Over the next hour, the army managed to hunt down six rare monsters, a rather stunning number made possible only by one explanation.

“Am I a monster magnet?” Rowan wondered.

“Maybe,” Olivia laughed. “Just enjoy it.”

Although only six rare tier monsters had been taken down, the army had gained an extra twelve rare tier soldiers. Everyone’s spirit was high as they marched back toward home.

It was a start. But it wasn’t enough. Nor was it perfect. Rowan was quickly realizing that the solution to his army strength wasn’t as simple as helping some of them reach rare. It helped, but even if all the soldiers managed to reach rare in the next few hours, it still wouldn’t be enough to really change things.

Most of the soldiers had taken the basic [Spearmaster] or equivalent rare classes which meant they got a new card and a nice boost to the effectiveness of their stats. But in terms of actual combat, it was only a marginal improvement. It would probably take two or three full parties of four to fight a rare-tier monster that Rowan could slay with a single spear strike.

They needed more training, better decks, and simply more experience against enemies. Even at the most basic level, the makeup of Rowan’s party was far superior to even the best party that the army could put together. Most of them were bog-standard melee fighters and although a division of spearmen was a scary thing to face on flat ground, there were dozens of ways that a demon army could tear them apart.

As the men joked with each other on their way back, Rowan slunk to the back of the march where he was joined by Olivia.

“Hunt wasn’t to your liking?” Olivia asked.

“No, not that. We’re going to need so many more soldiers if we want to have a fighting chance,” Rowan groaned, rubbing his face in frustration.

“Mother will help with that. She might grumble and complain that we need to learn, but she’ll help. I’m sure she’ll manage to browbeat the mercenaries into helping out eventually,” Olivia tried.

Rowan didn’t see things that way. If there was one thing that Rowan’s limited history knowledge taught him, it was that a reluctant ally was way worse than an insidious enemy.

“We still need strength that we can call our own. We need more men in our army,” Rowan said. That was his best short-term solution. What they couldn’t achieve in skill or cards, they would make do in bodies.

“Or you could reach epic.” Olivia’s face paled. “Sorry, that was a joke. Please don’t try to do that.”

Rowan opened his mouth to tell her even he wasn’t that reckless, but snapped it shut with a click when he realized that his past two classes were called [Reckless Spear] and [Sacrificial Spear]. There was good reason for her to worry.

The army made its way back into town without problem. Once again, Rowan was glad for the officers who could handle the logistics of moving and settling so many men. He was free to head straight back to the mayor’s manor.

As Rowan passed through the streets, he suddenly swung his head in a particular direction. The [Blood Reaver] stood in the shadow of a half-collapsed house and met Rowan’s eyes. The mercenary had a bottle of something dark in his hand, which he raised up against Rowan.

For a second, a small voice in the back of Rowan’s mind wondered what would happen if he ordered his troops to attack. It’d make his life easier and a show of force would bring the other mercenaries in the town to heel.

But then the moment passed and Rowan kept walking.

—

The next few days passed by in a haze. While Camilla worked the mercenaries, Rowan led the army into the wilderness. By the end of it, all the soldiers were either at the upper half of the uncommon levels or new owners of rare classes.

As the sun set on another day of training, Rowan made his decision. It was time to be a ruler.

He had an idea. It wasn’t a good idea. It wasn’t even necessarily feasible. But it was one that could be the answer to his problems.

The meeting room, once a symbol of the town's prosperity, now felt cavernous and cold. Maps littered the table, each marking a reminder of their precarious situation.

“Thank you all for coming,” Rowan said. Sitting around the table were Camilla and the chamberlain. In some ways, this was the first meeting they had together since he became mayor.

Camilla entered, dark circles under her eyes betraying nights of difficult negotiations. "Not a problem," she said, looking at Rowan with a glint in her eyes. “I’m surprised though. You haven't been very interested in what happens in your domain.”

“My domain? The kingdom takes back the town when this is all over right?”

“Of course not, why would they? It’s in their best interest to look after and make things more convenient for any heroes that choose to stay.”

“I just assumed… well, never mind. That’s not why I brought everyone here.” Rowan took a moment to organize his thoughts again. “Do we have extra equipment? Besides the ones that are currently assigned to the soldiers.”

“We do,” the chamberlain said, his weathered hands fidgeting with a quill. “Most of the equipment from those who fell or left was salvaged.”

“Okay, then. What are our finances like? Can they support the current army comfortably? What if we double those numbers? Or even a full one thousand soldiers again?”

“Full thousand?” Camilla said as she pursed her lips. “I'm afraid not. The town has simply suffered too much damage for that. There's too much to fix and too many businesses to rebuild. And the real costs of maintaining an army comes from the price to feed them. Five hundred, though? That would be manageable.”

