This is the second part, which wasn't supposed to exist, but now is. It's short, but I wanted to put in some lore to this, while also trying out Economy. Which I never really studied much. Well, enjoy. The next will be tomorrow evening, and will also be tha last for this story.

“Year 523 of the Empire calendar.

After almost twenty year of peace, the fourth emperor of the Kalaust Empire, Franco the Fourth of Calenda, decided to start a new war to satisfy his own thirst of power.

But, even though he may have been an oppressive bastard, who would decide to break off any pact with other nations and shed the blood of his now citizens for his own profit, he was not an idiot. He knew very well he had to prepare for that, as the other powers would probably not stay put while he destroyed them one after the other.

So, he decided to wait for another three years, so that he could gather resources and put his enemies one against the others.

Now, we won’t dig much in the political warfare that he started, even if it sure was a good fight he put on in those three years. No, we will now talk about how massive the operation to gather materials (and build weapons for his army) became.

Franco did something that no ruler ever did, as they always put their pride over everything. He decided to trust the matter to the Adventurer Guild. He sent his messengers to all the guild branches to up requests for materials at double the normal price. Thus, the adventurer job in all of Kalaust had a boom, with everyday more and more people joining in the association, and adventurers from other parts in the world coming to set in the empire. This was also an advantage for Franco, as not only did the revenue of materials increased, but he could also recruit all of these people as mercenaries for when the war started.

So, in only three years his army doubled in numbers, and became ten times as strong compared to before. And what baffled even more the people from those times, was that the income that the Empire got didn’t decrease at all, but it got even higher! Even with all the money the Empire had to pay to support the rewards for gathering requests to the Guild, they only got more and more money.

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But that is only normal. As more and more adventurers came to Kalaust, merchants also followed, to sell their products. And of course, many immigrants, searching a job also came, bringing more manual labour, which raised the food production, increased the expansion of cities etcetera.

But, this is not all. It also brought new technologies and inventors, further increasing the life standards of even the poor people.

One of these inventors, called Juan, was personally hired by the emperor, thanks to one of his projects. Juan had in fact come up with a bizarre machine, which he called gravitational ship.

It was a normal ship, which could fly by exploiting a rare kind of mineral called gravitone. This material was found on the flying islands of Astri and had the peculiar ability to levitate.

Juan wanted to use his invention to improve the exportation and importation of goods, but Franco had other plans in mind. After stealing his projects he decided to lock away Juan in the deepest part of his dungeon, to make sure that no one would ever discover his new, secret weapon.

He immediately ordered the construction of the gravitational ship, but he still lacked the most important component: the gravitone. Just around fifty square centimetres were enough for a ship, but he wanted to build an entire armada of those. He could have bought it from the inhabitants, but even though Angles were generous creatures, he knew for sure that they wouldn’t be much willing to sell their only safe Eden. So he decided to take it whit force.

The next night, the Dragoon Division of his army took off to the Astri Island. Their mission was to slay the native population and gather as much gravitone as possible, leaving no witness behind.

The next day became what we now know as the “massacre of the pure”, one of the most brute slaughter that took place in the long war, without including the fall of Escariot. But that is another story.”

Extract from the “Epics of the Long War”, wrote by the Ember Sage not many years after the end of said war, in the year 864 of the Empire calendar.