As for the citizens complaining, they certainly were, but that only made those capitalists happy. In their experience, a population that constantly complained was far less dangerous than one that had fallen completely silent. Once people stopped cursing at the system when things went wrong, they no longer vented their frustrations with words and instead began considering action. That lesson had been learned through decades of bloodshed, and none of the people at the top had forgotten it.
The greatest example of that phenomenon was the fate of corporate CEOs. Nearly thirty percent of them never reached retirement because they were assassinated by people who believed they had been pushed too far through endless profit squeezing and declining living standards. Many executives had driven ordinary citizens to the point where they no longer wanted to live, creating a level of resentment that money could never erase. It became one of the darkest periods in modern economic history, as boardrooms slowly transformed into battlefields.
Ironically, the financial markets reacted in a completely unexpected manner. Whenever a notorious CEO was killed, the company's stock price frequently increased instead of falling because investors believed the replacement would improve public relations and profitability. Before long, an even darker rumor began circulating throughout the financial world. People whispered that it was no longer ordinary citizens who benefited the most from those assassinations but rather the shareholders themselves.
Whether those rumors were true hardly mattered anymore because the public believed them. As more ordinary citizens learned those stories, they gradually became quieter and quieter instead of louder. That silence frightened those in power far more than protests ever had because history showed that people who stopped speaking entirely were often preparing to act. For the first time in decades, many influential figures began wondering whether they had already gone too far.
At first, however, those fears quickly faded. Ordinary people no longer possessed the means to seriously threaten the elite because modern warfare had changed beyond recognition. Cheap autonomous drones dominated every battlefield above ground, making any large gathering of people an easy target within minutes. Attempting a conventional uprising had effectively become impossible.
As a result, the few battlefields that still existed were forced underground. Signals were much harder to transmit through layers of rock, greatly reducing the effectiveness of drones and long-range weapons. Military engineers intentionally designed tunnel systems with countless bends and narrow passages so that remote-controlled equipment could not function properly. Once armies entered those tunnels, warfare resembled the brutal trench battles of centuries past far more than modern combat.
Explosives were also considered poor choices in those underground battlefields. Most tunnel networks began at least ten meters beneath the surface, meaning that careless detonations risked collapsing entire sections onto friendly soldiers. Commanders instead relied on disciplined infantry assaults, shields, bayonets, and close-quarters fighting to seize territory one corridor at a time. It was a brutal style of warfare that demanded patience rather than overwhelming firepower.
Because of those conditions, military campaigns advanced at an unbelievably slow pace. Entire offensives sometimes measured their progress in meters per month instead of kilometers per day. Every tunnel had to be cleared manually, every corner could hide an ambush, and every mistake could collapse the battlefield itself. Compared to the lightning-fast wars of the early twenty-first century, these conflicts seemed almost frozen in time.
Above ground, the situation was completely different. Drones had become so inexpensive to manufacture that virtually nothing could survive in the open for very long. Armored vehicles, infantry formations, and supply convoys were destroyed almost as soon as they appeared. The battlefield above the surface had become little more than a graveyard of machines.
That reality was one of the primary reasons why large-scale wars declined dramatically after 2050. Nations realized that even victory came at such a terrible cost that there was little point in pursuing it. They could destroy one another's infrastructure with ease, but actually occupying territory had become almost impossible. As a result, governments increasingly preferred economic pressure and political influence over open warfare.
Sadly for the American elite, everything changed once the System arrived. Mana fundamentally altered the balance of power, allowing individuals to gain personal strength that no amount of wealth alone could purchase. The advantages previously enjoyed by those at the top suddenly became much smaller as cultivation offered ordinary people a genuine path toward power. For the first time in generations, the social hierarchy began to shift.
The only reason the United States continued to stand in its existing form was because of two fortunate circumstances. First, nearly every major country on Earth was completely focused on preparing for the upcoming Trial and had little interest in interfering with America's internal affairs. Second, the United States military remained one of the few national institutions that the capitalists had never been able to fully dominate. Those two factors prevented the nation from collapsing under its own internal tensions.
The wealthy certainly possessed enormous influence over the armed forces through politics, lobbying, and industry. Nevertheless, influence was very different from absolute control. The military had maintained a culture that valued service, discipline, and merit above inherited wealth, making it one of the last places where ordinary Americans believed they could build meaningful careers. That reputation proved invaluable after the arrival of the System.
For countless young Americans, military service represented more than simply carrying a weapon. It offered purpose, belonging, and an opportunity to advance through personal ability rather than financial status. If the capitalist class had attempted to seize complete control over the armed forces, widespread resistance would almost certainly have followed. Even many soldiers who disliked politics would have viewed such interference as an unacceptable betrayal.
Those two circumstances alone kept the nation together. Without the world's attention being diverted toward the Trial, foreign powers would likely have exploited America's internal instability for their own benefit. Without the loyalty of the armed forces, domestic unrest could have spiraled completely out of control. The balance maintaining the country had become far more fragile than most outsiders realized.
If either of those pillars had disappeared, the consequences would have been catastrophic. Given the sheer number of frustrated citizens living throughout the country, many analysts believed that large sections of the wealthy elite would not have survived the resulting chaos. Their financial resources would have mattered very little against millions of desperate people who believed they had nothing left to lose. Numbers alone would eventually have overwhelmed even the best private security forces.
It was never that such a revolution had been impossible before the System arrived. The real obstacle had always been the enormous number of casualties that both sides would suffer during such an uprising. The wealthy possessed enough weapons and influence to inflict devastating losses before finally falling themselves. That cost alone discouraged countless people from taking the first step.
