Munitions Empire

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"Are you really going to do business with Shireck? That's practically like asking a tiger for its hide…" Roger looked at Tang Mo, who was picking his teeth with a toothpick, and asked in confusion.

Tang Mo slapped the homemade toothpick onto the table and smiled, "I'm just buying time. As long as they are willing to maintain a peace period of three to six months with us, we can turn Brunas into an ironclad fortress."

"By then, we'll have hundreds of soldiers and a dozen grenade launchers, fully capable of setting up a defensive line to go to war with an enemy ten times our size in Brunas," Tang Mo said as he looked toward the exquisite map hanging on the wall beside them.

This map was a gift from Gis to Tang Mo, and along with it came many other things.

For instance, the pile of fine wine in the corner of the room, the tens of thousands of Gold Coins in Tang Mo's warehouse, and an order for the Great Tang Group that seemed quite exaggerated.

Shireck had placed an order for 100,000 bullets with Tang Mo, priced at one Gold Coin each.

Gis had paid a deposit of 50,000 Gold Coins for this, as well as a contract for the mines near Brunas.

Brunas was originally an iron-producing area, with the vein extending all the way from the Northern Ridge Mountains and mineable on both sides of the Vicious Forest, the reserves were enormous.

On the other side of Brunas, there was also a coal mine, which was why Tang Mo's father, Tang Qi, chose this location to build a weapons workshop years ago.

Tang Mo acquired the deeds to the iron and coal mines, mining permits, and even contracts for the workers inside.

Tang Mo, having received so much, did not breach the agreement and immediately delivered 10,000 bullets to Shireck, which made the munitions workshops in the Leite Kingdom bustling with activity.

Gis began copying the needle-fired guns provided by Tang Mo without a break, manufacturing as many as 1,500 in one go.

"But do we really have to fight a battle with Shireck?" Roger asked with some reluctance, knowing that once the war broke out, the entire area around Brunas would surely become a scorched earth.

Tang Mo stared helplessly at the map, explaining to Roger, "It's not that we want to fight, but that they will definitely attack. If they were willing to do honest business, they wouldn't have such a bad reputation."

Having said that, he looked at Roger again with a wry smile, "We don't need to be too anxious, because the other party definitely won't act rashly in the short term."

"They only have 10,000 bullets, it's futile no matter how many weapons they make." Tang Mo walked over and comforted Roger, "So, they will definitely wait until all 100,000 bullets are delivered, and then they'll order hundreds of thousands or even a million bullets before they feel confident enough to confront us."

"Think about it, 100,000 bullets, a few thousand rifles – just a few shots per person in training and the bullets will be almost used up." Seeing that Roger was still somewhat worried, he explained very lightly.

"The other party will surely show weakness first, relinquishing many mines and towns… These are the terms we've signed into the contract, and they will execute them seriously," Tang Mo circled around the office desk, passed Li'ao and Redman who were seated there, and approached the map, scrutinizing the wealth of Shireck indicated inside the Leite Kingdom.

This map was a significant property of Shireck, showing the distribution of their resources.

Over a third of the mines in the Kingdom were directly controlled by Shireck, and of the remaining mines, Shireck had shares in half of them.

Actually, the King's wealth was less than what Shireck controlled, which was why Gis could be so unrestrained within the country.

With this map, Tang Mo could clearly see his wealth growing, because just about a fortnight ago, Shireck transferred a few small workshops in the eastern part of Brunas to Tang Mo.

These workshops produced fabric and weren't worth much. But once Tang Mo took control of these small workshops, he essentially controlled the villages they were located in.

As he spoke, he pointed at the spots on the map which seemed under his control: "And their purpose in executing these terms is to lull us into complacency, and to disperse our limited attention."

The places surrounded by red circles on the map now belonged to Tang Mo. To fully assimilate and displace Shireck's influence here, Tang Mo and his staff had much work ahead of them.

His fingertip rested on the little red circles around Brunas as if talking to himself: "Once we have too many places to look after, we will inevitably neglect some areas, and at that point, they can gather their troops and defeat our scattered soldiers one by one."

"So what do we do?" Tagg asked anxiously, sitting beside Roger.

