After the two men reached an agreement, Ye Wei'an met with Lady Selina in a side chamber of the temple.
When he offered to help clear threats from the territory before he left, the exhausted widow's expression grew complicated.
The Baron was dead, and the new Baron was still young. The entire Barony was without a leader.
She was deeply worried that the neighboring Yeland Family would ignore her brother's warning and hire bandits to harass the territory.
When Ye Wei'an had agreed to let her recruit soldiers and horses, she had also worried that if he took too many troops with him, she might have to surrender some of the territory's interests to Raymond Yelland just to get a chance to recover.
Now Ye Wei'an was volunteering to help. To her, it was like a gift arriving in her hour of need.
"Since you're willing to lend a hand, I have no reason to refuse." Selina sighed, showing a rare trace of sincerity. "Ye Wei'an, perhaps I misjudged you before. You have more of an elder brother's sense of responsibility than I thought."
As Selina nodded, Ye Wei'an could only sneer inwardly.
As expected, no matter how shrewd she was, she was still a woman who rarely left home and whose world was confined to noble society.
She had no idea who was really behind the gangs raiding the trade routes.
On the border, smuggling and banditry were two sides of the same coin. Considering the map, he could easily conclude that Amarisk's smuggling operation was most likely working with the Zhentarim.
In other words, most of the "bandits" in Hurek Forest were actually her own people.
Without an official Baron's orders, even as the son of the Baron of the Xiaxing Family, Ye Wei'an couldn't simply sweep through and exterminate those bandits.
After all, bandits didn't wear nameplates. If you claimed you'd wiped out bandits, who could prove it?
In the Eastern Marches, only the local lord and the Purple Dragon Legion under the March Warden could decide who counted as a bandit.
And the March Warden's position was held by the Amarisk Family.
If he took it upon himself to suppress the bandits, he would be practically handing Earl Wafred a pretext to use against him.
Earl Wafred was already unhappy that Ye Wei'an had taken a share of the two hundred thousand gold coins in inheritance. If the March Warden accused him of raiding a caravan and decided to punish him, Ye Wei'an would have no way to defend himself.
But now, Lady Selina, the Baron's mother, had personally issued the order. That changed everything.
In the borderlands, orders issued by the local lord were legally beyond the Purple Dragon Legion's jurisdiction.
Ye Wei'an had received his orders, so of course he would clear out the bandits suspected of belonging to the Yeland Family for his little brother's sake.
Whether he happened to hit a few other bandits along the way was beyond his control.
Of course, making trouble for the Amarisk Family and getting back at Earl Wafred were only part of his aims.
This expedition had three other benefits.
First and foremost, it would showcase his command ability. He wanted the knights and soldiers to see for themselves how he led troops in battle and believe he could lead them to carve out a place for themselves in the frontier.
Second, it would give his troops experience. Ordinary soldiers wouldn't be enough to establish a foothold in the dangerous Pioneer Territory. Ye Wei'an wanted to train an elite force.
With the Companion System, the fastest way to train soldiers was to kill monsters and gain experience. The easiest way to gain a lot of experience was to suppress bandits.
Finally, there was the chance to take from the thieves.
As a smuggling partner of the Amarisk Family, the Zhentarim were bound to have plenty of valuable contraband.
Criminal organizations like them never got involved in low-profit businesses.
The recruitment drive that followed proved Morey's prediction almost exactly.
Every recruiting station was packed with people.
When Ye Wei'an promised to provide settlers on his new land with fields, farm tools, and seeds, all of Firefall Territory was stirred.
Farmers who had worked the land in Firefall Territory their whole lives without owning an inch of it, and younger sons with no hope of inheriting the family estate, surged toward the recruiting stations like a tide.
At the same time, recruiting artisans and skilled workers went exceptionally well.
His reputation in Firefall Town helped: blacksmith apprentices, carpenters, cobblers, brewers, clerks, engineers... Many townspeople from Firefall Town willingly joined his ranks.
A few unusual figures also appeared in the crowd.
They were all informants who had given testimony in the "Gray Crow" case. Though Ye Wei'an had pardoned them, their reputations in town were ruined, and their neighbors shunned them.