Nor would the conflict have remained confined within American borders. Every major power in the world would have viewed such internal turmoil as an opportunity to weaken one of its greatest rivals. Economic sanctions, intelligence operations, proxy conflicts, and political interference would all have intensified overnight. No nation would willingly ignore such a strategic opportunity.
That, more than anything else, was the biggest reason why nothing significant happened during the American Civil War. The world's major powers had their attention fixed elsewhere, each dealing with crises that demanded immediate action. Rather than intervening directly in the conflict, many countries instead used the opportunity to quietly dismantle American influence within their own borders. By the time stability finally returned, much of that foreign influence had already disappeared, leaving behind a world that was considerably less dependent on the United States than before.
However, everything changed once humanity returned to Earth after the Trial. The arrival of mana and the System forced the capitalists to pay far more attention to the well-being of their population than they ever had before. Keeping the people reasonably satisfied was no longer simply good politics but an important matter of national survival. As a result, this new wave of economic exploitation became a test to determine whether they could once again push society to its limits without provoking another disaster.
Unfortunately for them, they quickly encountered a problem they had not anticipated. Almost nobody trusted them anymore, and the people were fully aware that similar housing projects abroad were being offered at significantly lower prices. Rather than signing contracts immediately, most citizens wanted to know exactly what they were agreeing to before committing themselves. That hesitation infuriated the capitalists, who viewed every delayed contract as lost profit.
The irony was that much of that money had never truly belonged to them in the first place. Nevertheless, in their minds every customer who delayed making a purchase represented income that had been stolen from them. That mentality had become deeply rooted after decades of maximizing quarterly profits above everything else. Accepting that someone else might offer a better deal simply did not fit within their worldview.
Even worse from their perspective were the rapidly expanding military cities. The United States Army had grown to enormous proportions, eventually establishing fifty legions, one for every state in the union. Many military planners wanted to expand that number even further, believing additional forces would greatly improve national security in the age of mana. Congress, heavily influenced by powerful corporate interests, refused those requests and placed strict limits on further expansion.
Despite those political restrictions, the military still succeeded in getting several large construction projects approved. Unlike the corporations, the armed forces viewed those new neighborhoods primarily as strategic infrastructure rather than commercial investments. Their goal was to create stable communities capable of supporting soldiers and their families for generations. Profit was considered entirely secondary to readiness.
The corporate developers naturally wanted a different approach. Their preferred model was to construct the neighborhoods first and recover their investment afterward through high housing prices and long-term contracts. Unfortunately for them, the financial risks involved were simply too great in the new economy. No bank was willing to finance projects of that scale without sufficient guarantees.
As a result, those companies were forced to wait for the six-month exclusivity period on the European information to expire before they could begin building their own districts. That delay significantly slowed the United States compared to many other nations. Countries that trusted their governments moved much faster because negotiations over property ownership proceeded smoothly. America, by contrast, found itself trapped in endless legal and financial disputes.
Elsewhere in the world, most citizens accepted their governments' proposals without excessive resistance. Many properties outside the newly planned cities had already become abandoned or significantly damaged, making relocation a relatively reasonable option. Governments promised that anyone surrendering urban property would receive farmland outside the cities in exchange. Since farmland still possessed considerable value, very few people objected to that arrangement.
Even families with no intention of becoming farmers accepted those agreements. Land remained a valuable asset regardless of whether it was actively cultivated, and it could always be sold or leased later. Governments also strongly encouraged agricultural production because the age of abundant imported food had ended. Every additional field reduced dependence on expensive food purchased with precious silver coins.
That economic reality became increasingly important as countries watched their currency reserves decline. Citizens constantly spent coins inside the System, purchasing skills, equipment, and countless other opportunities that strengthened humanity as a whole. Governments preferred investing in domestic agriculture rather than borrowing additional money simply to import food that could just as easily be grown at home. Food security had quietly become one of the pillars of national security again.
The United States faced a far more complicated problem. The issue was no longer simply financing new neighborhoods but determining who actually owned the land beneath them. After decades of crushing medical debt and rising living costs, very few ordinary Americans still owned their homes outright. Instead, ownership had gradually shifted into the hands of banks, investment funds, and large corporations.
Ironically, that system now worked against the very people who had created it. The corporations suddenly discovered that they first needed to transfer ownership rights back to ordinary citizens before the System would approve housing loans. Without genuine ownership, Gaia's lending framework simply rejected the applications. The same legal structure that had once maximized corporate profits had become a major obstacle to future development.
Gaia had intentionally designed the loan system that way. She wanted humanity to fight for its own future rather than be tempted by the promises offered by the corrupted humans. In her calculations, home ownership created stability because people who possessed something valuable were far more willing to defend their communities and their civilization. A person with a home had something meaningful to lose.
Because of that philosophy, Gaia monitored the American housing market much more closely than many officials realized. She viewed late-stage capitalism as a social environment that encouraged instability, greed, and exploitation if left completely unchecked. While she had no interest in controlling every aspect of human society, she also had no intention of financing systems that undermined humanity's long-term survival. Her loan policies reflected that balance.
The Chinese government gradually reached the same conclusion after carefully studying Gaia's decisions. Their analysts realized that she consistently rewarded policies promoting long-term stability while discouraging systems that concentrated too much wealth or power in too few hands. Once that pattern became obvious, many Chinese officials quietly adjusted their own economic planning to align with her expectations. They understood that cooperating with Gaia was far easier than trying to work around her.
Watching the United States struggle with problems of its own making became a source of quiet amusement within certain Chinese government circles. Publicly, they maintained professional diplomatic relations and avoided mocking another major power. Behind closed doors, however, many officials could not help but laugh at the irony. The very economic model that had once made America extraordinarily wealthy had now become one of its greatest obstacles in adapting to the new age of mana.