By the winter of the 9th year, I was able to employ another construction group, which I sent to the southern baron’s town to start building all the other infrastructure that we’d need, like houses, clinics, and such.

Though, that really wasn’t a concern of mine right now, as with the more and more people the southern baron summoned per year, the town would grow enough to be able to slowly replace the workers I was sending from the capital with their own, or at least start supplementing with their own local work force.

And, while the military infrastructure in the town would suffer after the tide had been dealt with, due to both the damages done by tide and lack of funding that was going to come from me as the town was going to lose its military importance quickly, that was going to be the baron’s problem, not mine, so I didn’t really mind it.

My current worry was just growing the economy to be strong enough to deal with the influx of soldiers we’d have after Yamato was done constructing the military training grounds he was working on right now.

“...Should I just... order the barons to make an army?” I thought to myself while sitting in my office.

Afterall, I’ve always intended for the nobles to have some men-at-arms ready for whenever there was a need for them, and also because I didn’t want to send the royal army to every corner of the world whenever there was a small problem with some monsters.

“...I don’t really think the barons need a standing army right now... but they should at least have a few dozen soldiers ready to defend their own villages...” I muttered, and started writing a short letter to the barons, whose contents weren’t that important really.

And after barely 2 months passed since I wrote, and sent those letters to the barons, I was greeted by message of a quest completion.

Divine Quest A Church Befitting of The Goddess completed!

“...Finally.” I muttered, and getting out of my office, went to visit the church for a few minutes.

It was... well, really gothic with a lot of detail on it, it was clear even from a single glance how many hours were spent on the thing.

Not that I really spent a lot of time inspecting the hard work that went into it as I honestly just detested the building.

Though... while I didn’t like it, my people were quite religious, and their religious fervour also helped a bit as they simply had no problem with me being their emperor.

“...I need to build more churches, don’t I?” I Thought to myself as I watched from afar the amount of people that were trying to use the place, and made a mental note to assign some people to make churches around the town, and then went back to work.

We now had 70 more construction workers free, and in less than 2 months we’d have enough bricks to start the construction of the stone walls in the southern baron’s town.

Though... I wasn’t sure if I wanted to send any more men there for now, as I had sent enough people there already, or at least I thought so.

So, instead, I sent one of the freed-up construction groups to go help Yamato and his soldiers, while the other one joined the others in building more houses in the capital.

And, like I said before, a month or two later, at day 3.299, all the bricks for the walls of the southern baron’s town were ready, and we shipped them with carriages, and 3 months after that, the construction of the military training grounds was completed, and it boasted a whopping 25 barracks, which allowed the entire facility to support 500 soldiers!

And I of course went to take a look at the facility on the day of its completion and... it wasn’t actually that crazy.

Yes, it was basically a settlement of its own with a granary, a small church, and housing for all the soldiers and officers, but it was only a training ground after all. So, not that impressive, but pretty functional instead as it could train archers, horsemen, and any type of infantry we could supply with sufficient equipment.

“So, how many days we have left?” Yamato approached me asked me as we were watching a show prepared by the soldiers and knights “of their own volition” that definitely wasn’t orchestrated by Yamato.

Definitely not.

“Around 217 days if the first monsters appear in middle of February as we guessed. Why, are you afraid you won’t have enough time to drill the troops properly?”

“Drilling them about how to use their weapons, and how not to stab their fellow soldiers is not hard, especially with those classes you are able to hand out, but supressing the fear of death from them... that is going to be the hard part.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You are right... though, can’t say I’ve made your job any easier by always choosing to deploy troops en masse so that they were never at danger.

“But how do you plan on making them not fear death?” I asked, curious as to how he’d do such a thing as my best guess was... well, just threatening the deserters with execution, which was not something I wanted to even threaten people with, so I had chosen not to deal with that side of the army a lot over the years, and let the soldiers do whatever they wanted to do.

“For now, nothing really. Not that I don’t want to, but you can’t really suppress the fear of death in those that have never experienced it.

“I just have to put a strong sense of camaraderie into them, so they don’t escape from defending the walls, and also a good mixture of shame and corporeal punishments will do the job.

“Afterall, people don’t tend to like being pushed out from the group they are in, and most don’t like pain either. So, they should be a good enough glue to keep people together through the early stages of our fight against the monster waves.

“After the monsters start attacking though, we’ll try and catch a few of them, and bring the younger soldiers to them, and perhaps even make them “fight” with them, under supervision of a lot of other soldiers of course. That way we should be able to slowly start suppressing that primal fear in them.”

