When Kylia woke up, she didn't open her eyes right away. Instead, she focused on the soft fur-covered bed beneath her. She preferred fur to linen because it was much thicker and kept her warmer during the winter.
After finally opening her eyes, she sat up quickly, startling two worried figures waiting by her bedside.
"My Valord is awake," an elderly male rohati approached her first, followed closely by a younger female rohati dressed like a maid. The man, named Fermer, was the former lord of this small citystate before he happily relinquished control a couple of months ago to Kylia to manage. The woman is his former maid Roshi who now works for Kylia.
“What happened?” Kylia asked softly, feeling a throbbing pain in her head.
For humans in the modern era, dealing with headaches was as easy as using a sack of ice or taking some pills, Kylia had neither of these things right now. Even if she did have an ice pack, she wouldn't be able to place it on her forehead, as her horn is in the way.
Roshi glanced at some notes and responded, "My Valord, when you didn't call for us, we sent a group of local miners to search for you. They found you lying in the mud, passed out."
“How long have I been gone?” Kylia asked. It would be annoying if she was out for a long time, someone stupid may have the idea to take her place while she was gone.
Sensing her concern Femer quickly replied “You've only been asleep for several hours, it's now midnight.”
Kylia was relieved when she heard that when suddenly her headache flared up.
“Ah! My head hurts so much right now! Please go and report back to tomorrow morning,” Kylia groaned, clutching her head in distress.
“Yes, my Valord!” they both replied, bowing deeply before quickly exiting the room.
After making sure the two were really gone, Kylia thought deeply, trying to remember what had happened to her.
In her memory she was pretty much dead at the time, thrashing, coughing up blood and staggering about. But now she is clearly alive and feels much better than before, better than she ever had in her life ignoring the headache going on right now.
Just as she tried to infer what had happened a floodgate in her mind suddenly opened up. 61 million souls worth of data came crashing down upon her, string theory, astrology, farming knowledge… it all filtered into her mind. Every life story, every emotion, each struggle and every dream collided within her consciousness, a storm of experiences, voices of anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness.
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She watched a man watching the news on TV, an intense knife duel from both perspectives between each opponent, and finally experienced hanging herself off a stool.
All of this was extremely painful to Kylia, in fact if 61 million souls worth of data were really stored in her mind, I'm afraid that her head wouldn't be able to blow up any more from the sheer amount of information coursing through her brain. Instead these 61 million souls are being “connected” to her soul through a multidimensional conduit, she’s just getting used to it.
The next morning Kylia, who had spent half of the night head breaking pain, gained a new understanding of the technology level of this world. Kylia guessed that The Japanese Kingdom of Hyrule is likely the most technologically advanced civilization in this world. The Kingdom of Hyrule possesses at least a medieval steel forging, farming, and craftsmanship, supplemented by a little magic based sheika technology, its national strength is vastly superior to any of the Ukrainian/Russian Western States combined.
Compared to Hyrule, the Western states are far inferior in regards to technology, as almost all the states rely on Hyrule to supply them with steel, iron, tools and weapons in exchange for food, keeping the states population very low.
In Fact this is so effective at keeping population low that the entire population of the Western states is only at the same level of Hyrule’s, even though the land area of the Western states is approximately seven times larger than the entire Kingdom of Hyrule.
Without steel weapons, Western states are forced to keep most of their population within their capitals as they are unable to gather the combat effectiveness to properly eradicate monster dens, compared to Hyrule’s population which is a lot more spread out in settlements all over the country.
This not only affects the limit of growth in the Western states but this also lowers food production as the area for growing food shrinks down rapidly.
However, under these circumstances, the statistical management of the Western states is vastly superior compared to even the Hylians, as with only the capital to supervise it becomes much easier to keep track of resources, compared to an entire country. Enabling the states to conduct nationwide censuses each year.
Kylia who was reviewing all of this stuff in her head was suddenly interrupted by knocking on her door.
Kylia, who woke up a while ago, stretched while putting down a brush that she was using and said, "Come in! ...what's the matter?"
Two panicked figures stumbled through the doorway, “My Valord, the neighboring city-states have done it this time! They’ve imposed a steel tax on any barge traveling through the Rosa River! This decree comes directly from Valord Rosa of the State of Rosa herself!”
“Ha-Ha, Rosa is my sister, Citiestates dare tax us? Xa-Xa-Xa!” Kylia forced a stifling laugh, dismissing Fermer’s statement.
Kylia had been experiencing a streak of bad luck in the last few days. Just yesterday she nearly died, then had a traumatic night with very low amounts of sleep and now the next bad thing happened to arrive at her doorstep, much like someone dumping you a tootsie roll at your front door, except it's the kind you don’t want to eat.
The citystate of Fermer, now being called the State of Kylia, sits right on the confluens(where two rivers meet) of the Rosa river and the Roscof river, making it into a major trading hub of commerce in the Rosa river basin. The state enjoys a very temperate climate, similar to that of Ukraine’s, making the region perfect for farming. To the northeast there are numerous resources, timber, horses, iron, stone, and many more, similar to the Donbass region of Ukraine.
That's where all the Kylia’s advantages end, the state also holds many dangerous disadvantages that could be exploited easily by its neighbors.
To the west is the State of Rosa on the coast, East is Rishka Citystate, North is Roscof plus Techiya, both are City States, and the south is also the territory of Rosa. In short Kylia is as a landlocked country as Bolivia is in south america, has a navy but can’t leave to the open seas.
What's worse is that the State of Kylia is not really a true Valord state by Valord state standards.
The State of Kylia is 10x smaller in area than the smallest Valord states and its population of 9,000 is only 90% the size of the next larger state by population, Sovi, with 10,000 to its name. This may not sound like a lot, but the largest state by population, Viskov, has a population of 30,000, which is three times larger than Sovi’s.
Kylia can only be called an existence that is stronger than City States, but suppressed easily by Valor States, no match for Rosa and her allies.
“Blaaaaaaaaayt!”