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Augustine\'s rise to power had been so swift that it even gave Reibert a sense of an unreal illusion. He even thought that he had touched the threshold of becoming the Empire\'s Prime Minister, or even the Emperor himself.

Such illusions, such castles in the air, made him forget that everything he had seemed to come from a distant place, from an obscure human being.

Now, the other party seemed to be coming to collect the debt, and doing so by knocking on his door, which suddenly reminded him of many things, many, many things!

"My dear Augustine, worrying now is of no use, because our first fleet has already set sail for the Southern Waters, and nothing can stop the outbreak of this naval battle now," said the King of Poplar Kingdom with quite a good mood lately, comforting Reibert with a smile.

His Prime Minister had brought him one victory after another, and the size of his kingdom had already tripled!

Having defeated their Orc neighbors, they took control of a large number of pastures. They had more horses and more food, which could be used for further expansion.

After obtaining support from the Shireck Consortium, they were nearly invincible. Any resisting country would be easily defeated by them.

The only thing constraining the Elf Race was that the speed of their weapon production could not keep up with the pace of their expansion.

Since defeating the Orcs, Poplar Kingdom had consistently been short on metal, and the production of bullets couldn\'t keep up with the consumption of the front-line troops.

Everyone suffered yet reveled in this problem, because they had never encountered such good fortune before—whenever their troops had the logistical support to attack, they were certain to achieve victory.

The problem seemed simple. They just needed to frantically increase their production capacity, and that\'s precisely what the Augustin Family did.

As a result, they did indeed reap benefits—in the past six months, the Augustin Clan became extremely wealthy, and Poplar Kingdom launched outward expansions and, relying on the Augustin Family\'s munitions, secured a record of complete victory.

Even more so, they had improved their weapons, creating a bunch of strange and messy repeater weapons that turned out to be quite useful when facing enemies armed with Shireck flintlock guns on the battlefield.

However, problems were not nonexistent as they had pushed their production capacity to the limit, and the downstream industries were struggling to keep up.

Steel smelting could be directly increased by building blast furnaces, but where the iron ore would come from, was unknown. The Elves had really not considered using steam engines to boost the productivity of the mines first, as their other factories also desperately needed steam engine equipment.

The frenzied competition for steam engines among factories led to a bottleneck in the production of steam engine equipment—the Elf Race didn\'t have an electric power system to balance the power generated by steam engines, so they had to place a steam engine at every location that needed one, which was far less efficient compared to Tang Mo\'s electric power transmission.

The mines could only rely on hard labor from miners. If they were short on manpower, they forced overtime, and if that still wasn\'t enough, they used slaves to mine; efficiency was terribly low.

Low efficiency resulted in insufficient production capacity, and the ultimate solution was to rely on Poplar Kingdom\'s naval fleet to make large-scale purchases from other countries.

They had plenty of money from annexing neighboring countries and exploiting the citizens of the occupied areas, so Poplar Kingdom wasn\'t short on funds, and purchasing metal ores was going very smoothly at first.

But the good times didn\'t last. As Great Tang Group and Shireck Consortium both joined the queue for metal procurement, international iron ore prices were immediately driven to a staggering level.

Watching the three competitors, Poplar Kingdom could only barely maintain the current situation with its iron ore procurement.

Unexpectedly, now, their lifeline at sea, which they so relied upon, had actually been cut off by a scoundrel who had come knocking to collect his debt.

This was no small matter but a major issue concerning whether Poplar Kingdom could continue to expand and stabilize the current situation.

What made Augustine Reibert even more disconcerted was that this naval war seemed unavoidable, as the most efficient communication system in the world was not possessed by Poplar Kingdom.

The telegraph, this emerging communication technology, was exclusively owned by Great Tang Group, and all of Poplar Kingdom\'s commands and dispatches could only rely on letters and envoys for coordination.

This resulted in a delay in information, rendering some decisions unable to be conveyed promptly to the hands executing the orders.

When Augustine received the news from the Southern Waters, Poplar Kingdom\'s first Fleet stationed at Osa Military Harbor got the message at the same time.

Poplar Kingdom\'s first Fleet, with 30 first-rate warships, can be said to be very large. These expensive, with each warship having over 40 cannons, floating fortresses were the most powerful naval weaponry on this world before Great Tang Group made its appearance.

The first Fleet stationed at Osa Military Harbor had no reason to avoid battle, so as soon as they received the call for assistance from the Southern Waters, they would definitely send a fleet southward.

