It had been a few days after my unofficial birthday when the first of our corvette-class ships left the shipyards. The first batch of patrol ships arrived at Avalon's harbour with the grinning Terion and his wife on board.

"That explains why you were absent from the ceremony." I smiled back once he stepped down from the closest ship.

"We are sorry, my Lord!" Pyonta tried to curtsy but I raised my hand and stopped her.

"You don't have to bow to us, Pyonta. Unless you are better at least." I quickly said. "Verka won't stop talking about your pregnancy and how she will be a godmother. When she finally told us about the problems and what the healers told you, though she should have started from it, by the way, she won't stop asking Irene to grant you a miracle to protect you and your child. Even though Irene agreed immediately..."

We all looked at the brightly smiling goddess in question who had quietly manifested right behind her Prophet.

"What?" She grinned, making me sigh heavily. "All right! My bad. But technically, I told you everything in one breath so..."

"It was a shockingly deep breath then." Hestia laughed and hugged the woman. "May my blessings stay with you and your family."

"Thank you, my Lady." Pyonta smiled as a soft blue light glowed and particles danced around her and her husband.

She had finally but reluctantly, accepted that there wasn't much point in protesting when we, the Royal Family of Arcadia, decided to do something. In their case, we insisted that both of them drop any honorifics and be informal when we are alone. While it was easier for Pyonta, her husband used honorifics instinctively. When Hestia let go of the woman, Pyonta was covered in golden light.

"Done," Irene said as she opened her hands, which she had put together in a prayer. "You should be safe, but be sure you don't overwork yourself. Rest as much as you can, Pyonta."

"Thank you so much, my Lady." Pyonta smiled brightly and put her hands on her barely raised belly. "But there is so much to do..."

"I will take care of everything, my Dear," John said confidently. "You must rest."

"See? Then let's go rest in the gardens while the boys are doing their stuff." Verka grinned and once she put her hand on Pyonta's shoulder, she gently tugged the woman towards the waiting Royal Carriage.

Once the girls left us, I exchanged gazes with the governor of Northern Everlight and smiled. "Before everything else, congratulations, John."

"Thank you, my Lord." He blushed slightly but smiled. "We didn't expect to be blessed so soon..."

He fell silent and looked at me with a blank stare of someone nervous and shocked.

"Life always has its own plans." I laughed and fraternally patted his shoulder. "There's still plenty of time so stop worrying that much."

"I'll do my best, my Lord..." He shook his head and took a deep breath.

"I'll give you something to distract yourself then." I put my hands on my hips and looked at the newest patrol ships. "You can start by telling me about the corvettes. I see a few changes..."

"Ah, yes!" He beamed a smile and switched his gaze to the ships. "After a long discussion, we modified the armour alloy and weapon systems. Simply put, we decided to take a far more affordable and reasonable approach."

We boarded the closest ship and I took a closer look at its armour steel plating. The very delicate blue shine made it apparent that it had orichalcum added to the steel instead of mithril. Or they were mainly made of orichalcum, because here and there I, still, clearly saw more greenish-blue tones which clearly indicated some adamant and mithril remained.

"Ok, I give up. What have you done with the armour?" I asked with curiosity, ignoring the more obvious changes for now.

"As you clearly noticed, my Lord, we decided to mainly use orichalcum and adamantium steel alloys instead of using mithril-based alloys. The reason for it was trivial... We can produce orichalcum alloys ten times and adamantium alloys five times faster than any mithril alloy. We also have much more adamantium at our disposal than mithril and the tendency won't change in the foreseeable future." He explained calmly and patted the ship's railing with a thoughtful expression. "We are going to need all the mithril we can get to upgrade the hulls of Dauntless, Valiant and, not to mention, building the third dreadnought. Frankly, using it on corvettes would be simply wasteful."

"Hmmm..." I considered his opinion for a moment. I was ready to disregard it, but I quickly realised that I still tend to think about the Navy as purely a waterborne force. "Elaborate."

