Chương 104: The Enemy Approaches

Li Qinwu led his primary host, systemically sweeping through one estate after another according to the map of rural manors confiscated from the Governor's Manor. The gentry landlords and their private retainers fell beneath the long spears of the Goblin recruits, turning into raw experience points that forged one Hobgoblin after another.

Although Li Qinwu orchestrated this purely to grind military tiers, the swinging of blades and the tumbling of aristocratic heads shattered long-standing shackles, allowing the winds of freedom to sweep through Poloia anyway. Each time the monstrous host marched past a manor, pulling out the deeply rooted bloodsuckers and their lackeys, the serfs truly did obtain their freedom.

As the militia flung open the granaries to distribute grain, the serfs fell to their knees, weeping and loudly praising the blessings of the Goddess of Life. The militia soldiers firmly corrected them: "No! It is not the Goddess of Life. It is the Union!" The grand name of the Union reverberated across the territories surrounding Poloia. The serfs, long suppressed by the gentry and landlords, began to stir once more, sending a wave of absolute panic through the remaining elites.

Driven by sheer desperation, they abandoned their farmlands for the time being, retreating behind the thick stone walls of the regional lords' castles and locking the gates. Until Count Fischer's punitive crusade arrived, they would absolutely not emerge from their protective turtle shells. Li Qinwu spent over half a month conducting his sweeping campaigns.

The batches of Goblin recruits cycling through his immediate party rotated several times, and the Hobgoblins he successfully trained were now numerous enough to form an entire regiment. He rotated these newly minted Hobgoblins back to the barracks for standard military training and took in a fresh cluster of 1, 000 Goblin recruits, intending to sustain his leveling cycle. However, with the gentry and landlords barricaded inside fortified castles, Li Qinwu found himself with no wandering targets left to hunt.

Left with no other alternative, he ordered his artillery units out of the city to begin hammering the lords' fortresses. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Following a thunderous barrage of cannon fire, the grand gates of a fortress located west of Poloia were blasted wide open. The Goblin musketeers let out fierce roars as they surged through the breach.

They aimed their firearms directly at the enemies' legs and abdomens, blowing them flat onto the dirt, while Li Qinwu seized the openings to push his system recruits forward into the melee to harvest experience and level up. Through this extensive period of level grinding, Li Qinwu had deduced a rough benchmark: every Goblin recruit needed to personally eliminate three to four enemies to trigger a promotion.

Consequently, he issued a strict command to his system troops: during each deployment, they had to personally finish off exactly four enemies, then immediately withdraw from the castle. Operating precisely according to Li Qinwu's parameters, the system recruits surged inside for a frantic burst of slaughter, then pulled back out of the fortress gates under the cover of the veterans.

Following this, Li Qinwu led his system troops a safe distance away until the system designated them as having successfully disengaged from combat, triggering the battle evaluation interface. He then clicked the upgrade option, transforming the entirety of the recruits into Hobgoblins, rotated them out of his party, recruited a fresh batch, and charged back into the castle once more.

The regional lord inside the fortress had fallen into absolute despair when his walls were first breached, but seeing the enemy mysteriously withdraw, a spark of hope ignited within him once more. Yet, just as he attempted to rally his forces to seal the broken gateway, the monsters would surge back inside with bloodcurdling shrieks, completely scattering his newly assembled lines. The psychological whiplash left him entirely overwrought.

"We surrender! We surrender!!" the lord shrieked from atop the ramparts. Li Qinwu leveled his musket and blew the man's head apart on the spot.

"Surrender my foot! We don't accept surrenders. Kill them all!!" A brand-new batch of 110 recruits charged into the fortress, initiating a fresh cycle of slaughter. After enduring three separate iterations of these revolving assaults, every single defender inside the castle was wiped out, yielding Li Qinwu a grand total of 345 Hobgoblins in a single campaign. Li Qinwu led his men deeper into the fortress to set up camp, prepare rations, and take inventory of the spoils.

A dying landlord writhing on the cobblestones spat a venomous curse toward him.

"You filthy Goblins! Revel in your arrogance while you can! Bask in your conceit! Before long, Lord Fischer's grand crusade will ground you into dust! They will slaughter every single monster and every last rebellious serf together! Hahahahahahaha!!" Li Qinwu didn't grant him so much as a glance as he strode past toward the lord's audience chamber. Walking closely behind him, Gobu Bow casually leveled his firearm and blew the man's head apart, silencing the laughter instantly.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Entering the grand hall, Li Qinwu seated himself upon the lord's ornate throne, sinking into deep contemplation. This fortress marked the tenth stronghold he had brought down. Before the raw destructive power of cannons and gunpowder, the lords' fortified castles were exceptionally fragile, reduced to nothing more than glorified experience packs.

Yet, things had reached their limit; every last bandit, gentry landlord, and regional lord in the surrounding jurisdiction had been thoroughly wiped out. He had nowhere left to grind experience. Through the execution of so many regional lords, Li Qinwu had also confirmed a critical piece of intelligence: a powerful Great Count named Fischer had successfully organized a massive coalition army numbering 80, 000 men, poised to launch a grand offensive against Poloia in just over a month.

