Another week passed after Lint and Sander left.

After mastering the Green Qi-Attracting Technique, Richard taught it to Ron and Viscount Souter. As someone with a hero’s template, Ron grasped the fundamentals without delay, but Viscount Souter remained unable to do so.

The blow of being outdone by Richard and Ron makes Viscount Sutt doubt his own talent, despite the fact that he’s quite good at what he does.

Putting aside cultivation matters, Richard was currently touring the Tie Mu City arsenal with Eko to assess their equipment.

The workshop bustled with activity. The Tie Mu City arsenal, which originally consisted of only a dozen mediocre blacksmiths, had greatly expanded following the Hunter family’s defeat of the House of Wil.

The arsenal absorbed all the craftsmen from the defeated House of Wil; after familiarizing themselves with the Tie Mu City arsenal’s assembly line, they greatly increased the efficiency of the facility.

“This is made from our own iron ore?” Richard asked, picking up an iron spearhead still attached to its casting.

“That’s correct. All equipment here is forged from iron extracted from the ore veins deep within the ironwood forest.”

The steward accompanying him responded hastily, “How do they compare to the ore we used to purchase from the west?”

“The weapons and armor forged from the ore of the western border are of higher quality, but they’re also much more expensive. Our own ore is sufficient, and with more of it, we can produce weapons and armor nearly as good.”

Richard nodded in agreement. When the army was smaller, it had been feasible to purchase the western border’s high-quality iron ore, but now that the military had expanded tenfold, it would be unwise to insist on pure quality. They needed to make careful calculations to make ends meet.

“How many weapons and suits of armor can we produce in a week with sufficient raw materials?”

“If raw materials are abundant, we can produce more than a hundred suits of padded armor, fifty or so knight swords, five hundred spear tips, and over a thousand arrows each week.”

“At present, our stores of knight swords and spear tips already meet the needs of our expanded forces. We are primarily focused on producing padded armor, and we will increase production in a few weeks.”

In the feudal era, weapons were not hard to come by; armor, however, was another matter. The rate at which an army’s soldiers were armored was one of the most important indicators of its strength.

Although the production process of fabric armor was simple and it was highly cost-effective, it was still armor. Even with the adoption of the cutting-edge assembly-line method, the output was strained to meet demand.

Over half of the Flying Bear Army’s soldiers still lacked armor and were training in hemp clothes and leather armor made from grass ropes.

After inspecting the quality of the armor and weaponry, Richard was quite satisfied. When it came to equipment, one couldn’t prioritize quality over everything else; a balance between cost and quality had to be struck.

These weapons might not be exceptional, but they were certainly up to military standards. In all the northern lands, only a handful of soldiers could boast such lavish protection, and outside the coffers of the Northern Expeditionary Force, only Richard could afford to arm his men so well.

“Continue to increase your output, but don’t relax your standards. You must be careful; I appreciate your hard work.”

“Indeed, I am fortunate to have received everything I have from you, Master Richard, I…”

Richard’s words left the factory manager beside him red-faced and slightly tongue-tied.

After offering some encouragement to the workers, Richard departed the armory with his retinue.

Another week had arrived; it was time to see how Boulder Fortress was doing.

At the beginning of the new week, Boulder Fortress acquired another construction point, but the temple that produced fifth-tier infantry and the barracks that produced sixth-tier cavalry remained grayed out, indicating they could not yet be built.

For the time being, Richard was unsure of the reason, so he chose to upgrade the swordsman camp into a Crusader camp instead.

“Indeed,” he murmured, slightly excited. As expected, once the upgrade was completed, the previous swordsman units appeared to be upgradeable as well. Without hesitation, Richard spent some gold pieces to promote several of his swordsman units into Crusaders.

This week, Richard’s personal strength and the strength of his subordinates experienced a near-explosive growth. Let’s take a look at Richard’s personal panel:

Name: Richard

Level: 4 (560/8000)

Strength: 12.9

Stamina: 11.9

Agility: 12.1

Spirit: 4.2

Skills: Beast Breathing Style (Grandmaster) – maxed out, Green Qi-Attracting Technique (Elementary), Attack Technique (Intermediate).

Units: Spearman (70), Archer (40), Griffin (18), Royal Griffin (5), Crusader (10)

Swapping out the Universal Qi-Attracting Technique for the Green Qi-Attracting Technique was akin to upgrading from a musket to a cannon. In terms of all attributes and energy levels, Richard’s forces were now at the level of an experienced knight’s.

The System had once again replenished his troops, and the ten new Crusaders meant that he now had ten knights under his command (Ron, as a hero unit, was no longer counted).

Even though the System’s troops were strong, Richard still paid careful attention to the operations of his own forces. After all, even though the System’s troops were powerful, there were too few of them.

The most numerous, the foot soldiers, produced a mere twenty units per week, amounting to two thousand in two years. On a battlefield that might accommodate hundreds of thousands of soldiers, this meager number would be far from sufficient.

After examining Boulder Fortress’s buildings for a while, Richard made a round through the barracks to assert his presence.

In less than a month, the recruits had been trained into shape. After all, with TIE Mu City’s official academy in operation, TIE Mu City did not lack for competent junior officers. The diligent training of these officers had yielded an abundance of quasi-knight rank soldiers ready to fill the ranks.

After handling a day’s worth of miscellaneous tasks, Richard’s understanding of his own military strength grew clearer.

He began to consider a more difficult quest: with over a dozen true knights under his command, perhaps it was time to try annihilating a small tribe of cannibal demons.

In the mansion of the fourth lord of Lancelot, Drifting Snow City.

As usual, Lint was engrossed in the books Richard had gifted him. Since his return from Hunter last week, Lint hadn’t left the estate. He spent all his time studying and taking notes, poring over the texts with great care.

Perhaps even Richard himself hadn’t read so thoroughly through these books.

“Sir, the marquis asks that you go to the council chamber,” Sander announced.

His voice pulled Lint out of the ocean of knowledge and back to reality.

“May I ask what the matter is?” Lint asked, peering up from his book without putting it down.

“The Blademaw Knights have detected a massive tribe of giant man-eating demons migrating across the Wilderness,” Ron answered.

“How far away are they?” Lint finally set down the book, now fully focused on the matter at hand.

“They’ve come from the western Wilderness, and their closest noble territory is about three hundred kilometers away,” Ron responded.

Upon hearing this, Lint frowned.

Three hundred kilometers was quite close; a traveler could reach the human territories from here in a week if they moved quickly.

Ogre had always been the bane of the northern lands’ humans. Each adult ogre was the equal of one of the best quasi-knight candidates, and the stronger ogre warriors were a match for knights. 

In the past, small groups of ogres had wandered from the Wilderness into the human territories, but never more than a few hundred at a time. The most significant incursion had been when a mid-sized tribe of less than five hundred ogres directly led to the annihilation of several noble families.

A super-sized tribe, on the other hand, was made up of at least three thousand ogres. If mishandled, this could spell disaster, leaving Lint with no choice but to take this seriously.

“Let’s go, Sander. We can discuss on the way.”

Displaying a rare seriousness, Lint urged Sander to hurry to the Lancelot Family’s Boule Chamber.