"Greetings Emperor Julius, welcome back."

As soon as I had scrubbed the last of the filth which had clung desperately to my body after a month of living the hard life as an uncivilized barbarian sleeping out amonst the stars for over a months, excluding the few times we did visit locations that had beds to offer us.

I was shuttled right into a meeting with my Minister of Interior, Miri. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Though as I exchanged pleasentries with the young woman, my eyes couldn’t help but drop down from her face.

...

Not to her chest of course, I am a gentlemen of course.

No my eyes dropped to her belly.

A belly which was once more looking rotund as if she were trying to smuggle a head of cabbage under her clothing.

Seeing the direction my gaze was pointed she broke into laughter.

It had only be around two months since the last time we had seen one another and yet...

Even with two kids at home, Zeff that horny fool couldn’t keep it in his pants and leave his wife alone.

Once more my Interior minister found herself pregnant and was bound to disappear once more herself in another few months time and she brought yet another life into this chaotic world of ours.

"You... look like you’re doing well?"

"Extremely so Sire!"

"He hemm you know if you ever want a good nights sleep you can always ask the guards to just lock him up for a night or two?"

"He he he, I’ll keep that in mind, but its fine, I’ve always wanted a large family, I dreamed of it all the time back in the village when Zeff went off to war." She started rambling and reminiscing. "After he save me back then, I always thought about going back, back to the slums to rescue the other kids, but we could barely take care of ourselves adding more mouths to feed would just be cruel to all of us, but now with the life you’ve provided to us, now I can build up that passel of children all on my own."

"... just be sure not to overdo it ok...?"

With this little matter out of the way we both took our seats and we got down to brass tax.

Not literally of course, but I had been away for a month now, and aside from Serena no one else knew of my system so I had to sit through an hours worth of catch up.

Most of the important things I was already aware of, however there were the bits and pieces that the system couldn’t tell me about or alert me to.

Overall there was the problems I already knew about such as the civil unrest in the newly obtained Francian province, while there was growing dissent born from the rebel terrorist elements in Greeica.

As for smaller problems, they were hardly enough to be called problems.

Such as a request to expand the imperial navy, as with out recent expansion our total coastline nearly doubled, if not more than doubled.

That added to the fact that the empire itself was massive but shortcut routes over land were presently not something that was feasible so, shipping was the only option.

But we had been more determined on bulking up our naval forces to protect our waters and at the time blockade the Principality, or launch naval assaults alone the francian coastline.

But now it was peacetime, and yet ships were still being built for the military.

Not new one of course, but warships would take weeks, even months to carve all the wood and assemble the pieces.

By the end of the next two weeks all warships commissioned by the palace would have been completed and our Navy reached the desired amount though this was still to few ships for my liking.

However we were limited by the number of sailors so until more men could be trained additional ships would just be a waste.

But then there is the civilian side of things.

Fishing boats, merchant ships, and passenger vessels.

All sides of the movement of goods to increase the luxury of living or shuffle the population around to reseed the various settlements and regions.

This was of course an easy enough request to approve.

Hampering naval trade would only restrict the empires growth and give our opponents and advantage by being the only ones to bring trade into the empire while funneling our own wealth home to their nations.

Then there were reports that the recently integrated regions such as Carthage, and Parthia were calling for greater legion facilities as the desire to serve in the imperial navy and imperial army were growing day by day as the living conditions under imperial rule gave the citizens the drive to want to protect this way of life from being taken away by anyone else.

And increased recruitment rate was always welcome, the peace we had earned would not last forever and if we could double the militaries size in the next year or two all the better for us, if the peace lasts longer we can even reach the point of having a decent quality army on top of high numbers.

Visigoth is a nation that was known for having an almost endless stream of members within its military but in contrast they suffered from a lack of quality.

A nation reminiscent of the Russian empire, an opponent who could be considered a heavyweight, but who always fought with their shoes untied.

Capable in their peak of sending millions of men into the field of battle with a policy of mass mobilization even if it harmed their own industrial capabilities.

But if you can win with numbers and brute force who cares about technique.

However Romanus was different, we were a newborn nation, one who had a decent population in the millions but this was a mix of all different peoples, and my rule was not a heavy handed one, aside from the few times in the beginning where conscription was the only option, now the recruitment centers were overflowing.