The systematic development of magic had brought sweeping changes to human life.
The magic circles drawn by mages held countless possibilities.
Making objects move on their own, lighting flames automatically, summoning winds, and more. A hundred years had passed since everyday magic became widespread, and magic had become something easily encountered in daily life.
...For the upper classes, at any rate.
Mages were rare. Fewer than 0.01% of the total population had been granted the miracle called magic.
And over the past thousand years, the mages who held power had continuously inflated their own worth.
They suppressed scientific advancement, colluded among themselves, and charged exorbitant prices for "bestowing" magic upon those who could not wield it.
The amount of Mana Stones required to draw a single magic circle was staggering.
Depending on the difficulty of the spell, it was not uncommon for a single stroke of a magic circle to consume an entire high-grade Mana Stone.
Even if a commoner saved an entire year's wages, they couldn't catch so much as a glimpse of magic.
Into that West, the South's technology began to arrive, piece by piece.
The first to come was electricity.
When telegraph poles appeared in the middle of the city for the first time, the people of the West stared at them with puzzled expressions.
To anyone who knew nothing about them, the cables dangling from wooden posts were simply eyesores.
Then workers from the South gathered and began laying some kind of iron road.
Spreading gravel, placing wooden planks, and setting steel rails on top—it was all utterly foreign to the people of the West.
The water and sewage systems underwent a massive overhaul as well.
Tearing out perfectly functional plumbing and installing an entirely new system was difficult for the people of the West to understand.
Why fix what wasn't broken?
When the public bathhouses shut down and the water supply began cutting out intermittently, people started voicing their complaints.
"What on earth are they doing over there?"
"I haven't the faintest idea..."
"I can't understand why they'd put such an ugly thing right in the middle of the city."
"It looks like Southern companies are up to something—is it really all right to just let them carry on like this?"
"I don't understand why they tore out perfectly good plumbing. It's been three days now and I can't properly use the water at home. What in the world are they trying to do..."
At first, the arguments went back and forth.
The alien structures intruding on the city's familiar beauty didn't sit well with those who had a genuine fondness for the West.
Electricity was a new technology—research on it had only begun in the South a few decades prior.
To the people of the West, who had believed that invisible forces belonged to magic alone, electricity was nothing short of an inexplicable anomaly.
The South was well aware of that sentiment.
But they weren't worried in the slightest.
"Once a civilization has tasted the conveniences of modernity, it can never go back."
Kayl Leopold knew what 21st-century Earth had looked like. He knew the power of electricity—a force that made things possible that were more miraculous than magic itself.
Compared to the absurdly high cost of magic, electricity was priced reasonably. If the results were the same, people would inevitably flock to electricity.
That would be the decisive blow that uprooted the mages' grip on the West.
"Don't worry about public opinion in the West. I'll provide every resource you need and fund this to the maximum—just make sure the modernization of the West moves forward, whatever it takes."
"Yes, Your Grace!"
Even amid the public's misgivings, power lines and streetlamps continued to multiply along the roadsides.
The railway tracks grew longer by the day, and the water and sewage systems began to look brand new.
Months passed like that.
By the time people were slowly growing accustomed to Porvin's changing landscape—
[ Electric Streetlamp Installation: Complete ]
[ Public Telephone Facilities Deployed in Porvin City Center ]
[ Steam Locomotive: Trial Operation ]
[ Water and Sewage Replacement: Complete ]
A notice from the ducal residence was posted in the center of Porvin's main square.
Every eye in the city turned to it immediately.
The reason for all the digging and laying in the city center over the past two months had finally been revealed.
The first to react were the young people who had gone to the South to work and earn money.
Having grown somewhat familiar with Southern civilization, they welcomed the news.
"They're finally putting in streetlamps here in the West?"
"And telephones too! That means I won't have to write letters to my friends still down in the South."
"A steam locomotive? Finally—I can get to the South without suffering through seasickness."
When a handful of people "in the know" showed visible excitement, everyone else's attention naturally followed.
People didn't need to understand what it was. If a friend or family member who'd worked in the South said it was good, that was reason enough to feel good about it.
When the curious asked, the answer was always the same.
"So what exactly have the Southern engineers been building all this time?"
"Hmm... it's a bit hard for me to explain. Just go see it for yourself when it opens."
That amplified curiosity soon turned into anticipation.
"Right—after months of all that work, something must have changed dramatically."
And so night fell on Porvin.
Porvin had always been a dark city beyond its central district.
Mana lamps, which had to be installed by hand by mages, were uniformly expensive—only the ducal residence and the city center could afford to be lit.
