The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Adrian wasn’t really in the mood to try and convince them. He knew for a fact that living in Oresfall was infinitely better, even without all of those so-called ’special perks’ that the other nobles gave out. The literal street sweepers in Oresfall were clearly living a better life than these veteran soldiers. So Adrian had no interest in spending any more energy trying to drag them to his side.

"Okay," Adrian said to the small group on the left. "You guys can head over to your lords by the tents and go back to your places."

Then he turned to look at the massive, overwhelming group that had happily stayed behind.

He smiled brightly at them.

"I am incredibly glad that you have chosen Oresfall," Adrian said. "I am only going to tell you one thing right now. Head over to Oresfall immediately and tell the city guards at the gate that I sent you. They will take care of everything. They will give you housing and a job."

He gestured to his own armored men.

"Of course, you will have the choice to either become a farmer, a construction worker, or something else. You can also get drafted into the army if you want, but I will only do that once I get back home. Until then, you can choose the other civilian jobs. Everything will be properly explained to you once you arrive. You will get free food and you will also get very good, consistent wages. There are obviously some perks for becoming a soldier, but choosing not to become one isn’t that big of a deal. You will still live well."

Adrian waved his hand.

"Now, I will send a few of my elite soldiers with you right now. They will safely escort you all the way back to Oresfall. And that is it."

Since it was still early in the morning, Adrian did not really tell the men to sit down and rest. He left a group of around a hundred heavily armored Oresfall soldiers in charge and got them to immediately start marching the new recruits back to his territory.

Just from this single interaction, thousands of men officially joined him. Along with the three thousand men who had first retreated from the battlefield and agreed to be citizens, and adding in the new defectors who had just expressed their interest, Adrian had just instantly absorbed over six thousand new men into Oresfall’s population.

When added to his current civilian base of twenty thousand, this would push Oresfall’s total population up to twenty-six thousand people. That was an extremely crazy rate of expansion for a Barony.

Just thinking about the sheer amount of daily mana those people would dump into the gacha wheel made Adrian smile.

He nodded to himself as he happily watched the massive crowd of people leave the camp.

Then he turned to look at the remaining combat forces.

He had his own elite army of around nine hundred men, and then there was Draven’s force of four thousand. So in total, their combined vanguard was sitting close to seven thousand infantry if he included both frankenstein and the other nobles’ armies.

Adrian turned to look at the nobles who were standing right there next to him.

He locked eyes with Draven.

"The one who has the highest amount of risk here is actually you," Adrian said quietly. "I literally told you that it would be way better if you just acted like you were still on the Emperor’s side. I really don’t understand why you kept insisting on being completely honest in there."

Draven just crossed his massive arms.

"I already told you," Draven rumbled. "That is a knight’s honor. I am not going to go too deep into playing some complicated double agent game for the Emperor. I will openly express who I side with, and I side with you."

Adrian let out a soft sigh.

"Well, if that is how we are doing it, then we will need to get Duke Silas on our side as soon as possible," Adrian muttered. "I mean, I know he will join us, but this is a much more complicated thinnow. You just made everything incredibly annoying, brother Draven."

Draven just chuckled deeply.

"Life isn’t fun if there aren’t any hardships to overcome."

Adrian just shook his head. "Yeah, yeah, sure."

He turned to look at Frankenstein.

"Send a few of your fastest men back to Duke Silas’s territory immediately," Adrian ordered. "Deliver this message directly to him."

Adrian snapped his fingers. A sealed, wax-stamped envelope instantly appeared out of thin air in his hand. He casually handed it over to Frankenstein.

Frankenstein nodded quickly and walked over to his own soldiers.

All of Frankenstein’s men were still currently on site because Adrian didn’t exactly send them over to Oresfall, even though many of them had quietly expressed their interest in defecting. It was mostly because Frankenstein’s army was slightly more well-trained compared to the random peasant militias. It was the exact same situation with Baron Kaldwin’s army too. Their forces stayed back at the camp to keep the numbers high while the untrained peasants were sent away.

Adrian watched as Frankenstein headed over to his commanders.

He let out a soft sigh and looked at Draven and Kaldwin.

"Well, now that all of this is done, I am going to go take some rest," Adrian said. "We will not be fighting the Avarice Kingdom today, and I am pretty sure that the Emperor is going to either attack us for treason, or at least come over here personally to talk. Let’s just wait and see how it goes."

Adrian headed back over to his private tent. He let out a long sigh as he stepped inside, lying down fully clothed on his small cot. He closed his eyes, not to actually sleep, but just to quietly think about his next moves.

Meanwhile, somewhere outside the tent, a few hundred meters away, one specific guy stood awkwardly with the remaining Oresfall army.

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