuss."
The War Department had exactly one question for the head of the Japan branch.
"How stand affairs within Japan? What is their perception of Daehan—and could they conceivably ally with another nation and attack us?"
"Judging by the data our branch has compiled: absolutely impossible. They couldn't even get past Naniwa."
The children from the orphanage were simply too clever, too capable. Given new identities, they had spread across the land and penetrated every daimyo's court.
And above all, backed by Daehan's support, Nakamura had expanded his domain into a massive power—while the concession zone had been returned to Daehan.
The concession was already thoroughly Daehanized, and had long since grown into an immense fortress.
"Thank you. Hard work, indeed."
"All thanks to the foundations Haneul-nim laid for us."
The Himiko School, it could be said, had played the largest role of all.
Diplomats were also dispatched to Vietnam to reaffirm their friendship once more, and countless scenarios were reviewed.
Scenario after scenario was drafted, each one reverently filed away into the archives.
"By the way, why have they been so quiet for decades?"
"Last I heard, they're at war with each other."
"Are they insane? Then why did they say they were going to attack us?"
"Because they're insane?"
"Ugh..."
Having given up on understanding Europeans entirely, the War Department pulled another all-nighter drafting war plans.
"Ugh... I need more coffee."
"Save me a cup too."
Rustle, rustle.
At a desk in the mild Mediterranean climate, Haneul sat at his leisure, flipping through the reports.
"Mmm~ Just as predicted, every last bit of it."
"Weren't they just paying lip service with that whole coalition army business?"
"Who's to say? You can't know everything about the world. I'm sure there are circumstances we're not aware of."
Because a great war would one day come—once? no, twice—Daehan was busy preparing yet again today.