Celestina Shoukan

Chapter 29 - The Official Declaration of War

The cover page features Celestina's Diplomat for Charge d'Affairs of Papaldia Empire, Captain Jacob Angelus

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The Papaldia Empire, Imperial Capital Esthirant

Supreme Commander Arde was baffled. Knowing that Mu sent an observer to the Celestina Empire and finding out that their analysis showed Celestina would emerge as a victor, he came up with feasible countermeasures for dealing with a larger military force. He thought, without actually seeing the results of Mu's analysis, that, if anything, what he would've misread was their method of attack. However, based on the report, he was completely baffled over the amount of pure strength they had during the meeting. Losing everything they sent to the Kingdom of Selarong wasn't a big deal where ground forces were concerned, but it was equivalent to a quarter of their naval power.

The implications of this information were causing confusion in Arde's mind. If, instead, it were some country inside the civilized areas that had brought a few thousand ships-of-the-line. He thought that the forces they dispatched would have taken some damage, and their overall strategy would only result in the damage that can be sustained to a certain degree. Still, there was no possible way they would ever get wiped out.

He had calculated Celestina's war potential using the report on the naval battle with the Kingdom of Louria, but maybe some of the information in it was inaccurate. Also, a statement from Lieutenant General Adem that survives the war against the Celestina Empire, the Papaldia Empire, didn't expect that Celestina's military was beyond his expectation.

"I need to look at all of our information on Celestina again and check the sourcing!!! Mu... what kind of information did they stumble onto?! ...Wait, could it be...?"

Arde imagined the worst possible situation. Could Mu have possibly... started exporting their machine science weapons? By moving their technology from the Second Civilization to the farthest reaches of the world, they wouldn't encounter much risk to themselves, and they could attack the empire by proxy. If the Celestina Empire were able to wipe out the Third Civilization by some miracle, it would fall to the First Civilization, mainly the Holy Milishial Empire, to keep them in check. The technological advancement level outside the civilized areas was too low for them to reproduce the weapons they made. And for Mu, they would be able to measure how effective their weapons were against other superpowers, profit from the exports, and keep the Papaldia Empire in check; it wasn't just two birds, three birds with one stone.

"If that's what's happening... this is bad! This is really bad!!!"

Supreme Commander Arde ordered his men to reinvestigate Celestina in much more detail.

--

First Civilization, Holy Milishial Empire, Port Town Cartalpas, a particular bar

At a particular bar, drunken patrons were watching a flat crystalline lens. In the top superpower, the Holy Milishial Empire, the news could be magically recorded then transmitted and displayed elsewhere, in color, using a flat crystalline lens receiver. The exact method differed, but this magic news program was available in both Mirishial and the Second Civilization superpower Mu, though only Mirishial, the world's strongest country, could watch it in color. Once a week, news from around the world was projected by Holy Milishial Empire's broadcast news via these crystalline lenses. For traders, this news was invaluable.

"It's starting!"

Music began to play, signaling the start of the news broadcast.

"Greetings, it is now time for world news. We have some genuinely fantastic news for our viewers today. And now, for our first story.