Everywhere else scraped by on the faint light leaking from the windows of private homes.
But now, everything was different.
"These streetlamps were installed by our company, Louis & Phillips!"
When the company's president pressed a button in the center of the square, the city blazed to life in an instant.
Everyone stood slack-jawed, watching the light spread outward from the square.
The brilliant illumination that had only ever been seen on the streets of wealthy nobles in the city center—it was that remarkable.
And yet, a worry crept in alongside the wonder.
"This isn't going to end up billed to us, is it?"
That worry vanished the moment the next words were spoken.
"This light was not made by magic. It was created entirely through technology made by ordinary people—our light, made by our own hands."
"Therefore, the maintenance and upkeep of these streetlamps will be provided free of charge by Louis & Phillips, and no fees will be billed to the public."
At that, the crowd erupted in cheers.
The fact that brightly lit streets at night—something only nobles could afford due to the steep upkeep costs—were now available to commoners as well carried enormous meaning.
Of course, the company wasn't doing it out of pure charity.
"If you'd like to bring that light inside your home, please contact Louis & Phillips. We'll offer it at a reasonable price that everyone can use without worry."
They used the moment to promote their own business.
It was a good outcome for both the citizens of the West and the company alike.
Scenes like this played out across the West.
"This is... what they call a telephone?"
"That's right. It serves a similar purpose to the Crystal Orbs that mages use. You speak into the lower part and hold the upper part to your ear."
The arrival of the telephone was nothing short of revolutionary.
Crystal Orbs were luxury items, each one worth the price of a mansion—things commoners would never see in their lifetimes.
But a telephone cost only a few silver coins to operate.
Silver coins were still a significant sum for commoners, but not so much that they couldn't spend it once.
"As public telephone booths become more widespread, the price will come down further. The goal of our Southern companies is to give ordinary people access to technology that feels like magic."
The steam locomotive, and the trams cutting through the city center, stirred a new wind through society as well.
"To think that a lump of iron like this moves faster and more comfortably than a horse-drawn carriage."
Some people were so fascinated by the trams simply moving that they spent entire days riding them with no destination in mind.
The shocks didn't stop there.
"Have you been to the new city hall they built?"
"City hall? Why would I go there? Nothing to see, nothing to do."
"They've applied new technology brought in from the South. It's the middle of July, and apparently the inside of the building feels like autumn."
Air conditioning, powered by Magitech Engineering, appeared in the height of summer and captured everyone's attention without exception.
Even nobles who could afford to employ mages came back to see it multiple times.
Through all of this, a few thoughts settled naturally into people's minds.
The South Duke, who rooted out corrupt nobles and generously shared new technologies with us, must be a good man.
How extraordinary must the South be, where technologies more miraculous than magic are used like everyday things?
How wonderful it would be to live in the South, even for a little while.
In the midst of all this, word of a merger—quietly leaked by the South's Intelligence Bureau—began spreading among the citizens.
If the South and the West had been entirely separate nations, talk of a merger wouldn't have gone this far.
A sovereign nation forcibly annexing another sovereign nation was simply unthinkable.
It was unacceptable, both ethically and in terms of national sentiment.
But the South and the West were not separate nations—they were regions bound together within the vast empire.
However much autonomy they were guaranteed, the shared understanding that the people of the West and the South were citizens of the same country remained clear.
And so there was little resistance to the idea of a merger.
Merging two regions of the same country?
From the perspective of an ordinary person who didn't follow politics closely, the thought was simply: "If it means living better, why not?"
As long as the country itself wasn't collapsing, commoners had always been most concerned with their own lives.
Besides, the South had been nothing but generous to the West all this time, and the West—now that the corrupt nobles had been driven out—owed the South a great deal.
And there were no corrupt nobles in the South.
A clean, capable leader who had come all the way to the West to crush its corrupt nobility—Kayl Leopold's uncorrupted society appealed deeply to people who had spent their lives being exploited by those very nobles.
"A merger between the West and the South might not be such a bad thing."
Everyone who didn't follow the intricacies of politics thought the same.
Of course, the intellectual class understood perfectly well what a merger between the West and the South would mean.
But no one opposed it.
The corrupt nobles who might have objected had already been killed or stripped of all power by the South's hand.
The West's ducal residence, which served as the regional government, was no different.
A duke installed by the South sat at its head, and the cabinet composed of ministers sent by the South was little more than a rubber stamp for Southern paperwork.
And so the year turned, and when the cold winter snow melted away—
Public opinion in both regions had tilted considerably toward merger.