Chapter 213: Rebuilding from the Ashes

But the first thing in this childcare shop that caught my eye was family medical service registration. Having personally experienced the greatness of the medical service, I boldly paid the 10,000-point registration fee.

[You may now use the family medical service.]

[The fee is 10,000 points, and the service is provided to designated members of the Streit bloodline. This service includes treatment of external injuries, internal injuries, vitality, and disease.]

The service I used before didn’t include disease treatment, so it was only 5,000 points, but this family medical service could treat disease too. With this, I’d be able to protect my family’s health.

Especially in the medieval world, where infant mortality and childbirth mortality were very high, the importance of this service went without saying. Let’s see, my remaining points were 18,220.

Since it was week two, I could use it twice, but for now I used it just once.

[Using Talent Boost once. 5,000 points deducted]

Nine more investments and the rank would rise, evolving the excellent heir into a genius-level heir. I’d have to invest another 45,000 points going forward. Half the points I’d earned from quests just vanished.

Of the remaining 13,220 points, I invested 10,000 in the lord shop.

The passives I currently had numbered three (Soil Fertility 10%, Production 10%, Strong Soldiers 10%). The first thing I invested in was Trade 10% from the growth passive commerce tab.

It meant I’d see 10% more profit on the trade of Feuzen’s specialty goods.

Could I sell the cheese and dairy products a little dearer?

I spent the rest of the points on Increase 10% from the population tab. The reason I chose population increase was that Feuzen too had suffered quite a few war dead. In terms of ratio, we’d taken a full 7% loss.

In terms of the win-loss record it couldn’t be called a loss, but Feuzen was a small village.

"We lost two from the standing army, five levies, and thirteen townspeople."

After receiving August’s report, choosing population increase was inevitable. With twenty dead, the population had dropped to 262. So I was all but forced to choose Population Increase 10%.

But how does the population increase?

Either settlers arrive in a group, or the townsmen’s wives all get pregnant together.

Hmm, getting pregnant en masse.

Feuzen wouldn’t end up being called the pregnancy village, would it?

And among the levy dead was a blacksmith from the Feuzen-Schmidt family, the household I’d entrusted with copying firearms, and his son had taken over. The problem was whether copying firearms would still be possible.

Other than that, most of those who died were stable hands and shepherds.

From the medieval perspective, which takes the high and low of occupations seriously, I suppose it was fortunate that they weren’t important resources. But the deaths of my townspeople stung me deeply all the same.

"The Gale Knights’ losses are fourteen dead, five seriously wounded, and twenty-two with minor injuries."

In this battle, fourteen Gale Knights had died.

It was by no means a small loss. Was that the price we paid?

In the case of the Gale Knights, most were from the direct squad that had defended Feuzen alongside August. That was because they’d fought desperately against the enemy soldiers climbing the palisade in order to protect the gunners.

Because they were lads with a sense of justice, I expressed deep mourning over their deaths. If I’d recruited based on skill rather than character, deserters would have appeared within the Gale Knights. As it turned out, not a single one had deserted to this day.

That’s the true measure of my proud Gale Knights.

I gave orders to summon the reserve unit at the headquarters.

"How did the gunners do? Now that you’ve seen it firsthand, they’re worth their salt, aren’t they?"

"Worth their salt is an understatement. It made me think the battlefields of the future may come to be dominated by these firearms. To kill a heavily armored knight commander that easily..."

After experiencing the firepower of the guns up close, August seemed to have suffered a great shock. They had the drawbacks of horribly slow reloading and smoke that obscured the line of sight, but the results more than made up for it.

In particular, Ted, as a marksman, was said to have killed three of the enemy’s siege commanders. From the shooting practice on, he’d hit the target on the first try, so it seemed he had a talent for sharpshooting too. And the other gunners were no slouches either.

There was surely the influence of the Strong Soldiers (10%) passive and the F-Rank Streit Gunners, but in any case the gunners performed splendidly. Since it was a weapon that could even kill a knight, the gunners revered their firearms like sacred relics.

A whole barrel of gunpowder was used up, but it was a splendid result.

And of the 45 firearms, 5 had become defective.

The mere fact that they’d concentrated fire on the heavily armored commanders whom arrows couldn’t pierce and neutralized them was enough to turn August, who’d viewed firearms negatively, into a believer.

