Training for utilizing the tank actually does take some time, and my plan is to stick around here in Ostark until the second ship arrives with another tank. In practice, it's best to operate a few of them together, rather than treating them as an individual fortress. This gave me plenty of time to get a better understanding of the total situation on the dwarven continent, and review maps and battle plans that we were previously kept in the dark about.

In a lot of ways, the dwarven continent reminds me of Japan, both in size and composition. It's perhaps a bit larger over all, and a bit wider, comprised of only one large island, rather than an archipelago of a few islands. It's all mountainous with only a handful of lowland plains along the coast. Thankfully, due to its long history, there are roads pretty much everywhere, including through mountains. Occasional earthquakes do cause older tunnels to collapse though, so the maps are marked with tunnel construction dates, which seems to act as a stand in for the probability that tunnel is still functional if it hasn't already been crossed out.

Due to their exceptional road network, moving tanks through the country should be easy, but utilizing them effectively could end up being difficult in certain situations. Fighting in valleys and mountain passes allows ambushes to be executed easier. On the other hand, with the long range of the main cannons, distant targets on the other side of a valley could easily be disrupted, forcing enemies to either retreat, or come attack.

The main strength of the tanks though should actually come from the ease of clearing out the coastal plains, especially with further help from the ships. I've entered into discussions with Kao about precisely that. The defended territory around Ostark has slowly been shrinking in, and the safe perimeter has shrunk down to a handful of passes and checkpoints about 20 miles out from the city. After any of those fail, they'll be pinned down to the city's valley itself.

It might be possible, however, to begin retaking the territory along the inland coast with our assistance. The plan would be that we have two warships travel along the coast a bit ahead of the advancing army, shelling and disrupting any enemy encampments. I had asked about the concern about preserving existing cities. Kao looked defeated as he told me that it's better to save soldiers lives and have to rebuild than it would be to try to clear a city out.

There were other serious concerns that were brought up related to maintaining control of the existing territory. Much of the dwarven fighting force was decimated in the years of the war, with many fighting aged men fighting just to give enough time for women and children to escape. Under normal circumstances, that population would be supplemented by the other two races, humans and elves. At least some of the humans will probably still help, but there are questions about whether all of them will or not. It's our island clearing problem on a much larger scale. There is no hope of actually removing all the demons, but at least clearing out the main forces and preventing the loss of reclaimed territory is important.

With that in mind, I had a one on one meeting with Kao to discuss this problem privately. We discussed both tools at our disposal now that could be useful, and tools that we could probably develop within a few years time that would drastically reduce the necessary manpower to hold territory. For example, currently, watch posts could be either built or retrofitted with rangefinder scopes in addition to telescopes to provide a larger area of coverage, reducing the amount of individuals needed to watch a fixed area. Over time, those outposts could have a tank stationed at them to allow a smaller force to take on potential larger threats, with the additional benefit of retreat not resulting in leaving behind valuable technology. The tank could simply retreat, and they could leave the water distiller behind.

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As for potential future developments, I believe that, with a few years of work, I could probably design explosive rounds for the artillery, which would fundamentally change how useful the large cannons are. Currently, it's just a lead shell, meaning it does a great job of breaking whatever it hits, but it doesn't usually hit personnel. Occasionally, shrapnel will blast off of a hard surface and cause casualties, but it's rare. An explosive round, by comparison, would actually allow those artillery pieces to really do a number on unprotected personnel at a long distance.

If we have explosive rounds, then outposts could also be outfitted with artillery, which would allow them to remotely deal with enemies from miles away. That would also mean that you wouldn't need individuals with combat magic as part of the fighting force. Anyone capable of operating the artillery piece would do, expanding their available manpower.

I told Kao all of this privately because I have serious reservations about arming potential enemies with this technology. If turned against us in a decade's time, we'd be just as decimated as the demons on the dwarven continent. We need guarantees beyond just words or documents. That is to say, we need a large amount of permanent dwarven residents on our island such that the dwarves would have no choice but to assist us should a threat come to us in the future, which is a hard topic to discuss. I'm basically requiring Kao give us hostages, not that they'll be treated poorly, but it doesn't change the fact of the situation.

It was a heavy conversation, but Kao has always kept a level head. We had to work out a lot of details on how this would actually work without upsetting too many people. We wouldn't want the dwarves that we're keeping as hostages to see it as such, because it would cause it's own problems. The ultimate decision was that we'd offer residency in our port city to dwarves who lost their homes in the war on the mainland. They'd have dual citizenship, but restricted movement to a degree.

We already negotiated for the rights to build a port city on the dwarven continent ourselves, so it acts something like a cultural exchange, where our citizens who live in that city will also have the same requirements put on them. We'll claim that the restricted movement is to ensure that the ports remain open and there are enough laborers on either side and to build closer cultural ties, but that is just a surface level excuse. The idea is to build up the two locations as a pair of cities with equal integration of dwarves and demons in either location to further obfuscate the real reason for their existence.

With that negotiation completed, I have a new direction for my research to take, as well as some adjustments to what we need to be producing. We'll start making and shipping telescopes and large rangefinders to improve zone control for the dwarves. The joint offensive won't begin until further details are worked out. After the next tank arrives, I'll head back to the island, and with the third tank, we'll have our ministers of the army and navy come to discuss the exact execution of the first counter offensive.

It's been 20 days since I arrived in Ostark, and I'd been ensuring everything was working well with the tanks. Without a need for sleep, the nights are a bit lonely on the ship. There are others who are awake, but it's only a handful of individuals maintaining everything. I noticed, however, that Elora has been snooping about. Needless to say, I've ensured that I'm keeping myself safe with plenty of others around me at all times. There is no way I'm allowing a one on one situation to occur there.

Outside of that, I've been spending some of that time trying to work out the beginning stages to making an explosive round. The type I have in mind is an impact explosive, which means we'd need a primer. Primers are the main thing holding us back from making dangerous handheld guns that would outclass magic, so the implications of this technology will go beyond just artillery, though I didn't want to divulge that information freely.

The main issue with developing it is that it's a bit more complicated than a lot of technologies that I've recreated, or at least, I believe it is. My knowledge in the area is fuzzy in my memory. The most that I was able to recall are that azides are quite shock sensitive, so I'll be attempting to create azide compounds first when I return to Kembora. I also have a laundry list of changes already to make to the tank design, so if I'm waiting for construction for certain chemical processes at some point, I'll probably start work on that as well.

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