The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 64

"Wartime system means that the entire empire's economy, transportation, material distribution, and military conscription are all transferred to military control. All duchies must relinquish their tax collection rights and material allocation rights, which are then uniformly managed by the imperial central government."

You are all soldiers, so I don't need to explain to you how much this will affect the fiefdom interests of the nobles and the balance of power in the parliament.

The war with Ross had lasted for several years, and at its most intense, people were dying along every inch of the border, but even then, the Empire did not go into full mobilization.

He looked at Pavel, then at Perfit, his expression a mixture of defending himself and making a final stand against an undeniable fact: "Thanks to your efforts, the fortress's defenses have been significantly improved. The infected are kept out of the trenches, and the soldiers are properly protected against the virus."

The situation does not appear to be out of control.

If the situation here can be stabilized, hastily switching to a wartime system in the rear could actually trigger unnecessary panic and conflicts of interest.

The Elector opened his mouth as if to say something, but the envoy raised his hand to stop him, his tone becoming more polite and resolute than before: "I will truthfully report your opinions to His Majesty the Emperor and the Council."

But your request is unlikely to be approved until the situation deteriorates further.

The Elector kept his mouth shut.

He placed his hands on the table, his calloused hands turning white at the knuckles from the effort, but he didn't speak again.

He was a soldier, and he understood better than anyone that an order was an order.

Perfit stood on the other side of the conference table, his cane on the ground, and did not join the argument.

From the moment the special envoy said that "the situation does not appear to be out of control," she knew where the crux of his problem lay.

It is precisely because the fortress's defenses now appear so solid, because the epidemic prevention measures are so effective, and because the soldiers are so disciplined, that the special envoy feels the situation is still under control.

The defense system she personally modified proved her right, but at the same time, it also pushed her efforts to persuade the envoy to the brink of disaster.

She felt neither anger nor disappointment.

She simply felt a long-lost weariness that she had repeatedly experienced in the meeting rooms of the Langton Council of Nobles.

That is when every warning you give is proven true by facts, but the person sitting across the table is unable to make the most rational choice due to the weighing of political interests, and instead uses the achievement you created to temporarily stabilize the situation as a reason to refuse to take deeper action.

She is an alchemist.

She could even arrogantly call herself the strongest in the world.

This title would sound arrogant on any other alchemist, but on Perfit Brandlis, it was simply a statement of fact.

In Langdon, it is not difficult for an Alchemist of the Alliance level to turn iron ore into steel.

Any alchemist who obtains a joint license has received standardized training in material transformation. Transforming a fist-sized piece of iron ore is a basic operation for them, taking only a moment, and the quality of the finished product is sufficient to meet most industrial needs.

But what they couldn't do was what Perfit did on the night of the breakout.

He picked up a piece of pebbles that had nothing to do with iron from the ground, touched it with his magic wand, and after a few breaths, the stone turned into a piece of compressed smokeless coal.

This is not a simple purification of homologous substances like iron turning into steel, but a complete breaking down of the boundaries of material classification, separating carbon from silicate rocks, and then recombining it into a high-purity crystal structure.

This operation is theoretically feasible in alchemy—provided you can precisely control the energy flow of dozens of transformation nodes simultaneously and have sufficient mental strength to support the entire process.

The number of alchemists in the entire Victorian Empire who can do this can be counted on one hand.

While other alchemists were still in their workshops meticulously adjusting the tolerances of a single gear component against blueprints, Perfit had already constructed a fortress out of thin air in the wilderness.

It's not a metaphor; it's a literal creation.

Using two Philosopher's Stone fragments simultaneously to activate a terrain-altering transmutation array, she transformed the flat frozen ground into a complete defensive fortification within a few breaths, complete with two circular trenches, frozen ground walls several meters high, pre-reserved firing ports, and firing platforms.

It would take an entire engineering company a whole day to dig a trench of the same size, but she did it in the time it takes to take a single breath.

While Romulus's engineers were still digging through the frozen ground with pickaxes, she had already made the earth change according to her will, just like soil—rising, rolling, compacting, and solidifying.

Ellen once said to Maurice privately while they were camping, her voice carrying a subtle balance between admiration and discouragement: "While we were still learning how to draw a straight line with chalk, she had already turned the whole world into her canvas."

And these weren't even her true peak.

The Philosopher's Stone itself is the pinnacle of alchemy.

Despite their lifelong dedication to research, Perfit's parents failed to create the Philosopher's Stone. The Brandliss were renowned in the Imperial alchemy world, masters in both human transmutation and material transformation. However, the ritual to create the Philosopher's Stone went out of control at a crucial moment. If Perfit hadn't activated the Emerald Book of Omniscience for the first time during the aftermath of the rampaging ritual, they would not only have failed to create the Philosopher's Stone, but would have also razed the entire Brandliss Manor and the surrounding area for miles to the ground.

A fourteen-year-old girl, who just a quarter of an hour ago was an ordinary person who wasn't even an alchemist's apprentice, managed to forcefully guide the out-of-control energy back onto track during the few minutes of the ritual going berserk, saving the Philosopher's Stone from the brink of collapse.

The fact that she was able to forge the Philosopher's Stone signifies that her knowledge and abilities were among the best in the world.

But at this moment, she stood in a besieged fortress on the border of Romulus, facing an envoy who was weighing the pros and cons despite being threatened by both a horde of corpses and divine abominations. Her alchemy was of no use to him.

She can change the shape of the earth, but she cannot change people's hearts.

She can seal away divine evil, but she cannot seal away the political inertia accumulated by an empire over thousands of years.

She can cause the permafrost to churn and engulf thousands of infected people, but she cannot get a middle-aged civil servant to set aside his concerns about the balance of power and make the right decision.

She was too young, seventeen, not yet to inherit the title, and not even entitled to sit in the audience of parliament in her own country.

Her name might be heard in Langdon's aristocratic salons, but very few people have actually seen her or listened attentively to every word she said.

To the gentlemen sitting in high-backed chairs, Perfit Brandlis was just a spoiled schoolgirl, indeed talented, but not someone to be entrusted with matters of state.

Perfit took his cane off the table and leaned on the ground.

She didn't say another word. She turned and walked out of the command post.