Chapter 121: Corruption

Lucius turned to Demetrios.

"Forge Master," Demetrios quickly provided the background. "This is the chief naval architect I hired from Alexandria. He hails from an ancient shipbuilding bloodline and possesses immense merit in the East. He is suited for constructing your battleships."

Lucius nodded, having already read the man’s Directorate dossier, but he quickly returned to his question.

"Kallikrates, you have not answered me. What is your honest assessment of the *Dominus*-class cruiser?"

Kallikrates nervously shot a glance at Demetrios for help.

Understanding the architect’s fear, Demetrios quickly nodded.

"Speak the absolute truth. The Forge Master does not punish honesty."

Swallowing his lingering fear, Kallikrates gestured to the blueprint. "Forge Master, the *Dominus* is a lethal warship that fulfills its purpose in the coastal shallows."

Lucius nodded, but Kallikrates frowned. "However, the hull possesses glaring redundancies. Your engineers utilized a miraculous steam engine, but they mounted it inside a flat-bottomed, bloated Roman grain barge. The hull is incredibly un-streamlined, and fights the waves. It wastes immense amounts of coal. A minor redesign of the keel would increase maneuverability and top speed in deep water."

Seeing Lucius remain silent, Kallikrates feared he had insulted the Forge Master’s genius.

"Overall, Forge Master," he added hastily, "for an empire that only began building a navy, the *Dominus* is a miracle. Any shipyard in the East would kill for this engine."

Lucius nodded thoughtfully.

He wasn’t insulted in the slightest...

The Greek was entirely correct.

Lucius was a chemical artilleryman and a metallurgist; his engineers were brilliant blacksmiths, not sailors.

He fully expected their naval hulls to be deeply flawed in oceanic conditions.

Lucius sigheds. "This is a discipline in which the Syndicate must improve. There is absolutely no shame in accepting superior expertise."

Lucius moved to the center of the room. "Now, I was informed you have a new design for me."

*Phew...* Kallikrates felt like he had just been granted a second lease on life.

Eager to prove his worth, he quickly pulled a large scroll from a drawer and spread it across the drafting table.

"Forge Master, initially, Demetrios and I planned to introduce the Alexandrian polyreme... a multi-tiered oared galley," Kallikrates explained. "But after consulting with your Chief Engineer, Decimus, we entirely scrapped the concept."

Hearing Decimus’s name, Lucius smiled. "Decimus? What did the old man say?"

"When Decimus came to the docks to inspect our traditional hull crafting," Kallikrates replied, "he bluntly informed me that human oarsmen were obsolete. And after I studied the raw torque of your steam boilers, I realized he was correct."

Lucius frowned slightly. "If you abandoned the galley, why didn’t you just introduce the famed Eastern Roman Dromon hulls? They are the fastest sails in the Mediterranean."

Demetrios looked embarrassed and quickly interrupted. "Forge Master, the genuine Dromon blueprints are guarded by the Eastern Senate on pain of death. While we could easily replicate the general shape, transferring the exact proportions and techniques is considered high treason in Alexandria. We could not smuggle the texts."

Lucius sighed.

He wouldn’t share his explosive clay formula for all the gold in Rome, either...

"Then what was the solution you came up with?"

Kallikrates’s eyes lit up with excitement. "By combining Decimus’s steam propulsion with my deep-water hydrodynamic theories, I have drafted this."

He tapped the vellum.

It depicted a sleek, deep-V shaped hull, devoid of oar-banks.

It was designed to cut through ocean swells rather than ride over them, armored in steel belts, and driven entirely by dual, submerged steam-screws.

Lucius stared at the blueprint, profound satisfaction washing over him.

This was exactly what he needed: a true, deep-ocean predator!

"I am immensely satisfied with this design..." Lucius declared firmly. "Construct the prototype immediately. The *Classis Ferrea* will place an order for twenty hulls the moment it passes deep-water testing."

Hearing the lucrative promise, both Demetrios and Kallikrates beamed with joy.

"Forge Master," Kallikrates asked, "do you have a designation for this one-of-a-kind, first-rate battleship?"

Lucius looked at the deadly blueprint.

Considering this warship would establish the Syndicate’s dominance over the entire globe, he chose to take on a similar naming convention to his first ironclad, naming it after the city where his revolution had first forged its heart.

"We will call it the *Lugdunum*-class Dreadnought," Lucius replied.

***

December 3, 221 AD, The Italian Peninsula.

While Lucius was excited by the rapid construction of deep-water battleships in Massilia, the Roman Empire was beginning to cannibalize itself...

With the ousting and imprisonment of Treasury Prefect Marcellus, the immediate aftereffects of Consul Valerian’s desperate edict began to sweep across Italy.

The corruption of the patrician class, previously held in check by the central bureaucracy and the imperial tax auditors, was suddenly unleashed.

It became a mad beast, destroying the civic foundations of the empire...

Without the central treasury to regulate the provinces, the magistrates responsible for grain distribution, aqueduct maintenance, and public courts felt their authority evaporate.

Their civic operations ground to a halt, constantly hindered and threatened by the private mercenaries of the regional noble houses.

However, in this environment of civic decay, one specific sector was blossoming with terrifying speed:

The private military industry.

With the full blessing of Consul Valerian, the patrician families rapidly expanded their private legions.

The slave plantations across Italy were brutally converted into localized industrial bases, literally utilizing human slave labor as a disposable consumable to mass-produce swords and armor!

Consequently, the numerical strength of the Roman military was skyrocketing...

This unified obsession with destroying the Syndicate kept the empire in one piece, preventing an immediate civil war as no patrician dared to openly rebel while the Forge Master loomed in the north.

Unfortunately for Rome, absolutely no one in the Curia Julia noticed the rotting flaw at the core of this rearmament.

The weapons being forged possessed different mathematical standardizations, wildly varying depending on which aristocratic house produced them.

The patricians, finally understanding the immense financial power of military supply lines, ruthlessly ensured their private legions used proprietary equipment.

The Julian house forged Greek-style pikes and oval shields; the Claudian house mandated shortened gladii and scale armor.

If Prefect Marcellus had been present, he would have instantly recognized the nightmare and enforced universal standardization.

However, with Marcellus rotting in a dungeon, Consul Valerian only cared about intimidating quantity.

He had zero understanding of the battlefield logistics required to supply fifty different variations of arrows, armor straps, and javelins to a unified frontline...

The patricians were thrilled, knowing they could price-gouge the state if their specific legions were deployed alongside another, doubling their profit margins.

Their blinding greed was digging a grave for the Roman Senate, but Valerian chose to bear the exorbitant costs, obsessed solely with accumulating enough manpower to crush the Syndicate.

Despite this catastrophic flaw, the Roman Empire maintained its unity through absolute military terror...