Dark Fate, Chapter 280 (Patreon)

Chapter 280 – Ambition

Just as had happened with the situation in South America, once Saudi Arabia joined the Ceresan Empire, and the UAE became part of the Kingdom of Ceres, dominoes began falling as other countries tried to adjust. Yemen was the firs to ask to join the Empire, seeking stability for the first time in over a generation. Bahrain and Qatar followed quickly, giving the Empire control over the majority of the Arabian Peninsula.

Of course, not everyone in the area wanted to join the Empire. Somalia was too busy fighting with itself to ask for anything, but I made a note to see about seeing whether some improvements might be made in the country, to try and turn it around. Oman, Kuwait, Djibouti, and Eritrea, on the other hand, were already trying to position themselves as natural go-betweens and trade corridors for anyone who wanted Ceresan goods, or goods from the Commonwealth or Ouran Huntworlds, but did not want to go through Ceres directly, for one reason or another.

Interstellar commerce was an interesting thing. Yes, you could, probably, find anything you wanted on the System Shop. I had, after all, bought most of the things I’d used to build the start of my empire there. However, you paid more for the convenience, not just for ease of finding things, but also delivery. And you were limited by what others put on the System Shop. Plus, prices were pretty much set, regardless of supply and demand, but you rarely found raw materials there.

That was a big thing for factory work, crafters, cooks, and especially researchers. So, you would find finished potions or even boxed lunches on the System Shop, but you wouldn’t find fresh herbs or raw chicken, as an example. Not until you got to the higher-tier materials, the Tier 3 and 4 materials, where there were simply too few people out there who could use them effectively. More importantly, there was always waste when people were training their skills and learning things. The people who made things, therefore, relied on people to bring them materials.

As for the researchers, they needed raw materials, in different quantities, to test how they combined, and whether they combined differently under different conditions, and what effects that those combinations might have on different items or creatures. Science was, at its core, a process of trial and error. And that process was easier to promote when you could find materials locally, for cheaper than the System Shop would give you. Without that process of experimentation and failure, new discoveries were all but impossible.

Then, there was the fact that buying from a company meant that you had some guarantees as to the quality of the product. To use raw materials as an example, two diamonds on the System Shop might be listed as being worth 100 gp. However, the composition, size, cut, clarity, purity, and so on of the two diamonds may be radically different, which might make one or the other completely unsuitable for whatever your intended use was. When you went to the source, however, you could get what you needed for the actual job you were doing.

All that was to say that interstellar commerce was still a big thing in the wider galaxy, despite the System Shop making things more convenient in some ways. And it was still very important on Earth, too. Probably more important on Earth, considering that the kind of freighters which could fly bulk goods around a planet were in short supply, so far. Sea travel was still the main mover of goods on Earth, and now I controlled three major bottlenecks with the Panama Canal, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea.

Combined with our off-world colonies and basic stranglehold on space travel, that made Ceres a third super-power on Earth, capable of standing toe-to-toe with the US and China. Our population might not be comparable, and the number of military personnel they had, compared to my military, was not exactly the same, but my troops were able to punch above their weight class, especially when it came to the navy. That would change, eventually, when people started developing their own spacecraft, but while I bought the knowledge and machines to build and design my ships, they were starting from scratch.

Well, there was nothing stopping the US and China from purchasing weapons designers from the Minion Market, if they could find them, and buying the machines they’d need to build spacecraft efficiently. But while I started Ceres from a clean slate, they were not so fortunate. The Initialization was still barely a couple years old, and countries that size had proportional problems. They had much more infrastructure to modernize, and they’d spent most of the time trying to stabilize their economies and prevent things from spiraling out of control. The fact that the pirate attack and several high-profile crises, only a couple of which were my fault, kept changing the landscape meant that they were still trying to catch up.

Meanwhile, Ceres had the foundation laid already, which made it easier for us to incorporate new territories and expand the Empire’s methods. The fact that you could, for instance, get from Madinah to Dubai in minutes rather than a twenty-hour drive through the desert or an almost three-hour flight changed the calculus of things dramatically. The same span of a few minutes could get you from Madinah to Bogota, or to Ganymede out by Jupiter. That kind of mobility, on the personal level, changed things on a fundamental level. It made everyone in the Empire more connected, even if they had been wildly different nations and ethnic groups before.

Then, there was the culture of the Empire. We didn’t try to ‘Ceres-ize’ everyone who came into the Empire. Instead, we let the ease of travel create a natural melting pot, while layering on the ‘core values’ of the Empire, which boiled down to defending ourselves and those under our banner, and adding a meritocracy to things, as well as the changes to the justice system. There was no state religion, or state language, or anything like that.

