Chapter 220: The Aftermath of the Declaration
The populace's reaction to the war declaration was not good at all. In Eden, a sense of panic started spreading like wildfire, causing them to frantically rush to the shops to start mass purchasing the things they deemed essential when in the face of an impending war.
As for the rest of the world, they heard the news which seemed to be spreading even faster than light.
However, they were all astounded as Esparia had chosen to go with the option of declaring war, instead of a surprise attack. This choice of theirs hinted that they were assured of their victory, resulting in them taking their time and efforts on trying to convince the world of their righteous cause and following the rules and their alignment with the principles that would garner more global support.
This display of confidence that Esparia had shown with their declaration of war had divided the netizens into two groups. One group thought Esparia would really be winning the war while the other thought that they were just being overconfident.
They argued that throughout Esparia's weapons' purchesathon, Eden wasn't just watching its enemies getting trained for the sake of beating them and instead must have already prepared themselves to endure the fight for not a complete one-sided beatdown.
Meanwhile, high above in the sky, the fighter jets of Eden patrolled, following the flight path that was arranged for them by Athena, during which they ended up passing through many cities.
The soaring of the aircrafts reminded the citizens that just a few minutes ago Esparia had declared war against their nation and they were now officially at war.
Although the citizens thought that their air force was just patrolling to calm them down and remind them that they were being protected, they still remained oblivious to the fact that the air patrol had only commenced after they had taken down a little bit more than twenty of Esparia's fighter jets. The jets that were meant to attack some of the very important infrastructures in Eden, but were thwarted in their attacks, resulting in their very own downfall.
In response to the Esparian press conference that had ended with the declaration of war, Alexander personally took to the podium and directly addressed the nation. He promised that they were sure of winning the war and causing as little as possible disruption to people's daily lives. However, he acknowledged that a few certain cities that were nearest to Esparia and were only separated by the water between them, such cities would be entering martial law and that state would continue for the next two days of the weekend, as to whether or not it will continue to be the same on Monday or whether they will be evacuating those cities will be more dependent on how the ongoing fight was going to develop.
As Alexander's press conference continued, thousands of troops rapidly started converging upon those cities and started executing swift and coordinated takeover, securing the cities, wasting no time at all since they were already stationed near the cities after anticipating the escalation.
They immediately started by taking control of the city's security from the police, delegating them to public control. Some streets were barricaded, other security measures were increased, and the navy vessels started appearing from the ocean horizons, coming from the nearest Navy ports.
These vessels also started patrolling the maritime borders of the two countries, giving assurance to the people after witnessing how the government was already prepared and had even started responding, this resulted in people cooperating with the soldiers to the best of their abilities, trying to cause as little interruption to the soldiers as possible.
This proactive response served as a hope of reassurance to the citizens. After witnessing the swift and organized mobilization of the military, the faith in their country rose after understanding that their government had already been prepared for this, leading to the swift response with precision right after the declaration of the war and was quickly responded with the dispatch of soldiers for their safety.
....
"How long are you planning to let this fight continue?" Rina asked Aron during their virtual meeting, a meeting which she had specifically asked for minutes after the declaration of war.
"No longer than a week. My family is here as well and the longer I let it drag on, the more convincing would be needed as to why I still live here, as they would suggest of going to some other country which would be safe for both me and my younger brother," Aron answered, revealing how long he was willing to let Esparia continue messing with him.
"Good. However, I believe that the morgans have misunderstood something based on the amount of investment they are putting in," Rina added after hearing his response, not showing even a hint of distrust in his capabilities of being able to end the war whenever he wanted to. What she had seen from him throughout the months they had known each other was more than enough to let her have complete trust in every word that came from Aron, even if it was a joke as even his jokes always carried a hint of truth within them.
"Yes, it seems like they somehow learned of your visit to Eden and also about the talk you had with Alexander, which made them think that you are behind some of the large investments in the country and they believe that you are acting as a helping hand in preventing the country's economy from collapsing and thwarting them from profiting from the country's economic collapse. Thus they decided to side with Esparia, causing a war with Eden so that it would force Eden to divert its resources from development to war, which would result in a faster collapse of Eden's economy, than it would have ended with them benefiting from the aftermath" Aron explained, chuckling as to how a mere misunderstanding had caused the Morgans to make some huge investments in Esparia.
"Sorry about that" Rina said in slight embarrassment, remembering how she had insisted on visiting and bringing the Tritium to Eden personally, which inadvertently triggered the misunderstanding to occur, resulting in the sparking of an all-out war between the two countries and a slight delay to some of Aron's projects.
"No need to worry about that. A fight with Esparia was bound to happen soon anyways given their provocations since the downfall of the previous government, and they weren't able to receive any benefit with the change of power. Right now, I plan to use the Rothschilds as a cover to use some of my tech in a way that can explain having an advanced tech so soon without even having any news of extensive research by the country and to justify being forced to release the tech for the public to see to those familiar with your family's beef."
"Although this had accelerated the timeline for some of the plans and even delayed some, everything else is still going to happen according to schedule, unless the Morgans manage to force the US military to intervene," Aron replied and when he reached the last part of his words, he initiated and maintained an eye contact with her.
"You don't have to worry about the possibility of such a thing happening. For such a huge move to happen from our side, it will need an acknowledgement from both families and a few small ones, which is almost impossible due to us always not agreeing on the same thing, so you can be rest assured, the US government won't be swayed into intervening by the Morgans on my watch," Rina replied, promising to handle that matter and also make sure something like that doesn't happen at all.
"Then I will consider that to be done and plan accordingly. Also, a few days later, a cargo should be arriving to you, it should help you with moving Ava to the glasses," Aron said giving her something that would change the topic of their conversation and remove the weird atmosphere that they had entered in after he had mentioned the reason for the larger than usual investment done by the Morgans in Esparia.
"Thanks. Based on her brief explanation, Ava told me that she should gain at least three times an increase in efficiency compared to when she is on the private network, which in itself is unbelievable since I had witnessed one of the servers where our private network is being hosted. And it was really massive and having it being out beaten by a computer inside glasses is similar to something from the dreams"
Aron said nothing but just smiled as he knew that Ava's transition to the glasses wasn't just going to amplify her operating efficiency by more than ten folds, but it would also trigger an evolution in her capabilities due to a part of her code that will be coming online after having found a suitable and sufficient computing power for it to operate with everything she was made with. As for why Ava was not sure of how much efficiency she will be gaining, it was because she didn't have complete information about the quantum computing technology at the moment since Nova had deemed it to not be among the required knowledge during the time she was making her.