Necromancer: Kingdom Building with My Legion of Undead Knights-Chapter 12: Territory Status

Darion slept for about an hour and thirty minutes. It wasn’t exactly intentional, he hadn’t entered the room planning to sleep that long, but between the meal sitting heavy in his stomach and the hours he had spent in the graveyard digging up corpses, his body had simply made the decision for him.

When he woke up, he had roughly thirty minutes before he needed to be at the training grounds.

He sat on the edge of the bed, yawning and stretching his arms, thinking about how to address the knights.

He looked young. Too young, probably, for what he was doing, standing in front of a room and telling starving, dying men what was going to happen next. But that was fairly normal in this world. His half-siblings, some of whom he was older than, had been handed far more complex responsibilities than a crumbling barony. Rowan especially.

When his role was mentioned, he had received applause but somewhat grimly. The Nobles had cheered because the role was a good one, one of prestige and honor actually. But it was not for the weak and was seemingly risky. So Rowan being appointed showed how ’supposedly’ strong and powerful he was.

And from the memories Darion had inherited with this body, he recalled that there had once been a king who died leaving only a four-year-old son behind. The boy had been crowned regardless, though it was the king’s wife doing the actual ruling until the child was old enough to lead properly. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

So a young-looking Baron wasn’t exactly unheard of.

’Wish I had kept my beard instead of shaving it,’ Darion thought.

He had been growing a moustache before, but had shaved it regularly: a Bastard with a moustache was the kind of thing people laughed at openly. But from now on, he decided, he was letting it grow. Let the beard come in. Look the part of a Baron, or at least something close to one.

Now, addressing the knights.

As Darion, he wasn’t naturally the most confident speaker. Standing in front of a crowd of starving, weathered men and telling them something worth believing, that wasn’t something that came easily to him. But that was where his former self made the difference. As Julian, back on Earth, he had been well-spoken and composed. The kind of person who could hold a room.

Combined with everything he knew as Darion, he could make this work.

’Can I get an overview of the knights... the kingdom... is that possible?’ he asked the system.

[In a way.] It replied.

’Show me.’

His status screen appeared, but instead of his usual attributes, what came up was this:

[Territory Status – Percvale]

Ruler: Baron Darion

Territory Condition: Declining

Population: 2,148

Military Strength: Very Weak

[Percvale Knight Order]

Total Knights: 121

Knight Commander: Sir Garren

Senior Knights: 12

Battle Knights: 43

Junior Knights: 65

[Military Condition]

Combat Readiness: 41%

Morale: Low

Equipment Quality: Poor

Food Supply: Critical

[Barracks Status]

Structure Condition: Damaged

Available Beds: 200

Current Occupancy: 121

Armor Condition:

• Functional – 38

• Damaged – 57

• Nearly Unusable – 26

Weapon Condition:

• Swords – 89

• Spears – 21

• Shields – 46

[Additional Forces]

Archers: 0

Cavalry: 0

Reserve Militia: 0

[Military Assessment]

Percvale lacks sufficient manpower and resources to defend against large-scale threats.

Immediate risks include:

• Monster incursions

• Bandit attacks

• Territorial invasion

Recommendation: Increase food production or reduce military numbers to prevent collapse.

Darion stroked his beardless chin, staring at the screen.

The idea that they ought to be Archers didn’t even cross his mind until now. Archers were an important part of a medieval kingdom’s battle force and not having any was a loss for the barony.

Now a population of just over two thousand. That sounded like a reasonable number until he held it against the larger picture. Other kingdoms surrounding Percvale could easily have ten thousand warriors alone, never mind their total population. Ten thousand warriors against his one hundred and twenty-one knights wasn’t even a comparison worth making. It was an erasure.

And war wasn’t some distant, abstract possibility either. Percvale was drowning in debt, and according to what Garren had told him, some neighboring kingdoms had already begun making noises about taking pieces of Percvale’s land as repayment. That kind of talk had one natural destination.

The debt itself was its own problem. It had been borrowed by the previous leaders of Percvale, that much was clear. What was equally clear was that none of it had gone toward the people. The land was barren, the knights were starving, the castle had no food and no coins. Whoever had borrowed that money had spent it on themselves and left the consequences for everyone else to live with.

And the people whose land might be seized as payment: the farmers, the families with houses on that ground, they weren’t going to simply hand it over because some distant agreement said they should. They would fight. With rusty swords, with farming tools, with whatever they had. And if they lost, the land would go, and with it, pieces of Percvale itself.

’I’ll have to ask Garren what the previous Barons actually did with the borrowed money,’ Darion thought. The question hadn’t occurred to him when Garren had first laid out the financial situation, he had just absorbed it, accepted it the way he had accepted most things thrown at him. Being reincarnated into this world as a Bastard son of an Emperor. Being exiled to a dying barony with nothing to his name.

He had a habit of just taking things as they were.

It wouldn’t change anything about the debt to know what the money had been spent on. But he wanted to know anyway.

He was still turning it over in his mind, the status screen still hovering silently in front of him, when a quiet knock came at the door.

"M’lord." It was Garren’s voice. "Two hours have passed. The knights are assembled at the training grounds."

Darion stood, dismissed the screen, and walked to the door.