From the balcony of his governor's mansion, Elias watched the river crawl past like a patient serpent, brown and unhurried, carrying silt from hills that had never known glory and likely never would.
The Drina Marches stretched beyond it in muted greens and greys—fields, forests, small villages stitched together by dirt roads and quiet endurance.
It was perfect.
He leaned against the stone balustrade, a glass of dark Montenegrin wine in hand, and allowed himself something he rarely indulged in.
Satisfaction.
Not triumph.
Triumph was loud, reckless, and invited mistakes.
This was deeper than that.
This was victory.
For the first time since he had arrived in this world—since the system had branded itself into his existence and offered him power wrapped in rules and probabilities—Elias had fought a true, continent-shaping war.
And he had won.
Not barely.
Not through luck alone.
But decisively.
The Ottoman Empire's European half had collapsed in months.
Great Powers had protested, postured, threatened—and then eventually signed unable to properly dispute the transition of lands between the two powers without setting off a new conflict one that very well could engulf the entire European world.
Borders had been redrawn.
Straits had changed hands.
Russia now touched warm water paying a premium for the priviledge, Britain gnawed its knuckles in frustration, Austria sulked with its minimal prizes regretting not getting involved more actively in the conflict, and Montenegro—small, ridiculed, dismissed—had risen as something entirely new.
All of it had unfolded exactly as Elias had planned at least within a certain margin of error.
He exhaled slowly, letting the cool evening air fill his lungs.
The system pulsed faintly at the edge of his awareness, as it always did.
Silently indicating new developments and alerts were being generated, most if not all of them coming from the mining crews collecting credits for his hidden empires further growth, and advancement.
Where for the last few years he had been spending generously on building up his navy, and military now in a time of peace he could afford to properly build up the reserve and reach the next rank of his system, allowing for the enhancement of his military, and the superiority of their weapons and vehicles beyond the decade they were currently within.
And the number of credits coming in, were increasing faster than ever before.
That of course was thanks also to the system.
For he had a total of Five bases now.
The thought alone still carried a sense of unreality.
When he had first begun, a single base had felt like an impossibility made manifest—a miracle disguised as concrete and steel.
Then two.
Then three, all clustered within Montenegro's original lands, hidden beneath mountains, forests, and coastal cliffs.
The backbone of everything he had built: production, logistics, command, and redundancy layered atop one another like armor.
The fourth was the real insurance policy.
North America.
Not on the coasts, not near the industrial heartlands of the East, but inland—near Salt Lake City, in what was officially designated a Native Autonomous Zone.
A region overlooked by Washington, underdeveloped, politically fragmented, and considered more problem than priority by the Americans.
These were the lands Elias had managed to wrestle from the Union's hands giving them a method in which to aliviate Native american aggresion, while also paying back debt owed, one they were unwilling to pay but compared to giving up lands they were actively settling, the wastes of the west were nothing much.
Though having Britain sticking its nose in and guarenteeing independance of this new autonomous zone, under their Canadian confederation was a thorn in their sides.
But now that Elias had managed to deliver an MCV to the region, a base had been constructed along with a host of facilities, and thanks to that even if the natives who lived upon the land chose to live as their ancestors had, so long as they didnt disrupt the soldiers who protected the zone, or the miners who generated the income to make this venture profitable everything was copescetic.
And this gave Elias the insurance of a place to run away to should things go vastly wrong in Europe.
The fifth base—his newest acquisition—was closer to home, yet in many ways the most important.
Nestled deep within the newly claimed lands, its existence officially registered as nothing more than a fortified administrative and industrial hub.
Unofficially, it was a nerve center.
A proving ground.
A template for what the empire could become when Elias no longer needed to hide.
And it was commanded by Lieutenant Zofia.
Elias allowed himself a thin smile at the thought of her.
Where he was patient, she was incisive.
Where he planned in decades, she dissected problems in hours.
Her appointment as both base commander and provincial governess had been a calculated risk—and one that paid dividends daily.
Reports from her territory were immaculate.
Crime was functionally nonexistent.
Smuggling networks had been dismantled within days, not just through mass arrests but by making them unprofitable.
Even the locals who should resist being ruled by a foreigner, were unwilling to even meet the womans eye, from a mixture of respect, awe, and fear.
her chosen provincial capital would be one of the most heavily invested development zones, while the base itself would be hidden nearby, actively mining the rich veins for ore to be converted into credits.
Elias swirled the wine, watching the surface catch the dying light.
King Peter would never see this view.
Nor should he.
Peter was necessary—useful, even admirable in his way—but he was not meant to understand the machinery beneath the crown.
He dealt in symbols, legitimacy, and faces to present to the world.
Elias dealt in structures.
Power that did not announce itself, allowing others to become arrogant and assum themselves to be the better at all times.
Beyond his balcony, lanterns flickered on in the village below.
Life continuing.
Children laughing.
Just normalcy.
He took a sip of wine.
Europe mocked the reforms now being instituted within the kingdom.
Called them reckless.
Called Peter naive.
Called Montenegro an experiment doomed to fracture under its own contradictions.
Let them.
They had mocked railroads once, too.
Mocked standing armies.
Mocked universal literacy.
And just like then they would learn this was the furture as well.