Munitions Empire

Brunas, the headquarters of Great Tang Group, was where Tang Mo's stronghold lay. A meeting regarding the current situation was taking place.

The situation had become very clear now. The opposition was obviously targeting Great Tang Group, encircling all the powers that Great Tang Group could influence.

To the north, Poplar Kingdom and Songmu Kingdom were both facing border pressures, and to the south, Dorne Kingdom was extremely passive.

The Central Leite Kingdom was also waging war against the Kingdom of Gemalin. Shireck had clearly planned this for a long time.

"Nicely arranged, drawing Leite into conflict with Germelin while dragging Dorne and Suthers into war as well. This time, the enemy is much better prepared than the last," Tang Mo leaned back in his chair, looking at the map, it was unclear whether he was being sarcastic or actually praising.

He shifted his gaze to Harry on the side, "I hear that the profit of the munitions department has increased by three hundred percent recently, a delightful situation, indeed."

"Master, our situation is not favorable. The large number of munitions orders has depleted our own material reserves. If the war drags on, we will soon fall into the trap of a shortage of supplies," Harry reminded Tang Mo.

The adversary, also an arms consortium, naturally could gauge the extent of Great Tang Group's reserves to some degree.

Indeed, Great Tang Group might have risen swiftly, appearing fierce, but it also had its own Achilles' heel.

This Achilles' heel was materials—the rapid development, though swift, necessitated a massive consumption of materials, so the stockpile couldn't be all that large.

Granted, Great Tang Group had more efficient factories that could produce more advanced artillery shells and more powerful cannons, and they could even build ironclad warships that Shireck could not produce.

But if the war broke out on too large a scale or dragged on indefinitely without end, then Great Tang Group's supply would face serious problems.

This was essentially Shireck's overt strategy. They had targeted Great Tang Group's inability to withstand the consumption of a large-scale war through its material stockpile.

It couldn't be helped. The higher-ups at Shireck saw it rightly because Tang Mo's Great Tang Group indeed could not withstand such depletion.

Despite Tang Mo purchasing a large amount of steel and even constructing several large steel mills, and popularizing more advanced iron-making technology, the steel produced by Great Tang Group was dispersed among a multitude of related industries.

Steel was needed for railways and trains, and even if the carriages were made of wood, the tracks indeed consumed real steel.

Steel was also needed to build ships and manufacture automobiles, and Tang Mo's factory equipment also required steel, so there was much less steel that could be allocated for weapons production.

Likewise, most of Tang Mo's metal reserves were used in expansion, the outbreak of war accelerated the consumption of these metals, and Great Tang Group's metal reserves began to tighten.

The frontlines of the war not only consumed Tang Mo's material reserves but also his human resources.

To respond to the war, countless able-bodied workers were assembled and focused on transportation and military training, which also slowed down the pace of Tang Mo's production expansion.

Without the war, Tang Mo's expansion rate would have grown geometrically, but now the pace had clearly slowed down by several times.

These were all issues that caused discomfort for Tang Mo's Great Tang Group, but they had to be endured nonetheless.

"There's no way around it. If we talk about absolute production capacity and material reserves, Shireck Consortium holds an absolute advantage, and that's not something we can change in the short term," Tang Mo looked at his subordinates, admitting his own weakness.

However, he then said, "But we have our strengths, ones that were overlooked by everyone in the past, but are now increasingly important!"

He stood up, walked over to the map, and drew a large circle on it with his hand: "Indeed, Shireck has greater overall strength than us. But why did they lose more than a year ago?"

"Because they couldn't concentrate their forces against us! They are so massive that they don't even know what's happening in their local areas!" Tang Mo said, with a mocking smile.

Then he pointed to the warzones on the map and continued, "Their power requires transportation, and time to concentrate in the needed areas. We are clearly superior to them in terms of transportation!"

"Further afield, their supplies cannot be assembled in the warzones. The consumption along the way is enough to make them collapse. So in fact, what affects the outcome in the warzones is still the proximity to these areas... these regions!" His finger slid across the map, narrowing down to the nearby countries.

"Looking at the Shireck Consortium in these regions alone, or say, the industrial base of these nations, they are not even on the same scale as us!" Tang Mo confidently drew his conclusion: "We are at least twice, if not three times their size!"