And the scale of this fleet would undoubtedly be substantial, because accompanying the message from the Southern Waters was surely news of two warships having been sunk.

So, there might be 10 warships heading south to join the battle, and it\'s estimated that the warship from the Great Tang Group that\'s come to collect the debt will definitely be sunk.

Or rather, at this very moment, it\'s possible that this warship from the Great Tang Group has already been sunk.

Thinking up to here, Augustine Reibert couldn\'t help but sigh once more. He had originally planned to play both sides, but as things had been progressing smoothly on his front recently, he had put the idea of hedging his bets to the back of his mind.

After all, as his side was thriving, although the groundwork of betting on both sides had been laid, he still trusted his own side a little more, more or less.

However, with the Poplar Kingdom\'s expansion and the continuous arrival of information, he had actually heard about the rising Great Tang Group.

A new arms and weaponry consortium capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Shireck Consortium was now an entity that the Augustin Clan could not afford to take lightly.

What worried him more was whether, if his side sank the Great Tang Group\'s warship, the hostility between the two sides would be truly established.

He even began to seriously consider whether he should settle the debt of 100,000 Gold Coins owed to Tang Mo and then perhaps apologize, transforming strife into peace…

What he didn\'t know was that his funds had possibly already breached the 10 million Gold Coins mark, selling the entire Augustine family might not even be enough to pay it off.

Coming back to his current concern, he was depressed because it was already too late to send out messengers to properly negotiate with the people on the debt-collecting ship.

He could no longer catch up to the fleet heading south, nor could he get his people to reach Southwater in time to communicate properly with those on board the challenging warship.

"I really didn\'t know that you had a debt relation with the recently frequently mentioned Great Tang Group," said the King of Poplar Kingdom to his most capable subordinate, "It seems that the situation is already irreversible, isn\'t it?"

Reibert bowed his head and answered with some embarrassment, "I\'m afraid so, and thus I plan to prepare a delegation to negotiate with the owner of this Great Tang Group in Leite Kingdom, seeing as it\'s all just business, with no deep-seated hatred..."

"We sank one of their ships, and they\'ve sunk at least 30 of our merchant ships! This is already enmity," the King of Poplar Kingdom interrupted Reibert, quite agitated.

If a kingdom was blockaded at their doorstep and had so many ships sunk while still maintaining restraint, then there was no need to mention valor or spine.

This was an outright provocation, practically a declaration of war! Therefore, as the King of Poplar Kingdom, Poplar XI did not intend to let this go so easily.

Meanwhile in Brunas, Tang Mo was looking through the complete dossier on the Augustine family of the Poplar Kingdom, a thick stack that seemed comprehensive. Exclusive tales from m v lem|p-yr

"Aren\'t you worried that sending a warship to challenge an entire nation might not succeed?" John asked nervously, standing before him.

"Why worry?" Tang Mo replied with an odd gleam in his eye, looking at John and smiling as he retorted.

His warship had an absolute advantage in speed, firepower, and defense. If it could be sunk, the Poplar Kingdom would have already united the seas long ago.

Even if the enemy concentrated their forces and surrounded it on all sides, the ironclad warship could easily break through and destroy the encircling enemy vessels, possibly even turning the tables to sink all the enemy ships surrounding it.

Moreover, he had the advantage of communication, being able to command the warship at any time—a condition the enemy did not have. Where battlefield coordination was concerned, if his side scored 80, the enemy might at best score less than 10.

If anything went wrong, he could directly order the warship to return home, which was much faster than sending a message.

Furthermore... he had two ironclad warships! If one was not enough, he could deploy three, completely preventing the Poplar Kingdom from setting sail!

So Tang Mo was not concerned about the battle, but instead started teasing John, "Just how many dads do you actually have? The first time you introduced yourself, you claimed your dad was Tural... Later, you said your dad was William..."

"That..." John immediately blushed. He had boasted extravagantly in the past without revealing his true identity, but now Tang Mo had investigated him thoroughly.

Tang Mo continued to tease John, "Later, I did some investigating. The current patriarch of the Augustine family is Reibert. Guess which one is your real dad?"

"Alright, I lied to you before... I never expected to become so deeply involved with you," John admitted his previous lie with some embarrassment.

Tang Mo pointed at the report featuring Reibert and asked curiously, "So, is he your real dad?"

"..." John looked at Tang Mo speechlessly, feeling the powerless urge to punch someone but not daring to.

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Finally, the update is complete, no debt owed anymore! Hehehe!