Shipyards across Gaian Civilization mobilized, churning out more spaceships even as more and more such yards were produced to pump out even spaceships in a vain attempt to meet the endless surge of demand that had emerged from countless nations, organizations, groups, and individuals.

A surge of demand for countless space-related technologies, utilities, and amenities sends industries into a supply-expansion frenzy. Exo-suit manufacturers expanded manufacturing factories to produce for nearly one thousand times as many people as they would normally supply for. Negatronic warp drives also skyrocketed with an astronomical amount of demand that they could ever hope to supply to.

Every sector even remotely tangentially related to interstellar travel, expansion, and colonization experienced a crippling amount of demand, flooded with more money and capital than they knew what to do with.

Soon enough, the first few fleets of spaceships began to depart from Gaian Civilization, the very first of which was from none other than the Kandrian Empire.

"—And here we are gathered in the Kandrian Empire’s observatory, where we can clearly see the fleet of spaceships that have exited the Panamic Space Station and are all but ready to take off!" A reporter enthusiastically declared. "Don’t blink, because you might miss it! These spaceships will be traveling at many times the speed of light and will reach their destination in just a matter of months!"

RUMBLE

The footage featured magnificent spacecraft of different sizes and classes emerging from the Panamic Space Station. The crest of the Kandrian Empire was proudly engraved upon their hulls. Their workmanship was spectacular while their visual appeal projected a grandiose image from a blend of colours emerging from a color scheme featuring golden, blue, and white.

VMMM...

The ships began vibrating as their warp drives were supplied with a massive surge of energy.

VMMM!

The very fabric of space and time began warping as the crew prepared for take-off, having calibrated the warp drives perfectly.

"Riemann Tensor is stable, space-time curvature is proceeding in accordance with expectations."

"Internal temperature stable."

"Spaceship warp drives have been synchronized."

"Long-range space-time sensors are active."

"Prepare for take-off."

Soon enough, it was time.

VMMM!

The entire world watched as the image of the spaceships warped due to the curvature of space and time, which warped the light that emerged from them just moments before they shot off at speeds far greater than that of light.

"And there they go!" the reporter cried. "They lead the Kandrian Empire into an era of stars!"

The event, viewed by virtually every person in the Kandrian Empire, garnered tremendous support and evoked great pride to be the first individual polity to send people outside of the solar system. It reminded them of their pride as citizens of the greatest nation in the world.

As the nation that controlled the supply of negatron matter, it also possessed great expertise with it and could accommodate extremely luxurious negatron warp drives developed by private corporations that had received special permission from the Kandrian Empire to work with negatron matter and develop technological products to sell to the Empire and, now, to the rest of the world.

It didn’t matter that they were late to the space race or had to develop all their space infrastructure from scratch. The biggest constraint to interstellar travel was the negatron warp drive, which they had an absolutely massive advantage in.

Following them immediately were fleets from other superpowers of Gaian Civilization. The Bournvyrne Empire, Elven Genoran Civilization, the Evolutionary Army, Greater Tekvoria, the Panamic Consortium, the Pasupati Clans of Kiriket, and even the giants.

These were nations powerful enough to get their hands on enough negatron matter to build powerful warp drives for space travel, even after having used it for other purposes.

They were the first wave of pioneers and colonialists heading to another star system as their launches became some of the most celebrated moments and a landmark in human history for the first wave of interstellar enterprises outside the Panama Continent.

The interweb and the broader citizenry of Gaia cheered for the powers of human civilization moving to outer space. They yearned for a future where space travel would become cheap and affordable, for a future where they themselves could travel across a vast civilization that stretched across the stars, with so much to see that they would never get bored.

Of course, many of them were aware of the fact that space travel was likely to be extremely expensive for a very long time. Even if human civilization had been whipped into a production frenzy of anything that was even tangentially related to space travel.

And yet, the romance of interstellar activity caused a proliferation of footage of the various spacecraft from human civilization shooting off at speeds even faster than light, played on repeat over and over on all news media channels, and talked about endlessly on the interweb.

"Why are you here instead of being out there celebrating human history?"

The voice of Edward hung in the air as he pointed to the screen in his posh living room, featuring footage of fleets in outer space entering warp travel, disappearing into the distance as a wave of cheers emerged from countless people who held aspirations and dreams for humanity in the interstellar frontier.

["Woohoo! The take-off is a success!"]

["We dwarves will establish an empire in the stars!"]

["Look at our magnificent space whales coursing into the cosmos!"]

The excitement and boister of the people involved in the launch of countless fleets towards the stars emerged from the television screen, hanging in the air as it broke the silence in Edward’s living room.

He turned towards Rui, who sat opposite him on the couch, wearing his Martial attire, calmly sipping a cup of Britannian tea.

"This tea is good," Rui remarked, taking a good look at the place that Edward called home. "I expected something a bit more fancy than this for a former prime minister, though."

It was surprisingly cozy and rustic for someone who was as high up as he used to be. The light of the evening sun peering through his windows, lightly illuminating the living room, permeated through Rui’s translucent body. The clothes that he wore were also so relaxed and homely that Rui had a hard time associating with the same man they called the Iron Minister for how powerful he once was.