Herald of Steel

"You could have been a bit gentler!"

On their way back, Lady Parthia shot Alexander a 'wounded' look in the carriage, rubbing some of her parts as if they were sore.

"Hehehe!"

Alexander only gave a hollow pleased chuckle as he recalled all the things they had done afterward, moving from the bath to the floor mat, and letting Lady Parthia mount him, thus fully enjoying the sight of the swinging melons as she bounced.

Those sweet puppies were squeezed, stretched, pinched, pulled, and played with until they were bright red and hurting.

"I hope it was worth it."

His thoughts were only broken by Lady Parthia's affirming voice.

"It was! It was!" Alexander happily nodded, "To be able to bed an honorable queen such as yourself for only a thousand sq kilometers of land was more than worth it! Hahaha!"

Lady Parthia however was not so easily bought by the exaggerated flattery, ".....You were already thinking of giving up some land here, weren't you? You need some 'Zanzan' local here after all."

So in a cool tone frankly revealed Alexander's plans, "I am guessing I will not be the only one to get these lands?"

"..." This nearly made the man cough out in embarrassment.

Indeed he planned to hand out a few titles to some of his men- like Remus, the boy had worked hard and performed quite well in the campaign.

In addition to this being a reward, Alexander also hoped that this way there would be a few voices within the army supporting the defense of these lands if things ever turned sour.

"Hehehe, my lady is truly keen eyed. You are right… I would have considered giving you the lands if you had just asked!" Alexander said the last piece as he wanted to see how the reticent Lady Parthia would react to their personal 'deal' knowing this.

"*Snort! We never beg!"

The sharp, curt response both pleased and stung Alexander, he had wanted to see how a bitter Lady Parthia would look, but a 'too proud to be hurt' look was also good.

"I also know that you have probably given me a seat at the council anyway," Lady Parthia then added her guess, before reaffirming in a regretless voice, "Don't worry! Our deal will stand as is."

…..

Lady Nanazin listened to the pair of lovebirds speak such casually with each other with a disgusted heart.

If she was given the deal, she imagined she could have counted even to a thousand if Alexander could keep up.

Then suddenly in an outburst that came out of nowhere, she violently interjected,

"If you are so generous with the land my lord, why don't you give me some? I have been whoring myself for you every day!"

This snub rubbed Alexander entirely the wrong way.

He believed he had done enough for the woman, from rescuing her to taking care of her to pampering her to the best of his abilities.

Yet, she dared to talk to him like that?

Finding her manner very vulgar and ungrateful, Alexander imperceptively frowned and made a certain decision in his mind.

"I will reward you once we get back!" He then frostily replied, which only sought to aggravate the lady in question.

Where had she heard that before?

.....

Alexander spent a few more days in Caira afterward, taking care of a few loose ends, the vast majority of which involved details of seeing the city be handed over to Miss Linda and the elders just as promised.

Alexander also took the opportunity to meet with Lord Castell one last time, greeting,

"My lord, I hear you will remain here for the foreseeable future. This is good. Our two families can continue to flourish with you here."

This was Alexander's way of subtly reminding the man of the treaty and asking him not to cause trouble.

"Haha, rest assured. That loan you promised the family is enough to keep that sassy girl in check. She has become a lot more obedient, hahaha."

The way the man fondly looked and spoke of ML was very different from just a few days before, making it clear the girl had made her move.

This was of course good news for Alexander, and thus he worded a few flattering praises to help her.

It just remained to be seen how effective this would be in the long run.

After Lord Castell, he then met up with Lord Kite to remind him of their prisoner deal, and got a promise that everyone would be sent with the next year.

The only thing that Alexander missed was Lord Castell standing on the walls and looking at the legionaries march for Lady Miranda's new home when his second in command came up to report in a very professional tone, Enjoy exclusive content from empire

"My lord, the thing you asked… it is done. They are in place."

"...Good."

Alexander might not have understood the context of those words even if he was there.

Not to mention he was preoccupied with many more mundane stuff.

The marching from Caira to Lady Miranda's new city of Prizzle was a boring one, especially given he and Lady Nanazin were in a sort of cold war.

So no hanky panky.

This made the long, seven to eight hour marches almost unbearable.

Sure Alexander was intrigued by the greenery and open countryside for the first few days, but that got old pretty fast.

It was all the same thing over and over again- a continuous stretch of farmland, woods, and rivers occasionally dotted by scattered settlements and villages.

Only two good things came out of this.

First, Alexander got to see the local specialties and a snapshot of how some of them lived. And he found that many of them actually had a better lifestyle than say the likes of Tibias and the hilly parts of Zanzan.

The

Two, he used all the free time he had to finalize the reward and loot distribution for the soldiers in his head.

He would not have been able to do this if he was fooling around with Lady Nanazin.

Hence on their way to the city, Alexander gave Remus a baron title, made a few officers the equivalent of landed knights, and promised many of the high performing soldiers land once they reached the end of their service, were discharged honorably due to injuries, or died, in which case their children would get it.

Everyone else got a share of the looted booty- which came to around 600 ropals worth of goods or coins, or three months of salary for a regular grunt.

This was perhaps not as great as the reward for taking Tibias, where many got a 'bonus' worth two years of their wages, but the scale between the two campaigns was completely different.

And the soldiers understood this, which was most of them were pretty happy with their gains.

As for who was deciding the exact amount of the gains, well, the credit had to go to Remus and Menes, both of whom had to work day and night like madmen to prepare the reports for Alexander.

The reason for such pressure was because taking inspiration from his previous life, Alexander had come up with a 'survey like' report.

But navigating such an unfamiliar format proved very difficult for the admin officers.

Remus even openly cried out,

"Fucking hell, what is this crap? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, rate each of the officers in the following categories-

1. Taking charge of his unit.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

2. Leading them to battle.

3. Following orders.

4. Keeping up troop morale during morale.

5. Reacting to a sudden flanking attack

6. Spotting breakthrough opportunities

7. …..

8. ....

13. Giving out proper battle signals using trumpets.

14. .....

Please comment on why you choose to give the number citing at least two examples."

Remus had his eyes turn almost red by the amount of work being asked of him.

Who said being a general was easy? Safer perhaps... but easy... definitely not, not when you worked for Alexander.

There was even an incident when Remus ran up to Alexander and screamed,

"Fuck you, Alexander! You think you can make me slave away just using the excuse of a noble title? Ask me to do this bullshit and I swear I would rather become a grunt!"

Shouting like so, he then threw the scarp of paper he was waving towards a dumbfounded pasha.

Alexander had no idea what he had done to tick the young boy so much.

It was only after asking around a bit that he understood many were finding it too hard to complete his report.

"My lord, this is asking for too much information. And we are too few in number. We need more time." One of the officers in charge timidly admitted.

Alexander had forgotten the number of men who could read and write comprehensively within his army was at best twenty.

The rest could only do the bare minimum, like writing their names or a few numbers.

So asking them to 'defend' their number in essay form was really stretching it a bit.

"Ahh! The importance of general education!" Hence lamenting like so, Alexander waved the comment section and asked for only one example and the name of the battle it happened in,

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