Chapter 720.3: Plans Can Never Keep Up With Changes

The biggest news of the day unquestionably belonged to the Southern Seas.

Representing the New Alliance and French Fry Harbor, the Jungle Corps had conducted a friendly visit to Ring Island. In a relaxed and cheerful atmosphere, both sides jointly released a declaration of friendship and pledged to deepen cooperation across more fields.

Governor Channing of Ring Island announced that New Alliance citizens were welcome not only to trade at the harbor, but also to visit and invest directly on the island itself.

In simpler terms, they just opened another new map!

Although Ring Island’s total area measured only 30 square kilometers across roughly equivalent to four Wake Islands, the local survivors had pushed the development and utilization of those 30 square kilometers to the absolute limit over the past two centuries. It was much like the residents of Shelter 100 who spent their entire lives trapped inside their tunnel.

Ring Island’s hyper-dense industrial system and highly automated production methods were enough to make even Boulder Town’s most advanced factories bow in admiration.

Of course, productivity and production costs were another matter entirely.

At present, Dawn City’s large-scale, rough industrial model remained the fastest and cheapest option, with at least two-fifths of the New Alliance’s total industrial output value supported by factories there.

Both sides had plenty worth learning from each other, whether in engineering or sociology, especially because both societies had been jointly built by shelter dwellers and wastelanders.

Though their developmental paths differed, their trajectories shared many similarities.

A small incident also occurred during the visit. A group of “little fish-men” attempted to sabotage the underwater pipeline.

Fortunately, the players at French Fry Harbor had already been wary of threats originating from the Death Coast ever since construction of the underwater pipeline began two months earlier. 50 W-2/H seaplane attack aircraft wiped out more than 1,000 aquatic mutants in a single bombing run after forcing them to the surface.

After witnessing the New Alliance’s overwhelming military strength and determination to maintain regional order, Governor Channing immediately expanded the friendship declaration by adding a mutual defense agreement.

From then on, Ring Island would not only allow New Alliance military vessels to dock at its harbor, but would also construct an airport beside the island for New Alliance air forces to use.

All of those achievements were thanks not only to the underwater freshwater pipeline, but also in part to the Torch Church and the Federation authorities. After all, had those idiots not caused such chaos, Ring Island’s residents never would have trusted a bunch of outsiders who had arrived less than two months ago.

As for what was happening, after experiencing freshwater priced at 0.8 silver per ton, the residents of Ring Island could only admit that the agreement they once signed half-skeptically now smelled absolutely glorious.

In a certain sense, just like the Moonfolk refugees who fled to French Fry Harbor, they had unknowingly begun taking on the shape of the New Alliance...

Professor Yang: Sigh... seeing you guys make money hurts more than losing money myself. T.T

This_lord_is_arrogant_what_can_you_do: Boring game, trash game! Been reserving for two damn years and still can’t get in! Once I finally enter, I’m blowing all of you up! ╭∩╮( •̀_•́ )╭∩╮

Quit Smoking: Holy shit, it’s been two years and you’re still getting New Year’s allowance money? ꉂ૮(°□°'˶)ა

Night Ten: Brother Light, just let him in already. The red-name system’s been around forever, shouldn’t someone test it? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

No Family: Please don’t. At least if you don’t get beta access you can still shitpost on the forums. If your account gets banned, you can’t even log into the forums anymore. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Midnight Umbrella: Bro, why are you so experienced at this?

No Family: Ahem... I just heard about it.

Escaping Mole: Strongly demand the Baiyue Strait Development Company go public! If these bastards keep snowballing like this, they’ll buy the whole New Alliance sooner or later!

