Chapter 1139 – Season 3 Arc 8 Start – Carving up Land


    It took a whole month to clean up the mess of the Order of the Golden Rose.


    What they had in place previously was primitive in every way. Local militias acting as the enforcement of centralized guidelines was an administrative system that belonged in the Middle Ages. What had kept this territory together had been momentum, the incorruptible zealotry of the militants and the accuracy with which the Order’s seers could sense lies. Had John waited, the whole thing would have either folded in on itself within a few years or William would have spontaneously discovered a love for bureaucracy.


    Given that even if John had lost, the Order would have enlisted Fusion’s officials to arrange the administration, it was clear what would have happened.


    The good news was that the territories were already pacified. A lot more pacified, it had to be admitted, than any of the territories John had taken over. Reason for this was the duality of the aforementioned seers and the Order’s lower threshold for capital punishment. Lower population density likely also played a role, but fundamentally credit went to the Order. Turned out that cleansing a population thoroughly of all remotely criminal elements and pulling the rest into a religious worldview was a formula for rapid stabilization. A pretty risky one, if executed callously. It was easy to accidentally round up innocents in the process and acquire the ire of the remaining locals in the process.


    Although John still insisted that there were more there that could have been redeemed, at large the Order had done a splendid job at creating a swathe of land ripe for governance. During the entire month, there was no single incident of a slavery ring popping up and all other sorts of crime were squarely under the average of the rest of Fusion.


    Problem was that there was basically no one left in those areas that could serve even as an intermediate governor. Any kind of guild laying claim to certain areas had been crushed and dissolved, many of their higher ups ending up dead, self-exiled, or recruited by the Order, depending on luck and level of ‘purity’.


    So, while John had been handed the optimal situation to carve a few states out of the area, there were no officials left or to be found to do it for him. Fusion’s own core administration was still fledgeling, stretching it out to administer a landmass about half the Federation’s new size would have caused problems everywhere else. He couldn’t use the military either, since those forces were still needed to occupy the formerly Lorylim-afflicted areas.


    To put it bluntly: Fusion was suffering from success. It was growing faster than manpower demands could be met and this sudden, massive expansion, brought it near the breaking point.


    The Gamer had to do all of it either personally or closely observe the procedures. Even with two bodies, keeping everything moving forwards took almost all of his time. He had to negotiate details with William and Moira. The latter was now a lot more closely involved in the leading process. It seemed that the reveal how much more powerful than him she was had humbled William in terms of his leadership. It hadn’t caused his behaviour towards John to change though.


    Beyond them, John had to travel through the entire territory and personally take stock of what was happening. This was another point that made setting up the administrations terribly difficult: data. The Order had been so completely focused on punishing the wicked, they had never done a census. Data relevant to military operations was abundant, such as enemy locations, leaderships, and such. Everything the Order had excessive data on was already crushed under their heel though. At best, John could use the reports as clues where to try and find concentrations of Abyssals.


    Jack was driving around in the Cadillac, locating Abyssals, asked them about their local situation, did a rough headcount, where they would like the border of their community to be, and where he might find the next settlement. All that information was then compiled by John, who had to fly, teleport, and drive all over the place in parallel. Other internal affairs didn’t just stop because he was busy over there. The Lake Alliance held their elections, reshuffling the entire balance of power in the House of Commons. Notably, Emrik succeeded in becoming Speaker of the House. John barely had an idea how that happened, even if it didn’t surprise him. He completely lacked the time to look into it or take countermeasures, if he had even wanted to do that.


    He would have to deal with that, just like he would have to deal with the new party balances, later.


    In total, there were nine new states, including the dependent territory of the Order, and Pacificia had been expanded slightly to the west. There had been no other reason for it than John wanting the borders to look as clean as possible. That was the beauty of being able to draw his own internal borders however he liked. The Crest states could surely be fixed up at a later date.


    When it came to the names, John was dissatisfied on various levels. Typically, William had suggested something and John hadn’t had any better retort than, “I don’t like that.” Which, given that his own suggestions would have been the name of the states that shared the same space in the real USA, was not a good enough suggestion. Especially when initial polling on the names William suggested was largely positive. Not a surprise with what remained of the locals. The names were especially on the nose where the Bible Belt intersected with the former Order territory. Even Abyssals weren’t protected against picking up a level of religious affinity through proximity, it seemed.


    Even the Lord-Protector hadn’t been brazen enough to suggest New Brighton though. That had been spawned by the locals all on their own.


    It bothered John. It bothered John a lot. He was the ruler over all of this and yet there was no ‘John’s Field’ or ‘Newmanshire’. As far as he was concerned, that was an inappropriate thing to demand. Yet, he really, really wanted it. Perhaps he could get some balls rolling down the line to make that happen. Preferably in the spot where Washington state was located in the mundane world. It would have a certain poetic justice to it.


    Even if he didn’t like the names and was envious of New Brighton, John couldn’t deny the Order the cultural impact their conquests would have. They did make his work a lot easier, letting him annex a third of the USA in one swoop, and protesting on the names would just earn him the ire of the people living in those places. That would have been worth it if his goal was to break the back of the religious sentiments. However, ‘Lady Worship’ or whatever the Order called its faith, was a largely beneficial framework of being. Trying to eliminate or even hinder it would be more trouble than it was worth. Especially since he just arranged the way the Order would spread its chapter through Fusion.


    This would also, probably, be the last chance to try and stomp out this religious movement before it seeped into every other region of Fusion. Once they were spread around the states, there was no stopping this. With all the leaning John did on the Order’s work and people to keep this annexation as smooth as it did go, he would have been ill-advised to do so.


    Whether they would be treated more like Jehova’s Witnesses or regular Christians, time would tell. For all he knew, the Order would schism into a more lenient commonly practiced variant and the militant faith of the current Golden Rose. That was a problem for John decades from now. With all of this work done, he finally had time to turn his attention elsewhere.


    Through all the work, two things had irked him. One was his lack of ‘levelling time’, which really meant that he hadn’t had enough time to fuck to get his daily max out of Experience of Love. The month that could have gotten him a total of 15 levels had only allowed him to get a total of 7 done. Not that gargantuan of a loss, but enough to annoy him. Generally, there had been a total lack of grinding.


    Then there was the matter of Delicia. Obviously, with the Perk acquired just before the annexation, he now had an avenue to get what he needed to save the shortstack alchemist. Such an Adventure would take time though. He hadn’t even had the chance to figure out the correct combination of words to maximize his odds.


    Much as it bothered him, his ambition to conquer North America outclassed his ambition to overcome Romulus in one single matter, just as the necessity to ensure the proper governance of tens of thousands was more important than the life of an individual he barely knew. Had Delicia died before he had gotten done with this task, he would have been seething.


    Luckily, there was still time.