Jason and his friends made a plan after learning about the National Improvement menu. Over the years the Free Nation had built up industries of every sort, introducing to the world of Debris the idea of mass manufacturing and the assembly line. They’d developed the supply lines as well that were needed for major industry. Not every corner of the Free Nation was modernized to Human standard, but any city-state that had been a part of it for long enough had made great leaps in progress and were almost unrecognizable to what they once were. The way that this played out was that the central capital of the Free City was the most developed, being at the center of all trade, industry, politics, and culture within the Free Nation. From there, the city-state around it were the next most advanced. Then, the next layer was almost advanced but not quite. This proceeded outward where with the distance from the Free City increasing the less a given city-state resembled that of an advanced culture of at least modern Human civilization. There were some deviations from this though. City-States that had jumped on board with the idea of the Free Nation once they heard of it and focused on improving themselves and just happened to be in the right spot in the chain of trade and supplies that they were able to advance quicker than others. However, even when taking on the core principles and throwing all their weight into this new way of living for them still left them unable to keep up with the Free City. The reason being, Humans and Thesin played important roles in the Free City. They had knowledge or myth that informed their actions of what direction to head in, letting them develop technologies that they had some inkling of from when they were part of cultures that were much more advanced while the other city-states had only their own imagination to come up with new ideas which also needed them to learn the new concepts that the Humans and Thesins brought to the table.

It was a hard sell. Humans were new on the scene and proved to be one extreme or the other, very capable, holding their own against species and beast that outmatched them on a physical level, or useless, unable to be much help in any regard whether it be simple tasks that most any of the present species could accomplish due to having grown up in the environment of Debris or taking on some beast to kill or tame it. There was quite the number of Humans that lost their lives due to this fact, but ones who survived were well respected and seen as balancing out for the failures. Of course, the ones that were proving to be competent were also those generally who had lead lives that were unlikely to have the knowledge that would be of much benefit in the situation that the Free Nation thrust them into the role of educating others medieval cultures about technology that they, more or less, thought of in the same way as magic. They could use machines and technology well enough, but the underlying principles of how exactly they worked was a mystery and due to the thrust of their lives usually, they encountered less industrial and engineering technology and more here’s a gun and here’s a gun that has been manufactured to fire more rounds faster with less chance of it breaking down, or in rare circumstances, they were of the crowd that their sense of advancing technology was that of iphone and it’s generational redesigns. In either case they were usually just tool users caught in the grind of the Human modern world at levels that didn’t afford them much understanding of the tools they were using and they were the type that didn’t really care to take an interest in how those things were made. They had better things to do with their lives.

The Thesin, on the other hand, were simply not listened to as easily as foreigners and newcomers to Debris, Humans. They had been held as slaves for centuries, treated as delusional semi-intelligent beasts of burden that were dangerous if not trained properly. It was simple for Humans to get past this issue because the Thesin were just another alien species among many others, but all the others had known them in this way for generations and it was now natural reaction for most where they resided to react to them by shying away from dealing with them. Listening to and interacting with them, however, was critical to the swift advancement of technology in the Free City. The Thesin provided the pathway of what was a good path to follow through their stories of how they once were and the Humans provided their engineering abilities and knowledge of how Earth was. The T`kata and Eaugr’n provided the heavy labor. The Apox were great at seeking out and collecting materials. Lastly, the J`nkians had access to and, at least, a smidge of experience with and knowledge of the super technologies available to them on Debris. It was only when all these aspects came together that the city-states of the Free Nation could advance as fast as possible. Without the Thesin and knowledgeable Humans to guide the way to how to develop tech and which paths were most viable to go down the city-states outside of the Free Nation had to wait for the knowledge or the goods to make their way to them through the usual trade channels, and people were just not ready to rely so heavily on the Thesin who just a few days ago they’d not have trusted them much of anything they said. Luckily, with the new improvement menu Jason could boost how fast places got what they needed and more.

