“Zeyra, Stemple, the official negotiation is over for today. Begin the due process,” Rui told them.
“But sir…”
“Just do it,”
The two bowed before taking a leave.
They were his official assistants and advisors, but this wasn’t an official meeting from this point forth.
He loosened his tie a bit before drinking some water.
“Now then,” He began. “You wanted to know about the world we came from? I can tell you. Well, we come from a faraway place, it took us quite some time before we got here.”
“How far away?” She asked.
“I cannot reveal that, unfortunately,” He shook his head. “But the distance is much greater than the size of this island, I can tell you that much.”
Revealing the distance between the Kandrian Empire and the G’ak’arkan Tribe would increase the, albeit low, probability that they could run into the Kandrian Empire someday. If hostilities ever broke out, then this would become yet another headache for the Kandrian Empire.
“What is your world like?” She asked once more.
“…What is our world like, eh? There’s so much to say that I don’t know where to begin.” He paused for a moment, before starting. “Our world is large. Very larger. Larger than you can probably imagine.”
“Large?”
Rui nodded. “The number of people, the size of the land that we come from. The territory, everything is magnified.”
“I see…” She muttered. “How many tribes are there in the world that you come from?”
“About that, we don’t have tribes.” Rui smiled wryly. “We have something called countries. You can think of them as very large tribes, that are much easier to enter and exist. Most countries are bigger than this entire island, you know?”
“What?!” Her eyes widened. “Those must be gigantic tribes!”
“You can think of them in that way,” Rui shrugged. “But countries are not as tightly bound as your G’ak’arkan Tribe. Usually, most people can enter and exit them with some ease.”
“What?” She frowned. “That sounds horrible, why do these tribes allow anybody to enter??”
Rui scratched his head, her question was so fundamental that he needed a moment to gather what he had always taken for granted. Not just in this life, but in his previous one as well.
“Principally, it is because countries hold that people have the right to freedom to leave the country if they want to. Practically, it’s because the vast amount of trade that happens between and through countries would be impossible if people weren’t allowed to leave their countries and join other countries.”
She just stared at him, too confused to even know how to respond to that.𝚘𝑣xt.𝑐𝓞𝚖
“Er, countries and people of those countries trade things with other countries… Kind of like how we just have agreed to trade Martial Art techniques with all of you,” Rui explained.
“Oh, I see! You all trade Martial Art techniques with each other, correct?”
“Well, not really. We mostly trade many kinds of things, ranging from food to resources, technological pro-“
He paused when he saw confusion creeping into her expression, before shifting his explanation. “You see all the various objects of all sizes and shapes that you see our people using”
He gestured out the window.
She nodded. “Like those strange moving ones that have people in them.”
“Correct, people exchange those things from other countries, among other things,” Rui explained.
“I see…”
Rui continued helping her understand what the Panama continent was like bit by bit. The G’ak’arkan Tribe was so vastly different that she didn’t have even the slightest bit of familiarity with concepts that would have otherwise been ubiquitously known back on the Panama continent.
The G’ak’arkan Tribe lacked an economy. The tribe satisfied everybody’s needs to the best of its capabilities, and it did a well-enough job. If there was something that somebody in the tribe wanted from another one of their members, they needed to simply ask, and they would oblige. People naturally did everything they could to help their tribe. Boys and girls who had the potential for Martial Art dedicated everything to it, becoming the new generation of Martial Artists that would protect the tribe from the hostile enemies on the island, while the remaining children would take on more ordinary roles befitting their capabilities.
This is why she was unable to comprehend the very concept within a country. She still fallaciously attributed the values of a tribe, but on a larger scale, to countries.
“People do not give each other what they want just because they want it, that kind of behavior is limited to within families. Outside of family, If you want something, you need to offer something worth its value. A fair exchange, similar to what we are trying to do between us.”
This was technically true since money counted, but it still sounded like the barter system which existed prior to the invention of the concept of currency. But he hadn’t even gotten to the concept of currency yet. She still had far too incomplete a worldview for him to even broach that topic yet.
Slowly but surely, she began gaining a somewhat clearer yet blurred view of what the continent was like.
“Do these countries fight the way that the tribes on this island do?” She asked, curious.
“Well, some of them do. But largely, most countries do not fight with each other like the way the tribes of this island do with each other.”
Of course, war was by no means gone. There was plenty of conflict that occurred across the entirety of the continent. Yet the countries did not fight each other as intensely as he had seen the tribes of the island do with each other.
They knew nothing else but war, they were born in it, molded by it. There was no diplomatic cooperation between any of the tribes for the most part.
This was something that surprised her the most.
“They are so big, yet they do not use their size to fight with each other?” She wondered aloud.