Our Family Has Fallen

”Okay.” Paracelsus agreed without much hesitation, which Lance hadn’t expected.

”I just wanted to get your opinion first...”

Lance tried to appease her, but she cut him off.

”I have no time to waste on such meaningless Potions. I have a mountain of unfinished work.”

Lance knew she was always direct, so he set his worries aside and went to help.

He wielded the scalpel while Paracelsus, freed from her laborious tasks, took notes and made illustrations.

Lance chatted with her about events outside and the medical challenges he encountered while treating the wounded.

The medical staff lacked surgical experience, and the drugs and tools required for surgery were inadequate.

Paracelsus had always shown little interest in these matters, focusing solely on recording the anatomical report.

This wasn’t her Domain. She cared little for matters beyond the secrets of the human body. Furthermore, she couldn’t do much about surgical issues due to the shortage of supplies—a problem she couldn’t resolve quickly.

That was until Lance mentioned the leprosy patients.

”What? Are you confident about that?”

Infectious diseases could be considered plagues. Every plague meant a vast number of deaths and uncontrollable panic.

No one could achieve effective treatment; contracting the disease was tantamount to a death sentence.

This was definitely a ”pearl of the underworld” in medicine; whoever could claim it would undoubtedly leave a bold mark on medical history.

”Don’t worry. You’ve always been part of the medical team. As for whether it can succeed, I believe you will be a witness.”

Didn’t Lance know what this meant to her?

Of course, he knew.

But why bring it up only now?

Because revealing his trump card too early wouldn’t have the same impact. Now, at least, Paracelsus was preoccupied with leprosy. Even if she were truly worried about the Ascension Potion, that concern was now pushed to the back of her mind.

This was equivalent to Grendel intervening in the Ascension Potion matter while also getting Paracelsus involved in the leprosy treatment.

Lance always planned his actions; he wouldn’t have dared to approach her without preparation.

Even with his current strength and status, he couldn’t escape social intricacies. Life was indeed complex this way. However, considering others’ feelings could make them feel pleased and relaxed, which is why everyone liked interacting with people of high emotional intelligence.

If Lance hadn’t repeatedly emphasized that this initiative hadn’t begun yet, Paracelsus might have dropped everything to start researching leprosy.

Lance’s understanding of Flesh allowed him to make precise incisions. With his strength, dissecting the bodies was effortless. Skulls that Paracelsus would need half a day to saw through, he opened as easily as one pops a can.

With his help, the remaining Pigmen were dissected at an unprecedented speed, and sufficient samples were collected.

”Don’t look at me like that. You know how busy I am.”

When the dissection briefly concluded, Lance felt Paracelsus’s burning gaze. It was a look he was all too familiar with—akin to someone discovering a prize workhorse.

Shouldn’t I be the one looking at them like that? How did it turn into them looking at me this way?

Paracelsus knew Lance was telling the truth. She had heard from him how dire the situation in Hamlet was, and now they had provoked the people from Bastia.

Although she hardly cared for such matters, she knew that a Lord’s responsibilities were unlike those of idle noble heirs.

In his previous life, Lance hadn’t been a ”soldier king,” nor even a soldier, and he wasn’t a military enthusiast. His understanding of military matters came merely from a few war games he had played.

So, when building his army, he didn’t simply copy the systems from those games. Copying them would have been useless, as he only had about five hundred soldiers at his command at the time.

Establishing a complicated and cumbersome system then would have been a self-imposed constraint, adding much impractical work and severely hindering the army’s growth and development.

Therefore, he simplified the army’s various ornate ranks and optimized its structure.

He established squads of ten, each with a squad leader.

Fifty soldiers formed a platoon, with a platoon leader and a deputy.

One hundred soldiers formed a company, with a company commander and a deputy.

The basic infantry was organized into four such companies.

Although the artillery and Cavalry units were understaffed, they were established as separate formations.

These six companies constituted Hamlet’s current military structure, and Lance had already planned for future expansion.

He planned to recruit refugees, selecting an initial batch of two hundred. After their training, he would pick outstanding veteran soldiers from other companies to form the core of new companies. This method of pairing veterans with new recruits would ensure the rapid development of combat capability.

New soldiers would also supplement companies understaffed due to reassignments, casualties, or retirements.

Essentially, the training camp could produce a batch of two hundred soldiers monthly, enough to expand one company. This was the advantage of muskets: training was simple, quick, and yielded tangible results.

As long as equipment and logistics kept pace, a Musketeer trained for just one month could kill a Knight.

With a traditional cold-weapon army, one wouldn’t see progress without at least three months of basic training. Knights, furthermore, began their training in childhood and only qualified to wear knightly armor after passing rigorous assessments.