The Scourge had set up a large fortified position. Short black metal walls guarded an obvious magical magrail depot, from which a huge centipedal robot was disgorging hordes of smaller spider robots. Kyle doubted that the average Veskayan scout could really tell what the entire construct was, so the location hadn’t been a priority for artillery or saboteurs.

  Surrounding it, the tank and the legion mages shelled the compound into oblivion. This was supposedly the main Scourge installation in the entire region. Ach, wait until I make that zeppelin. Then no fortress shall stand against my forces.

  Once the shelling was complete and the defenders had been shattered, the legionaries advanced in lockstep through the smoking ruins and killed any crippled surviving robots. Kyle had been reflecting on how well the short campaign was going when the first man stepped on a landmine.

  ————

  Instantly, most of the men on the field spun around looking for the source of the explosion. Kyle instantly recognised it for what it was: an antipersonnel high-explosive land mine enabled by magic.

  Turning on all of his speakers to the maximum, he screamed, “NOBODY MOVE! THE GROUND BENEATH YOU IS TRAPPED!”

  Instantly, a few legionaries discounted his words and continued. When the first one of them disintegrated in a gout of blue flame, the rest instantly stopped.

  Kyle turned on his armor’s modified mana-sight scanner, courtesy of Bariyon. What he was was a massive pain in the army’s collective ass. The entire area was covered in small blips of mana, mostly around the center of the cratered train yard.

  “Ok, here’s how this is going to go! Those of you already in the trapped area will be moved back group by group. No one else has to die today!”

  And so, in groups of about twenty, Kyle evacuated the legionaries and his own soldiers from the ruins. It almost went perfectly. On a particularly tight path between two minefields, one man broke his ankle on an unfortunately placed and shaped rock and fell flat on a mine. The resulting explosion of fire caused not only his instant death but the slow and gruesome death of 5 men around him.

  Aside from that, no one else died during the battle. And only a few would die during the rest of the few weeks of campaigning, mostly due to Kyle’s immensely slow and cautious tactics.

  The moment his troops ran out of ammunition, he bade farewell to the Cagliar and marched south back to Pechemvar. On the way, they encountered the other force the emperor had promised: the Daralian Shock Troopers.

  An elite army of men wearing thick scale mail equipped with huge two-handed axes marched in formation down the road opposite Kyle’s significantly less professional-looking troops. Their leader, a man with a huge mustache and an elaborate blue-plumed helmet, nodded at Kyle and nothing more.

  Kyle was quite interested in the Veskayan Imperial army. It clearly included countless elite local forces with specialties and weaknesses, but also countless actual Legions that were less specialized and better equipped for general warfare. An interesting dichotomy to be sure.

  Upon reaching Altrai, which happened to be closer to the frontline than New Brasilia, he dismissed a good two-thirds of the army and distributed pay and bonuses. Instead of collecting their cheap and soon-to-be obsolete guns, he let the men keep them to increase the security of the countryside against both monsters and the few remaining bandits.

  In the single month of mostly marching, things had changed little. And it was time to build a kingdom.

  ————

  Month 6 of the Two-Year Plan

  Kyle had a problem. Every factory across Pechemvar had its own, isolated steam turbine and engine for power. Kyle had one main solution-centralize factories in one place, and use the nanofactory to build a nuclear battery. It was certainly in the nanofactory’s capabilities.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Most league colonies started as a single landed ship powered by one of these babies. The size of a couch, the things could produce 900 MWe-enough energy to power the entirety of his little empire.

  Sadly, the battery itself was much larger than the pretty small nanofactory, and was far too complex to be built in constructable parts.

  The one solution was to build a larger single-use nanofab. Kind of like using a hammer to build a bigger hammer to strike a particularly tough nail. Due to its bootstrapped nature, the hammer would break after hitting the nail-but it would get the job done.

  That was Kyle’s plan for building the nuclear battery. Over the course of the month, Kyle centralized all of his industry in the space between Altrai and New Brasilia, which he hoped to merge into one metropolitan area one day. The battery would be able to power countless electric motors that could in turn power the factories using gearboxes and ratios.

  But that was for another day, once the industry was actually centralized. A few other easier-to-solve problems presented themselves to him first. Namely among them, the education pipeline to acquire more skilled workers.

  Kyle had a strong solution. An apprenticeship program-workers could train an apprentice for a month, and work alongside them for two more. The number of at least slightly competent workers would skyrocket quickly.

  The other short-term problem was transportation. Short of starting the automotive industry some 20 years too early, the rail network was about to become critical. But for now, finishing that nuclear battery was first.

  So much would instantly become available to Kyle. Mass electrolysis would also become possible, granting him the aluminum necessary for his dream zeppelin. Many other materials, specifically copper, would also become much cheaper.

  ————

  Building the colonial battery was a two-week process. During that time, Kyle was mostly focused on guiding the nanobots involved in the construction and explaining the basics of cold fusion to Bariyon, who helped him occasionally. The entire province carried on without him.

  The administration in particular had massively exploded in size. Countless accountants from the defunct guilds had flocked to join him, including Pilka, the rabbitfolk who had originally given him his adventurer id card.

  A few more mills and factories opened, as a huge trading caravan from Cascetta arrived that month. Demand was still slowly increasing, and the merchants were coming from farther and farther away bringing raw resources and leaving with industrial goods.

  At the end of the 6th month, the battery was finished.

  League colonial tech was known for being incredibly reliable; but Kyle wasn’t taking any chances. A huge bunker of steel and concrete some 30 feet underground held the battery itself, while a small fortress protected the transformers and capacitors.

  Kyle’s nanofactory used a Reality Sheathe to function. The Sheathe could be transferred using nanotechnology he didn’t really understand, but all he knew was that he would be trading the nanofactory for the colonial battery. True efficient cold fusion was made possible through Reality Sheathes, which formed the basis of a lot of League Technology.

  Once the exotic energy was consumed to construct the battery, his nanofactory would be nothing more than an expensive paperweight. He expected to have to use magic to catch up on deficiencies rather than by making critical parts in the nanofactory.

  In preparation, he’d filled an underground storage facility with railgun rounds, and another with a few tons of hard-to-manufacture parts. Hopefully, it would tide him over until he at least reached a sufficient tech level.

  ———

  The moment was upon them. The startup process was actually a complicated affair with countless levels of verification, but Kyle had put a red button on the reactor for style reasons. Bariyon was watching from a corner.

  Slapping the button down forcefully, he jogged out of the room. “Why are you fleeing? You assured me this was perfectly safe!” Kyle yelled from the concrete bunker hallway outside the main room housing the battery. “You never know!”

  Bariyon strolled out of the room just as the battery activated. In an instant, Kyle’s implants reported the collapse of his nanofactory’s Reality Sheathe. Although trading infinite production for infinite energy seemed unwise, the Reality Sheathe would eventually have been expended years in the future. At that point, the small size of the factory would become obsolete due to increasing industrial capacity. Small parts could already be made much faster than the nanofactory could match.

  Watching from an armored observation room, Kyle kept a close eye on the screens monitoring the reactor. Bariyon would be the only one permitted to enter the bunker, and Kyle had actually brought him in to teach him about the reactor.

  Needless to say, things were about to get interesting in Pechemvar.