Tang Mo laughed nonchalantly, "We don't need to watch so many mines, nor control so many towns. All we need to do is stay honest and wait here for their people to come and fight."

"Basically, to willingly let Shireck give up the Leite Kingdom, we have to make them realize the fact that they can't beat us," said Tang Mo, before turning around to look at his confidants.

Redman asked a question out of the blue, but everyone knew what he meant, "How many will there be?"

Tang Mo didn't care at all and casually gave an answer that left many speechless, "About… 20,000, I guess."

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"..." Wes, Li'ao, Roger, and others didn't speak; they just looked at Tang Mo, their eyes filled with worry.

Scratching his head, Tang Mo grimaced and asked the people, "Think twenty thousand is a lot?"

"A bit..." Wes nodded.

Although at the Northern Ridge, they had defeated an enemy force several thousand strong with just 600 men. But that was at the Northern Ridge, and they had new-fangled weapons like needle guns.

Now it seemed Shireck also had Tang Mo's weapons, at least there wasn't much difference in terms of individual weaponry between Shireck and Tang Mo's security troops.

What was worse, previously they had fought on a relatively small battlefield and had stopped the enemy's assault. But in Brunas, they faced twenty thousand enemies on a considerably long defensive line!

For them, this was definitely not good news, at least not exciting news.

Tang Mo smiled, his grin full of disdain and danger. He scanned the crowd and raised an unexpectedly unrelated topic, "Ever heard of the Somme River?"

"No, where is that?" After reflecting for a moment, Roger realized he had never heard of the place and asked back with some confusion.

But Tang Mo did not answer his question and instead approached Li'ao, continuing to ask, "Then have you heard of Verdun?"

Li'ao appeared uncertain as he struggled to search his memory, finally looking at Tang Mo with some uncertainty, "Have you been there?"

"No, I haven't been there," Tang Mo shook his head, "I haven't been there in my life."

The group was somewhat puzzled, looking at Tang Mo, "Then..."

Tang Mo sat back in his seat, spreading his hands, "Don't worry! Trust me... For us, twenty thousand might not even be enough for us to kill in one day..."

"..." Everyone was speechless at Tang Mo's cryptic statement; they had never heard of killing twenty thousand people in a day.

"Now, gentlemen! What we need to do is make the best use of this hard-won period of peace and focus on our most important work," Tang Mo walked back to the map, touching the edge of the Vicious Forest, at the short line of alternating black and white.

It was drawn by him using strips of white paper and ink, cut into a thin line and stuck on the map. What this line represented was now quite obvious.

This was the world's first railway track, linking the old factory area with the new one. In just over a month, the short few kilometers of track would be completely connected and put into operation.

He couldn't blame these people for not knowing about the meat grinder at Verdun, so he also couldn't blame them for not understanding the implications of his words.

In fact, anyone who knew about the battle of Verdun in that war in Europe knew that automatic weapons had rewritten the entire landscape of warfare.

From that point on, any attacking force in a war would pay a heavy price, and Shireck would definitely pay ten times, a hundred times the cost for their arrogance.

These entrenched parasites didn't even want to buy some steam engines to improve their production lines in advance.

Greedily, they compensated for their technological shortcomings with sheer numbers of workers, hoping to rely on an irrational war to completely dominate everything that belonged to Tang Mo.

That's why they only bought bullets and nothing else from Tang Mo, and that's why they generously agreed to Tang Mo's demand to take over the entire Leite Kingdom.

In the end, both sides were scheming, calculating against each other in their own ways.

The pit Shireck was digging for Tang Mo was called having ten times the troops! They would teach Tang Mo a lesson with a war, after having enough munitions in reserve.

And the pit Tang Mo was digging for Shireck was even deeper, named the Maxim machine gun. Although this thing was still on paper, some of its parts had already begun production.

"Sir, do you really think that this steel path, expensive to build... will give us an advantage in the war?" Tagg asked with incredulity, expressing the doubt in his heart.

In his view, using the steel required for dozens, even hundreds of cannons to lay a track randomly on the ground and call it a road was sheer waste.

"No..." Tang Mo shook his head, the railway would certainly help in the war like never before, but this time he wasn't relying on it.

However, he then continued, "But, it will make us richer after the war is over..."