The day after my talk with Yamato was... exhausting to say the least. And not only for me, but for everyone in the government as well!

We drew up plans, discussed the finer details of everything, scraped some ideas and replaced them with others, and by the end of the day, I had a mountain of paperwork I had to do.

And for Yamato, he had started reforming the army. Thankfully though, the army was still young and there were no generals and officers complaining about the reforms.

If there were some old guards though... it would’ve been really, really annoying.

But thankfully we don’t have to think about that.

Now, let me talk a bit about our plans.

We were planning on building 2 stone walls in the capital city of the southern baron, with one of the walls being 100 metres away from the city centre, and the other being 200 metres from the city centre, so there would be only 100 metre distance between both walls.

And I had already ordered 30 of our around 60 masons to start working on that project.

Though, they would be making the bricks in the capital, and we’d be sending the bricks to the construction site via carriages.

Though we still had a problem and that was the fact that we kinda... did not have the construction workers to start building the wall, and start developing the infrastructure of the town.

Building the walls themselves would actually take a pretty short amount of time but the other buildings? They were going to be a problem.

We needed a few granaries, at least 4-5 barracks, and houses for the potential refugees.

And I am saying potential refugees from the nearby villages because... we are just guessing the strength of the monster wave, and the tide that will be following it.

So, I was going to have to just combine a few of the full-time workers from the construction groups and send them ahead to start the development of the village into a proper town. Because there’s just no way for us to make enough new CG’s to send to the southern town, so I just needed someone to start doing everything, slowly.

And by slowly, I mean slowly. As even just building all the granaries and the barracks was going to take around 300 days or so.

I was simply going to take some men from CG2 and CG5 and make the CG8, which would have 35 full time workers.

And to not hamper the growth of the capital, I was also going to replace the duties of CG2 and CG7. The schools would take a bit longer than normal to complete but out child population that could actually go to school was not a lot, so it wasn’t an issue... for now.

The only thing I now had left to do was order for messengers to be sent to the 2 barons to inform of the developments, and tell them to divert resources to build rudimentary log walls around their villages, and ask the capitol for extra resources if needed.

“Damian, I am changing how the guards operate.” Yamato told me as he barged into my office a few days after he started reforming the army.

“...What do you mean by that?”

“What I means is, no more regulars guarding the capital. We are only leaving that to Militia for that job.

“If we make more places of importance like the administrative quarters we can, and should, make more barracks for them, and appoint proper guards to them, but right now? There’s no need for that.

“And I need the extra men for a project you’ve been pushing back.”

“A project I’ve been pushing back?”

“Yes, the military headquarters, and training area that is not boxed in the capital. You’ve told me about your plans before, remember?”

“Yes, I do but how’s having more free soldiers help with that?”

“I am going to order them to build the thing?”

“But—how? I’ve only been intending them to be professional soldiers, so I doubt that most of them even know how to build things. At best they could set up some tents, but that is at best.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll drill it into them. Afterall I am quite used to building some basic structures, and defences from the local woods. How hard could making something out of stone be?”

“...I’ll... send an architect with you. But be careful, we only have 3 of those, with one of them being me.”

“Sure sure, I’ll bring him back alive!” Yamato said, and left the room.

I was not that surprised by him choosing to make the soldiers build things, as I had been considering it but decided against doing so.

Afterall, he’d only have 40 soldiers he could make use of at best, and 2 knights and 2 squires as well, so, not a lot of men. But if we assume that he makes the bare minimum required for the training grounds... around 600 days... at best.

Yeah, he wasn’t finishing it up anytime soon. Though, if he’s lucky, he will be done with the training grounds a month before the monster wave’s start!

...

*Knock Knock*

“...Enter.” I said a few moments after I heard someone knock on my door.

It had been 11 days since I met up with Yamato first and we started discussing what we should do about the approaching monster wave, and it had been around 9 days since the barons were informed about our plans, and immediately released it to the public.

And as the furthest villages were only a dozen kilometres or so away from each other, the information had spread... quickly.

Though, not that there were any rebellions or anything. People already knew we had a plan, and as nothing that was too threatening to their daily lives had happened before, people were not feeling too scared of what was to come.

