Chapter 251 — Drills and a Proposal for Improving Melee Weapons

As the domain continued to grow, the population gathered on this land had already surpassed ten thousand, and the Cecil Combat Corps had undergone a new round of expansion in the process. The system, which resembled a construction corps, along with the tremendous boost magic gave to production and construction, allowed the Cecil domain to maintain a fairly high ratio of soldiers to civilians, and at the same time without overly affecting the development and operation of the domain.

Gao Yang had always firmly believed one thing: an age of chaos was coming. Whether it was the monsters in the Gondo wasteland or the wars between human nations, sooner or later they would find their way to his doorstep. And to face that impending danger, forging a powerful armed force was necessary, and inevitable.

And as the Cecil Combat Corps expanded in scale and the various administrative frameworks within the domain gradually took shape, Gao Yang's training of this army grew ever more formal and rigorous. Compared with the crude regulations of the early days of domain construction, many of which resembled nothing more than "three chapters of agreement," Gao Yang enacted military regulations that were clearer, stricter, and easier to tally for rewards and punishments. He stipulated the pay and benefits of every rank of soldier, laid down basic standards of conduct for the troops, and set out how the army was to be supervised, how military merit was to be recorded, and how dereliction of duty was to be punished. And to ensure these rules and regulations were carried out, he ordered the two knights, Philip and Byron, to select from among the young soldiers a group of literate, honest, and reliable men to serve as junior officers. Thanks must go to the night-school teachers for their efforts; more and more people in the domain could read now, and selecting such a group of junior officers was no difficult matter.

Gao Yang himself was not a man who understood military affairs, but fortunately Gao Yang Cecil was an expert in this regard, and combined with the bit of theory he had accumulated as a keyboard warrior in his previous life, he had at last managed to put this framework together.

Once the framework was built and the regulations drawn up, what remained was the nearly brainwashing education of new recruits and endless drilling, forging every rule and code of conduct into conditioned reflexes, carved into the bones of every Cecil soldier.

In the military zone on the eastern side of the domain, the new recruits were undergoing their daily physical training. These men, who not long ago had been ordinary farmers and laborers, were now outfitted in standard-issue Cecil armor, carrying on their backs training packs weighted the same as their combat packs, with steel vambraces bound to their arms matching the size and weight of a magic-conductor terminal. Laden with this gear, they drilled in formation on the open ground, while Gao Yang stood together with the two knights, Byron and Philip, watching over the soldiers' training.

From time to time the curses of veteran soldiers serving as instructors drifted across the field, but today the complaints and catcalls of the new recruits could no longer be heard.

"To be honest, the formation drill you insisted on pushing through really has been a useful thing," Byron said, watching the new recruits who in just a few short days could already stand in neat ranks, and he could not help but marvel. "After a round of drilling, at the very least their obedience has gone up."

Knight Philip, meanwhile, was marveling at something else: "Using a simplified knight's code as the soldiers' standard of conduct, and requiring everyone to meet it—I truly never expected that could be achieved."

"So long as the drilling is thorough enough to make them commit what they learn day to day to their bones like conditioned reflexes, then even if they don't understand anything of knightly spirit, they'll still act accordingly," Gao Yang said. "The Cecil Combat Corps is a very special army. They must protect this land, protect the people on this land, and the people must support them with all their strength. Only in this way can we gain a firm foothold on this dangerous wasteland frontier."

Knight Byron was rather moved: "The private troops of ordinary nobles are mostly scoundrels and ruffians. Even if they come from common stock, once they don the noble's emblem and have a blade in hand, they extort the common folk without the slightest mercy, because the nobles only need these private soldiers to protect their castles... Occasionally there are nobles of knightly spirit who pay heed to military discipline and strictly demand obedience from their soldiers, but that is limited to strict demands alone. Someone like you, who draws up piles of rules and regulations to bind his soldiers... I've never seen it before."

"An individual's morality will in the end perish with the individual; only sound systems and regulations can ensure that discipline remains effective after the personnel have been rotated out," Gao Yang said with a smile. "Of course, even with sound systems and regulations, there is no such thing as an eternal kingdom or order in this world. But at least a body bound by institutions will survive a little longer than those that crumble the moment their leader dies."

"An individual's morality will in the end perish with the individual..." Knight Philip wore an expression of admiration, but upon hearing the latter half of Gao Yang's words he could not help but frown. "You mean to say that even with these sound institutional constraints you have established, the Cecil domain will one day... follow in the footsteps of those who perished?"

"If later generations don't know how to cherish it," Gao Yang spread his hands, "then no matter how good the foundation, that day will always come."

Knight Philip's expression turned serious: "There is no need for such pessimism, you—"

Gao Yang waved his hand before the other could finish: "Don't give me any of that 'your great enterprise shall be eternal' nonsense. That sort of talk is for fooling idiots and the dead. I don't count on it. Back when I was buried, someone even carved 'monumental achievements, enduring through ten thousand ages' on my gravestone—and then the next time I opened my eyes, my grave had been dug up. From that day on, I stopped believing in that kind of flattery."

Knight Philip was struck dumb, speechless for a good while, while Knight Byron at his side slapped Philip's shoulder hard, laughing so much his ribs nearly cracked: "That's what you get for blowing hot air at a man with experience."

Gao Yang shot a glance at Byron, who had not a shred of knightly bearing: "And you can stop laughing. I had you conceive a new type of melee weapon suited to the Cecil Combat Corps' way of fighting and its magic-conductor technology—have you made any headway?"

Owing to the discovery of the "Defiance" fortress, the mountain ruins were undergoing large-scale clearing and restoration. Gao Yang intended to bring the middle layer of the ruins back into operation and turn it into Cecil's "Center for Ancient Technology Research" and its second industrial base. And considering that Knight Byron had been organizing exploration in the ruins since before the onset of winter and now had such remarkable results to his name, Gao Yang had given him a few days off, so that he would have time to return to the surface and soak up some sun, and time to go home and keep Pea company. Still, in the spirit of making the fullest use of every man, Gao Yang had also casually handed Byron a rather light task: to think about what else the soldiers under his command needed, and from that to design an improvement proposal for the Cecil soldier's melee weapons.