If the products can't be delivered to the places where they are needed, it's no different than not being able to produce them at all.

This era was deformed because, due to Tang Mo's emergence, the entire world's technological development was completely chaotic and random.

Scientific technology and theoretical knowledge could not catch up with the development of technology; most of the technology introduced by Tang Mo actually lacked sufficient theoretical support in other regions.

To put it bluntly, these technologies could not be easily replicated, and even if they were copied, the imitations were crude, with few able to fully grasp them.

Similarly, in areas where Tang Mo had not had time to develop, the world's technological level remained backward, lagging to a laughably pathetic extent.

Take a simple example: this world already had cars, which were a new product introduced by Tang Mo, and were even in use in many regions.

However, only the Leite Kingdom and Dragon Island had complete, large-scale production bases for refining gasoline.

What's more ridiculous is that Tang Mo's methods for transporting crude oil were basically still primitive; he had no oil pipelines, nor did he have tanker ships specialized for transporting oil.

Therefore, the gasoline produced on Dragon Island was actually transported to Brunas in large quantities using a mode involving wooden barrels and sailing ships.

Similarly, all the liquids produced by the oil refineries of Brunas and the Leite Kingdom were mostly transported to other places using primitive methods.

Who could have imagined that the fuel for the gas stations in Ice Crystal City, ensuring enough gasoline there, depended on a magical combination of horse-drawn carriages and wooden barrels that were originally for wine and spirits?

Tang Mo had introduced a square iron gasoline barrel, but this luxurious method of transporting oil was only popular in Brunas, after all, iron was still a relatively expensive material.

In places outside Leite and Dragon Island, iron as a material was still relatively unfamiliar, and most of the time, areas which could make do with wood did not use iron materials.

"Although the enemy has made meticulous arrangements, have they... forgotten something?" Tang Mo asked his subordinates as he stood beside the map.

"The Poplar Kingdom and Songmu Kingdom are too far to quench the immediate thirst, Suthers is troubled from within and without, the Leite Kingdom is struggling on the border, Dorne is too preoccupied with its own troubles..." Luff shook his head, unable to think of any forces they could still mobilize.

"The same is true for Dragon Island; even if Roger suspended construction there, he wouldn't be able to help us out in the short term," Li'ao added, shaking his head as well.

"We still have a force they haven't taken into account..." Tang Mo smiled, placing his hand on a spot on the map, "Let's hope they can give our enemies a surprise!"

...

"Report!" A Germelin officer pushed open the door of his commanding general and shouted loudly.

The general commanding the troops invading Leite lifted his head, along with a group of military officers and a representative of the Shireck Consortium who were studying the battle situation, to look at the officer specially in charge of delivering intelligence.

"What's the matter?" the general asked, looking at the messenger whose complexion didn't look quite right: "What happened?"

"A message from the officers on the flank! They said we seem to have been ambushed by the Leite military!" the messenger hesitated before conveying the news from the flank.

"Hm?" The general frowned, somewhat unwilling to believe such news: "That's impossible! How could the Leite Kingdom still have such a large army? How many people are they?"

"The messenger said that the enemy has two legions... and there's likely... another legion behind them…" the officer stammered.

"That's impossible!" This time, it was the Shireck's person who cried out loud: "Where did they get so many troops from?"

The messenger felt awkward, glanced at his general, and after seeing the doubt in the latter's eyes, looked back at the Shireck representative and said: "Sir, the message is authentic. The messenger said... said that the troops were flying... the flag of a wolf, a wolf flag."

"Northern Ridge!" The Shireck representative's face turned pale in an instant; only then did he remember that the Leite Kingdom seemed to have an "autonomous region" that obeyed orders but not proclamations.

Usually, everyone remembered the rapidly industrializing Northern Ridge, but habitually neglected the fact that Northern Ridge always had a military force in existence.

What no one knew was that for the past two years, Northern Ridge had never been idle; since Earl Fisello of the Northern Ridge was assassinated, his military forces had been expanding.

With the support of the Great Tang Group, the economic situation in Northern Ridge was enviably good, which meant that Ronin Alice, who had inherited the earldom, had always had more than enough funds to maintain her troops.

What everyone didn't know was that the small Northern Ridge possessed six regiments of troops. These regiments were not traditional legions but modern infantry regiments reorganized by graduates from the Great Tang Military Academy.