Chapter 555 — The Tangled Skein

Amber blinked, looking at Gaoyang's expression, which seemed at all times to hold a plan already formed in his breast, and nearly forgot to keep chewing the dried fruit in her hand.

"No matter what happens in this world, is it always an opportunity to you?"

"Not always, but circumstances force me to turn anything into an opportunity," Gaoyang shook his head. "Go notify Philip and Byron, have them come here—it's time to make military preparations as well."

"Call them here?" Amber's eyes widened slightly. "Could it be... you're planning to march out of Boulder Fortress while the royal house and the Eastern Region are both drained?"

"No. Doing that would only undermine my own foundations and earn me a kingdom that will be in turmoil for the next twenty years. I won't do such a thing," Gaoyang shook his head. "But we must prepare for the worst—I don't believe this civil war will really stop, and I believe even less that the Southern Region can stay aloof forever. The royal house and the Eastern Region are both full of clever people. Those trying to find opportunity in this barrier crisis... are certainly not limited to me."

Amber looked Gaoyang up and down, then her figure gradually faded into the air. "Tsk, tsk. I really can't play along with deep schemers like you. You keep plotting here—I'll go call those two over."

Gaoyang watched Amber's figure slowly dissolve, then drew his gaze back and let it fall upon a blueprint on the desk.

It was a vehicle—or rather... a weapon.

A king of the land, assembled from engine, tracks, armor, and turret.

Though the Great Wall project was urgent, Gaoyang knew better the execution efficiency of the kingdoms of this era. This so-called "urgency" was a world apart from the Southern Region's production and construction plans. Given the pace at which those nobles of the royal capital handled matters, they would at least wrangle over this until this summer. In such a long stretch of time, there was still much he could do.

"The blueprint that passed testing at the Origin Laboratory... I hope it really goes as smoothly as I expect."

Gaoyang said in a low voice, and at the same time reached out toward the food box in the corner of the desk.

His hand found nothing.

"...How did she even take the box with her this time?!"

...

The situation in Ansu was a whirlpool, and human society a tangled skein of knots. These terrifying upright apes who lived on land might be short-lived and fragile, but when it came to churning their own society into chaos they possessed a talent that left even the sirens marveling—and of this, Miss Til had the keenest appreciation.

On the No. 1 slipway of the North Bank Shipyard, the siren Til conscientiously curled herself into a ball, listening with one ear to the craftsmen discussing the current affairs in the newspapers, while her mind drifted and rambled, half here and half elsewhere.

Creatures like humans—they had no tails, yet in a certain sense they could still "tangle" themselves into an awful, hopeless heap.

But none of that had much to do with the sirens—at least not before humans were capable of long-distance ocean voyages. Until then, these terrifying upright apes who lived on land had little enough to do with the sirens.

What concerned Til most now was that this project before her, which had run on from last summer to the present, had finally produced results.

Before the siren lady, in the dry dock beside the slipway, a brand-new and beautiful great ship—utterly unlike the traditional vessels of this world in design—lay quietly within the vast dock, waiting for the moment it would enter the water.

It was a colossus built of steel, with an elegant, continuous curved hull and two flat, broad decks. Three pairs of "magic wings" that resembled a pair of great wings were folded neatly and symmetrically along the sides of the hull and the rear of the upper deck, while on the lower deck, at the fore, midships, and aft, six great gun mounts crouched silently upon their bases. Sunlight filtering through the gaps in the overhead cover fell upon that cold metal, giving off a dazzling gleam.

Two "Calibrator"-class iridescent light generators, four large "Truth" railguns specially modified for shipboard platforms, and a great many small defensive railguns mounted all over the hull—together these armed the colossus into a fearsome beast of the deep.

This was the product of an entirely new design, blending human shipbuilding style with siren technology—a truly advanced warship. Though in the eyes of the siren Til it could still be called backward in many respects, in the eyes of the countless craftsmen of the shipyard it was already a miracle.

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