I spent the next hour or so sprinting away from the keep and into the woods. At first, the keep sent riders out to try and fetch me, but I easily lost them the moment I entered the woods.

After I was sure the Karswyn kingdom soldiers were no longer chasing me, I telepathically contacted Professor Sageira to inform her of my change of plans for exfiltration. She told me she already knew and was on her way to pick me up. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Within half an hour, Professor Sageira picked me up and was flying me back home.

"So, was the client satisfied with my performance?" I asked.

"Professionally, yes, they were very satisfied that the lesson was soundly beaten into their daughter. That is the whole reason for the Broken Scale trials. However, personally, they are rather pissed at you for putting a lance through their daughter’s arm, but it is nothing a bit of healing magic cannot fix." she said, making me rather worried.

"Do I need to be worried about angry Earth Drakes causing earthquakes under my home?" I asked, which only made her chuckle.

"Not in the slightest. The worst they would do is ’accidentally’ kick up some dirt at you." she replied, but that still worried me. To a normal wyrm, it would be just a bit of dirt on their scales, but to a human, it would be the equivalent of an excavator unloading a bucket of sand on me.

All I could do was laugh it off and hope that that future never came to pass.

***

Time passed. The school break for my siblings and friends came to an end, and the new year arrived. Emma and my siblings had to go back to the Royal Academy, begrudgingly in Emma’s case.

But with the new year came new changes. My Royal Academy friends came of legal age to work for my family in their roles. A week into the new year, a carriage my family sent rolled up to my front door, where I was waiting.

When the carriage came to a stop, Dave, Sam, and Elise stepped out. Despite being friends, they must have felt the pressure of being in the home of a noble, especially because my parents are around. But regardless, I warmly greeted and welcomed them into my home.

After they greeted my parents, we ate with them for dinner and showed them to their accommodations. The next day, we got them acquainted with what their life would be like working for my family.

Dave and Sam were introduced to the knights serving my house and would squire under them to eventually earn their own armor. And godwilling, they would be knighted by the king when they are ready and nominated by my father for knighthood.

As for Elise, being a mage, my mother took her under her wing to assist with her daily administrative duties and magical duties, such as array maintenance and investigations, whenever incidents involving magic occurred.

As for me, I did not have as much free time as I thought I would to pursue my own goals, such as improving my secret lair, experimenting with how to further incorporate Dragon Tongue magic into my crafting, and performing the exercise to strengthen my soul so it can eventually become strong enough to have my own dimensional storage attached to it.

No. I and a few of Dad’s knights were sent out to conduct recruitment to bolster our standing army, discreetly, of course.

When Dad gave the orders for us to conduct recruitment to bolster our household’s army due to "increased cases of banditry," which I knew was bullshit because I had access to the territory’s reports. I suspected Dad also caught news of war on the horizon, and/or he had orders from the king to start war prepping.

After the orders were given and the knights left to make preparations to carry out their orders, I stayed behind and asked, "War is coming, isn’t it?"

Dad looked at me with a stern face and asked, "Did someone tell you?"

To keep my promise to Professor Sageira and give her plausible deniability as my information source, I shook my head in the negative and came up with an equally plausible answer. "Nobody told me. But I would think that my father is not foolish enough to send his son and knights on a recruitment drive without a solid reason, especially when we are arming to more than double our current army size. Historically, kings are not fond of their nobles building up their forces for no good reason, which means that you most likely had royal approval to do so. And seeing as to who out nehbours are, it makes sense."

Dad sighed and said, "It lightens my heart that my son is not only strong of arm but also of mind... I am sure this need not be said, but I will say it anyway. What we speak about should not leave this room." He then informed me of the orders from the royals, which were to build up our fighting manpower as much as we could support, and if we recruited beyond capacity, the men we recruited were to be sent to our neighboring nobles to join their armies.

This rang financial alarm bells in my head. I know the territory’s GDP. The money I brought in helped jump-start the initial standing army of a thousand men, giving us time to develop industry to offset the financial drain of maintaining a standing army. The taxes we currently receive cover their upkeep, leaving a surplus we can save and reinvest. But more than doubling the standing army in such a short period of time would definitely bankrupt us.

As I was doing the mental calculations in my head, I asked, "Do we have enough gold to cover that many men? I think i better ask Professor Sageira if she has any ’jobs’ available."

But before I rambled on, Dad raised his hand to stall me. "Worry not. The Royals did not give us an unreasonable order without any support to carry it out. For this increase in manpower, the Royals have opened their coffers to us." He then leaned back into his chair and stroked his beard before saying, "But that is of little issue. The problem we would face soon is arming and armoring these men. Like me, all the border nobles have commissioned all available blacksmiths to start production, but even if money is no obstacle due to royal funding, we just do not have the skilled labor in large enough numbers to keep up with production."

Heeding my father’s worries, I stroked my growing stubble before saying, "I may be able to help you with that. Get me the designs of the weapons and armor you commissioned from the blacksmith. If it is simple enough, we may just need skilled labor to oversee mass production."

Dad took me to the armory and showed me the designs he commissioned the blacksmiths to craft. They were simple, only covered the critical parts of the head and torso, but lacked any flexibility.

Simple enough, but it still took a skilled blacksmith quite some time to hammer it out. On a good day, a skilled, non-aura-capable blacksmith can hammer out two to three of these basic munition armor, four if he thinks sleep is for the weak.

That was not going to cut it. So I told Dad about my idea of bringing in unskilled labour into the equation... I introduced him to the concept of assembly line production.

After explaining and even using some illusion magic to show him a rough concept, Dad took me off the recruitment drive and set me to work on the weapons assembly line. We spent the rest of the day planning and budgeting for this new project and planning where to build it.

This also means I am going to need to implement some of my powertools to make this project possible.

So much work and planning to do, so little time.