“Okay, one last question. How exactly do people recruit potential soldiers?”

Camilla traded a glance with the chamberlain. “The process is slightly different depending on which noble house you're talking about. For the Sutton House, anyone with an uncommon heart card that's combat or combat-adjacent is welcomed. As well as someone with a rare or higher crafting, support, or lifestyle type heart card. Past that, we give tests to anyone with a common heart card that's focused on combat and select the best.”

“Okay perfect. This is what I’m thinking. We put out a recruitment notice. We accept every applicant that passes our fitness tests until we have five hundred soldiers employed.”

Camilla sighed. “That won’t work. Heart cards aren’t just indicators, Rowan. They’re the essence of a person's potential. I heard about what you’ve been doing with the army. I think it’s a good idea to boost morale right now but you’ve noticed the problem with it right? The soldiers have trouble fighting higher tier monsters.” Camilla waited for Rowan’s nod before continuing. “Adding more recruits would stop you from raising champion fighters. The officers would be weaker, which means that when there’s a demon they can’t stop, it’s a massacre.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“All we need is to give them a chance.” Rowan pushed on. “A chance to level up to uncommon or even rare. It won’t matter what their heart card is at that point. It won’t be easy but we can have some of the new rare tier soldiers lead them on leveling expeditions. A whole army of uncommon or rare soldiers has to count for something. We defended Felton’s Mill with less.”

“It’s different.” Camilla frowned. “Do you have any ideas how many people you have loitering around the town with delusions of becoming a combat class in spite of having heart cards or conditions that even the mercenaries didn’t want?”

“A lot of them,” Rowan answered, thinking back to his outing with Olivia. “Most of them stuck and starving. This is a beacon of hope for them.”

“It’s not hope if you fill your army with useless chaff and drag the whole town down,” Camilla hissed.

Rowan leaned back, stunned by the vehemence from the baroness. The chamberlain stepped in to explain things. “What Lady Sutton meant is that swelling your numbers by drawing in raw recruits is how armies fail. The breaking point for any army is around ten to fifteen percent losses in a single battle. No matter how well trained a soldier is, when his friends start dying, his will to fight plummets.”

“Even mercenaries, known for their independence, make sure to only recruit those with heart cards that have potential. Our problem isn’t in quantity. It’s in quality. We need trained men and only the mercenaries have it at the moment.”

“But?” Rowan could hear that there was something Camilla wasn’t saying.

Camilla calmed down enough to lean back into her chair. “My apologies Rowan, I didn’t meant to snap at you. The mercenary companies are proving more uncooperative than I anticipated. The last few days have been trying.”

“Apology accepted,” Rowan said immediately. “Is it Florin and Tamara?”

“I don’t think so,” Camilla said slowly as if she wasn’t sure herself. “They have something to do with this but they don’t have anywhere near the influence to unite all the mercenaries together. It almost feels like the whole town is in on a plan that we were not informed of.”

Rowan's thoughts immediately turned to Kayla. He swirled the idea briefly around before dismissing it. She had no reason to do something like that. Curiously, he never doubted that she could do it.

“So what do we do?”

Camilla looked like she had swallowed a lemon. She turned to the chamberlain. “When the previous mayor of Rest’s Remorse fell, what happened to the army?”

The chamberlain paused. “The army retreated to the inner walls and held the town there. They performed bravely.”

Camilla turned back to Rowan. “As much as I think this will probably end in tragedy, I don’t think I have a better alternative. Any more time spent on the mercenaries at this point would be foolish. They’ve chosen to remain stubbornly independent.”

“Lord Rowan,” the chamberlain had a twinkle in his eye as he addressed Rowan. “What do you need from us?”

“I don’t have the first idea about how to recruit or train an army,” Rowan admitted. “But I think the soldiers can be more than a cleanup crew. What we need is probably a combination of training, levels, and equipment.”

“Lord Rowan, I feel like it would be a mistake if I didn’t say this. What you are proposing will tax the town’s treasury to the limit. We won’t have enough funds to hire one of the mercenary companies if we proceed down this path.”

“I believe it. Let’s try recruiting more soldiers from among all the interested commoners and we’ll go from there.”

“Very well. It will take a few days to organize the recruitment. We need to clear a testing area, prepare criers and notices, and more,” the chamberlain said.

“Rowan, is this really what you want?” Camilla asked one last time.

“It is.”

“Then I’ll help. I just hope this works out.”

Rowan didn’t reply, but he hoped so too. He prayed for it to every deity that would deign to listen, including Aristaeus.

—

As it turned out, anxiously awaiting the start of a new recruitment experiment wasn't ideal for one's nerves. Rowan managed to hold up well the first two nights, but on the third evening, he didn't even bother trying to sleep.

