Last year was a revolutionary time for Kylian heavy industry and agriculture. Steel and food flowed through Kylian society like never before.

In turn this raised the Kylian population by 1%, an increase never seen before from centuries of decline.

However, Kylia had no intention of stopping there. She knew that with high birth rates and very long life spans, the State’s population growth should be a lot higher than it is now.

Many still die from high mortality rates, diseases, or the cold during winter. This constricts the amount of population growth per year.

To put in perspective of how low the Kylian population is, we can compare it to modern countries on earth.

Mauritania, a country of west africa, is roughly the same size as the State of Kylia at 1 million SqKm. However, compared to Kylia’s 9,000 people, Mauritania is home to 4.736 million people or 526 times larger than Kylia’s population.

It gets even more severe when you compare the population of Kylia to that of European countries. The land area of France and Germany combined, about 908,522 SqKm, is home to a population of 151.1 million people, 16789 times larger than Kylia’s population.

Greenland, technically the least densely populated “country” on earth, has around 0.14 people per square kilometer living in its borders. However, Kylia smashes that record with a depressing 0.009 people per square kilometer, which is not even a tenth of the density of Greenland’s.

Because of this, most technologies such as rifles, cannons and many other inventions cannot be manufactured not because of a lack of materials or technology but instead of a lack of population.

For example, the production of a Mauser 98k requires many parts, from various bolts, metal parts and a wood stock. Although Kylian blacksmiths can now make all of the metal parts thanks to the introduction of modern metallurgy plus surplus steel and Kylian craftsmen can carve all the timber into stocks, it would take months to fully equip the Kylian armed forces of 50 men, let alone mobilizing 1000.

This will not even include any uniforms, ammunition, and other gear that is vital to an industrial military. Kylia is not like Russia, where millions could be put to handcrafting supplies during war. The total industrial population of Kylia is less than 200, with half of them being new steel worker recruits and the rest consisting of masonries, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, and the armed forces(non rural).

Because Kylia does not have sufficient manpower to brute force production, she must focus on Kylian light industry, which lagged way behind heavy industry and agriculture the year prior. With the rise of the light industry, people’s living standards will also rise, leading to decreased morality.

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Kylia's first target was the textile industry. This famous industry is what prompted the rise of the British Empire and European hegemony for centuries.

The State of Kylia is no stranger to textiles, however most textiles are produced by the rural population, resulting in insufficient quality and quantity to the general public as each piece of clothing has to be sewed by hand.

While there are some choices of fabric for the population to wear, most of the public wear linen clothes as they are relatively strong and less labor intensive to make than cotton.

However turning flax seeds into linen manually is still way more labor intensive and longer than converting the stuff industrially, so Kylia immediately ordered the opening of an entire textile factory filled with flax spinning machines along the Roscof river.

As Kylian workers began the construction of the textile factory, Kylia got to reforming the construction and tool industry.

Last year, when the Kylian government purchased large amounts of construction materials and tools, Kylian artisans struggled to fully saturate the construction and tool market, even with all the surplus amount of steel flying around.

In regards to this Kylia had decided to promote a new way of making stuff, standardization and production lines.

Hiring 40 new workers, Kylia divided them into two production lines of carpenters and the equipment industry. The equipment industry would supply the carpenters with everyday tools that they use for their job. To produce these tools, workers would specialize in either producing or combining certain parts, then passing them down to the next specialist, resulting in faster production speeds.

The carpenters would do the same thing, except for furniture and other woodworking related products.

With the production of furniture and tools ramping up, along with the rapidly rising steel industry, material reserves in the capital were running dangerously low. Using the newly freed blacksmiths, craftsmen and newly hired alchemists, Kylia had achieved many breakthroughs in the chemical industry.

Although it's not an official industry in Kylia yet, under Kylia’s guidance, the alchemists succeeded in making smokeless gunpowder.

Using this gun powder, miners could now mine ore at frightening speeds. No more swinging a metal stick on some rock, just place the explosive and collect the ore. New inventions such as wheelbarrows also made ore transportation a lot easier for the miners.

Towards the end of the year, while many traits of a backwards classical/medieval civilization still stand, compared to the previous year in which the country was climbing out of mediocracy, the current situation can be described as a partial bloom of industrialization.

Obviously infrastructure is still way behind industrial standards but besides that, the major industries of industrialization have been established.

All of these industries were established with the future of the Kylian military in mind. Textiles for military uniforms, equipment manufacturing for military weapons plus equipment and steel for all of those.

It can be said that Kylia is now confident that she can fight the State of Sovi head on and not lose the fight, however it's still too rash to fight the next strongest Valor state, let alone all of them at once.

Meanwhile, North of Kylia City, as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows across the winter landscape, a gloomy march began to reverberate through the air. The ground churred as a few dozen shrill figures emerged from the snow, clearing the foliage in their path as they made their way south.

One lifted its snout to sniff the air, its stubby horn protruding from its forehead, drool dropping from its slobbering tongue as its eyes glowed with an evil hunger.

The Monsters are coming.