I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

Time passed in a flash—four full years had gone by.

Under the continuous escalation of the Britian Empire, the Seris Alliance had successively deployed 1.2 million bolt-action rifles along with hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition and grenades. At the same time, several ammunition production lines were established within the Kingdom of Suria to supply munitions locally.

The bizarre tide of infected had also been suppressed through the cooperation of civilians in the western regions of the Britian Empire and the regular army. Only a few scattered remnants remained, having slipped through the net.

Meanwhile, the war situation in the Derro conflict had consumed a massive population through prolonged attrition under previous escalations—something the Alliance had also contributed to. It was the Alliance’s infrastructure teams that had helped both sides construct roads and railways...

While this greatly enhanced the speed of troop deployment to the front lines and the delivery capacity of logistical supplies, it also, in a very real sense, accelerated the rate of soldier casualties on both sides.

Because faster deployment of troops and supplies meant that neither side could achieve meaningful advances. Instead, both were locked into daily attrition warfare within entrenched positions, and soldiers on both sides developed intense war-weariness.

The situation on the Dmitria Church’s side was even worse. The joint company formed under John’s leadership had used the Church’s previously acquired colonies as collateral guarantees.

But now, new colonies were nowhere in sight, and the four colonies that had originally served as credit backing had already been reduced to ruins during these four years of war.

The idea of using land resources obtained after defeating the Roshek Tsardom as a future stock growth pool was gradually becoming unrealistic.

The kingdom’s populace had already completely lost any expectation of victory in this seemingly endless war, and naturally, the stock price of the Wokingmeh Consortium began a slow yet unstoppable decline.

Most importantly, the annuity bonds that John had promised the nobles—guaranteeing a 20% annual return—were about to reach the end of their five-year lock-in period.

If the nobles lost confidence in the future, withdrawal of investment would be inevitable. And such withdrawals could trigger large-scale bank runs among the populace, causing the Wokingmeh Consortium to collapse instantly.

However, just as John was drenched in cold sweat, the situation encountered by the peace envoys sent by the Dmitria Church caused a sudden reversal of fortune.

The Tsarist Nation had also withdrawn its troops. What had begun as a defeat had ended in a negotiated stalemate—an outcome that, for John, was a blessing in disguise.

The Roshek Tsardom, which treated serfs as expendable, had continuously sent them to the front lines to die through harsh coercive measures.

In the past, the Tsarist Nation’s regular army had mostly consisted of professional soldiers, who would merely bring along some serfs to serve as expendable units—charging into traps or taking blows.

But the weapons of the Seris Alliance had enabled the large-scale arming of serfs. At a lower cost, the Tsarist Nation could easily field armies numbering in the millions, with the front lines now almost entirely composed of serf legions.

At first glance, this did not seem significant. But in reality, the structure of the Tsarist military had undergone a fundamental transformation. After years of baptism in blood and fire, even the most poorly trained forces, given enough time, could be tempered into elite troops.

Within the 18th Army Group, Yadov—who had risen to mid-level command—seized an opportunity to completely eliminate the army group commander along with a large number of noble officers. With a single gunshot, the 18th Army Group transformed into a rebel force.

Following his lead, other serf legions either mutinied or split off one after another, sparking a massive wave of serf uprisings across the Tsarist Nation.

Newly conscripted serfs, upon receiving their issued weapons, would immediately turn around and shoot their own quartermasters before launching rebellions on the spot—causing the nobles to completely lose trust in the serf armies.

This severely undermined the Roshek Tsardom’s mobilization capability, leading to stalemates or rapid retreats across various fronts.

Initially, the territory that Roshek had regained through heavy tanks and Mechanical Soldiers was entirely lost again, along with significant additional territorial losses.

At this point, the Tsar was overwhelmed by internal uprisings and had no desire to continue the war, urgently seeking to sign an armistice and shift focus to suppressing the rebellions.

This was when the Dmitria Church began to stall. As long as they could tie down the Tsar’s main forces, the internal rebellions would be enough to cripple him.

Thus, when both sides sat down at the negotiation table, the Church’s representatives immediately made outrageous demands, driving up the price recklessly. The Tsarist grand duke responsible for negotiations became so enraged that his face turned red, and he grabbed a teacup and hurled it at the Church’s representative:

“You think you’re worthy? If you don’t want peace, then we keep fighting!”

‘Then fight! Let’s see whether your Tsar collapses first, or we do!’

“Damn you—!”

The envoys from both sides broke into a full-blown brawl inside the conference room, and the first day of negotiations ended in total discord.

But while the two nations remained entangled, a major problem also erupted within the Britian Empire itself.

Previously, in order to suppress the infected hordes, Britian had used every possible method. Among them, the Alliance’s airdropped weapons had greatly alleviated the crisis.

However, those over one million rifles had been directly delivered into the hands of the western Beastmen. Now that the infected threat had been largely eliminated, when the Empire attempted to reassert control over major cities and territories, it encountered fierce resistance.

Only then did the Emperor realize just how catastrophic his decision had been. What did over a million rifles mean? It meant that, on average, one out of every six to seven western Beastmen possessed a weapon.

This level of combat capability was not much weaker than that of the infected.

And most of them had previously been serfs—how could armed serfs possibly remain obedient?

Obey? To hell with that. They directly declared the western region to belong to the western Beastmen and formed their own liberation organization.

Kill them? Intimidate them?

After brutally massacring two cities to enforce suppression, while disposing of the corpses, roaming Beastmen agents secretly threw in several infected bodies. Within just a few days, the number of infected surged again—and this time, the Beastmen showed far less determination in eliminating them.

Imperial orders issued to the western regions became largely ineffective. The reactions of the local population were extremely subtle—they reverted to their previous tribal aggregation patterns.

Numerous small tribes began to flourish across the western lands.

When the regular army arrived, they would simply relocate with their families, leaving the army to deal with the infected on its own. As long as the infected did not invade their settlements, they ignored them.

After all, they all possessed Alliance-supplied weapons, and years of frontline combat against the infected had allowed them to understand some of the infected’s weaknesses. Small-scale infected groups no longer posed a threat to them.

Millions of Beastmen were scattered across the western lands in tribes of several thousand each. This made governance extremely difficult, and deploying troops achieved little.

Send too few troops, and they would be slaughtered. The Beastmen themselves also had a considerable number of powerful mages.

Send too many, and the Beastmen would simply flee.

Moreover, the regular army’s supply lines were frequently cut off by guerrilla attacks, and they were often lured into traps—being led into areas densely populated with infected and attacked from both inside and outside.

Even the Saints found themselves at a loss. The Britian Empire had six registered Saints. Even if all six were unleashed in the western regions, annihilating one tribe at a time—how long would it take to deal with millions?

And it wouldn’t be enough to kill them once—it had to be done twice.

The intense bloodshed would quickly attract infected creatures seeking to feed. Even if they didn’t increase in number, feeding would strengthen them.

There was even a faint implication that the Beastmen were leveraging the infected threat to pressure the Empire.