Ample Time: You’re exaggerating way too much. A lot of our business is actually financed through loans from the New Alliance Bank. You think every business can just get funding whenever it wants? Though if we could go public, I would absolutely support it. Don’t look at how much we earn, we spend a ton too. If we could raise capital through listing, we wouldn’t need to keep expanding through debt. (¬ω¬)

Sideline Slacking: Holy shit, your business still isn’t big enough?! How much bigger do you wanna expand? ꉂ૮(°□°'˶)ა

Ample Time: This is barely the beginning. Forget the projects in Port Gallon, even just in the Southern Seas, the underwater freshwater pipeline network we plan to build is still mostly unrealized. Right now only one pipeline is operational, and Ring Island is our only customer. One pipeline alone is nowhere near enough to solve the living and industrial water needs of millions of survivors. We need many more.

Sideline Slacking: How much money can selling water even make?

Ample Time: Selling water alone obviously won’t make much. But the trust we establish by helping locals solve water shortages creates many other opportunities. Especially since the locals are well-educated survivors. Many of them possess knowledge and experience on par with the experts at Camp 101, particularly in marine land reclamation, which they specialize in. Those talents are exactly what we need, and in some cases desperately lack.

Sideline Slacking: 666!

Spring Water Commander: Damn, your game is insane. (づ •. •)?

Ample Time: Tsk, what do you mean?! Which wall of theirs did I tear down? They need fresh water, so I give them fresh water. They need electricity, I give them electricity. I even provide overseas employment opportunities for their idle population. And the price I ask in return is merely some local resources they currently can’t use or have in excess... I prefer calling it ‘efficient resource allocation’.

Night Ten: My god... Survivor Daily should hire you as an editor.

Sideline Slacking: 66666!

Eye Owe Money: Fuck! Other corps commanders lead their brothers to riches. Our corps commander only has the number 6 on his keyboard.

Construction Boy: Exactly! Our commander sucks too much!

Sideline Slacking: ??? Fuck, what’s wrong with me doing that after investing money in their company?

Eye Owe Money: ? When the hell did you secretly invest?

Old White: I pulled Brother Sideline into it. Two months ago. <(˘ ˘ ˘)>

Eye Owe Money: ??? HOLY SHIT!

Midnight Pubg: By the way, the governor of Ring Island also agreed to build an 800-meter runway beside the island. Brothers from the Air Force can station there in the future too. That’s another benefit brought by the pipeline. :)

Mosquito: Well, since they’ll be relying on us for water and electricity anyway, borrowing space to park a few planes doesn’t seem excessive. (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)

Battlefield Atmosphere Group: Is 800 meters too short?

Mosquito: Not really. W-2s only need 300 to 400 meters to take off. Oh right, heard a new aircraft model’s coming soon too. You guys can look forward to it. ♡૮₍ฅ ᵔ ꈊ ᵔ ฅ₎ა

Ample Time: Anyway, since infrastructure development has proven effective, our next stage will still focus primarily on infrastructure. As long as we connect all, or most, of the Federation’s 13 islands into the fresh water and power network originating from French Fry Harbor, then even without stationing troops locally, we’ll still gain indirect control of the region through economic means.

Old White: Like Silvermoon Bay?

Ample Time: More or less.

Although the Camel Kingdom had repeatedly requested New Alliance troops be stationed in Silvermoon Bay due to the irrational actions of the Xilande Empire, and had even offered to cover all expenses, nothing concrete had come of it yet.

Recently, the New Alliance had been reforming its military structure, abolishing the old unit organization and restoring the Federation Era military hierarchy.

Of course, that mainly concerned NPC military corps.

Player corps could still call their commanders “Boss” or “Chief” however they liked.

And so, while Ample Time continued painting grand visions of the Southern Seas’ glorious future alongside forum users, and encouraging them to storm the tower and persuade Light to establish the River Valley Province’s first casino... stock exchange, something unexpected suddenly happened.

Tail: Shocking! Huge news! Σ(°Д°;)っ

Quit Smoking: What happened?

Falling Feather: ?

Tail: French Fry Harbor’s neighbors, they’re fighting each other!

Old White: ...?

Ample Time: ???

Night Ten: Holy shit, Doggy Light flipped the table! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

In less than a minute... the entire forum exploded into chaos!

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