Chapter 31: Children Are the Continuation of Parents

It felt a bit too early to try and build that, as they likely wouldn’t understand even if she explained it; they would first need to experience a bitter lesson of their own.

Yet there was still a substitute template she could use—namely, a certain side-parted sergeant group.

Now, the situation in the Roriman Kingdom was becoming increasingly turbulent, and the Fafnir territory could not afford to be completely unprepared and put all of its eggs in the Church’s basket.

If they fell, there would be nowhere left to complain.

Therefore, they had to keep a regular armed force in their hands.

Aggressively expanding the army was definitely out of the question, as it would undoubtedly trigger the Regent’s already sensitive nerves.

Thus, shifting her focus from training ordinary soldiers to training professional officers was an excellent approach.

Two thousand regular troops and two thousand qualified reserve officers were two entirely different concepts.

With two thousand professionally trained sergeants acting as the backbone, she could easily raise tens of thousands of combat-ready soldiers in a short period.

Moreover, they would be the kind with high organization and decent, non-lackluster combat capability.

Of course, this so-called high organization was only in comparison to other local forces in the current environment.

In Su Na’s modern view, almost no force in this era could truly be called a regular army, except perhaps the Royal Guard and the noble knightly orders.

The Royal Guard and the noble knights all held at least low-level noble status.

They were the most direct beneficiaries of the kingdom’s system, giving them the sense of honor to sacrifice their lives for the kingdom, whereas others lacked this.

In the era when military nobles led armies, due to blood relations and land-binding ties, the army could withstand twenty percent casualties without routing.

Those that collapsed only at thirty percent were considered famous, elite troops.

Now that local military power was centralized, it was hard to say whether the mercenary-like kingdom troops could handle ten percent casualties without collapsing.

After all, the kingdom’s army couldn’t offer better recruitment terms than local lords, and those military commanders assigned from elsewhere felt absolutely no psychological burden in exploiting their subordinates.

Usually, they just provided meals and that was it, giving out pay sporadically.

Since they could just conscript by force if they ran low on men, you could never expect much combat capability from forced conscripts.

Collapsing at ten percent was already a miracle, and even then, only because desertion carried the threat of execution.

On top of that, you had to subtract the phantom soldiers these officers pocketed wages for.

In a thousand-man unit, having one or two hundred phantom soldiers, leaving actual strength at seven or eight hundred, was perfectly normal.

The entire Western District Governor had about twenty thousand troops.

Theoretically, as long as Su Na could train a two-thousand-man private guard unit into a sergeant corps, she could rely on them to resist most of the Western Governor’s forces, which was more than enough to secure her safety.

The ideal was wonderful, but the most important realistic problem was: how could she convince her old father to hand over the private troops to her?

It wasn’t that she was a coward, but wouldn’t saying this make it look like she wanted to usurp his position?

She had already obtained most of the decision-making power in the Fafnir territory.

She handled the economy, and administrative affairs had been taken over by the Governor anyway, so the only chip left in her father’s hand was this thousand-odd soldier force.

Now she was asking for military power.

She was practically one step away from pointing at Kaibuli’s nose and saying, “Old man, why haven’t you abdicated yet?”

And once military power was surrendered, Kaibuli would essentially be forced to abdicate on the spot.

Except for his title, he would be completely hollowed out by his daughter, a tragic situation indeed.

Furthermore, regarding the dream from before, she didn’t know how to bring it up to her mother, Adelaide.

In the following days, Su Na spent every day with the carpentry team tracking the greenhouse construction progress, urging the Kortel Merchant Guild to gather breeding hens for her.

Meanwhile, the Kortel Merchant Guild urged her to deliver the steam engines as quickly as possible, as the Church behind them also needed the new equipment to raise production.

Coupled with the trial manufacture of textile machines starting, and having to continuously correct and troubleshoot blueprints with the System in her dreams, Su Na was as busy as a spinning top during this period, rotating incessantly day and night.

Although she didn’t show it on her face, Adelaide keenly sensed she had something on her mind.

After all, every time Su Na ate with her, those small eyes kept scanning her and Kaibuli, hesitating to speak.

Finally, one night after dinner, while Su Na was lying in bed following the System’s virtual light screen guidance, drawing gear transmission assemblies with a quill on cardboard, her door was gently knocked.

“Are you asleep, Nana? It’s Mommy.”

Su Na packed up her drawing board and called out: “Not yet, Mother! Please come in.”

The door was pushed open, and Lady Adelaide, wearing a nightgown, walked in holding a wooden tray containing a bowl of milk, which caused Su Na’s nose to wrinkle slightly.

In this era, pure, additive-free natural milk was fine in every aspect, except that the raw, gamey taste was truly terrible.

Though she could drink it, she truly disliked the flavor no matter how many times she drank it.

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