Which was good as we weren’t even sure if it would be too hard to overcome or not.

*Creak~*

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And as the door opened to reveal who was knocking on it... I was surprised to see a familiar face.

“Jonathan, how the fuck did you get here? There are guards everywhere!” I said in shock, as, while Jonathan tried to sneak into the administrative quarters before, he had always been unsuccessful in his attempts.

“Simple! I just didn’t let them see me!” He said, laughing a bit, and when I gave him a stern look, he backed on what he said.

“Tsch! You know, you are no longer that fun to tease Damian, right?

“Don’t worry, I didn’t sneak in, this time at least, and I am here for official business!” He said and slammed a paper on my desk... which caused the small tower of papers on my desk to fall off the ground.

“...”

Then I turned my gaze from Jonathan to the papers on the ground, then to him, and to the papers on the ground again and again.

“Err... I am sorry?” He asked meekly.

“...I am not talking to you until you collect all of those papers, and put them back on my desk.” I said, while leaning back on my chair.

And while Jonathan grumbled for a bit, he started doing it anyways.

And while he toiled away, I thought about my relationship with Jonathan for a moment.

I still considered him a friend but... we were not as close as we were before.

We still met up sometimes, and talked and played jokes on each other, but every year the time we spent together got less and less.

Which was... a shame, but that was just normal.

He was still a hunter after all, and I was the literal heart of this empire, and its emperor.

Not a lot of similarities in our jobs, so we couldn’t spend a lot of time together.

“Hmm?” I made a surprised sound, not that Jonathan noticed that I did so though.

And slowly, I got off of my chair, and walked up to Jonathan, and grabbed his arm.

“Hey, what are you doing!” He said, surprised as to why I had suddenly grabbed his arm.

But before he could actually try and shake me off, I pulled back his sleeve and clearly saw something I hadn’t expect to see.

“...Bastard, why didn’t you tell me you were starting to tier up?” I muttered loud enough for him to hear me as I looked at the dark blue splotch of skin on his arm.

“Heh, why do you think I am here?”

“What do you mean?”

“...Wait, d-did you forgot our promise?!”

“I... don’t remember a promise?” I said, genuinely not having any idea as to what Jonathan was talking about.

“...You... hahhh. Just, read the thing I brought, will ya?” He said, and pulled his arm away from my grasp.

And as he continued to work on collecting all the papers he had thrown to the ground, I walked back to my desk and picked up the thing he brough me, and started reading it.

“...Guild creation request a-adventurers guild?!” I said in shock as I read the guild he wanted to create, and all the things I forgot rushed to me in a second.

A year or so ago, we were drinking the first batch of ale some of the farmers had made by experimenting with the fermentation techniques I talked about, and this being an entirely new body, had between nothing and absolutely jack shit levels of alcohol tolerance, and, while we were a bit drunk, Jonathan asked me to talk more about the other worlds I had told him about before.

And while I was talking to him about other worlds, I slipped up and talked about adventurers, whom were people that made a living from well... adventuring, which was most of the time killing monsters, which was a life Jonathan had long dreamt of.

And, towards the end of our conversation, he had asked me if I’d ever make the ,adventurer guild I talked about, and in my drunken stupor, I had made a promise about letting him do that if he ever reach Tier 2.

“Fuck... so this is why you’ve been so quiet the past year...” I said under my breath, and Jonathan put an arm on my shoulder while dropping the last of the papers on top of the desk.

“Yup, I’ve been preparing for this day for the last year and a half! Now, finally, I can achieve it! Exciting, is it not?” He said with a glint in his eyes, surely dreaming of all the grand adventures he was going to go on.

“...Jonathan, you are going to die.” I said with a calm voice, looking him straight in the eyes again.

“Haaah... this again? I told you already Damian I am ready to—”

“And you are going to kill people.” I added.

“What are you talking about? Aren’t adventurers always there to save the people while the nobles are not in your stories? Why would I be killing people? Well... other than bandits and vagabonds that is.” He said, removing his arm from my shoulder and taking a few steps back.

“Sure, you are not going to kill people directly, but this adventurer’s guild is going to be the grave of many, many people.”

“And how do you know that oh great Otherworlder? Have you ever been to an adventurer’s guild before? I think not!”

