The next day, the three of us returned to school. I wasn’t really expecting much out of the alchemy lessons anymore. Luckily, Mr. Delmont had started pushing me further and further in medicine instead. The school mostly prepared students for alchemy university, but it also sent a few students to medical school. And my healing 'ability' made it easy to promote myself as a future medical university student.

When we got to class and sat down, I saw Iselde. It was rare for her to arrive before us, so I gave her a friendly wave.

“Iselde! Good morning! How are you?” I asked.

“Hey Miria! Hey Felix! Hey Anise!" said Iselde, giving the three of us friendly grins. I gave her a quick morning hug, which she returned, and then her grin grew wider. "Did you hear? The war is ending! I overheard my dad and my mom talking about it this morning!” Iselde said. She was almost bursting with excitement.

It took me a few seconds to process Iselde’s words, before I blinked in surprise.

“The war is ending?” I asked.

As we got older, the teacher had started to teach us more about countries of the modern era. As a result of that, we had also covered the current war between Verne and Enallia. He had dumbed it down a bit, and neglected some of the atrocities that occurred during the war. But he had still taught us about the conflict, and the coalition that had formed against Verne. The three of us had kept ourselves updated on the day to day progress of the war.

And that very knowledge and familiarity with the war was the reason I was so surprised. The war had escalated year after year, but nobody had any advantage over the other side. Some reporters estimated that half a million soldiers had died in the war already. And in that time, neither side had managed to hold on to new territory for longer than four months. Both sides had started using everything and anything at their disposal. From wild new inventions, to ancient Zelyrian technology, everything was on the table.

Most wars in this world continued until one side gained a decisive advantage. Then, the losers would fork over some money and land to the winner. The alliances on the continent would reshuffle, and a decade later they might be right back at it. If a country 'took too much' then the other nations of the continent would beat them down.

This had baffled me at first. The way the continent self-regulated the strongest nations felt weird. But I had realized that no nation wanted to absorbed by its neighbors. So the natural result of any nation getting an advantage was that the rest of the continent worked together to break that advantage.

The more I became familiar with this continent’s history of struggle and warfare, the more I empathized with Old Mo’s disgust for the process. It seemed pointless and endless.

And this war had gone on for far, far longer than most wars on this continent. The addition of new technology, such as improved airships, had drawn the war to the skies. Old Zelyrian technologies, such as artificial babies, had made the war bloodier on the ground. Assassination had become commonplace. Zelyrian magic was routinely used to tip battles in favor of one side. Recreations of old Zelyrian magic were also used frequently. It was a total mess, and part of me had wondered if the war would ever end.

“Is the war really ending?” asked Anise, sounding just as shocked as I felt. “I mean… I guess it had to end at some point, but…”

Iselde nodded. “I’m shocked too. My dad always said that they might keep fighting forever.” She sighed. "It's much better in Damilius."

“Honestly, I’m shocked that it took this long,” Felix said. “Most wars on this continent end within a year. This war is pretty unusual for its length, as well as the use of industrial weapons and machines."

"Yeah, but with how much both sides seem to hate each other, I figured one side would need to end in complete defeat," I said. "After all, the biggest reason for the war is that Verne is more industrialized than everyone else. Heck, they fought the rest of the continent almost alone. And they stalemated with them. That shows how scary the Vernese military is. With how the continent regulates itself... I'd be shocked if the loser of this war had a nation afterwards."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"True," said Felix, after a few moments. "Do you know which side won the war?" he asked Iselde.

"I don't," she said.

A few moments later, I heard someone else take a seat next to us. I turned around and grinned, as I saw our other friend.

“Hey Vance!” I said.

“Hey Miria,” he said, giving me a friendly smile. “And Iselde, Anise, and Felix. What are you guys talking about?”

“The war ended!” said Iselde. “Or, well, my dad said it’s going to end soon. The Vernese called for peace and the other side accepted… or something.”

I suspected there was a lot more to it than that, but that was as much detail as I was going to get from Iselde.

“Huh. That’s good,” said Vance. “But it seems… I don’t know. Sudden. They’ve been fighting for so long. The idea that the war is about to end feels strange to me.”

Iselde shook her head. “My dad says that they’re still kind of fighting. Until the peace treaty is signed, you never know what might happen. And they might keep shooting until a final treaty exists.”

I felt rather surprised that Iselde and Vance were so interested in the state of the war. That was something I expected adults to care more about. Just a few moments ago, I had assumed that Iselde would only know surface information about the war. She had almost immediately disproven that idea. I scratched my head, and started quietly adjusting my idea of what a normal ten year old was like. By the age of ten, children were aware enough of the rest of the world to take an interest in it.

Before I could fish for more information, Mr. Delmont walked into the room. He mentioned that the war might end soon, but didn't elaborate much before moving on to other lessons. I felt a little disappointed by the quick dismissal of the topic. I wanted to know more.

During lunch break, I asked Mr. Delmont to lend me a copy of the daily paper, (which he was happy to do), and read it during lunch. It might mark me as a little odd, but Old Mo said I was a passable kid at this point, so it wasn't too big of a deal. As long as I only occasionally seemed odd, nobody would think of me as anything more than a weird ten year old.

Iselde and Vance didn’t seem that interested in reading the news, but Anise and Felix read the paper with me. I grinned to myself. At least my understanding of ten year olds wasn't totally off. They didn't want to read the newspaper with me. They wanted to gossip about the end of the war, but not learn the specifics.

“So the Vernese surrendered, but not completely,” I said, as we read through the headline of the paper.

Felix nodded. “A conditional surrender is still a surrender. They're only willing to lose a little bit of land and money. It looks nothing like the total demolition of the country I was expecting. I wonder why the other nations accepted it.” Felix frowned.

I also frowned. I kind of agreed with Felix's earlier assessment. With how dangerous Verne was, the rest of the continent normally would have ripped the nation apart. Losing a little money and territory was nowhere near ruining the nation.

“One of the pieces of land they mention in the article is a big iron and copper mine,” said Anise. “Without that, Verne's industrialization progress will slow down. The war reparations will also weaken them. Maybe the other nations think they can outgrow Verne with more metal?” Anise shrugged. "It's the best guess I can come up with."

I thought about it, before nodding. Anise's guess made as much sense to me as any other reasoning. I wasn't an economist or a war strategist, after all.

As I continued reading through the paper, I started to pay less and less attention to the state of the continent. Instead, my attention was drawn to one other fact. Something that concerned our group a bit more directly. The second half of the article had details about the Vernese surrender. It prefaced this section by talking about the impact of artificial babies during the war. Apparently, normal artificial children were very strong and smart. At six years old, they could outperform regular soldiers. And most people felt sympathetic towards children. They weren't on guard against them the same way they were against adults. Both sides had used them heavily during the war for those purposes.

That wasn’t what surprised me. We had seen occasional newspapers featuring information about this. But as we kept reading, I started to get a bad feeling in my heart. Why was the newspaper talking so much about artificial children?

As we got towards the end of the article, my bad feeling was confirmed.

The coalition wanted Verne to surrender all ancient Zelyrian artifacts and technology. The coalition didn't just want to slow down Verne's industrialization. They also wanted to remove their path towards Zelyrian research. And Verne had agreed. They had also agreed to turn over all artificial children and research related to them.

There was no way Felix's information wouldn't be included. I didn't think anyone would be able to connect Felix the artificial baby with us. After all, Felix and I had spent a lot of time changing the way he looked. The only thing that remained the same was his name - and Felix was a very common name. But even if I knew that it was unlikely, I still felt nervous.

Felix's origin wasn’t going to come back to bite us… right?