The sharp whistle of the morning wind blew through the mountain range, but Elias didn't stir right away.
For the first time since waking in 1850's, he'd slept deeply.
No lice-ridden straw mattress beneath him, no creaky timber roof threatening collapse.
Just warmth, silence, and the soft hum of the HQ's automated systems pulsing like a heartbeat in the walls.
His eyes opened slowly.
Clean sheets.
A firm cot.
Warm air that didn't stink of smoke or wet stone.
He sat up, stretched, and exhaled a long, satisfied sigh.
"Guess I needed that."
The clock on his interface flicked to 11:17—later than he usually allowed himself to rise.
But today wasn't about ideology or village politics.
Today was about infrastructure.
His refinery should have finished construction hours ago, and if the system held true to the simulation model, he'd already be generating credits.
Money meant expansion.
Expansion meant power.
He dressed quickly and strode out of his quarters, coat flaring behind him like a cape.
Outside, snow clung lightly to the mountain slopes.
The air was crisp and dry, with the unmistakable scent of earth turned freshly by machinery.
The Refinery stood in the gully beyond the main plateau—its squat form nestled between hills like a sleeping giant.
Gray metal panels glinted in the light.
A horse and cart driven by a man pulled into the refinery only to dump the stone and ore contained within, before setting off once more heading towards the mine site.
Elias jogged up to the command terminal built into the Refinery's flank and placed his palm on the reader.
[Access Granted: Supreme Commander Elias Kaine][Current Credit Reserve: 15]
[Income Rate: +.5 Credits per Hour]
He froze.
Stared.
Then blinked.
Slowly.
"…You have to be kidding me."
One Half.
Credit.
Per hour.
At that rate, it would take about a month just to fund the Barracks—let alone any infantry, Engineers, or further infrastructure.
His visions of a base bustling with life, strategy, and construction halted dead in their tracks.
"System,"
he barked.
"Why the hell am i earning so few credits from my ore refinery?"
'Refinery operating at 100% efficiency. Detected yield per load: 2.4% viable ore content. Majority composition: granite, shale, and low-value soil. Refinery processing effective. Resource node is classified as LOW-GRADE.
Elias sighed, rubbing his temples.
"So it wasn't glimmering with potential. It was glittering with dirt."
This wasn't a strategy game anymore.
In the real world, there were dry wells.
Not every mine was El Dorado.
His first site, chosen for its tactical value, had failed him economically, its value lay in the minor amout of Iron ore that could be mined but not before tons of rock and soil were first removed.
He'd built the refinery too early, too quickly without properly deciding where him base of operations should be located.
Still, all wasn't lost.
If he left the ore refinery alone, eventually it was sure to locate some ores, be they iron, silver or gold the credit boon would be a godsend for him, but even still if all he could do for now was wait then that would be what he would have to do, perhaps go back down the mountain and ask if there are any known veins he could direct the miners closer to, to aid in the acquisition process.
He needed the Barracks more than ever now—not just to recruit soldiers, but to train those all-important Engineers who could build forward outposts, survey terrain, and expand his reach.
Elias had never been a patient man.
In his old life, he was driven by deadlines, feeds, and the ticking tempo of modern chaos.
In this one, the world moved by nature's clock—and winter had pressed pause on everything.
Each day was a battle of expectation versus reality.
He woke, he checked the refinery.
Still averaging only a half credit an hour.
Still nothing but rock, gravel, and the occasional useless glint of mica that looked like gold until refined into dust.
He had made small adjustments—redirected the workers and cart slightly east, adjusted the route to pass through a deeper cleft in the hillside—but each scan, each reading, returned the same frustrating results: low-grade, low-yield, low-income.
Elias scowled.
So much for luck.
In the evenings, he returned to the village, trying to walk the tightrope of involvement without entanglement.
He asked questions, disguised as curiosity.
Talked of "mineral curiosity," as if he were an eccentric northern scholar interested in geology for leisure.
The locals offered little.
The concept of mapped ore veins, to them, was laughable.
They knew of old quarry pits and rumors of gold up north—fool's talk mostly—but no real prospecting had been done.
They lived off the land, not beneath it.
What could he do?
Force them into labor?
Start digging trenches through snow-packed hillsides with his bare hands?
No.
He had to play the long game.
Even if it meant hibernation.
The HQ, for all its silence, had become a strange kind of solace.
Warmed by internal systems, self-sustaining and fully supplied, it was a bubble of 21st-century efficiency tucked inside 1800's wilderness.
He spent hours in the Map Room, watching the simulation overlays redraw the world.
Lines of power were shifting—small now, but in motion.
Great Britain was still proceeding with their colonization of South Africa though recognizing the issues that came with managing the colonies against the natives just as they had in north america, and most importantly of course is the rise of Napoleon III and the French Empire just a month ago in december of 1852.
In other words... its the napoleonic world right before the rise of industrialism and the fall of monarchism as the primary form of government.
With france being under a state of military dictatorship for the next half decade or so, until the monarchy can be fully re-established in place of the republic.
And of course this year 1853 being the starting point of one of the most famous wars of the pre-industrial age.
The Crimean war, so remember almost exclusively for the charge of the Light Brigade.
A war brought about by the eastern question, as the rise of Russian into the global spotlight once again was opposed by Great Britain and the resurging French Empire.
Checking on his current available credits
Credit Reserve: 168
At this rate, he'd have enough for the Barracks… eventually.
But what then?
One Engineer?
Two?
They couldn't do much in the frozen earth.
Snow choked the terrain, and any construction above ground would draw attention.
He couldn't build; he couldn't fight; he couldn't even send emissaries without raising suspicion.
His revolution, it seemed, was on ice.
One night, as the wind howled against the HQ's exterior like a beast clawing to get in, Elias stood alone in the Comms Hub.
He stood there staring across the empty room, at the telegraph keys.
All useless for now.
Still waiting for wires that didn't exist, for a signal to send.
In his enforced solitude he began formulating plans to accelerate growth exponentially, and even got to the darkest lines of thought.
Mainly the creation of the barrack followed by the creation of a few riflemen units only to then have those units leave forming a mercenary company of sorts to participate in the Crimean war against Montenegro's primary adversary the Ottoman Empire, primarily as a test of how powerful his RA units were, while at the same time getting an opportunity to aquire funding both as payment for their participation in the war, but also an excuse to loot the locals before they fall considering that the conflicts for the most part at the start of the war would occur within the balkans, his forces would not need to travel all that great a distance to participate, and equally so it would be easy to send back and spoils to Montenegro into his waiting arms.
Though as entertaining as the thought was, to have his Montenegro mercenaries turning the fate of the war, allowing history to shift and Russian to come out victorious, Elias sighed in defeat that even with the just over two years that the war would last for, that amount of time would not be enough for Elias to raise up a great enough force to tilt the scales in the russians favor, at best he could change the fate of specific battle saving a few thousands lives or prolonging the state of war a few months longer.