Chapter 48: Underlying Currents

Herman Buckley was full of confidence, but his father, Earl Soren, couldn't shake a sense of unease.

He couldn't pinpoint exactly what was wrong—just that things might not go as smoothly as expected.

Idar Territory...

Earl Soren once again fixed his gaze on the map. No matter what, this battle must be won!

Krell was thrilled to become a member of the Idar Standing Army, but after that... there was nothing else. The grueling daily training left him gasping for breath, giving him no time to think about anything else.

As for the somewhat immature ideas he had when applying to enlist, those gradually transformed—under the patient guidance of the military instructors—into a simple commitment to defending Idar Territory.

"Unify thought, seek truth from facts." This was the fundamental rule Bruno set when establishing the Idar Standing Army.

Krell's ideas had both promising and concerning aspects in Bruno's eyes.

If guided properly, Krell's desire to protect would turn into loyalty toward the Idar regime itself. But if left to grow unchecked, Bruno feared it might lead to unintended consequences.

Thus, after a conversation with Krell, a new position was introduced within the Standing Army—Instructor.

Drill sergeants handled the soldiers' physical training, while Instructors focused on ideological education, ensuring every soldier understood why they enlisted and what they were fighting for.

Originally, Bruno had planned to introduce basic literacy education after developing paper-making techniques.

However, this step was now split into two, forcing Bruno to begin ideological education ahead of schedule.

Every day, the Standing Army's training pushed the soldiers to their physical and mental limits. It started with the basics—standing at attention—then moved to weighted endurance runs and standard combat drills.

Most importantly, Idar was the only noble territory in the eastern Norman Empire that had adopted a recruitment system. This made the intensity of its military training far greater than that of other territories.

For comparison, the Norman Empire's regular army typically trained once every two or three days due to food shortages. Private armies of other lords? Training once every five days was considered normal.

In Idar, however, training occurred daily. Outside of drills, soldiers remained in the barracks for additional training—standing at attention, push-ups, frog jumps, weighted runs—all mandatory daily exercises.

Under the special attention of Sam Layton, Krell was utterly exhausted but rapidly improved thanks to the intense regimen.

Fortunately, the army's food supply was excellent—a revolutionary achievement in this world. Not only did the soldiers get three meals a day, but they could eat their fill.

Though white bread was reserved for the elite, black bread was available in unlimited quantities. Soldiers even received a small portion of meat or fish and even poultry, just enough to add some much-needed fat to their diets.

This was all thanks to the enormous revenue generated from sea salt production and sugar refining. Without these new income sources, Bruno would never have been able to finance both the construction of the Hanging Garden wonder and military reforms simultaneously.

As time passed, the training expanded. The army introduced archery, sword fighting, hand-to-hand combat, and other standard martial disciplines of the era.

Bruno would have loved to introduce firearms and gunpowder, but the problem was simple:

He only knew that gunpowder required sulfur and saltpeter—nothing about the exact production process.

The system shop did offer a gunpowder formula, but it was prohibitively expensive. So for now, Idar's military would have to stick to traditional combat methods.

Luckily, this was a world of magic.

The concept of enchanted weapons introduced a new combat possibility.

Magically infused swords were currently unfeasible stabilizing enchantments on them was far too complex. Unless Arnel could persuade some mages to join them, there was no way to develop them in the near future.

Even if they figured out the enchantment process, mass production was another challenge. They couldn't possibly force mages to spend all day manually engraving enchantments, could they?

However, fusing Wind Acceleration Magic with arrows was much easier.

The only obstacle? Arrow shafts were too thin, making enchantment engraving difficult.

For now, Arnel had to hand-draw each enchantment himself, limiting production to just 20 enchanted arrows per day.

Bruno called in one of his army's top archers for a test.

The soldier drew his bow to full tension and let the arrow fly.

Bruno barely caught a glimpse of a shadow zipping through the air before the arrow slammed into a distant target with pinpoint accuracy.

The speed of the enchanted arrow was at least twice that of a regular one, and its range had significantly increased.

A standard soldier could shoot an arrow 60–70 paces. With Wind-Enhanced Arrows, they could hit targets at over 100 paces. Earning the "Hundred-Pace Marksman" achievement was now effortless.

As early spring arrived, the soldiers of Idar grew tense.

For they knew that as the long winter faded away, the probing attacks from Soren Territory would soon begin.

If Earl Soren could gather intelligence on Idar, then Bruno had his own ways of obtaining intel on Soren's movements.

Soren Territory had already revealed its ambitions to annex the Grand Highlands—the exact reason Bruno was in such a hurry to form a Standing Army.

No one wanted constant trouble at their doorstep, least of all a transmigrator like Bruno.

Before Bruno took over, Idar had already suffered multiple defeats in the Grand Highlands. Now, he had to clean up the mess left by his predecessor.

To be fair, the military strength gap between Idar and Soren wasn't massive—but Soren held a slight numerical advantage.

Both sides were equally matched in terms of strategy—it was mostly a matter of who had more black bread to keep fighting.

There were no real tactics involved. Battles played out like mass brawls, with peasant levies charging first in chaotic skirmishes, followed by elite guards engaging in close combat.

This kind of primitive, brute-force warfare had zero technical sophistication.

But this year...

Bruno surveyed the rows of well-trained, muscular soldiers in the camp.

He smirked.

"It's time to reclaim everything we've lost."