Just as he had promised, Ye Wei'an took them in and gave them the chance to start over in his new territory.
To make up for the shortage of laborers, Ye Wei'an even took Gray Crow's thugs out of the castle dungeon.
Cormyr law strictly prohibited slavery, but where there was a policy, there was always a workaround.
Many merchants, nobles, and criminal gangs saddled people with enormous debts and made them "debt slaves."
These criminals had met the same fate.
Ye Wei'an sentenced them to hefty fines and personally offered to "pay" them on their behalf.
In return, the prisoners had to sign harsh contracts with him. Officially, they were "contract laborers"; in reality, they were slaves.
Recruiting soldiers and knights, on the other hand, went poorly.
Aside from loyal confidants like Volodya and the more than twenty soldiers who had followed Ye Wei'an from the beginning, few came forward.
And most of those who did were soldiers who knew Cain and the others.
After three full days of recruiting, Ye Wei'an had only managed to assemble a force of around forty.
But that didn't mean Ye Wei'an had failed.
His reputation for "rewarding and punishing fairly" was making a difference, and Grand Knight Morey's standing in the army had piqued many people's interest in the expedition.
"I hear Lord Ye Wei'an's going to wipe out those scum in the forest?"
"Come on, let's see! If he really has what it takes, we can follow him into the wilderness and earn some military merit. That's better than staying in Firefall Valley and putting up with that Amarisk woman."
This attitude was common among veterans and knights.
They weren't ready to swear allegiance, but they were willing to follow Ye Wei'an's orders for the time being.
Together, they made up another force of around forty men.
Morey had originally suggested leading the expedition himself. After all, the eighty-strong ragtag force was made up of a complicated mix of people. Without someone capable of keeping them in line, they could easily fall apart in the forest.
At the heart of it, he was still worried about Ye Wei'an's ability to lead troops.
But Ye Wei'an refused.
"Sir Morey, recruiting and preparing supplies are the most important tasks. I need to take Lina with me on this expedition, so I can only leave you here to keep things under control," Ye Wei'an explained.
"I'll obey your orders." Morey couldn't go against his lord, however uneasy he felt, so he agreed. Then he found Volodya. "You brat, remember to protect the lord and your sister. If anything happens, don't come back to face me!"
Volodya bowed and accepted the order.
The force of eighty had assembled on the training ground.
This hastily assembled fighting force included thirty soldiers with only [Lv.1 Militia], thirty [Lv.1 Fighters], and more than ten [Lv.1 Rogues].
The backbone of the force was made up of seven or eight Lv.2 Fighters and Rogues, assigned as junior officers.
As for the strongest fighters, besides Volodya and Cain, there were four knights ([Lv.3 Fighters]).
Although their stats were a little lower than Cain's and Volodya's according to the system, their wealth of battle experience made them well suited to middle-ranking command roles.
Ye Wei'an had never received military training and barely knew most of them.
So he divided the army into three groups.
Cain led the first group, consisting mainly of his old subordinates and the soldiers who had joined because of their influence—nearly forty men in all.
Ye Wei'an also assigned two Lv.3 knights as his deputies.
Volodya led the second group, made up of the soldiers who had volunteered for the bandit-suppression expedition.
These men didn't have as much faith in Ye Wei'an. To keep them from ignoring orders and disrupting his tactics, he had to put Volodya in charge.
In practice, he was relying on the influence of the Grand Knight's son.
Ye Wei'an also assigned two Lv.3 knights as Volodya's deputies.
The remaining Rogues formed a scout unit, led by Ye Wei'an himself, with Caleb, an Lv.2 Rogue, as his deputy.
Morey watched from the side, his brows twitching.
Normally, a lord stayed at the center of a heavily guarded formation—especially when the commander was a frail spellcaster.
Yet Ye Wei'an intended to lead the scouts and take the vanguard.
He wanted to ask his daughter Lina to talk the lord out of it, but she refused.
"Lord Ye Wei'an has his own plans. We just need to trust him."
With even his daughter saying that, what else could Morey do?
Before you continue