Actually, there were local and regional efforts underway, with my explicit blessing, to both preserve and promote local cultures within the Empire. The reasoning was simple enough: it cut down on rebellions and gave fewer openings for foreign actors to cause trouble. Ripping up someone’s culture and belief system left them angry and dissatisfied, which meant you had to spend more time and effort keeping them from causing trouble.

Basically, it was the same philosophy as with the Black Zones. I let people in an area do culture and religion how they pleased, so long as they didn’t do anything that was against Ceresan Imperial Law. But I also made it so that anyone who didn’t like that culture could leave, and the people who wanted to do things that were against Ceresan Law could head to the Black Zones, where all of that was legal. I didn’t need to put the boot on people’s necks, because just having the option of moving to find better situations if you weren’t happy meant that the kind of disquiet and malcontent that fueled resistance movements had channels that it could flow through. Even if there was a flood of displeasure, those channels would siphon off the excess before it could reach critical mass.

Combined with my only adding countries that asked to join the Empire? And all the skills I had to discourage rebellion and increase my reputation and the abilities of my empire? No, I was not worried about rebellion, even when I now had a major stake in one of the most historically contentious areas on Earth.

So, I was not terribly surprised when the different ambassadors started calling my office, asking questions. Like the Japanese Ambassador, Kitamura Ena, who sounded slightly overwhelmed when I answered her call. “Ah, Ena-chan. So lovely to hear your voice. How are our kits?”

“You know perfectly well that they’ve been right little terrors, ever since they learned how to crawl. Miyo and Umeko have started trying to climb things, while Inari is already creating some minor illusions, like making herself invisible! And Kayo just managed to create foxfire this morning! Only the size of a match’s flame, and it barely lasted, but still!”

I chuckled, and said, “Well, Kitsune are known for having some innate magic, and my bloodline is rather magically enhanced, as well. But for them to be climbing around and using magic, even to that limit? Very impressive indeed. If I had to guess, Inari and Kayo are going to have some form of caster class when they get older, while Miyo and Umeko will have more physical classes.”

“I’m sure you’re happy. They’re able to cause chaos before they can even speak, or understand the consequences of their actions. But you know this call isn’t so we can talk about the girls.”

“I mean, I’d be willing to take the time for that conversation.”

“Emperor Greene!”

I smiled, despite the exasperation in her voice. But her tone was clear. She was in ‘work mode’ now, so it would be rude to keep playing, for now. “Ah, we have the work voice on, I see. Well, Ambassador Kitamura, what is it that the Japanese government would like to know?”

“What are your plans moving forward, now that, between the Panama Canal and the waters around the Arabian Peninsula, Ceres controls the chokepoints that channel roughly twenty percent of global maritime trade, and similar percentages of the maritime oil and liquified natural gas trades?”

“The simple truth is that I have no plans, Ambassador. Since there are no countries currently under sanction from the Ceresan Empire, I am quite content to let trade move through, at the standard rates it has been going so far. Yes, I am just as aware as your government is about what I could do to the economies of different countries if I decide I don’t like them, but that is why I default to diplomacy, first, rather than punitive measures like sanctions and trade wars, which usually end up just causing trouble for a lot of unrelated people. Honestly, until local governments are in more of a position to actually compete with the Ceres Royal Navy, I see no reason to engage in sanctions, as a general policy.”

“Because you see sanctions as the resort of nations who are not willing or able to put their military might into making a problem go away, right?”

“Come now, Ambassador, you know me better than that. I am not some violent thug who just goes around destroying anyone who gets in my way. However, I will say that, historically, sanctions have been used by countries that are unwilling, or unable, to do what is required to solve a problem through more direct means, so they resort to playing with the money. However, there are a couple problems with that system.”

Ena sighed. “I have a feeling I’m going to regret this, but what problems?”

“Well, the problems all tie together into one core issue. It is impossible to meaningfully change a regime through sanctions unless the sanctions are so heavy-handed that the common people start paying for it swiftly, not the people making the decisions. So, the sanctions effectively end up as being either annoyances to the modern people, or so destructive that few options remain for the common people in the wake of the sanctions, which leads to revolution more often than not.”

Mhyreth slipped into the office, then, wearing her formal armor, and handed me a note. I looked it over once, and then again, before nodding to her. Turning back to the phone, I said, “I am sorry, Ambassador, but I’m afraid I must go, now. The father of one of my women is arriving as we speak, and it would only be right for me to meet this other Demon Lord in person.”

“Another demon lord?”

“Yes, the father of my familiar. You remember Mhyreth, yes? The one who unleashed the [Annihilation Beam] against the Greater Kraken off the coast of Panama. Her father and a few of his wives are coming to visit.”

There was a brief pause on Ena’s end, and then, she said, in a tired voice, “Right. I am going to ignore that, and go play with the kids. That is officially well outside my pay grade.”