"Shall I pay out the death compensation?"

"They shed blood for my estate, so I too must do my duty."

"You must be the only noble who honors the war dead, my lord."

I’d introduced the system so that my cherished men could rest easy even in death, and August was deeply moved by it. I’d honored every member who’d fallen in battles large and small up to now.

It’s one of the reasons the men follow me: the fact that even in death, their keepsakes and compensation would go to their families. Almost no cavalry commander makes such arrangements, so I’d put it into practice.

I likewise set compensation for the townspeople, arranging things so that their deaths would never be in vain. And I decided to lay both the townspeople’s bodies and the members’ bodies to rest at the church.

Fortunately, the church grounds were spacious.

Clearing the battlefield and recovering the bodies was done under August’s leadership, mobilizing all the townspeople. I wanted to grant the dead their rest, but with the bodies rotting right beside Feuzen, leaving them as they were could cause an epidemic.

Arzt was tending to the wounded, and he was thoroughly observing the hygiene practices I’d emphasized, which made me proud. Other doctors wouldn’t have understood why it was necessary, but Arzt was different.

Having become a fatalist, he believed in and followed whatever I instructed without question.

What’s more, Arzt had taken it upon himself to study why disinfection and hygiene mattered.

A very encouraging development.

And I drew up a battle report and sent it to the crown prince and the lords. They’d be waiting with bated breath to find out how things had turned out. Only if Feuzen was safe could the princely coalition army make its move.

I sent another letter to Fried, the heir of Count Euz. I’d written out the conspiracy of the Count of Baschurten and the Count of Basel in detail, so the Fried I knew would be wary of the provincial nobles.

His reply would determine my next destination.

The enemy would learn from the surviving remnants who fled that the assault on Feuzen had ended in failure, but in the end they’d be forced to make a choice.

Push the operation through as is.

Invade Feuzen once more.

Or withdraw from Baschurten.

For a while there’d be the pleasure of waiting for their head-splitting decision. As for me, I couldn’t move for some time either. The cleanup of the battlefield wasn’t finished, so I’d have to stay in Feuzen another day or two.

Rest for the officers and men who’d fought hard was important too.

Then August came with a request from the cavalry.

"The cavalrymen want their spoils of war stored?"

"They’ve no good way to dispose of them, so it seems they’re looking for a place to keep them safely."

"Well, they can’t exactly carry all of it around. Hmm..."

Having weighed the gains and losses in my head, I ordered August to gather the cavalry representatives of each faction. Soon about thirty lieutenants gathered in one place. The number of lieutenants had dropped from before.

The cavalry dead hadn’t been precisely tallied, but apparently about fifty had died. Since these were borrowed cavalry who didn’t perfectly follow my command, they didn’t report the detailed state of their units to me.

Well, since I could identify unit information with the Commander Scouter, I could easily find out, so it didn’t matter. I did, however, need to keep watch so these men wouldn’t commit crimes against the Feuzen townspeople.

Because of that, Fiel and Viktor were having a hard time keeping the cavalry under control. Fortunately, supplies weren’t short. We’d brought plenty of supplies each time we returned to Feuzen.

They wouldn’t dare think of plundering.

"I’ll buy up all the spoils you’ve gathered. How about it?"

"You’ll dispose of the spoils for us? Hmm, do you have that kind of money?"

"The lord is far wealthier than you lot imagine."

"Then what sort of price will you set?"

"It’s a local sale, so isn’t it only natural that I set it low?"

You think I’m crazy enough to buy spoils at a high price? Naturally I’d set the price in my favor. Since they couldn’t carry all the spoils around, in the end the lieutenants fell to bickering among themselves.

They’d keep traveling battlefields and collecting spoils going forward, and the conclusion was that rather than hauling them around, heavy as they were, only to dump them later, it was better to dispose of them locally. The ones who objected just didn’t want to sell cheap.

"Fine. But set the war horses at market rate."

"I’ll price them according to breed."

The spoils piled up like a mountain in the empty leftover warehouse. The usable items among them would be repaired and used to arm the levies, and selling the rest to the trade caravans would net a fairly tidy profit.

There was overflowing demand for arms anywhere you went.

And there were a full 40 war horses, enough to get the horse ranch running.

That said, the horse ranch I’d built so ambitiously had been reduced to ashes in the wake of the war.