Hero

Three days later, on the great plains barely a dozen kilometers from Yar'kilantir, the armies of the Kingdom and the Empire finally began forming their ranks.

The highly professional Empire fielded an army of sixty thousand.

Thirty thousand were traditional infantry, twenty thousand cavalry. The remaining five thousand Royal Guard and five thousand Musketeers were the true main force of this war.

By contrast, although the kingdom had a total of two hundred thousand people participating in the war, fewer than thirty thousand were actual professional soldiers. The rest were either temporarily conscripted farmers or private noble armies with no guarantee of combat effectiveness whatsoever.

After all, the defining feature of the feudal system was that the King could not interfere in the specific affairs within each noble's territory.

Moreover, Allen had recently purged a large number of nobles and their private armies, resulting in a shortage of junior and mid-level officers. Their overall organizational structure had been left several streets behind their opponent's.

Some units, lacking effective command, had already fallen into chaos before the battle even began. The soldiers had no idea what they were supposed to do.

"What an ugly sight! No wonder you wanted to launch a massive purge against this country's ruling class. They're rotten to the core." Sakura watched the Kingdom's army and offered her assessment.

Just as the girl said, compared to the Empire, which had completed centralization and was now bursting with vitality, the Kingdom was like an elderly man in his twilight years, unable even to coordinate his limbs.

The royal family, as the supreme leadership, had especially long since lost the authority necessary to rule.

Allen smiled, shrugged, and said, "The saying that one thrives in hardship and dies in comfort could not be more fitting for the Kingdom of