That was the biggest reason why many companies remained uncomfortable with the idea of sending ships across the open ocean. The sea was simply too unpredictable, and there were not enough captains or experienced crew members capable of making such dangerous journeys safely. The few people who possessed the necessary knowledge were already fully booked, leaving them with little time to train the next generation of sailors. Even if a company could afford to purchase a suitable vessel, that did not mean it could find the people needed to operate it. Without enough qualified personnel to guide their ships, businesses were reluctant to risk valuable cargo on voyages that could easily end in disaster.
The greatest limitation on ocean-going vessels was not the ships themselves, as one might initially assume. Most of the designs had been copied and upgraded from the Age of Exploration, when sailors had crossed vast stretches of ocean without the advantages of modern navigation systems. The ships produced during those times had been designed to withstand a wide variety of weather conditions, provided their captains understood how to handle them properly. Of course, even the finest vessel could be overwhelmed by an exceptionally dangerous event, such as a rogue wave, but ordinary storms were not necessarily enough to doom a well-managed ship. With the right knowledge and an experienced crew, these vessels could still serve as reliable means of transportation across the world's oceans.
This was why the appearance of American representatives at the auctions hosted by the Roth family had been so extraordinary. Their interest in attending the auctions suggested they were seriously considering oceanic trade, despite the dangers involved. However, the oceans were not forgiving places, and purchasing a vessel was only the first step toward establishing a successful maritime operation. A company could invest heavily in its ships and still lose everything if it lacked the people capable of navigating them safely.
The real problem lay with the crews who would have to man those ships, particularly when it came to navigation. Modern sailors had grown accustomed to relying on electronic navigation systems and GPS to determine their positions and plot their courses, rather than learning how to find their way by observing the stars and using a compass. These technologies had made maritime operations considerably more convenient, reducing the need for every sailor to master the traditional methods of navigation. From the perspective of modern naval forces, requiring everyone to learn those older techniques had once been an unnecessary expense. After all, before the System arrived, assistance could reach almost anywhere in the world within thirty minutes, making traditional navigation skills seem less essential than they had been in earlier centuries.
Consequently, generations of sailors had been trained to depend on technological assistance instead of developing the knowledge their predecessors had considered indispensable. Even now, after the world had changed, that habit was not something people could abandon overnight. Sailors were still adjusting to their new duties and learning how to operate vessels that differed significantly from the ships they had previously served aboard. Before they could seriously consider mastering the complexities of traditional navigation, they first needed to become competent at handling the vessels themselves. Tasks that might once have been familiar to experienced sailors had become challenges that required considerable practice for people who had spent their careers working with modern equipment.
Among the most immediate difficulties were the practical skills required to operate sailing ships. Crew members needed to learn how to hoist and adjust the sails, coordinate their movements with the rest of the crew, and climb the rigging without falling. Those responsibilities demanded physical strength, coordination, and an understanding of how the ship responded to wind and weather. A mistake while climbing the ropes could quickly become dangerous, especially when the vessel was moving in rough conditions and the crew had little experience handling it. Until sailors could perform these basic duties reliably, expecting them to master celestial navigation and the other traditional skills required for long ocean voyages was simply unrealistic.
The European Union had already recognised the importance of preserving that knowledge and had paid several of the remaining captains who could still navigate using traditional methods to hold classes. These experienced sailors represented a valuable resource, as there were very few people left who could teach the necessary techniques through practical experience rather than theory alone. Nevertheless, their limited numbers meant that the training programme could not solve the problem quickly enough to support a major expansion of maritime trade. Even if every available instructor devoted all their time to teaching, it would still take considerable effort to produce enough competent navigators for the number of ships businesses wanted to send overseas. The European Union could help preserve the knowledge, but it could not manufacture experienced captains simply by allocating more money.
The situation was made more complicated by the fact that most people who had mastered these traditional methods were historical sailors who pursued the subject out of personal interest. They were the sort of enthusiasts who found learning old navigation techniques challenging and enjoyable, treating the process as a hobby rather than a professional necessity. Although their knowledge was useful, it did not necessarily mean that they possessed the practical experience needed to guide a ship across the open ocean under difficult conditions. There were also people who technically knew how to navigate by the stars and compass because they had once been required to learn those skills. However, most of them were around ninety years old and had not practised the techniques in fifty years, making their knowledge far less useful than it might initially have appeared.
What the maritime industry needed was not simply someone who remembered the theory, but someone who had applied it regularly enough to develop genuine expertise. A captain who navigated by the stars almost every day would understand the small details that could make the difference between a successful journey and a dangerous mistake. Such a person would know how to interpret changing conditions, recognise subtle clues, and compensate when circumstances did not match the expectations of a textbook. Those practical lessons were difficult to preserve through written instructions alone, especially when the people capable of teaching them were so few. Without experienced navigators and enough trained crew members to support them, the proposed expansion of oceanic trade remained far more difficult than the availability of ships might suggest.
Eventually, the sea route was declared impractical for the time being, and attention returned to the land-based Silk Road. Although the decision was disappointing for those who had hoped to establish maritime connections, it did not mean that the wider trade project lacked potential. Instead, it meant that businesses would have to work within the limits of the resources and personnel currently available to them. The land route offered a more manageable alternative, even if transporting goods by wagon imposed significant restrictions on the amount of cargo that could be carried. Economists therefore began examining which goods could generate enough profit to justify the expense of moving them across such considerable distances.