All that Jason had to do is send out messengers with what he wanted the various cities to focus on and explain what was too happen. It would be the first nation wide product. To prepare for the attacks of Chris and his Krizians, Jason would have to convince every city-state to increase gathering of all the basic resources and then hand them over to him. It wasn’t going to be easy in practice because it meant that each worker had to be convinced to work harder and turn over the fruits of their labor to the state so that they in turn could hand it over to someone not many of them truly new much about. Jason could force the issue. He seize the resources, but if he did that would start him and the Free Nation down a path that wish to begin down. If they did they could justify being ever more tyrannical. Even if he was never tempted to, he had made the Free Nation to ensure that its citizens would never have to be scared of any would be king with a penchant for taking over and making the people them bend to whatever insidious will the king had for them. Take one step down that path and it would justify those who came in the future doing it, likely pushing it further as all humans are want to do. Regardless, he needed the resources and all he could do is send word out of what he needed for them to do and hope that the people would respond positively. Along with his plan he also sent word of an increase in taxes, the money gained from this to be used to pay for the resources to use for all of the things that were needed.

The first part of Jason’s plan was to construct a wall across the southern border of the Free Nation’s border. He designed it to be massive, larger than the ones found around medieval castle-towns. It would have several gateways that one could pass through, but it would be required for someone on the norther side to open for them. The plan was to make it out of ARMS material of the lowest grade. He figured that even though it wouldn’t be the strongest possible wall, it would be stronger than anything that the Krizians could bring to bare, even if they got access to better weapons. The material had survived every test that he put it through, only being damaged by cuts from weapons made through the ARMS technology. The thickness would counter that and even if it didn’t perfectly defend against such cuts the wall would heal itself. He would have made the wall out of the highest grade ARMS material, but he felt that would be overkill. Not to mention, many times more resources would be needed to build the better wall and the current wall was already extremely expensive. That wasn’t where he stopped with the wall, however, He also designed it to house hundreds of higher grade ARMS devices, all of which powered a shield for the structure that would prevent high energy arms from being used against it directly, or at least provide another barrier to get through. The final touches of the wall was to have cannons lining the top of it, able to fire on anything within several miles of the wall, on land or in the air, and between them, stationed at the fore of the wall were placed machine guns placed every 50 or so feet. They were a bit vulnerable in this position but it was the only way for them to be able to straight down the wall if need be. Each of the guns were made to be operated by a soldier who would strap into it. Once seated a shield would activate and then the gun would be ready to fire. It had a much shorter range than the cannons but the purpose of these machine guns were to fire on forces that had managed to get close enough to the wall that the cannons couldn’t be used. They were attached to the wall, but they designed so that they could move in any direction, in any arc, within a 20 meter range. It could fire on both sides of the wall and could hand off the wall with its barrels pointing at a parallel angle to the wall’s face. Each of them also had sensors so that it wouldn’t shoot at the wall or other gun station. They were also programmed not to fire on friendly targets, but there would always be problems where that may screw up. An enemy could be cloaked as an ally or vice versa, so it was best not to put it to the test and see if the AI can figure it out.

The majority of the resources that the Free Nation had went towards this wall, but the system allowed for the management of the materials. It didn’t need to be built all in one go, but slowly over time. In this case, something like 90% of the resources that were collected went directly towards constructing this wall and it would take some time to finish. Meanwhile, Jason used another 8 percent to unlock technologies that the Free City already had across the board along with building defensive structures starting from the southern continental regions, the least advanced of the Free Nation and most exposed to this upcoming war. With the final 2% of the resources that he had access to he focused on pushing for the Free City’s defenses to be increased, unlocking everything that he could to give them an advantage over their enemies and giving them access to newer and better technologies to test before modifying it, if needed, and shipping it out to the rest of the nation. With any luck, this would allow the weak parts of the Free Nation to catch up with other regions while still allowing them to advance technologically and maintain their advantage over the Krizians.