“...I’ve realised that you are using suppression instead of removal. Why, is removing the fear of death hard?”

“The fear of death is... not something you can remove from yourself. If you want an example, just look at me, I’ve lived my first entire life as a frontline soldier, and only in the last few months of it did I get the chance to rank up in the military, though that rank up didn’t really pull me away from the frontlines.

“But over the years, you just... gain a tolerance to it. But you can never remove it. Hell, I’ve had to fight to the brink of my life many times before, and the only reason I didn’t try to run away and seal my fate was because I had a calm enough mind to understand that running away would be the same as accepting my fate.” Yamato said, and I nodded as to imply that I had understood what he meant, even though... I didn’t really believe I had managed to suppress my fear of death like he had done.

I was embarrassed of my past self, but I was not stupid enough to think that I wouldn’t freeze again while looking at a monster thrice my size, without anyone being there to support me.

...Maybe I should ask him to train me as well in suppressing my fear of death?

...Maybe not now. He has his hands full, and I have mine full too! Afterall, I need to recruit a lot of people. And I mean a lot of people, as while I wouldn’t shy away from summoning new Homunculi to become soldiers if it was necessary, I also didn’t quite want to give people life, just to force them into a life of fighting and death.

...

As more months passed, and we neared the start of the next winter, I was able to recruit more, and forced to summon more, people into the military, and as of day 3.400, we had 250 soldiers, 15 of which were knights, and another 15 of which were squires, were going through training.

Yamato had asked me to designate him as the minister of the army, which I happily obliged to, and had chosen 2 of the knights to become his generals.

Would everyone in the army be ready by the time of the first monster waves? Probably not, but most of them just had to be able to fire a bow and arrow, so it didn’t exactly matter that much.

And from the reports I had gotten from the barons, they had a total of 100 soldiers ready to be called into service, and while I’d be calling the 60 soldiers of the southern baron into service, I’d let the northern baron keep his 40 men, in exchange of him... well, just defending his villages from monsters.

Another “interesting” that was happening in the capital was the official opening of the first adventurer’s guild, which was of course led by Jonathan.

I predicted that they wouldn’t have a lot of traction for the next month or two, but after the monster waves started, there may be some demand for their services, though I didn’t know exactly how they’d be perceived by villagers.

For all means, they were simply some random people that had picked up arms for their own benefit instead of joining the army, so the people may just look at any adventurers with a bad eye, and this whole adventurers’ guild may die even before it had the chance to prosper.

Though, there was always the chance that they’d be able to safe a few villages from a few weak monsters, and gain a lot of popularity.

Either way, I didn’t really care what happened to the adventurers’ guild. It felt really nice to have an adventurers’ guild in my domain as it really itched my fantasy world itch by the mere fact that it was called the adventurers’ guild, but I didn’t really see a reason for its existence.

...

As a few more months passed, and as the winter set in, I started sending scouting parties to the southern grasslands to see if any monsters were on their way to us.

Of course I didn’t expect them to find any monsters anytime soon, but it was better to be cautious rather than not.

Afterall, I had already filled the granaries in the southern baron’s walls, and built quite a few barracks and armouries for the soldiers in case we couldn’t supply them with resources from the outside, so it only made sense to take another step of caution.

And half a month before we first expected them, at the end of January, we got reports of our first monsters.

The scouts had attempted to make quick work of the small number of monsters they had seen, but were unsuccessful in doing so in the end.

And, as a final layer of caution, I just banned hunting until’ further notice, and ordered the hunters to join their respective towns and village’s militia.

Of course, I was going to be the one paying for them, after all I printed the money and had quite a few stacks of iron and copper lying around.

And it was a good thing I ordered the hunters to stop hunting as a few days after the first monster sighting, a few wayward monsters attacked the southern baron’s town, and a week after the first monster sightings, a few of the villages in the south were attacked by single, or pairs of monsters.

And the some of the people were getting properly scared as people from the northern baron’s territory asked for refuge in the capital, and ones in the south asked for refuge in their baron’s town.

Though, the numbers of the initial refugees were low, and nothing that couldn’t be dealt with, I tried to show the villagers that they didn’t need to worry about monsters by sending a few soldier patrols through the roads that connected the villages to the larger towns.

And I waited to see how many monsters would be attacking us in the coming months with bathed breath, hoping that the waves would be... manageable.