Chapter 2: Eleven Mosaic Paintings

Instead of finding an old factory with all sorts of debris on the ground, Ishida found that the building was completely new on the inside, with dozens of machines constantly working. 

The machines were producing guns, ammunition, and explosives at full capacity. Bright fluorescent lamps hung down from the ceiling, illuminating the entire building. 

The floor was littered with a multitude of unlabeled crates, many of which were open. These contained automatic guns, shotguns, pistols, sniper scopes, bullet cartridges, hand grenades, land mines, and anti-tank rifles. 

The sight of these weapons of munitions completely terrified Ishida.

“Why are all these weapons being made?” he said, slowly backing away. “I thought the last war involving us was over at least a millennia ago!”

As he backed away from the crates on the floor, Ishida bumped into a wall. He turned around and caught sight of something peculiar. While all the other walls in the building were plain, the wall he had just bumped was decorated with mosaic paintings. 

The writing below these paintings read, “The Rise and Fall of the Ajenian Empire (This collection is incomplete. Ten paintings are missing).” 

Ishida examined each art piece very carefully. In the first picture, a man with a curvy black mustache who wore a dark green military uniform with a multitude of glittering medals and a crimson cloak seemed to be instructing a large crowd that had gathered around him.

With his left hand, the man pointed to the west, where a great forest stood. His outstretched right hand pointed to the east, at a group of factories. 

The next painting depicted the same man standing on a tree stump many times larger than him, towering several meters above the ground. 

The man looked out into the distance, where tens of thousands of people were carrying giant logs. The area that he was standing in was now full of fallen trees. 

The third illustration was that of colossal factories working at full industrial capacity to produce steel. Each of these factories had five wooden funnels with pillars of smoke rising from them. Dozens of tiny dots were spread out around the buildings. 

Ishida looked closely and saw that these dots were people. They were of Lilliputian size when compared to the factories. 

In the next picture, smiths were banging on large pieces of iron with their hammers. The iron was flattened, formed into poles, and passed on to a group of workers who carried them out to trucks waiting outside. 

The man in the military uniform was standing in front of the factory, watching silently as the vehicles drove away and disappeared beneath the horizon.

The trucks in the fifth painting drove out to a snow-capped mountain that was not part of any mountain range. This mountain stood alone and was surrounded by plains and forests. There was also a river curving around its foot. 

The vehicles drove up to the back of the mountain, stopping only halfway up and unloading their cargo. 

Men in dark blue uniforms with yellow helmets and safety goggles— presumably architects— gathered and laid large pieces of blank paper onto the grass. These architects began drawing construction plans and blueprints. 

The following painting depicted multiple hefty cranes that lifted the iron poles into the sky and set them back down a few hundred meters away. 

In the seventh picture, a handful of factories had been completed on the back of the mountain. 

Workers and architects rushed to build more factories on the front side of the mountain as well. Cotton factories were constructed on the banks of the river at the foot of the mountain and humongous water wheels were placed on the water. 

Many people traveled from distant lands and settled on the mountain, which grew more and more crowded over time. 

The next painting was that of an ammunition factory that looked identical to the one Ishida had just walked into. It was much larger and grander than all the nearby factories.

In the ninth picture, the sky darkened as men put on their military uniforms and gathered their weapons. Armies in the millions began approaching the isolated mountain. 

These armies were so large that if you, honorable reader, were there to gaze upon them with your very own eyes, you would not have seen the ground or any trees in the distance at all, for their numbers were as great as grains of sand on a beach. 

The next picture depicted a fierce battle. An armada of armored vehicles plowed through the trees while a multitude of soldiers swept across the river. 

Soldiers of the opposite allegiance stood on the opposite side of the river, firing relentlessly. Alas, being unable to stop the horde of intruders, they retreated up the mountain. 

In the eleventh painting, the fighting appeared to have ended in a defeat for the defenders, and the back of the mountain was in ruins. The majestic factories that were once there were soon abandoned. People moved to the front of the mountain and settled there instead. 

This was the last painting. The wall beyond it was labeled, “Missing paintings, once found, shall be placed here.”

While Ishida was studying these mosaic paintings, he heard footsteps in the hallway. The sound grew louder and louder as the door to another section of the factory opened. 

Ishida spotted a long shadow looming out from the doorway.

“Who’s there?” a booming voice abruptly called. “How did you manage to get in here?”

Instinctively, Ishida rushed outside and away from the factory as quickly as his two feet would carry him.