The Admiral of Hogwarts

After leaving Massachusetts, Intrepid, and Salem to sort through the pile of documents in the attic, Hugo followed Split directly to the Balkan region.

Because the flames of war had died down, the Soviets had been hoping Hugo could visit this place, and now with this sub-dimension, Hugo could take this opportunity to see the future homeport of the ship girls in this world.

Hugo and the others emerged from a house next to Tartini Square. The original owner of this house had fled to Canada to escape the war, so the Soviets bought it.

Tartini Square is the most prominent square in the game's background image. It was originally the inner harbor of Piran, but it was filled in 1894 and turned into its current form.

Because it was quite late, Hugo quickly washed up under Split's guidance and fell asleep in the bedroom of this house.

The next morning around 9 o'clock, Hugo woke up from bed. After all, he had spent several hours in the mountainous area of the Alps the night before and went to bed very late.

"Marshal, you're awake." As Hugo walked down the stairs to have breakfast, he saw Split placing the freshly prepared breakfast on the table.

"Yes—aren't you having breakfast?" Seeing only one plate of food and a set of cutlery on the table, Hugo asked with some confusion.

Although ship girls don't actually need to eat, most of them have habits similar to humans, meaning that as long as they are not busy, they will eat and sleep like normal humans.

"I already ate breakfast this morning," Split said with a smile, then sat down opposite Hugo with a folder. "After you finish eating, we'll go together to visit the Earth's Core Furnace that has already been put into production."

So, after eating, Hugo and Split used the sub-dimension as a springboard to meet up with the ship girls who had already started working at the furnace.

Hugo had previously imagined what this so-called Earth's Core Furnace would look like, with the most frequent image being a river of magma made up of various molten metals or something, with dozens or hundreds of machines for forging on both banks of the river.

But when he came out of the space gate of the sub-dimension, he realized that his imagination was completely different from reality. Because on the other side of the space gate was actually a very modern-looking hall.

"Welcome, Comrade Commander." Seeing Hugo come out, several ship girls led by the Soviet Union all raised their right hands and saluted Hugo, "Welcome to visit our Metal Smelting Center."

"Thank you for your hard work." Hugo, wearing a white military uniform, also raised his right hand and returned a salute. Then he followed these ship girls to visit this core industry.

This is a very modern underground base. The walls and floors use a large number of materials similar to plastic, metal, and even glass. Lights cast a soft glow from behind these materials.

However, there are not many people in the base. Apart from Hugo and the ship girls, only some construct creatures like robots are going back and forth in the corridors of the base, as if transporting something.

"These are very simple robots, and they can only do some of the simplest tasks such as carrying, cleaning, and inspecting." Seeing Hugo observing the surrounding robots with curious eyes, the Soviet Union introduced them with pride.

"These robots were jointly designed and manufactured by Massachusetts and Salem, combining the technology of ordinary people with magic. They can greatly alleviate our current manpower shortage."

Speaking of this, the Soviet Union explained the reason. It turned out that after making the first batch of Fairy Silver, the ship girls found that this metal was far superior in all aspects to the base metals originally used in their ship equipment.

In this way, the nature of Fairy Silver suddenly changed for them. From a simple commodity, it became an item that ship girls could use to improve their abilities.

"Now, except for one-tenth of the Fairy Silver produced, which is used for the production of various materials, the remaining 90% is all used to replace the metal of everyone's ship equipment," the Soviet Union explained to Hugo seriously.

"This level of improvement is far more powerful than we previously imagined. To give the simplest example, in many places, just a thin layer of Fairy Silver plating can increase some aspects of our abilities by 20% to 30%."

"That's why you applied to me for Fairy Silver before, right?" Hugo nodded and said. "You did the right thing, after all, compared to all industries, you are the most important."

"Also, is there enough Fairy Silver now? If not, I think we can stop the production of flying brooms and a series of magic道具, and concentrate all the supplies to you—"

"Thank you, Comrade Commander, but the current output of Fairy Silver is already sufficient for us." The Soviet Union smiled and said, "We have a complete plan in this regard, so we can just proceed step by step."

"That's good, that's good. Remember, this type of thing will be given priority to you in the future, and other needs can be put on hold until you have finished using it before considering other aspects—"

After hearing what the Soviet Union said, Hugo nodded with satisfaction and continued walking forward along the corridor. A few minutes later, he felt the surrounding temperature begin to rise, and then a huge hall like a football field appeared in front of him.

In the center of the hall, a series of machines almost filled the entire hall, emitting a roar like a giant beast. A large number of robots with different shapes and functions were busy going back and forth around the machines.

These machines look very similar to the machines in the ordinary human world, but if you look closely, you will find that the outer walls of the machines are covered with dense and star-like shining magic runes.

"This is the Earth's Core Furnace after our improvement." Because the surrounding environment was a bit noisy, the Soviet Union spoke to Hugo through the admiral network.

"Compared to the fairies' original Earth's Core Furnace, this new Earth's Core Furnace has a larger volume, higher efficiency, and a very high degree of automation. It can be said to completely crush the fairies' products."

Unlike those conservative wizards in the magical world, the ship girls have a very high degree of acceptance of ordinary human products. So they designed and built this new type of Earth's Core Furnace that combines magic and technology.

According to the current shipment volume of Fairy Silver in the wizarding world and the information left over from the Wizard Party, the ship girls can be sure that the efficiency of the Earth's Core Furnace currently mastered by those fairies is almost only half of their furnace.

In the beginning, the ship girls thought they had miscalculated, because they couldn't believe that their simple improvements could achieve such good results, but later they discovered the mystery.

"If we were to talk about the reason, we could probably write a 10,000-word paper, but if we simplify it, it can be described in one sentence," the Soviet Union said with a smile on her face.

"The fairies have gone through thousands of years from the invention of the Earth's Core Furnace to the present, but their production is stuck at the level of manual workshop production due to the population problem in the magical world, while we have adopted industrialized production."