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I think for the thing called war, perhaps every world has their own way of fighting.

For this world, sword skills and magic increases one’s personal power and gives everyone the possibility to go against 100 people and against 1,000 on horseback, to a certain extent. But does this mean that an army isn’t important?

Of course not.

A strong person might be able to get rid of many small fish, but what if he’s stalled by all the small fish and other people take advantage of it? Or maybe he comes across an evenly-matched opponent and is forced to make the situation into one of ‘King vs King’ and ‘Pawn vs Pawn’; what will he do then?

At that time, without sufficient troops, you would have to pay a bitter price. You would also be screwed if the troops were also too lacking.

This is especially so when the commander-in-chief is a noob. In these cases, would it be better to assign those experts to the battlefield or keep them behind to protect the base? This is the kind of dilemma one would fall into.

When that time comes, the more troops you have, the better. The way a battle is fought between big Overlords is to first let the army troops wear themselves out first, then have the experts fight hand-to-hand.

Furthermore, a troop of 100 experts may enjoy the territory’s protection and the support of army formations.

It’s said that generals who deploy such troops are able to display strange army formations that allow the soldiers within the troops to display power exceeding their own level and forcefully raise their combat power; this is what is meant by the support of army formations. As for the territory’s protection, it’s a bit harder to describe; supposedly, it depends on the masses’ happiness, dependency and so on. Simply stated, the more faith the people in the territory have in the army, the greater the sense of belonging and the stronger the sense of ‘protection’ the troops will have when fighting in the vicinity of the territory.

I remember hearing a legend in the past that went something like this: there was once a big shot-level general that used a troop of 100 ordinary soldiers to fight on equal grounds with a Level 7 Swordsman. Now this is what is called ‘truly powerful’. If this kind of person was given an army of ten thousand, he would be able to take over the vast majority of cities like a hot knife through butter or maybe even have a fight to the death with those peerless experts.

But I didn’t expect to have these things as of now. First, I didn’t have a general who was able to command soldiers. Second, I didn’t have the complete trust of the masses. What I wanted for now was just to organize an army to keep public security.

However, even this tiny bit, this small request, was filled with bitter setbacks.

West-Resisting City is poor!

Many young people came over to enlist, but each and every one of them were basically malnourished and sickly. Only three or four people were able to achieve the set assessment standards. Left with no other choice, I lowered the standard for admittance. Even then, the most important thing was that I couldn’t see any fighting spirit on their faces.

This was an inevitable outcome.

How can you expect someone to have fighting spirit when they can’t even fill their own stomachs?

The socio-economic base is what determines the superstructure.

In the end, I didn’t need to do much filtering. After all, only 100 people came over to sign up and apart from the 19 who were too lacking, the remaining 81 people were enlisted. I didn’t straight-away give them weapons and armor, but rather called them to gather for a pep talk.

At this time, according to the patterns I’ve seen before, I should fervently propagandize about how there’s a necessity to guard their homes and defend the country; brandishing my hand as I propagandize “Ah, think about your close ones, think about your friends” and so on. But I felt that it was a very troublesome thing to do and that there wasn’t a necessity for it, so I simply told Aleya:

“Give everyone a gold coin.”

Good thing everyone’s an idiot.

A single gold coin……placed in this kind of desolate countryside with mountains, it would be enough to marry a wife, have a child, settle down and live comfortably with change to spare.

Aleya’s brows didn’t even twitch as she completed my request.

But I knew that this lass would be feeling heartache for a long time after we went back.

I faced these 81 young people and said:

“Our West-Resisting City is different from other cities. Our suburbs are very vast, there’s tons of farmland, and best of all, it’s sparsely populated, so everyone can feed themselves just by farming. This is also the reason why the large percentage of the young people haven’t come to enlist. People, sigh, as long as they wish to keep on living, won’t do work that’s risky. That’s why you guys definitely have your own reasons for enlisting and that reason is probably because you all need a huge sum of money that can’t be gained in the short-term by farming.”

“That’s why you all have such an expression, isn’t that so? Each and every one of you have a pair of eyes that have no light, no motivation to live; all of you wish for death so that you can receive some compensation payment from me! It might be 5 silver coins, it might be 10 silver coins, this is the ‘huge sum of money’ in your eyes. In that case, I’ll give you 10, 20 times that to you all! This is the money you’re using your life to pay for, so go back and solve the problems that need to be solved, spend some time with your families, then return. I want you all to survive, to kill many enemies, not to be a statistic, to be a head rolling on the ground.”

I stretched my body and waved:

“I won’t say anything about guarding your homes and defending the country, it would be preaching to deaf ears with the mental state you all are currently in. Hurry and get the hell out of here, you are to come back in three days at the latest to receive training!”

After a spell of silence, all of the people simultaneously roared:

“Yes!”

See, this is the power of money.

The best thing to do for a problem that can be settled with money is to not talk. People are materialistic; rather than lifelessly shouting slogans, you might as well take out some gold or silver, some material benefits and that would make them have more faith in you.

Watching them leave, my mood was also pretty good, so I casually asked Aleya:

“What are we eating tonight?”

While following behind me with her hands hanging by her side, Aleya calmly replied:

“White radish stew with cabbage.”

This little miser!

Siiigh……

I helplessly nodded my head to express my compromise:

“Alright.”

After all, I had just spent a huge sum of money, so it was expected for Aleya to be a little moody.

Just as I was thinking about how I should console her, I heard Aleya continue:

“We won’t be eating white radish stew with cabbage just tonight, we’ll be eating it for the entire month.”

“We’ll also be eating it next month and next next month.”

“Next year too.”

“En……this still isn’t enough. Let’s first eat it for the next 10 years.”

Ahhh??