34 — 4 (4)

Applicants flooded in just a day after the notice was posted. As expected, even with modest pay in the current situation, becoming a soldier wasn’t a bad deal.

After all, most citizens would otherwise work in agriculture.

There were plenty of young citizens who wanted to test their luck at least once.

Two messages reached Louis the moment recruitment was completed.

The first was a routine confirmation with no real meaning, but the second was hard to ignore.

Louis opened the city panel.

Happiness supplemented by the Colosseums was 5.

For three Colosseums, that was low; apart from the first, the others only added 1 each due to diminishing returns.

Base Unhappiness in a city was 3, so even adding the Colosseums’ 5 Happiness, total city Happiness was 2.

Now it had fallen to 1.

Who had grown Unhappy? Women. Most of Proia’s population was already stretched thin in agriculture, so when a bunch of young people were pulled out, the workload on women increased.

‘That’s a relief, at least.’

The drop being only 1 had to be thanks to Louis’s accumulated results.

The worst case would have been dipping into the negatives; city Unhappiness would then extend its effects to the military.

Had that happened, it would have been a headache for Louis as he prepared to sweep the monsters—but thankfully it hadn’t.

The recruits began full training. Boromir, Kalbang, and a hundred soldiers threw themselves into drilling them.

The recruits toughened so fast it made Boromir wonder if he had a gift for teaching.

‘Was I this talented at instruction?’

Unaware of the Barracks’ special effect, Boromir found himself enjoying how quickly the recruits learned.

Kalbang, unlike Boromir who mistook it for his own skill, judged that the youths had simply been starving to learn the sword—but in truth, only Louis knew the real reason.

While the soldiers trained steadily, Louis emptied what little remained of the treasury to buy weapons for the recruits from his second brother’s port city.

By the time the weapons arrived… three weeks had passed.

In other words, he could deploy the recruits now, or keep training them until they had no stat deficiencies and emerged as soldiers.

Naturally, Louis had no intention of waiting.

Louis sat on horseback.

Around him, spear-bearing soldiers stood in rank, stretching endlessly.

It was a spectacle. That so many soldiers would obey only his command—Louis was deeply moved.

It was his first time commanding this many troops; more than that, the feeling was on a different level from when he had borrowed Dekal’s men.

Their stats lagged a little behind standard soldiers, but their discipline was equal. That meant no problems in transmitting and executing orders.

For something taught in just three weeks, the results were excellent, and Louis felt no regret about boldly investing 1,200 points.

‘Preparing soldiers at this timing was the right call.’

Louis reviewed the conclusion he had reached over the three weeks, and the answer never changed.

A lesson branded into him by the barbarians:

Never neglect military power.

“Whole army, advance.”

Louis spoke briefly; signals rippled out at once, and the soldiers began to move.

‘Swift and decisive.’

Even idle, an army eats money—like a moving building.

Because Louis had emptied the treasury to arm them, only a few turns remained before finances hit bottom.

Goblins and orcs likely carried at least some coin, and even if not, the materials of their weapons had value in themselves.

‘Sticky.’

Monsters aside, just entering the marsh was exhausting. The entrance was fine, but deeper in even food supply became a problem.

If they were cut off en route? A swift retreat would be practically impossible. If it were armies, not monsters, colliding here, a force surrounded in such terrain would face certain annihilation.

Louis’s method for handling this harsh terrain was simple.

Crush it from the entrance. A tactic available when you had the numbers. He had issued the soldiers, besides spears, short shortswords.

Cut whatever could be cut while advancing.

The marsh wasn’t a dense jungle. The trees grew sparsely. What hindered movement were the ground’s sudden dips, the occasional broad pools, and the mass of emergent aquatic plants.

High humidity meant fire didn’t catch easily—but conversely, once you set it, you could control it.

“F—Fire!!”

Most of the fire-setting fell to Jerome. He was still limited to 1st circle. Without 2nd circle, he was of little use in open battle. Trapped werewolves could be handled with 1st-circle spells, but in this terrain—and against Green Skins (orc-and-goblin coalition) who moved more intelligently than werewolves—it was a stretch.

Moreover, orcs were surprisingly brawny; they often endured 1st-circle magic and charged through it.

Louis was working Jerome hard beforehand because, in battle, Jerome would be pulled to the rear.

Louis’s army advanced steadily. The surroundings were scorched clean.

Every blade of grass was cut or slashed down; anything that would take a spark was set alight and burned.

The air filled with acrid smoke, and the ground was hacked up, backfilled, and leveled in a messy patchwork.

What was the army’s main effort? Roads. Advancing while thoroughly securing firm routes.

Kalbang, who knew a bit of strategy, admired Louis’s plan.

What impressed him most was the short shortsword Louis had devised.

It was clearly custom-made and not cheap, yet issued broadly to the troops; it had a unique shape.

It wasn’t designed to kill, but purely to cut vegetation.

It wasn’t even really a financial loss, since once they drove out the monsters, citizens reclaiming the marsh could use them.

By contrast, Boromir had no time for such thoughts, busily smashing an alligator’s skull at the head of the column.

The plan’s drawback was that the many concurrent tasks during the advance tired the soldiers quickly.

However, thanks to the secured road, provisions flowed smoothly, so they could advance while eating and resting well.

And though the soldiers didn’t know it, Louis continuously monitored their fatigue via the info panel.

Before long, Louis’s army finally encountered the first monster band.

Orcs.

The orcs settled nearby had seen the sudden fires and upheaval and prepared for battle.

Orcs moved in packs, used their own language, and had enough wit to employ a bit of strategy—quite a threat to humans.

They were so numerous across the continent that they sprouted like mushrooms. Orcs without proper packs were very easy to deal with, but those that had banded together for a long time and grown in scale learned warfare endlessly from humans and sometimes formed federations on a near-national level.

The orcs Louis faced were the former—ones that had only recently formed a pack.

Even so, they weren’t fools; they had prepared for a fight.

Somehow they had scrounged iron; many brandished crude but sharp weapons, while the rest held clubs and charged all at once.

They had waited and then rushed down using the height difference.

On the already weak ground, the earth rippled in an instant as the orcs poured forward, and Louis’s soldiers were thrown into confusion by the suddenness.

But in crisis, Louis’s leader trait—Military Charisma—manifested without fail.

“First line, fall back! Second line, form a circle and receive them!!!”

The first line was the vanguard under Boromir; the second, the reserve under Kalbang.

Strangely, even amid the chaos, Louis’s voice seemed to pound deep into his allies’ heads.

Even if Boromir was brave, there was no need to fight while conceding the high ground. Boromir alone was strong, but most of the men were recruits with penalized offense—doubly so.

Louis had grasped that instantly.

At Louis’s order, Kalbang’s second line dropped their shortswords and brought their spears to bear.

A defensive formation.

Against a charging foe, nothing welcomed them like a ring of spears.