Steel, Guns, and the Industrial Party in Another World-Chapter 725:
TL: Rui88
Wolf Jars was furious!
Dirk Doyle, the wizard in whom he had placed great hopes, had led a full thousand of his most elite warriors to Lion’s Port.
They were planned to be a sharp knife, stabbing deep into a place the Northwesterners would never expect. Then, in coordination with their Collins allies outside the city, they were to take the small but wealthy city in one fell swoop.
But that wizard had failed to live up to the Grand Duke’s expectations. He had failed and come running back in disgrace.
Doyle was lucky. It was a critical time for the Grand Duke to recruit spellcasters, so the Grand Duke did not punish him too severely, only giving him a harsh reprimand.
Jars was not naive enough to think that Paul Grayman, one of the most powerful lords in the Kingdom of Ordo, would be unable to investigate the mastermind behind an attack by a thousand men.
He had to prepare for Grayman’s wrath before the investigation was complete.
But what the Grand Duke did not expect was that Paul Grayman would find out so quickly.
A merchant from the Northwest Bay in Fivehsheep Fortress delivered a personal letter from Paul Grayman.
The contents of the letter left the voracious Grand Duke dumbfounded.
Grayman first stated: I know you did this.
He expressed his indignation and strongly condemned Jars.
But the problem was at the end. The words seemed to hint at something—if Jars could provide a generally acceptable explanation, the matter would be dropped.
This…
After reading it the first time, Jars rubbed his eyes and, with great suspicion, carefully read the letter again.
Finally, he came to the following conclusion: either this was a conspiracy, and since it was a conspiracy, he couldn’t trust it; or, Grayman was facing some kind of difficulty, and if he was facing difficulty, wouldn’t that make him even more vulnerable to manipulation?
After careful consideration, Jars believed the latter was more likely. After all, the territory Grayman now controlled was right next to the orcs, and those prairie barbarians were not easy to deal with.
So he decided—to dispatch an even stronger force to conquer Lion’s Port and seize its wealth while Grayman was too preoccupied to look south!
He had to be quick. After one failed attack, those greedy yet cowardly merchants might be busy moving their wealth away.
He wrote a reply and had it sent to the Northwest Bay.
Paul was enraged!
He had made one last effort for peace, and Jars had trampled it underfoot.
In his letter, Jars had shamelessly mocked Paul’s cowardice, stating bluntly that he would show him the cruelty of the real world as the price for repeatedly refusing his recruitment.
Such a domineering attitude reminded Paul of Marltz Kent from many years ago, that bastard who deserved to be struck by lightning even in death!
Ever since he defeated Marltz Kent, took control of the Northwest Bay, became a guest of honor to the royal family, and a hero who held back the orcs, everyone he met had been respectful, no matter how much they disliked him in their hearts.
This long-forgotten sense of humiliation had not appeared for many years!
This humiliation filled him with drive, made him energetic, and made him secrete dopamine…
Regardless of how sincere Paul’s peace efforts were, Jars was going to pay the price!
Hansel Abbott was dispatched by Paul to Crystal Shrine, accompanied by a military advisory group led by Claude.
When news of their arrival in Crystal Shrine reached the palace, King Rodney XVIII laughed with joy.
With the help of a large amount of military scrip, Rodney XVIII had assembled a sizable army, an army completely under his own control, unconstrained by others.
However, after learning in detail about the performance of the Alda army in the war against the orcs, the king was no longer satisfied with building an old-fashioned army.
How to raise the force in his hands to a level close to that of the Alda army in the shortest possible time, at least in terms of the quality of the soldiers, was the king’s greatest concern. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖
The best solution would be to have a group of experienced officers guide his army—now the king’s dream had come true.
The officers of the advisory group, who should now be called instructors, carefully observed the king’s new army. They were pleased to find that at least the food provided to the soldiers by His Majesty was quite good. Compared to the hastily conscripted soldiers in most armies of this era, the king’s soldiers had rosy complexions and were in good spirits, showing no signs of malnutrition.
This was good. Their physical fitness should be able to cope with Alda-style high-intensity training.
However, their job was far more than just making soldiers line up and run drills. If that were all, any soldier from the Alda army would be competent enough for the task.
The most important job for the Alda instructors was to organize these soldiers.
More precisely, it was to improve their level of organization. After all, even an old-style army was still an army and naturally had some form of organization, but that organization was more reflected in “interpersonal relationships.”
The organization of an army involved many aspects.
The most direct was in combat.
As the saying goes, “A bad soldier is just one bad soldier, but a bad general ruins the whole unit.” In old-style armies, a charismatic and capable general could lead his army to create miracles. But once he was replaced by someone less capable, the quality of the entire army would decline disproportionately to the decline in the commander’s quality.
Moreover, in old armies, groups at different levels often only obeyed their direct superior officers. Once a superior node was disabled, the subordinate nodes would be at a loss. They wouldn’t know who to listen to or what decisions to make. There are numerous historical cases where an entire army quickly collapsed after losing a key node.
Another aspect was in daily life. It must be said that many old-style armies also had a large number of disciplinary regulations, many of which were quite reasonable and considered various aspects. But when it came to implementation, it was another story entirely.
In Paul Grayman’s understanding, when faced with unfamiliar, special, or unexpected situations, occasionally breaking the rules to solve a problem could be called handling special cases with special methods.
But in the Kingdom of Ordo, and not just limited to the army, the official institutions throughout the kingdom, including the ruling bodies of the various lords, their actions in small matters were almost entirely driven by “handling special cases with special methods.”
How a matter was handled, whether it followed the rules, and the extent of its enforcement depended on the likes and dislikes, mood, and personal relationships of the person in power, as well as their whims.
The reason it was said to be small matters was because they were very strict about important matters—the distinctions between high and low, the obligations of rulers and subjects, types of taxes, tax rates, and anything concerning the dignity and wealth of the powerful.
Returning to the army, there was another situation. The illiterate lower-ranking officers and soldiers could not grasp the many rules and regulations. What to do in any given situation depended entirely on their superiors, which gave even more weight to “interpersonal relationships” in the organization.
