Book 5 Chapter 2.1 - Growth
Su was still in Steel Gate. The command tower that was close to ten thousand square meters in size was wide and extensive, able to accommodate every single soldier under Su, should he so wish. Most of the rooms inside the large building were sealed and abandoned. Su and his subordinates occupied the top two floors, but they still felt like it was spacious and empty.
After incorporating Ledesma's troops into his own, the number of soldiers under Su exceeded a thousand for the first time. These soldiers needed to rule over three hundred thousand square meters of territory, which was completely inadequate. However, after continuous battles, Steel Gate's residents also declined to about twenty thousand, and Midnight City's population didn't exceed forty thousand. Most of the population fled into the wilderness to avoid the war, and when things calmed down, the ones who escaped returned. After all, there wasn't enough food or water in the wilderness, nor was there any basic form of order.
Roughly a million lived in the region Su controlled. This was an extremely shocking number, but the foundations were still established in Ledesma's era. Kane already told Su that he needed to quickly expand his army, and only then would there be a chance of consolidating the rule of the great lakes' western region, but Su himself didn't have such great aspirations.
Steel Gate's power source, metal smelting ability, and military industry, Midnight City's food industry and water purifying technology, as well as Kelan's biological and genetic engineering, altogether formed a perfect industrial and economic system. In addition, by relying on their population of close to a million, their potential might erupt in a year or two, greatly expanding their range of control. If Midnight City's research of water purifying technology could obtain some type of breakthrough, with the new era humans' doubled growth cycle and multiplied rate of fertility, the population might break ten million in under fifty years. Even now, if Su wanted to establish an army of over ten thousand, it wouldn't be too big of an issue, just that their equipment and abilities would be a bit lacking.
Su stood in front of the french window, the grand and imposing steel mill perfectly visible from this angle. The steel mill was one of the olden era human industrial civilization's most representative products. Steel Gate's steelworks occupied close to half of the city district, this steel mill that previously possessed six blast furnaces only had a small electric furnace being used. Despite this being the case, only a small half of its production capacity was being utilized.
Even though his brain whose data processing speed far surpassed that of olden era humans remembered the contents of over a hundred economic works, Su was still a complete amateur. He knew that if the massive industrial empire before him were to truly display its potential, it could easily support a population of over ten million as well as an army of a hundred thousand.
Su suddenly thought of Dragon City, as well as the things that had happened in the Black Dragonriders. Only when he began to manage an area himself did he truly understand the prosperity and might of the Blood Parliament. With close to a thousand dragonriders, as well as their subordinates that numbered close to a hundred thousand, to supply such an enormous armed force required a population at least several tens of times its size. This meant that within the Blood Parliament's area of ruling, it truly might be close to ten million.
The power of the Blood Parliament also laid in its science and technology that far surpassed other areas, to the extent where they already began to control and change technologies within Dragon City's experimental environments. Dragon City, which was close to the sea, was a region that originally should have levels of radiation far surpassing that of places more inland, yet under the protective force field, the radiation within the city instead became much lower. Before Su was forced to leave Dragon City, the Blood Parliament started up three new large-scale force field devices. Under their protection, the amount of radiation within Dragon City decreased a step further, becoming not much different from that of the olden era. Even olden era people would be able to survive under that type of environment.
The Blood Parliament was simultaneously striving to increase humans' ability to resist radiation itself, and the result of this research were as many as several tens of model numbers of various radiation resistance medications. At the same time, the various ability formulations could also be included in this category, because as one's abilities increased, most people's resistance towards radiation would increase as well, and their bodies' absorption of nutrients would also rise. In addition, as far as Su knew, extended duration radiation resistance medications without particularly strong side effects have already been developed, with a small amount available for high level dragonriders to purchase and use. This type of medication would offer protection against radiation for as long as half a year, allowing ordinary people to survive in most known environments. Since this was something Su was allowed to learn about with his status as a colonel, this meant that the parliament was currently preparing to manufacture it on a large scale.
The greatest enemy the human race faced in the new era were not mutated creatures, but instead the ever-present radiation and harsh conditions. Of course, ability users weren't restricted by these things, but from the day abilities appeared, the controversy of whether ability users were humans or not had already began. After close to a hundred years of development, this type of debate already began to settle.
No matter which angle one looked at it from, ability users were gradually breaking away from ordinary humans, becoming a brand new race, and not in the olden era's meaning of the word.
However, a feeling of doubt that had long remained unsettled once again surged within his heart, and that was that for some reason, the Blood Parliament never seemed to be all that interested in expansion. The main force in expansion were various low level dragonriders. Those truly terrifying figures, for example, the Spider Empress, instead remained in her nest year in and year out, not moving about outside at all. If Lanaxis herself took action, the Holy Crusaders might have long been eliminated.