The ride from the wall home brought with it a mixed bag if emotions.

They had only been away from everything for just over a month, and even extended their vacation by a few days to go out of their way and explore the Great Wall standing vigil over their northern border.

And yet as he rode alongside Serena back to the Eternal City, Julius couldnt help but feel a pang of regret.

He wasnt born to be an emperor.

He was just a regular guy, one who used to work a standard 9-5 with ample overtime dreaming of the weekends when he could just sleep all day and do nothing at all.

And now after a month on vacation he both wanted to go back to resume his position as the emperor, and commander in chief of one of the continents strongest nations thus far, and at the same time did not want to as it would mean a return to mountains of paperwork, endless meetings and discussions about the empire, its people, and future conflicts and expansion plans.

He wanted to simply spur his horse, take Serena’s hand and flee off to the far reaches getting to live their lives in isolation and peace as the rest of the world devolved into anarchy and bloodshed.

But the more he thought about how feasible such a plan would be the more he bereted himself in his mind for having even come up with such an idea in the first place.

Each time they rode past one of his many military forts, travelled through a town that was prosperous thanks to his rule, or cities who even without knowing he was coming celebrated their emperor, and the golden age he’d brought to their people.

They only passed through a handful of provinces on the return journey but each time they did, each time they reached a new distance from the great wall, the air and sky around them seemed to get brighter.

As if the lands beyond the wall had fallen into total darkness and only by heading towards the Eternal City, his shining star could light be returned.

Since riding was a task easily left to the horse who would instinctively follow Serena’s own horse, this left Julius open to use his system, and become a true passenger.

He wasnt getting back to work, not really.

If anything he was just getting a refresher.

The entire time they were away, Julius had only access his system a small number of times and that was only when the system dropped an alert meeting the filter he had setup.

Like when the Athenian rebels were heating up, and a dispatch of legionaires was required to pacify the region once more.

But now he had a month to catch up on.

A month of resources had been collected filling up his build points and allowing for further expansive works within his empire.

A month of the schools and labs researching and learning all the while earning him Tech points to increase the Empire’s tech level for both the civilians and his military.

But the question now remained just what to enhance?

Of course with the Empire being at peace for the time being the obvious answer would be to enhance the civilian life, increasing their productivity to increase the rate of growth for build points, but also allowing more of the public to have the free time to attend classes in schools to increase the overal literacy rate, but also allow more to enter labs furhter increasing the tech point gain rate which had already begun to crawl.

With technology, mechanical means of production could be created.

Not like the assembly line or anything, but tools like the heavy plow, dragged by horses or oxen to till more land than could be done by hundreds of people using hoes.

Switching out from cottage style industry of hand sewing, into more formalized looms, and spinning wheels.

Each unlocked and upgraded technology would give the people a better life, but also reduce the number of jobs required to fufill the requirements of his people.

This in turn would leave a large portion of the populaton jobless, which was the purpose of the game.

In reality you could never commit to having such a large army in this era, but when the game was created the developers couldnt care less about the actual growing capacity of field in the medieval or Renaissance periods of history.

They wanted to make a grand strategy game that provided players with the complexity of ruling a kingdom, or empire.

But without needing to get bogged down in the details so tightly that the true purpose, the conflicts and martial battles became an afterthought. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

That was why fields here in this world even before technological enhancement already produced enough to be refered as a bumper harvest.

Once technology was applied the food produced was already easily 3-4 times that of farms, and pastures from earth.

This in turn supported feeding more mouths, and again thanks to perhaps the gods of this world, the fertility rate of the people supported explosive population growths, which in turn allowed for bloodier campaigns without worry about the generation pool running dry to quickly.

For example Julius had only been a ruler of a territory for a few years now, and yet of the over twenty million people he now ruled over, plus the millions more who were vassal citizens of his empire.

His child rearing initiative started right after founding the Eternal city had already born grand results.

Across the core provinces of the empire, state run orphanages, were responsible for raising thousands of children.

There were produced from a number of sources, a family that already had reach it’s limits might send away any further newborns to become children of the emperor.

While brothels whose employee’s who became pregnant would do the same and receive compensation from the state for the time spent unable to perform their regular job due to the nature of their condition.

A liberal mind would argue Julius and his empire were buy children, and from a certain point of view you wouldnt be wrong.

But at the same time, the children placed into the care of the state were provided with a more than acceptable upbringing, albeit one that effectively would indoctrinate them into being loyal dogs of the empire.

Boys and Girls who would upon reaching adulthood without question enter the military or even root itself to serve the empire and its desires.

The plan would take time, but within anothe decade or so, on top of the few hundred thousand who served in the Imperial Army, these would become recruitment centers, and training grounds for future commanders, generals, and strategist who received training since birth to fufill those roles, rather than playing catch up and adapt to a role that was entirely new to them.

The inspiration of course coming from a movie in his old life, where the world used children as a means to fight back against an apocalypic level enemy.