The Relic

Chapter 4

Hitler ordered that all Italian trying to surrender to the allies be considered as traitors and shot on sight. In reality, many Germans turned a blind eye to the Italians' surrender to the allies. After all, the Wermacht had been keeping them unfed. They couldn't get food and necessities, so many officers chose to disobey orders and let the Italians cross.

Gestapo police found them and put them in a military tribunal. Albert Kesselring gave them a pardon though, since he reasoned that letting the Italian citizens leave also means less mouth to feed and less troublemakers behind the German lines.

The document of what happened reached Hitler, but Hitler never gave a reaction to what happened. Alfred Jodl's account say that Hitler couldn't care enough. Erwin Rommel's account say Hitler never got to read it. Felix Steiner claimed that the incident was purposefully kept as a secret because many officers in the field had similar views that the citizens shouldn't be shot and that would very much enrage Hitler.

Anyway, how about we go check what the Japanese were up to by this point? It's already July of 1945. The battle of Okinawa went worse, much worse than American expectations. Japanese were determined to defend it, and their super soldiers make advancing very difficult. Only about 15% of the island has been under American control. Japanese saboteurs have been making problems in supply line, thereby delaying the advance.

It still won't take long for the Americans to take over the whole island, though. Luckily for the Japanese, their research on the relic and its liquid obsession was bearing fruit. The Japanese managed to find a way to use the relic's liquid as fuel. However, the method was different to Germany's method. Germany converted the liquid to fuel before usage, while Japanese mixed it with a substance-I-forgot-the-name-of before using.

They didn't process the liquid much and just simply put it in with another substance. Their machine wasn't able to last long with the liquid, so they had to modify a lot of engines. Smaller vehicles like tanks and trucks are easy to modify, but larger engines like ships takes a lot of time, so their ship was out of commission for the time being. Planes weren't so difficult to modify, so the Japanese can still use their planes.

Using the relic's liquid as fuel is actually very useful. The engine can run longer with less fuel. The only downside to this is that the engines require servicing more often. If the engines aren't serviced enough, it would break down very quickly. It's quite a good alternative for Japan's oil crisis. They already lost their fuel source that is Indonesia, did they not?

Japan was less successful in enhancing steel with the liquid. The resulting steel is tougher, but it's more prone to rust and the cost of producing the steel outweighs the results, so Japanese decided to continue research but not mass produce it.

The most ridiculous of all, Japanese tried to insert the relic's liquid into dead bodies. They were hoping to reanimate corpses and the likes. After all, the relic's liquid had been one impressive substance so far. Why not try doing it? Spoilers, a zombie apocalypse didn't happen. Of course it's not possible. Hirohito called out on the researchers for doing something so dumb.

Japanese however, found another use for the liquid. The Japanese managed to turn the liquid into a kind of divine ointment. No, it's not from God. It's called divine ointment for a different reason. The divine ointment can heal almost any wound a human can receive. In addition, it also strengthens the tissues replacing the broken ones. Pretty neat.

Before you ask, no. There's no side effects like using the relic's liquid as fuel. This one is a natural function of the Japanese relic, so there's no side effect whatsoever, just like the food from the same relic and the fuel and steel from Germany's relic. The Japanese got obsessed with the relic though. Kuniaki Koiso, Japanese prime minister ordered a search on documents and the likes to find more relics. They chose to focus on something else rather than the war. I don't know what was in their mind.