Instead, he attempted to sneak out to the mayor's private training courtyard as soon as darkness fell. Attempted, because there were more than enough servants walking the halls, even at night, to notice him. Rowan discovered that nothing ruined a good sulk quite like running into a maid who immediately insisted on asking if he required assistance.

On this particular evening, his failure to sneak about was doubly pronounced. A voice rang out into the still night air, mere minutes after Rowan started mindlessly thwacking away at a training dummy.

“Somehow, I knew I'd find you here.”

A part of Rowan had expected Olivia to eventually find him. Or perhaps her mother, who seemed to walk without sound. Out of everyone, though, the last person he expected was Markus.

Yet there he was, a light smile on his lips and a mischievous twinkle in his ice-blue eyes.

“Can't sleep either?” Rowan always reached for deflection whenever he was caught off guard.

"No, I'm good. It's you I'm worried about. You've been off for days, even before you organized that meeting with Olivia’s mother. Come on, why don't you join me and explain what's bothering you? I promise I won't judge."

The wolf kin easily folded his legs under him and plopped right down on the dirt of the practice yard, patting the spot next to him.

Rowan wasn't given to grand emotional outbursts. He didn't even know how to express his emotions most of the time. There was, however, something appealing about the offer. So, eventually, the hero sat.

“Marcus, do you think I'm messing it all up with my plan? That it's not worth trying to recruit commoners?” Rowan asked quietly, avoiding the wolf kin's eyes in case he immediately said yes.

“I don’t know, Rowan. It’s not the kind of question members of my race ever have to confront.”

“Wait, it’s not? Then how do you even organize your armies? Do you have a way to manipulate the heart card people get?”

“Hardly. You’re just forgetting that our society is much more tight-knit than human culture. You don’t just ignore when a member of your family is hurt or suffering. Most people have the chance to pursue their interests because we want to keep everyone happy.”

“Why can’t it be like that here?” Rowan wondered, keeping his eyes trained on the plethora of the stars in the night sky. He hadn't really gotten a chance to admire them since that fateful ride from the capital with the baron.

“Numbers, I imagine. Our tribes are much smaller. A strong tribe doesn't even rival this town in size. We do have Grand Chiefs who rule over a series of tribes, but that's different. There's still some blood link between the Grand Chief and the people under their protection.”

“I'm not sure whether our future recruits will make things better or worse. I don't want to get attached if some of them die or fail, but still... I don't even know how I could possibly help them succeed.”

“Rowan, have you ever heard the story of the Thorn Knight? I know it's unlikely, considering your origin,” Marcus asked.

The sudden pivot threw him off, but Rowan eventually shook his head. “I'm afraid not.”

“Well, it's one of the most popular stories out there. We don't know her name anymore, or whether she was rich or poor. We only know she desperately wanted to be a knight, and that her heart card was extremely poor."

Rowan scoffed, shooting the wolf kin an unamused look. “You're trying to make me feel better with a fairy tale.”

“It's not that. We know the Thorn Knight existed. You see, when her system awakened, she didn't get a damage card, or a buff card. She got a true damage reflection card, the Thorn Guard. At common tier, too.”

“That doesn't sound great.”

“It wasn't. The card could only bounce back five percent of damage taken by the cardholder. So, to use her card, she had to fully tank all damage coming her way.”

“Unpleasant.”

“Except she didn't let that stop her! She left home, honed her build, and eventually became an immortal juggernaut that would grind all attackers down to nothing. I'm skipping parts, obviously, but the point stands.”

Rowan sighed, letting himself fall back to stare at the stars again. "That common cardholders can grow and become amazing, too?"

“Exactly. Everyone agrees the Thorn Knight got her happily ever after. Some say she settled down and started a family. Others say she became a queen and started her own bloodline. Some claim they know her real name and what she became: Locke, the Goddess of Knights and Valor.”

Rowan smirked a little. “I can't imagine her church likes that idea much.”

“Actually, her church doesn't mind. It's the other followers of High Gods that get uppity at the implications. Still, no one can deny that Locke's priests, paladins, and followers use a lot of thorn and damage reflection themed miracles and incantations.”

Rowan laughed, feeling a little better. It wasn't some revolutionary tale, and it hadn’t made his problems go away. But having a friend willing to miss sleep just to hang out with him lifted his spirits.

“Hey Marcus?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks for coming to find me.”

The man was silent for an uncomfortably long stretch. When he spoke, Rowan could hear the smile in his voice. “Nothing to thank me for, Rowan. Nothing at all.”

They sat there a while longer in companionable silence. When Rowan returned to his bed, he actually managed to get some sleep that night.