“Jonathan fighting with monsters is not a game, or a normal hunt. You may not understand whatever horrors lie there, beyond the borders of our towns and villages, in the darkest corners of the world, and I’ll concede, I don’t know what lies there either, but whatever horrors and monsters hide under our eyes are things normal people can’t hope to survive against.”

“And I am no longer a normal person! I am a Tier 2! Like you! Like all those monsters you were so scared of way back when! I’ve trained for this moment all my life, and I am ready for it!

“And, if normal people don’t have hope to defeat these horrors you speak of, why the army then? Afterall, they can’t win against those monsters, right?”

“Yup they can’t.” I said simply, and for a moment there was a silence between us as Jonathan had just not expected me to concede there as well.

“...Then why is that Yamato guy trying to make new barracks an hour away from the capital if no matter how many soldiers you have you can’t defeat those monsters?”

“You seem to be misunderstanding Jonathan...” I said as I started walking back to my seat and sat down.

“The war against monsters is not a game of quality or quantity—instead it’s a game about escaping their attention for long enough.

“The monsters have simply existed on this world for longer than us, they have dungeons out of which they crawl and true dungeons which spew them out to infest the world periodically.

“And we simply cannot hope to beat them in fairgrounds. We simply don’t have enough men to kill even a few of their weakest, but what we do have is this—” I said, tapping my head.

“Monster are stupid creatures. Some may have some rudimentary intelligence, but that’s it. Just a rudimentary intelligence.

“That’s why I ordered the building of these walls around the capital, the monsters, no matter how strong they may be, or how many of them there may be, can’t get in.

“No matter how much they wish they could. And the only thing we have to do is to pepper them with arrows for long enough until all of them fall dead on the ground they stand upon.

“And with time, we will develop more and more technologies, and in a century or so, we will be able to go on the offensive to claim this rock that is rightfully ours!

“But before we can do that, we have to fight them both in our grounds and... theirs.” I said, slumping on my chair.

“And that’s where you want to fight, on their grounds. And there, out in the wilderness, its not a game of intelligence, but of numbers instead.

“A monster can be a tier 3, sure, and it would be able to kill 99 soldiers easily, sure, but it will fall with the 100th one. And that’s why Yamato is trying to construct a bigger place for us to store our soldiers at, and train them further, so we can at least hope to defeat 2-3 Tier 3’s if they appear.

“Though... hope is a strong word. If 2 Tier 3’s appeared, the best we could hope is for them to chew on the corpses of the villagers and soldiers we sent down south for long enough so that we have the time to conscript or summon a few hundred more men to throw at them and hope they die this time.” I said, and turned towards Jonathan, and stared straight into his eyes.

“I am willing to have the blood of hundreds on my hand, after all, if the death of a hundred people can save the lives of a thousand people, that is a deal worth making. But are you willing to have that blood in your hands? Knowing that you will have to send waves after waves of adventurers on stupid quests, and watch them die for... what? Glory and gold?” I said, and waited for Jonathan to give up, dejected, but instead I saw him... smiling?

“Oh? So, the Tier 3’s are a problem, are they?” He asked lifting himself up and meeting my gaze.

“Then, I’ll just have to become a Tier 3 myself and take care of them!”

“...

“...

“...

“...Heh... hehehe—hahahahaha!”

I could only laugh at his stupidity. I mean, did he not understand how long it would take for someone to become a tier 3?!

It took him 8 whole years to become a tier 2, and he was saying he’d save people by just... becoming tier 3?

Did he not understand how many people he would throw to their deaths before he even had the chance to become a tier 3?

“Hahhaha... how stupid.” I said the last part under my breath, but he still heard me.

But before he could respond or anything, I just pulled the guild creation request towards myself, and signed it, and threw it at Jonathan.

“I signed it. Now, fuck off. I don’t want to see your face here again.”

“...What?”

“I said fuck off, are you as deaf as you are stupid?” I asked, being a little irritated by his dumbness.

Though he took the cue, and quickly went for the door, but before opening the door, he stood for a moment.

“...Thanks for trusting me, Damien.” He said without turning his face towards me and left the room.

“...Fucking idealists. Ruining my day.” I muttered in discontent before starting to do my paperwork again.