Chapter 8

[ x ] It can't be helped, your Battalion would need to be forged in the fires of war once the current training is finished. [Grants the 354th the ability to retain strength while fighting with limited supplies and resources.]

After thinking about it a few days later, you guessed that it was natural that your unit was just as all the other Mage Battalions of the Empire quite limited when it came to the amount of resources that it could ultimately use up in one go, but that was fine all things considered. The 354th was still not fully up to imperial standards but the special training some fields received made more than up for that, so much so that if these fields were measured from one to ten the 354th would gain a seven for both melee combat and the building of fortifications, which would be far over the imperial standards for these fields that you would put somewhere around four or five depending on the current focus of the Empire.

And while the 354th could only reach a four out of ten when it came to the remaining fields that wasn't so terrible when compared to what the Republic was currently fielding, so as long as your Battalion didn't fly directly into one of the Republic's Mage Regiments or a Battalion of their elites things should still work out. Thus, as long as you can somehow manage to keep your men a healthy distance away from those formations they should be able to fight with more or less equal opponents for a bit, which would hopefully come with its own merits and advantages.

At the very least, it was a timely reminder that your unit still lacked the required value to be seen as a proper Mage Battalion in the eyes of the generals and the Fatherland. But if the generals of the Empire could be described with one word it would be rational, so you were absolutely sure that they would see the value in your Battalion once the bullets and shells were flying again. Hence, it was child's play for you to simply push any feelings of irritation aside while you thought about ways to speed things up seeing as a unit judged worthless would be screwed the moment a proper war broke out, which was by now just a matter of time if one looked at the northern border.

The Legadonia Entente even announced what they still seriously called an exercise just on the other side of the border, which reportedly is planned to involve several Infantry Divisions to presumably frighten the Empire out of its own province, as mad as that sounds. You actually thought that the Federation would be the one that teams up with the Republic this time, but that belief of yours was apparently incorrect which was quite fortunate seeing as you and the Empire would take on the Republic and the Entente every day of the week over fighting the Republic and the Federation, that is if the Republic will even back these madmen up with all their warmongering.

Well, one can always hope for the best you guessed, even if you would readily admit that it's quite unlikely that the Empire could so simply destroy its old cage without anyone coming in from the side to interfere again, it was truly just a small hope that everyone in the Fatherland was clinging to, you included. A few months of fighting on a single front would be all that the Empire required to shift the balance of the continent forever which was why the Great Army even existed, to break entire nations.

Even if it was the Entente that was smashed and your Battalion could only watch from the Rhine as others claimed glory for the Fatherland, you would be happy for the Empire from the bottom of your heart, for it would mean that it was done, and the dream would have been achieved. Just thinking about it made teaching your men how to properly conserve supplies a whole lot more delightful, if the dreams of generations gone by could finally be achieved by the sudden incompetence of the Empire's enemies it's perhaps not that bad of a time to be alive after all.

With the continued progress of your troops and your thoughts of a brighter future, your mood was finally improving again from the mess that it was a few days ago, and with it the training was going noticeably smoother. The lessons were now simply flowing over your Battalion, drenching them finally in something you would call genuine competence. They still had their flaws, but they were motivated, they knew how to dig in, and they knew how to butcher the republican scum when they came close, all while only requiring two and a half times as much equipment and supplies as the average infantryman, so things really weren't looking that bleak for you and the 354th all things considered.

Please select the option you like the most:

[ ] Thus, you decided to focus some of your time on further improving their ability to build fortifications, of course less to train and more to ensure that Fallholt is truly safe and secure if things came down to it. [Improves the ability of the 354th to build fortifications and ensures that the Artillery of the 182nd, the 197th and the 168th is properly protected.]

[ ] Thus, you decided to focus some of your time on further improving their ability to defend the spotters stationed in Fallholt seeing as your Battalion would massively depend on how accurate the Artillery ends up being. [Improves the ability of the Artillery to support the 354th when it's fighting near Fallholt.]

[ ] Thus, you decided to focus some of your time on further improving their ability to get near the enemy, seeing as you were the one that proposed that mages should seek to end combat at any price as soon as possible you should lead by example. [Grants the 354th the ability to charge enemy battalions without losing moral when suffering casualties.]