The Hungry Fortress Wants to Build a Battleship in Another World – World of Sandbox

Telek Port City, just as predicted in advance, entered under Paraiso without the slightest obstacle.

“I admit, I feel relieved. I knew there wouldn’t be a problem, but still.”
Although Eve had thrown what was little more than a threat at Guildmaster Kuravia Telek, in practice nothing had changed, and they had accepted immediately.
If anything, there was even a trace of relief—almost joy—that Paraiso’s previously ambiguous position had at last been made explicit.

Of course, Ringo had already foreseen that reaction as well.
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. With this, we can openly proceed with converting the Telek Port City environs into a base.
As an initial measure, let us construct a large-scale naval port. Supplies will, in principle, be transported by sea from Fortress No. 2. The existence of Fortress No. 2 should remain concealed as much as possible.”

“I’ll leave those kinds of operational calls to you—I wouldn’t know where to start. But if our approach is to threaten with military power, will other cities really surrender as readily as Telek Port City did?”
Eve’s concern was justified—Telek Port City was a special case. It had been backed into a corner when Paraiso extended a hand.
They had never used violence, yet never bent to violence either. They provided abundant goods, offered work, traded with fairness, and always reciprocated. Above all, their beautiful outward appearance was wildly popular among the citizens.

Naturally, public opinion had already been building toward a desire to come under Paraiso’s protection, and petitions had been submitted to Kuravia Telek more than once or twice.
Kuravia Telek too had wanted to declare their allegiance sooner, but repeated inquiries had been met with stone silence, and they had nearly given up.
So when an enormous fleet suddenly sailed into harbor, dragged them aboard the flagship without discussion, and declared a terrifying ultimatum, they had been badly shaken—yet the actual demand was accepted without resistance.
“Iron Town and Fratara City will not be a problem. The situation in the other cities remains unclear, so they may take more time.

However, considering the forces they have, the chance of causing casualties other than through self-destruction is practically nonexistent.
We can neutralize them unilaterally, overwhelmingly.”
Even so, they were still humans. Emotion could drive them to the unpredictable—desperation attacks, reckless charges.
No doubt, Ringo’s statement meant even those contingencies were already accounted for.

“Accumulated experience can be gained from here on.
First, the Kingdom of Lepuitari.
We are currently loading fuelstone, so departure is in two days.

From there, we will circle westward by a concealed route to avoid detection, and strike directly for the capital, Moar.”
“So we don’t sail straight from Telek Port City after all?”
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. We should not provide unnecessary information.

If we seize the harbor of Moar, we can halt any expeditionary fleet preparing to punish Telek Port City.
True, once fuelstone becomes visible they will naturally infer our link to Telek Port City, but until then it serves as effective leverage.”
Threaten them into paralysis, then bait them with fuelstone.

“It’s more effective to give them hope first, then crush it,” was Ringo’s explanation.
The Kingdom of Lepuitari would of course prefer to buy fuelstone directly from the United Kingdom of Aphrasia—or better still, mine it for themselves. But The Tree could hardly allow that.
Paraiso intended to seize them by the throat and force their overseas expansionist course to a halt. That way they could buy time and secure their own foothold.

They could not afford interference while moving to pacify Aphrasia.
“Continued trade in fuelstone itself is no problem. So long as they keep using that energy source, they cannot truly obstruct The Tree.”
Paraiso was conducting research on the fuelstone being mined around Telek Port City.
When struck with sufficient force, it generated heat spontaneously.

The amount and duration of heat output scaled with impact strength, and also correlated with the stone’s size.
Thrown into fire, it ignited.
If shocked further while ignited, it flared into explosive combustion.

Reduced to powder and then ignited, it flamed through instantly.
However, achieving powder form required some manner of magical-fantasy-style processing; simply crushing it caused it to release heat and vanish uselessly.
Once heating or ignition began, the stone shrank in volume until it eventually disappeared.

Even left in open air, its volume slowly dwindled over time.
Because it heated upon impact, mining required extreme care not to apply excess force.
With mining tools that had undergone special magical processing, the rate of heat generation could be suppressed.

Those tools could not be ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) manufactured in the United Kingdom of Aphrasia; they were imported from the Forest Kingdom of Levresta.
To produce them independently would require highly skilled magical engineers.
Though a few phenomena still defied even Ringo’s understanding, the overall properties had been grasped.

Fortunately, the fuelstone near Telek Port City was at most the size of a fist, scattered through lava layers and laboriously dug out.
Open-pit mining sufficed; given the tools, extraction was relatively simple.
“There is a ceiling to the total heat it can generate. It can produce enough firepower to melt iron, but only by combining several methods. In that sense, it isn’t far removed in nature from petroleum or coal. Of course, the fact that it produces no harmful byproducts to human bodies is an enormous advantage.”

Lepuitari’s steam engines simply threw the fuelstone into boilers to produce steam.
Because no combustion gases were released, explosive-combustion reciprocating engines would never develop—at least, so Ringo predicted.
Thus, while steam-engine performance would continue to rise, miniaturization had a hard limit.

“Barring some breakthrough, they should be nearing the ceiling of progress.
Therefore, we will supply fuelstone at a level that prevents price collapse and allow the nation to vent its pressures.
Perfect for buying time.

Moreover, we can measure their technological level in real time, and detect immediately should a breakthrough arise.
Respond swiftly and it will never become a true threat.”
It was, truly, a merciless story. Listening to Ringo’s explanation, Eve could only think so.

From street rumors to state secrets, every shred of information in the Kingdom of Lepuitari was flowing directly into The Tree.
And even while handling it all, the processing capacity of the super-intelligence Core still had ample margin.
If they wished, they could monitor and analyze every surrounding nation as well.

The only bottleneck was production of spy-bots—but even as she reflected, Ringo’s unseen hand was steadily covering the northern continent.
“In that sense, what we really need is an information and communications hub. Radio waves can’t cross the wall of the horizon.”
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. We could launch communications satellites—or perhaps, more ambitiously, push forward with the development of quantum communicators.”

“Quantum communicators…”
Eve cast a glance over the technology tree. Naturally, quantum communication sat far along its branches.
Meaning, there were many foundations still to research before reaching it.

On the other hand, satellite launch could begin almost at once.
The problem: a high-output antenna would be needed to reach orbital altitude, and installing such equipment in hostile territory posed its own hurdles.
“So then, how high would an orbital satellite need to be?”

“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am.
Based on prior observations, approximately 500 kilometers altitude seems likely.
It could be lowered to about 300 kilometers, but lifespan would shorten.

At too low an altitude, its time over the horizon is too brief, so greater numbers would be required.
Geostationary orbit would be most convenient, but considering the abnormal gravity—or more precisely, the planet’s higher gravity acceleration—the geostationary altitude would be very far out.
On Earth it was 36,000 kilometers.”

“Right, gravity here is stronger. Hmm… well, I suppose we’ll only know by trying.”
Quantum communications would remain a long-term prospect. For now, Eve nodded and raised the priority of space development on the technology tree.