The Faithguard Army currently had nearly two hundred people, but only a little over a hundred had completed training and formally left their regular jobs to take part in combat.
Expanding recruitment tenfold meant a thousand men.
Castel's entire population was under ten thousand, so having the military account for over 10% was an extremely exaggerated proportion. Put simply, it was close to universal conscription.
Tenfold was also the limit of what the Faithguard Army could sustain. Alexei would break up the original Faithguard Army and use them as the backbone of the new force.
At this recruitment rate, nearly every military-age man in Castel would enter the army, while the rest would have to work in the factories.
Generally speaking, this was the limit of mobilization. Going beyond it would mean dragging in the elderly over fifty or children under sixteen to fill the lines—an extremely inefficient approach. After all, Castel could already be considered an industrial nation... an industrial island. These valuable people would be of little use on the battlefield, but they could still contribute in the factories.
Hearing that number, most people sucked in a breath. They were stunned by Theus's boldness. The Empire had been at war year-round, so the people here had some common sense about warfare. He was staking everything on this!
But it made sense. The seawater was rising without stop. If they could not find a way out soon, everyone would die.
Alexei swallowed hard, forcibly suppressing the excitement in his heart. Northerners had never feared war, and he had spent a long time studying at the Empire's army academy. He possessed an instinctive yearning for the battlefield.
He turned to look at Chloe, and a trace of fervor appeared in both their eyes.
The storm was approaching. Over the next