The central problem was that wagons could transport only a limited quantity of goods, making it impossible to compete effectively in the market for cheap bulk materials. The cost of loading, transporting, and unloading each wagon meant that the journey needed to produce a substantial return for the people financing it. Ordinary goods that could be purchased cheaply in one region would rarely justify the expense of transporting them all the way to another continent. Instead, merchants had to focus on expensive items whose value was high enough to cover the costs of the journey while still leaving them with a worthwhile profit. In practical terms, the Silk Road would have to specialise in valuable cargo rather than attempt to move the enormous quantities of ordinary materials that modern supply chains could handle.
However, merchants could not simply raise their prices without limit to compensate for the expense of transportation. If they demanded too much money for their goods, customers could turn to the marketplace maintained by the System instead, even though the fees charged for using that service were becoming increasingly expensive themselves. Those fees were already substantial, and their continued growth made the traditional trade route more attractive in some circumstances. Nevertheless, the marketplace still provided an alternative that merchants could not ignore when deciding how much to charge. If the cost of transporting an item across the Silk Road became too high, customers would have little reason to buy it from a travelling merchant when the System could offer another way to obtain it.
According to the economists discussing the proposal, one of the few ways to make the journey consistently profitable was to operate the entire caravan independently rather than rely on regional relays. Using those relays would mean transferring goods between different traders and businesses along the route, with each exchange introducing additional costs and opportunities for someone to demand a share of the profits. Such arrangements could quickly eat into the narrow margins available when transporting goods over long distances. In some cases, the extra expenses could become so substantial that merchants would actually lose money by participating. Running the entire journey themselves would require more coordination and resources, but it would also allow businesses to avoid many of the costs associated with repeatedly reselling their cargo.
The strategy proposed by the economists was relatively straightforward: merchants should carry goods that were expensive or highly desirable in China, sell them there, and use the proceeds to purchase valuable goods that could be sold profitably back home. The success of the journey would depend on understanding the differences between the two markets and choosing cargo that could command a sufficiently high price at the destination. Rather than filling their wagons with whatever goods happened to be available, merchants would need to select each shipment carefully. The limited capacity of their caravans made it essential to prioritise items that offered the greatest possible return for the space they occupied. If they could identify products that were both valuable and in demand, the long journey might become a worthwhile investment despite its considerable costs.
A particularly promising example was the European weapons industry, which already possessed a strong reputation for quality. Europe was known for having the world's best bowyers, and the Crimson Sun Guild sold some of the finest bows money could buy on the continent. Customers were generally happy to purchase their products because the quality justified the price, making these bows attractive candidates for long-distance trade. Merchants could load their wagons with bows and weapons produced by Europe's renowned craftsmen and transport them toward China, where they could exchange them for goods that commanded high prices in European markets. By concentrating on valuable equipment rather than cheap everyday products, traders could make better use of the limited space available in their caravans.
The return journey offered another opportunity, particularly through the purchase of silk and spices. Both had long been associated with valuable trade between distant regions, and they could provide merchants with desirable cargo for the journey back to Europe. Silk was an obvious choice because it could be transported in relatively compact quantities while retaining considerable value. Spices, however, had acquired an additional attraction in the changed world, where the presence of mana had transformed the value of certain natural products. The difference between ordinary spices and those containing mana could make the latter extraordinarily desirable, creating a market that had not existed in the same form before the System arrived.
Ordinary spices were still readily available in shops and could be purchased for relatively little money. They remained useful, but they were ordinary materials without mana, and their continued availability outside the newly transformed environment was partly due to the fact that they had been grown naturally rather than artificially aged by machines. The distinction mattered because mana had begun changing the value of agricultural products, just as it had affected other parts of the world. Wheat, for example, was now being cultivated in considerable quantities in fields that absorbed mana from their surroundings. The resulting crops could provide benefits to cultivation when people consumed them, demonstrating that food itself could become a source of advantages beyond ordinary nutrition.
The same principle applied to spices, which meant that their value was no longer determined solely by their flavour or rarity. When food contained mana, its taste could improve enormously, creating a noticeable difference between ordinary ingredients and their mana-rich counterparts. The change was substantial enough that normal salt and spices could even ruin the flavour of familiar dishes, including bread and pizza, when compared with versions prepared using mana-rich alternatives. For people who had grown accustomed to the improved taste of mana-infused food, returning to ordinary ingredients could be deeply disappointing. As a result, mana-rich spices were expected to become enormously popular throughout Europe, giving merchants another valuable product to carry along the Silk Road.
It was therefore easy to understand why so many people were anticipating the arrival of goods brought back from China. The people of the modern age had grown accustomed to a worldwide supply system in which products from distant countries could be obtained without personally worrying about the difficulties of transporting them. The sudden limitations imposed by the changed world had made that convenience much harder to maintain, leaving consumers frustrated by a supply chain that felt painfully primitive in comparison. Now, the proposed Silk Road offered a chance to restore some of that variety, even if the goods would initially arrive in smaller quantities and at higher prices. For businesses, the route represented a new opportunity to make money, while for ordinary people, it promised access to valuable products that had become increasingly difficult to obtain.