Having temporarily suppressed the toxins in his body, Arthur returned to his office and began dealing with the official business that had piled up over the past two days. Yet every document carried the same bloody words—money, money, money! Dear Your Highness the Prince, please allocate us funds—enough funds!
Money—we lack money!
Provisions—we lack food!
Equipment—we lack arms and weapons!
In the final analysis, Arthur was desperately short of money. Publicly, he had expanded his private army by ten legions. Secretly, however, he had made a decision shocking enough to stun the entire Western Continent: one soldier drafted from every ten people. Even during the most frenzied years of the Hundred-Year Land-Island War, nothing like this had ever happened.
But the direct result of such mad expansion was a shortage of money. Arthur desperately lacked money. He was so poor that he could no longer even pay the wages of the soldiers under his command! Not to mention the food needed to sustain those troops! Not to mention the overwhelming quantity of weapons and armor!
An ordinary saber or longsword, even one of slightly better quality, cost at least one gold coin apiece. Ordinary leather armor, no matter how poor the quality, could not be bought for under three gold coins. As for longbows and crossbows, those were even more expensive goods.
But surely he could not send all his soldiers into battle carrying the worst weapons and wearing the worst armor!
At the very least, they needed refined hundred-forged steel sabers and longswords, which cost no less than five or six gold coins. At the very least, they needed quality ordinary leather armor or ordinary iron armor, which ran to around ten gold coins. And that was only the equipment of the most ordinary soldiers. There were also the