ALL NOVEL Chapter 14: New Information
William returns to the City of Deron with a power sword in his right hand and chain sword on the other hand as troops in the town wall cheering his name. Soon, the fearful atmosphere disappears in the city as troops are once again busy with work as sergeants and lieutenants give orders to secure the city, marking sure that there is no additional surprise. Meanwhile, inside of the city castle, William is currently meeting with Sir Dolven to discuss the next step into resettling the city while planning for a possible counter-attack from other Vampire Lords.
"As of now, we have enough forces to secure Deron. I already sent a message to the nearest regiment to send additional troops and supplies so we can move on to our secondary mission." Sir Dolven said to William and other officers in the meeting. William showed a confused face when he heard a secondary mission which Sir Dolven saw and decided to continue to explain.
"Previously, when we launched this expedition, we expected a month-long siege on Deron, but thanks to you William, we have the city within a day. This moved our schedule ahead of schedule as we now have to move to the second part of the plan. When we receive the reinforcement, we will move our main force into Fort Stormfist and establish a defense against the Vampire army." Sir Dolven points at the map on the table as William turns his head to see the location.
On the map, Fort Stormfist is located about half a day to the west from Deron within the mountain. This gives Fort Stormfist a perfect defensive location against any invading army as it is a geological choke point and able to withstand the invaders for months. Seeing this, William asks Sir Dolven the obvious question.
"It is a perfect location to defend against an invading force, which right now is us. How do you expect to make a successful siege against the Fort defense?" William asked as a few of the officers from the Prince Benton's nodded their heads.
"We are ready for that. You see, Fort Stromfist has a few secrets that only the Royal family and few chosen nobles know about. First has a secret tunnel that leads into the main castle, this is meant for escape and secret supply run during the siege. So, while the main force attacks in front, a special unit will enter the fort and open the main gate. More detail will be discussed in the future, but if we secure the Fort Stormfist, we are guaranteed to secure this city and its resources for our kingdom." Sir Dolven explained the basic part of the second mission and moved on to current issues with the city itself.
William learned from the meeting more detail about the city itself as Deron has two main resources available. First is the iron mine, which is located three miles in the north of the city and already has fully established facilities for miners and smelters to work. Second is the southern area outside of the city as soils are rich with nutrients to produce high-quality wine. In short, the City of Deron is a trade capital of the iron and wine for the western region of the kingdom of Alderim and a potential income boost for the lord who rules over.
Soon, Sir Dolven ends the meeting but requests William to stay to talk to him. When they are finally alone, Sir Dolven grabs two cups and a wine bottle to share a drink with Undead Slayer.
"You are full of surprise, you know that. Completely wiping out three vampire armies, killing the giant monster in a duel and finally, punching the living shit out of the Crown Prince of the Alderim. You would be perfect for royal politics back in the capital, there would be a lot of tension when other nobles learned that we successfully took over the Deron." Sir Dolven said to William and drank his wine. There is a different war coming and Sir Dolven isn't equipped to fight the political battle as he is more of a military noble and prefers to battle defending his country.
"I don't mind, as long as I get my promotion and move up the rank, let the nobles fight each other," William said to the exhausted commander as he drank his wine. For William, he is more worried about Chaos Gods and their influence on this world than some political chess game. Sooner or later, William needs to get involved to build up enough military forces to fight against Chaos, but right now William needs to gather intelligence and learn more about this world so he can predict Chaos Gods' move.
"You may not want it, but you are already in as every noble knows or will know of your deeds from Greenhill and here." sir Dolven grabs the bottle to pour another drink for himself as William stops to look at the commander.
"What do you mean by that? I'm just adventuring in a special quest, after completing the second part of this mission, I'm returning to the road." When Sir Dolven heard William's comment, he gave a small laugh and gave the whole wine bottle to William.
"What do you think will happen after this is over? Prince Benton will receive recognition from the king and other nobles which he will gain more supporters. On the other hand, I will return to my region to replenish my troops for the next expedition or war. Do you think King Benton will give this city and fort to some noble who never participated in this expedition? There is no next line of a successor as they all died out over 150 years ago when the vampire wiped them out. This means you are a potential candidate, no, THE only candidate as you single-handedly deliver the city back to the kingdom.
Hearing this, William paused for full minutes to process the new information. He is just a simple commoner adventurer with no history of noble bloodline in this world. Unless there is a different culture and ways of doing things, there is no way the king or nobles will allow a commoner to control the region of rich resources and military fort.
"You do know that I'm a commoner right?" William said to Sir Dolven after a full minute of pause.
"Yes, I was once a commoner as well. You may not know this, but I join the war as a young man and earn my way through the rank within the military. By the time I reached my late 20's, I received a knighthood and earned the nobility. Now, I'm in my late 40's, I'm a commander of the Order of Black Flame and hold the title of Count. So, in my point of view, you have a chance to become a Lord of the Deron and Fort Stromfist. William, I rather have you rule this region than giving it to some worthless noble to lose it to vampires again. I will back you if you receive the king's decree and decide to accept the title of nobility." With that, Sir Dolven put down his cup and stood up to return to his duty as he left the meeting room.
"Damn," This was the only thing William could say as he sat alone in the meeting room as he once again paused to process new information and make plans for the possible outcome from this.
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Prince Benton made a full recovery thanks to the healers and for the next few days avoided William like a plague. It seems William's rough punishment for reckless leadership changed Prince Benton's attitude and views on general things as his action led to the deaths of many royal cavalry knights. As for William, he was busy training 'gunmen' as Sir Dolven finally saw the similarity between William's bolter and royal gunmen's gun. At first, William refuses to train them, but after seeing their training and how they managed to drop or fail to reload their rifles, he finally accepts the position of training instructor until reinforcement comes.
William renamed the 'gunmen' into 'riflemen' before starting the training and gave the basics of the firearms from the scratch. While troops were learning the basics, William also gave special lessons to officers of each platoon, the military tactic called 'Volley Fire.' William learned that riflemen fire all their weapons at once giving massive damages to the targets but due to the primitive design of the rifle, it took at least 30 seconds to reload their rifles. Seeing this, William decided to teach the old school military tactic from the movie when he saw it back home.
"Simple but interesting tactic, I'm surprised we never considered this before. Will there be a better way to increase the efficiency of the troops reload time?" Prince Benton said to William as he was fully focused on the lesson. Prince joined William's lesson in the middle as logic within the volley fire tactic made much more sense.
"Prince Benton, you are welcome to join the lesson but please hold your questions until I finish the lecture," William said to the prince and continued his lesson. After 30 minutes of the lecture, William finishes his lesson and moves on to the prince's questions.
"As the Crown Prince asked before, there are multiple ways to increase the efficiency of the reload time. First is having a large number of riflemen to increase the line of volley fire, which gives enough time for each line to reload and ready for the next fire. This is costly as it requires huge military funds to train and equip the troops. For this reason, there is a second option, to equip the troops with better guns while maintaining medium size troops." William grabs his bolter and shows it to everyone.
"This is called bolter, it holds 30 rounds of ammunition in the magazine and can fire all of them within 1.5 seconds in full auto. Unfortunately, there is no way we can replicate this weapon as we lack the technological skills to produce it. Still, using the basic function of the bolter rounds, I design an improved rifle with a new type of ammunition instead of the usual lead ball." William said to everyone as he showed his design of the rifle. It was a simple drawing of the rifle but with a big metal cylinder and hammer in the back. William, using his helmet's computer, introduced the revolver rifle with ammunition to the fantasy world.