148: The transformed army

After Arthur put this idea into practice, he tapped the dragon blood secret medicine packaged in a box, and sure enough, a box-shaped item appeared in the Portable Shop!

Tapping the item.

"A secret medicine that can be used with dragon blood to perform Body Tempering on humans, made from several kinds of medicinal herbs and magic plants.

Price: 1 Gold Coin!

Note: One dose of secret medicine can only neutralize one liter of dragon blood."

Arthur looked at the item description, noting that the price was within expectations, and he was already prepared for the note.

Because it was impossible for ten drops of blood to require one dose of secret medicine; that would be too much of a scam.

The specific amount of secret medicine needed depends on the quantity of dragon blood that needs to be neutralized during the soaking process.

For example, when used by ordinary soldiers, one dose of secret medicine neutralizes one liter of dragon blood, which is then diluted a hundred times.

Additionally, if one liter of dragon blood requires one dose of secret medicine for neutralization, then one cubic meter of dragon blood equals one thousand liters of dragon blood.

This means one cubic meter of dragon blood only requires a thousand doses of secret medicine from Arthur’s Portable Shop, which costs one thousand Gold Coins.

Even the six hundred cubic meters of blood from an entire Dragon would only require sixty thousand Gold Coins worth of secret medicine.

Of course, this is the Portable Shop price!

The prices in the Portable Shop are almost always ten times cheaper than in reality, so collecting enough secret medicine to neutralize the blood of an entire Dragon in reality would cost at least six million Gold Coins.

Arthur’s strong army plan, which aims to turn all four and a half million soldiers under his command into Bronze Knights, only requires forty-five cubic meters of dragon blood.

Therefore, regarding the secret medicine, Arthur, who owns the Portable Shop, only needs forty-five thousand Gold Coins.

In this way, calculating the total cost for Arthur to turn all four and a half million soldiers under his command into Bronze Knights...

The combined cost of the dragon blood and secret medicine only amounts to four hundred ninety-five thousand Gold Coins.

For Arthur, who possesses over two billion Gold Coins, this is a piece of cake.

Therefore, he quickly exchanged the corresponding forty-five cubic meters of dragon blood and forty-five thousand doses of secret medicine.

He then arranged for Victor to hand over the dragon blood and secret medicine to the experts summoned within the army, instructing them to complete the strong army plan within one week.

Of course, Arthur would not strengthen the army under his command for free.

Normally, the military pay required to support four and a half million Bronze Knights would crush Arthur financially.

Because one Bronze Knight's monthly military pay is roughly five Gold Coins, four and a half million Bronze Knights would require Arthur to pay twenty-two million Gold Coins per month just in wages.

That amounts to over two hundred million per year, which is roughly equivalent to the Kate Kingdom's annual profit previously.

Even after Arthur's reforms, the Lionheart Kingdom's annual profit could reach at least five hundred million, but two hundred million still takes up half, making it impossible to pay that much military pay.

Therefore, in Arthur's plan, he would have his subordinates in the military first announce to the soldiers that the King possessed a method allowing them to achieve a Bronze Knight Breakthrough.

The price for using this method is that they must serve in the army for twenty years afterward, and their military pay will remain unchanged.

After twenty years, they can decide whether to stay or leave. However, anyone who becomes stronger but refuses to serve for twenty years will be executed without mercy.

Although this condition is relatively harsh, Arthur believes that ninety-nine percent of the soldiers will agree.

Because that is a Bronze Knight, a powerhouse in the eyes of ordinary people!

Even if they are forced to serve in the army for twenty years, regardless of what benefits they gain while serving, they can still live quite well after retiring, relying on their Bronze Knight strength.

It must be known that becoming a Bronze Knight means they can live to be one hundred and twenty years old, virtually free of illness and disaster.

This is because Battle Qi can nourish their bodies!

The average age of people in the army is in their twenties, so even after serving for twenty years, they can still enjoy five or six decades of comfortable life after retiring in their forties.

Therefore, any normal person would agree to this deal.

Moreover, being a Bronze Knight means becoming Transcendent; how could an ordinary person refuse such temptation!

Of course, this condition alone is not enough, as many people join the army out of desperation just to earn a living!

Therefore, Arthur added another condition: if they are unwilling to use the method provided by Arthur to achieve the Bronze Knight Breakthrough.

They will be expelled from the army, because the weak are not worthy of staying.

With this two-pronged approach, Arthur was confident that almost none of those four and a half million soldiers would leave the army!

And the facts were exactly as Arthur expected, or rather, he underestimated the importance of the Bronze Knight status in the hearts of those soldiers!

In the eyes of those soldiers, a Bronze Knight is a powerhouse capable of killing dozens of ordinary soldiers like themselves!

Men admire strength. Upon learning that becoming stronger required no cost other than enduring pain, all the soldiers chose to remain in the army; not a single person left.

Since the army was so numerous, the entire process of soaking in dragon blood to gain strength would take about a week!

Although this time was slightly longer than the three days Arthur allotted for dividing territories among the nobles, it wasn't much longer, and Arthur was willing to wait.

Regarding the nobles, they submitted their chosen territorial boundaries on the very day Arthur announced the new policy!

They then rushed back to their fiefdoms, trying their best to concentrate some of the population and wealth into their new territories.

Meanwhile, the City Lords under Arthur's command obstructed this process at every turn, because the territories being separated by the nobles...

...would later become Arthur's domain, and they couldn't allow Arthur's wealth to be lost.

Due to the obstruction by the City Lords across the land, the nobles' wealth-gathering plans were largely ineffective, and they ultimately had to regretfully cease their efforts.

Additionally, it must be noted here that Arthur allowing the Lords to choose their own territorial boundaries was only aimed at the Great Nobles who were Earls or higher.

For the countless Viscounts and Barons scattered throughout the Lionheart Kingdom, Arthur, for the sake of convenience in management...

...would forcibly unify and centralize their territories.

This process was much more troublesome, and Arthur gave them a deadline of two weeks.

As for whether these Viscounts and Barons would agree, they definitely opposed it at first.

But seeing that the Great Nobles who were Earls or higher had yielded, they could only resign themselves to fate and relocate their assets.

Two weeks later, all the nobles within the Lionheart Kingdom completed their relocation work!

Arthur's Royal Family gained control over more than two additional provinces. The Lionheart Kingdom has a total of six major provinces, and the Royal Family now controls slightly more than four of them.

This demonstrated extreme power!

At the same time, Arthur's army had also completed the dragon blood Body Tempering a week ago, transforming into a formidable force composed entirely of powerhouses who were Bronze Knights or stronger.

But Arthur did not immediately order the transformed army to occupy the Royal Family's new territories.

Instead, he ordered a week of training to allow them to initially familiarize themselves with their rapidly increased strength!

Only then did this formidable army begin to show its fangs, stationing troops across the various territories.