Herald of Steel

The noble’s reason for joining in such droves was quite natural if one thought about the terms of the proposal a bit.

Alexander by design had made the proposal such that it made more sense to join him and receive the economic benefits rather than choose to stay isolated and all alone, with all the downsides to leaving Amenheraft and none of the upsides of joining Alexander.

Hence other than the most staunch supporter of Amenheraft, Lord Yuusuq, everyone flipped.

“Hahaha, it is great to see you make the right choice. You won’t regret it.” Alexander patted the arms of each man as he greeted them, and then decided to schedule the coronation at the Temple of Ramuh in a month.

The reason for requiring this large amount of time was because of a few reasons.

One of the reasons was that it would simply take Alexander some time to organize the large ball as it would include quite a lot of planning and making the decorations for the venue, preparing the halls, selecting a menu for the grand event, and organizing the guards and security to name a few.

But the true main reason for such a long lead time leading up to the event would definitely have to be so that the nobles could have adequate time to order and prepare the custom-made clothes for the event.

Clothes in Adhania were perhaps as much a fashion and status symbol as the jewelry worn or even the peerage itself.

And given that it was almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the nobles wanted everything to be perfect.

Hence the originally picky nobles were even more so about it right now, resulting in the delay.

As a side note, Alexander had also decided to gift each of the new nobles a new, lavish suit to wear during the swearing, almost as a kind of way to make for something similar he had failed to do during his wedding.

Hence the one-month delay was a boon for also his tailors, as it gave them enough time to properly measure, design and manufacture the custom-made clothes.

But one would be mistaken if they thought the tailors were ordered to have 11 suits.

Because it would not only be the eleven new nobles who would be sworn in that day.

No.

For there would be additionally the original four lords of Lord Prantik’s group.

But perhaps much more importantly it would be the official swearing of all his ever-expectant retainers and council members, who numbered officially a total of ten- Cambyses, Menes, Melodias, Menicus, Grahtos, Heliptos, Diaogosis, Uzak, Harun, and Jazum.

While unofficially it was eleven, as it also included Camius whom Alexander chose to keep hidden from his new nobles for now, instead personally apologizing to him in private and promising to make it up later with a large fiefdom and more favors.

“Hahaha, don’t worry about it doc. Those kinds of parties aren’t really meant for me anyway,” While Camius had simply brushed off the ‘un-inivite’.

Hence, as everything was being prepared for the coronation event in the coming days, Alexander busied himself with meetings with the 25 people to be sworn their fealty to him,

He met with all of them both individually and in groups, their main topic always regarding one thing- The respective noble’s fiefdom.

And for the ten new nobles, i.e. his council member and close retainers, this had been a long time coming.

Alexander had made many of these council members nobles within a fortnight of entering Zanzan, but they had no land of their own until now.

This had made them feel quite inferior when interacting with other nobles of even similar peerage, who had lands of their own.

Not to mention most Adhanian nobles viewed Alexander’s retainers as nothing more than common rabble who were pathetically trying to disguise themselves as one of them, like a toad would try to taste swan meat.

And so they were most eager to call a piece of earth their own and show those snobs.

Alexander naturally was aware of this, and so took this task very seriously, spending a lot of time looking at maps and even going out of the city to choose suitable fiefdoms for his retainers, to make sure he gave them a mix of good fertile plains, with bad barren wastelands, and boring, unproductive hills, with exciting mines and ore deposits.

All so that nobody ended up with too much good land or too little of it and feels cheated.

But that everybody had a healthy mix of every type of land.

Now Alexander had to give this amount of land out of his own pocket of recently conquered 8,000 sq km, some of which contained lands of other nobles whom Alexander killed either in Jabel or his battle with Djose.

But those nobles could not raise any objections due to being dead and so Alxx distributed much of those already developed lands to his men without any problem.

And as for the amount he gave.

Well, as each of these new nobles was a Shordar (Baron), hence per the fiefdom limitation of Adhania set by the royal family, he gifted all his military fiefdom the maximum amount possible, which was 100 sq km.

While most of the civilian retainers got the minimum amount- 80 sq km, including Cambyses.

And the reason for this was obvious.

As Alexander stated. “It is certainly true that the army would certainly not be able to fight without the arms of the civilian industry.”

“But it is even more true that the civilians would not exist without the army.”

“It is the army who fights for us.”

“It is the army who defends us.”

“It is the army who dies for us.”

“And no amount of civilian aid can bring a dead soldier back.”

“So it is only natural they get more benefits.”

Alexander throughout his life would always give the military his top priority, and all his economic output would be with the ultimate goal of strengthening it.

Hence the clear favoritism.

Besides, it was much harder for civilian nobles to rebel than military ones anyway. ．

After all, the pen was not literally mightier than the sword.

So it was an easy choice for Alexander on who to favor more.

While another much more sinister intention was to set the civilian nobles against the military nobles.

With the idea being that if these two groups were to be busy being at each other’s throats, they would be too preoccupied to rebel against him.

It was not a nice thing to do, but a necessary one.

For this type of political machinations was something Alxx had to prepare for even as he was laying the first bricks of his empire.

Hence with Alxx giving around 900 sq km to his closest friends and retainers, Alxx then moved on to get to know the fiefdoms of all his 15 new nobles.

He first located them on maps the nobles bought and then proceeded to learn every little detail there was to them.

Their size, geography, population, tax revenue, trading partners, availability of the amount of fertile land, relation with their neighbors, and a dozen other things.

While also working out the details of their first joint infrastructure development, i.e.- the roads.

This project which seemed quite simple on the surface proved to be quite a headache for everyone involved as Alxx and his nobles were forced to spend almost a whole week just working on that.

The reason for so was because it seemed that Alxx had grossly underestimated the amount of work and planning involved in the endeavor.

First came determining the exact number of routes that would have to be built, as Alxx demanded that not only the nobles be connected to each other, but also to Zanzan.

And since each noble neighboured multiple others, so each fiefdom become sort of a central hub for the roads, spreading out from it like cobwebs.

Then came the question of where to build them.

And a straight line to the next point was not always the right answer.

Because there might be untraversable terrains like deep rivers, steep hills, fjords, marshes, bogs, bandit areas, or even hostile noble territory in the middle or even just close to the proposed routes.

So all these had to be taken into account and then the road redirected to avoid those unfriendly terrain.

While for the rivers, if possible the route would be moved to lead to the swallower parts of the river if possible, as it would make building bridges easier, and if it was not, the bridges would have to be built even atop the deep river without an option.

And speaking of building bridges, that was another part of the problem, because it was not just roads Alxx was building but bridges too.

While another problem was that if the water was so deep and fast that bridges simply could not be built, then there was the further hassle for the logistics crew to cross the river on boats and start building the road from the other side.

Then came planning where these roads would connect with each other if two roads going to the same place met or there was already a pre-existing road so that there was no foolish mistake such as two parallel redundant roads going to the same place.

This was followed by calculating the total estimated length of the proposed road, the total time likely needed to finish it, and lastly the all-important matter of budget.