Chapter 10: The Result of the Expansion

TL: A_Passing_Wanderer

ED: Chrissy

The thing was, though, Kim Gi-Wu had already finished the preparations for the expedition even before making his speech.

The day after he made his speech...

"Signal them to get going."

"Yes, sir! All troops, advance!"

"Advance!"

The Creek army, now numbering six thousand after four thousand additional men were added to the ranks since the war two years ago, began their march outside the tribe's territory.

Among them, the warriors originally from the Creek still numbered two thousand, just as before. The rest were made up of the warriors from the subjugated tribes.

One might wonder if anyone would be willing to join the army of a tribe that forcefully subjugated them but surprisingly enough, there were more than enough volunteers wishing to do just that.

They were warriors, after all. Many of them wished to remain in the role where they could use force, rather than transition into various other industries.

Not only that, the majority of the warriors defeated during the last war witnessed the charm of the steel weapons and the group warfare tactic, falling deeply in love with what they saw that day.

Thanks to this development, the Creek could carefully select only the most useful warriors and absorb them into the tribe's army. Of course, the new recruits couldn't be trusted 100% yet, so the command was still given to the original Creek warriors.

Kim Gi-Wu then divided the carefully-selected army into three companies, each of them consisting of two thousand individuals. And the Creek army divided as thus began their conquest in three different directions.

Their march was relentless, unstoppable. They strictly avoided forests, wetlands, and other locations with difficult terrains to traverse, solely focusing on finding other populated villages.

The purpose of the army's operation this time wasn't to increase the tribe's territory but to expand its population, after all.

And realistically speaking, no one was capable of stopping the army's march, either. But that's because the rumors involving the Creek tribe, both plausible and nonsensical in nature, had spread to all the surrounding villages in the past two years.

"It's the Grey Army!"

"We, we gotta run away! There's no way we can win against them!"

The rumors were so effective that the tribespeople of those tribes being 'visited' by the Creek warriors instantly fell into despair the moment the army made their entrance.

Every now and then, some great tribes tried to resist but most of the other tribes simply went with one of two choices left at their disposal.

One, abandon their villages and evacuate before the Creek army arrives. Two, quietly surrender and submit themselves willingly.

"We do not wish to spill blood if there's no need for it. If your tribe is willing to peacefully submit yourselves to us, then we promise to accept you all as one of the Creek's people. You shall also get to enjoy the same rights as us!

"By doing so, you shall come under the brilliant leadership of our Great Chief, Lord Divine Spirit. Not only will you be able to acquire these powerful weapons, but you will also leave behind the life of hunting and gathering. By joining us, starvation will become a distant memory!"

The Creek warriors made a similar offer to every tribe they visited. Thanks to the conditions offered, many tribes stopped resisting altogether and willingly submitted themselves.

And so, the Creek tribe was rapidly becoming the rising sun of the North American continent.

*

North America was transforming into a rather strange ecosystem. While many tribes migrated near the surrounding vicinity of the Creek tribe, the lands they used to occupy no longer had any humans living in them.

Meanwhile, tribes located even further away were preparing to evacuate from the reaches of the Creek tribe.

In other words, the areas surrounding Creek were rapidly losing their inhabitants, becoming empty lands. This development was like an unexpected calamity for the tribes living in other territories.

That's because, from their perspective, they now had to choose between two options – either take in the refugees entering their territories without permission and try to live side by side... Or wage war against them to protect their own livelihoods.

As for the culprit responsible for creating this chaos, Kim Gi-Wu was currently holding his head as if migraine was assaulting him.

"Great Chief, the stored food supply is rapidly running out, sir. We might be able to hold it out for this year, but for the sake of our future, we need to quickly increase the arable lands."

"Great Chief, we need to increase the number of workers in the rock salt mine by several folds, too!"

"The news of the Chickasaw tribe arriving soon has reached us, sir. If such a large tribe was to join us...!"

"And we've run into a serious language problem, as well. It's almost impossible to communicate properly with several tribes."