This was a massive problem that gave Li Qinwu a profound headache. He began to thoroughly audit his available forces: Elite Firearms Units: 900 men Artillery: 4 pieces Cavalry: 20 riders Hobgoblin Units: 2, 500 men (the direct yield of his recent campaigns, all outfitted with heavy plate armor, capable of forming a solid 2, 500-man heavy infantry force). Because they were trained through live-fire combat, their actual combat effectiveness was exceptionally formidable. Goblin Recruits (In Training): 3, 000 men.

They currently possessed very little combat capability, but if drilled intensely for a month before the enemy arrived, they could barely be dragged to the front lines to hold the line. Goblins (Awaiting Incubation): Roughly 2, 000 expected. By the time the enemy arrived, these Goblins would have just barely transitioned into adulthood, likely possessing close to zero combat capability.

This meant that even if Li Qinwu dragged the literal Goblin hatchlings onto the front lines, he could barely muster a force of 10, 000 men. Pitting 10, 000 against 80, 000—to be perfectly honest, he lacked confidence. Yet, if he chose to retreat, he couldn't stomach the loss. The twelve massive granaries inside the city walls were bursting with grain; this was grain originally stockpiled by Poloia in preparation for the kingdom's broader war efforts.

If he could fully consume those stores, it would be more than enough to produce a staggering 100, 000 Goblins! Li Qinwu's ideal blueprint had been to entrench himself in Poloia for six months to a year—breeding hatchlings, training troops, and steadily consuming the grain supplies. For every 1, 000 soldiers he successfully trained, he would have them carry a portion of the grain back to the Union's sovereign territory, where the domestic leadership would integrate them into local production.

Before those colonies achieved agricultural self-sufficiency, the grain they carried would sustain their consumption. By funneling population back to the Union territory in continuous cycles of 1, 000, the Union would secure a massive demographic surge, leaping directly onto an entirely new tier of power. Unfortunately, the trajectory of worldly events never shifted based on individual desires. The enemy had arrived to crash the party. Li Qinwu felt a wave of profound frustration.

He had scavenged every single large piece of livestock across the Poloia jurisdiction, accumulating nearly 2, 000 head. The number of Goblins incubated over a month hovered between 3, 000 and 3, 500, but this figure was currently showing a downward trend. Because his desperate need for population had forced him to disregard the physical limits of the livestock, continuous breeding cycles had resulted in a massive mortality rate among the animals.

His capacity to convert inanimate grain into living, breathing Goblins was bottlenecked by his lack of reproductive vessels.

"My Lord, dinner is served." Amid Li Qinwu's mounting headache, Gobu Spear entered carrying a massive silver platter, placing it respectfully before him. Upon the silver dish lay a thick pork chop, several pieces of toasted bread, and a generous portion of seasonal vegetables. Gobu Spear poured Li Qinwu a large goblet of red wine, then cautiously retreated from the grand hall, closing the double doors behind him without making a single sound.

Having served Li Qinwu for so long, he knew perfectly well that his leader must never be disturbed when lost in deep thought, for the Boss was currently calculating the very future of the Union. Li Qinwu stared down at the exceptionally lavish dinner before him, his fingers slowly curling into a tight fist.

"I cannot retreat! A golden opportunity like this will never present itself again!"

"The outside world is currently engulfed in a massive war, and the primary regular forces of Halyun Province have been deployed to foreign fronts. If I fail to digest the fruits of this victory now, the Kingdom of Thasos will eventually stabilize its lines, recall its regular armies to reinforce the domestic front, and make it absolutely impossible for me to ever fight my way back here!"

"Following this campaign, the Union has officially entered the vision of the Kingdom of Thasos. The kingdom will realize that the Monster Forest is by no means a passive wilderness; it harbors a force capable of threatening their very sovereignty. The Kingdom of Thasos will inevitably mobilize a massive regular army to crush us!"

"The Union's domestic development has hit a severe bottleneck. If I cannot consume this grain to secure a sufficient population baseline now, when the Kingdom of Thasos's main army eventually marches upon us, the Union will have absolutely no forces to resist them!"

Li Qinwu suddenly arrived at a stark realization: if he failed to absorb this grain to aggressively fortify his own strength right now, within the next year or two, when the Kingdom of Thasos recalled its regular legions from the frontline to launch a domestic suppression campaign against the Union, the Union would face the very real threat of total annihilation!

"There is no turning back! Retreating now means a slow death in the future anyway! I must fight a decisive, life-or-death battle against the enemy. If we win, we secure the future of the Union and completely establish a permanent, unshakable foothold within the Monster Forest!" Li Qinwu completely steeled his resolve to wage this war. Although the enemy's 80, 000-strong crusade advanced with terrifying momentum, fortunately, he possessed the Mount & Blade system.

He still had just over a month's time; by utilizing the system to deploy his chess pieces in advance, he could accomplish a great many things!