"Sir, we have formed our first independent unit!"

Just as I was about to depart to Sandomir in order to meet with Jan Bone for the sake of learning how the Senatorial Debate went, a messenger form the mining town came to the castle, shouting his message while waving a thick folder of papers in the air.

"Speak fast!"

With how important that news were, I didn't mind slowing down my departure only to learn more about this matter. After all, if I could know about the progress of this insanely important project of mine in advance, then I would have more chips on the table while talking to the governor!

"The head unit of sixty-four men finished their shooting regime, and are now fully formed and awaiting orders. As for the body of the unit consisting of the one hundred, ninety-five men, divided into squadrons of sixty-five each, they will be ready and armed for orders within three days. As it stands, for now, only the backguard will require another week to fully prepare for combat!"

Just like I remodelled the organisation of the work in my projects, I wasn't willing to use outdated and inefficient military scheme in my own military unit. By mixing the bits of historical knowledge about how modern European and ancient roman military worked, I came up with strange division numbers.

First, came the head unit, Consisting of the best out of the best. Paid double of what the others earned, armed with multiple guns from the main repeating rifle through the personal weapon of the miniature repeating rifle looking like a slightly modified revolver, all the way to a single item that has yet to be produced, hand grenades. 

Divided into eight groups of seven soldiers and a group commander, they would each be tasked with a single task to fill, while capable of working together when a greater problem appeared to be tackled.

As for the body unit, it was the true ma.s.s of the entire small army of mine. With three heads numbering sixty-five people each, it was divided in exactly the same way as the head unit, with the addition of the middle-rank officer coordinating the actions of the entire unit. Compared to the "elites", it could only operate on the head unit scale, prepared to always fight with either sixty-four other men by their side or the entire body of nearly two hundred.

The real fun started with the backyard unit though. Numbering only forty-one, it consisted of the higher officer that would wield the command over the entire small army, with four groups five people each tasked with resupplying each of the head units and another four groups of five always travelling with the rest of the cargo and trained to use improved version of the reaper guns!

"That's good. Go to the castle's kitchen and have a proper meal."

Taking over the detailed report, I quickly scanned it content before stuffing it inside an inner pocket of my kontus. With how I was still in the open, while listening to the general report was acceptable, allowing others to learn the details contained on this paper would be a huge breach in the security of my information!

Because no matter how modern this concept appeared to be for others, espionage was a thing for all the civilised societies ever since the value of information was discovered! Considering how much all my projects relied on the improved schemes of the organisation or improved technology, I knew that if any not-major figure in the commonwealth was on the radar for the spies, then it was me!

Yet with how important that news were to me, I simply ignored everything else, even going as far as grabbing Elia in famed princess-carry and running towards the stables, only to hurry up towards the port where a steam paddler awaited us.

As soon as we finally appeared in more or less espionage-secure shed on top of the paddler, I nearly tore my contus open to grab the report and dig in its details.

Just like expected, the development of the new reaper gun was going great. Just by teaching the craftsmen working in the mining town the modus operandi for the first iteration allowed them to take apart all the mechanisms that made it work and improve every and each one of them.

Exactly as I did with my personal rifle, outside of rifling the barrel to improve both the range and the accuracy along with the heat resistance, the initial uploading system when the magazine would be pa.s.sed from the top to the bottom of the gun was exchanged with a simple mechanism based on the circular loading scheme with all the bullets attached to a special belt locked on said loading mechanism. 

Thanks to this, all the aspects of the firing, from loading through shooting all the way to changing the bullet were based on a single corb, allowing to decrease the number of operators for the gun to just three, with one person aiming, one person operating the corb and one person providing the ammunition belts!

But this wasn't the end of the good news!

According to the report, the recruitment campaign aimed at filling up the ranks to the maximum decided in the budget that I set for this part of my power was going great! Within just this week that I was away from the mining town, nearly a half of the entire determined number of recruits was found, allowing me to bolster the number of the modern troops serving directly under me to three small armies, albeit with two of them still deep in the trenches, learning how to shoot and move around the modern battlefield.

Yet just like this project of mine was taking time, so would all the other actions of my potential enemies. In just a few short weeks, anyone who would dare to cross my bottom line, would have to be ready to face the most modern, perfectly equipped and paid- out army in the world!