"Shouldn't we dispatch administrators to all the villages? After people from many tribes began mingling in our villages, all sorts of conflicts, both large and small, began breaking out, sir!"

"Mm..."

It was a total disaster.

The Creek tribe's population was currently experiencing an unprecedented surge. This growth far outstripped Kim Gi-Wu's expectations.

'Aren't they submitting way too easily? Don't they have pride in their tribal identity or something?'

Kim Gi-Wu believed that the majority of the tribes would try to flee from the Creek. And many tribes did precisely that in the past two years, too.

But the majority of the remaining ones chose to submit instead of evacuating.

If he were to simplify their reasons...

The superior military might, abundant food supply, the promise of equal rights, and the rumors concerning the Divine Spirit himself, Kim Gi-Wu, were responsible for this situation.

Hell, a warrior even took it upon himself to become a guide for the Creek's marching soldiers, just so that his tribe could go under the wings of the Creek banner. That's how severely this situation had evolved.

In modern terms, that dude would've been labeled as the traitor to his people.

All these factors conspired to create the current situation, with the army bringing in far more people than anticipated.

This also resulted in the Creek tribe's territory expanding forcibly, as well. At this point, it'd not be an exaggeration to call the tribe an actual nation now.

The problem with the lack of manpower Kim Gi-Wu wanted to solve had been taken care of in one fell swoop like this.

'But, so what? For the time being, we will be too damn busy fully absorbing all the new additions to the tribe to try anything else!'

His original plan was to gradually increase the population, thereby allowing him to start new industrial operations, but this...

Kim Gi-Wu stopped his inner monologue and began issuing new commands. "For now, employ every tribesman and woman who knows how to farm on developing all the unreclaimed land. It doesn't matter whether they are originally from the Creek or not. The majority of the iron being produced will be allocated to manufacturing farming tools, instead!"

"But Great Chief, shouldn't we appoint someone to supervise the non-Creek tribespeople in the field?"

"That's not important right now. We need to rein in the current chaos first before worrying about that."

People could live even if their houses were shabby. Ditto for their clothing, too.

But to survive, a stable food supply was an absolute must. No one really knew how many people would submit and join the Creek this year. But there was no doubting the fact that they needed to reclaim lands several times greater than what they had already in consideration of next year and the year after that.

It'd be too difficult to monitor what every non-Creek native who knew how to farm was doing in the fields. Besides, they were mostly satisfied by their new lives here and showed signs of assimilating quite well. They shouldn't cause a big problem like planning a rebellion or something like that.

"And increase the number of workers in the salt mine as much as possible, too. Salt is also crucial to our survival, after all."

One didn't really need salt when one subsisted mainly by hunting and gathering. But, with the tribe's eating habits shifting over to a mainly-grain-based diet, the acquisition of salt was no longer a matter of choice but an absolute necessity.

Thankfully, the blessed land of North America also boasted many deposits of rock salt that could be found liberally almost everywhere.

Kim Gi-Wu made sure to collect as much rock salt as possible since the mass-scale farming efforts began. There was no real need for the tribe to resort to drying out salt brine coming from underground to get salt that way.

The truth was, many countries back in the modern world used rock salt most of the time. Unless you were like South Korea, where not a single lick of rock salt could be found, of course.

"As for the problem of language, we don't have a choice but to solve it gradually. For now, set Creek's language as the official language and tell the others to learn it as soon as possible."

"...Yes, Great Chief."

The replies indicated that the executives weren't all that convinced. But even they couldn't think up a tangible solution in this case, either. In the end, they had no choice but to educate the others step by step over a long period.

'I guess we'll have to make an official language dictionary soon. Solving the issue with communication is incredibly important, after all.'

The language issue would only get worse the bigger the tribe's territory grows, after all.

"For the time being, we'll also be setting up the public order offices in each of our satellite villages. Once the warriors return from the expedition, break them into smaller groups and assign them to various public order offices. We'll have to let them manage the villages for now."

"The... public order offices, you say?"

"That's correct. We should let them handle the accidents and incidents happening in those villages. We simply don't have the time to deal with those matters at the moment, now do we?"

Until now, the tribe's warriors were responsible for keeping the public order and peace but, from this moment on, that job would be left to the public order offices.

'D*mn it. I wanted to start other operations, but with how things are going, we don't have a choice but to concentrate on farming, now do we?'

He should've told the expedition to limit the number of submitting tribes or some such. He began thinking that he made a mistake telling the soldiers to subjugate every tribe they could find until the cut-off date.

'Still, I'm sure my plans can go ahead once all this growing pain is taken care of...'

It would surely work out that way.

No, it simply had to.

*

And just like that, another mind-bogglingly busy year flew by.

The estimate of the new people joining the tribe put the number at well over five hundred thousand. In other words, the Creek tribe's population had shot past six hundred thousand!

Which meant the population had ballooned by over thirty times compared to when Kim Gi-Wu first arrived in the Creek tribe.

Of course, no census was done, so the exact number was still up in the air, but the estimate should still be more or less correct.

'How is that even possible?'

That was the thought brushing past Kim Gi-Wu's mind when he first heard the report on the current population.

It had only been five, six years since his arrival, yet the population had swelled by thirty times? How could he not think that in such a case?

Wasn't this like a shrimp devouring a whale or something? The original Creek residents had somehow become a tiny minority in the current Creek tribe.

The things Kim Gi-Wu and the high-ranking executives of the Creek tribe did during the past year were simple enough.

They set up villages, then assigned members from various tribes there in an equal ratio. This act of forcibly separating the populace was done to eliminate the distinguishing characteristics of different tribes. Which also helped with fundamentally eliminating the threat of those from the same tribes coming together to plot rebellions.

Of course, many people were not happy about this new policy, especially the warriors. But their dissatisfaction was suppressed to some degree by dangling a few sweet-sounding carrots – a promise to accept them all as true fellow tribespeople from the beginning – in front of them.

'The situation is different from three years ago, after all.'

The newcomers weren't submitting helplessly as the price for invading the Creek tribe, so they couldn't be held accountable for a crime here.

There were slight differences in language and cultures, but Kim Gi-Wu still forced everyone to comply with using the Creek language and practicing its culture.

The result of his actions was still uncertain. But the situation should become better in due course.

Most of the healthy adult men in these villages were assigned to the task of reclaiming arable land. The rest were turned into workers in various industries that had been expanded by a great margin in the meantime.

This arrangement meant that whether it was the agricultural or industrial sector, one skilled worker would be left in charge of several unskilled workers to teach them the ropes.

Kim Gi-Wu also created several spaces meant to perform similar roles as daycare centers so that children could be raised together in a large group. This freed up the female workforce, allowing him to assign them to industries that didn't require much physical labor, such as spinning and weaving cotton.

Thanks to his decision, the clothing situation for the newly-added population rapidly improved.

'Do I need to go this far? Isn't it fine to take my time doing things now?'

Kim Gi-Wu was still a human being, so inevitably, fatigue was gradually building up after spending the past few years working nonstop as if he was in a war. As proof, he'd catch himself thinking about such things every now and then.

But whenever he did, Kim Gi-Wu would resolve himself once more.

There were still many problems rearing their ugly heads from various places. However, he could definitely see the countless many tribespeoples from other tribes gradually finding stability under the Creek's banner.

And the tribe had recently finished creating the suitable environment to meet some semblance of self-sufficiency, too.

'Finally...'

Even if they couldn't farm using animals or machines... Even if they didn't have pesticides or an advanced way to distribute fertilizers...

The combination of a variety of grain and hardy crops selectively-bred through modern science and the fertile land resulted in quite a few surpluses of human resources.

And they had secured more than enough farming tools and equipment by now, too, freeing up the steel industries to move on to different tasks at hand.

Kim Gi-Wu had been waiting patiently for this moment.

Without a doubt, the tribe's scale had grown enormously in the past few years. But compared to his past – future – society, this place lacked in so many areas.

Kim Gi-Wu began utilizing the unused human resources to supplement all these lacking areas.

< 10. The result of the expansion. > Fin.