"At first, we thought about corvettes as a versatile patrol-escort craft that could be used as border patrol and policing craft, a ship that could be used as part of the fleet. But we quickly realised the last is obsolete." Now I looked at him with attention. Corvettes were exactly what he just described and discarded as obsolete. "Corvettes are too small for fitting them with the propulsion that would keep up with the capital ships and while they, in theory, can outrun destroyers, they wouldn't be able to keep the speeds in the long run. They were also too small for jump drives which would, additionally, slow down the fleet. Any additional minute wasted gathering mana to teleport the whole battle group can, in theory, mean the difference between victory and defeat. All capital ships can jump on their own and corvettes won't be able to do that unless we make them big enough for the jump drive."

"Then they are, basically, small frigates or pocket destroyers..." I nodded in agreement. "Go on."

"Thank you, my Lord." He nodded as we approached the gun emplacement. "That brings us to the weapons. Again, installing bigger cannons requires more mana to power them, and that would mean installing more reactors, which we don't have space for if we want to stay compact. Also, bigger guns require bigger turrets, which again defeats the point... Still, we are confident that we have taken the best possible approach. My team, once again, consulted Navy personnel and the Admiral's Office extensively and we concluded that corvettes would be a logistical problem if introduced as intended. The first draft was logical, but as the ship moved closer to production, we realised a few things. The Arcadian Fleets don't need a dedicated escort ship but we desperately need the border patrol crafts."

"And why did the Admirality decide we don't need the dedicated escort ship?" I crossed my arms and raised my eyebrow.

"All capital ships are capable of deploying CB-90s. As you know, my Lord, at the same time as developing corvettes, we worked on the gunship craft." He said, and I smiled, recalling how I watched the young inventors who worked on the concept. "The craft is ready but we haven't named them yet... I mean both the corvette and the gunship don't have official designations yet. Anyway, a destroyer can deploy up to four gunships at a time and up to twelve Dragon Riders. Frigates can deploy even six gunships and twelve Dragon Riders at a minimum. Dreadnoughts can deploy twelve gunships and at least thirty Dragon Riders..."

"Hmmm... But gunships and Dragon Riders are less armoured and certainly lighter armed than the corvettes."

"To be fair, the difference is negligible and, no matter how we look at it, we can easily increase the number of deployed gunships, which are dirt cheap and fast to build compared to even corvettes. Also, a larger number of smaller crafts increases the versatility of the fleet."

I nodded and suppressed an irritated sigh. Of course... CB-90 and the newest gunships were the equivalent of the helicopters and fighter crafts. Of course, they were going to replace some theoretically better ships thanks to their more universal role. I was only surprised that my people recognised their potential so early. It was another lesson in humility for me. I smiled at him and nodded in approval.

"I should have spared more time on confronting real needs with ideas throughout the planning phase. I'm glad and pleased that you noticed that before the ships entered service." I complimented him, earning his wide and proud smile. "However, you should have directly notified me earlier about the problems."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Lady Aoi decided that it wasn't worth bothering you, my Lord, with the technicalities. She confirmed the design only if the changed ship's designation and more extensive use of the gunships wouldn't interfere with your plans."

I closed my eyes and quickly found Aoi's report notifying me about it resurfacing in my memory as if it had always been there. My knowledge absorption was incredibly useful but sometimes it was awkward. The more reports circulated, the fewer things I was aware of until I needed them and, actually, searched through the vast library of things stored in my mind, waiting for my attention. Aoi did a great job solving that matter, and she spent a lot of time digging through the Palace's secret library, where I kept most of the knowledge of Earth. There she found information about the Blue Water Navy and the aircraft carriers of the twenty and twenty-first centuries.

"Very well." I nodded. Frankly, it was just a minor organisational detail that was, in fact, within her competence to decide. I smiled proudly. "So you decided that corvettes wouldn't need the toughest armour we could provide and you changed the main cannons' calibre as well."

"Yes, my Lord!" He quickly nodded and tapped the turret armour. "The most popular cannon used by our ships is the eight metre long, 155mm cannon that offers excellent range, precision, and power. It's the same cannon used by our Crusader self-propelled howitzers, with the only difference being a much better fire rate and delivered power thanks to the ship's reactors. But... We don't need such cannons on the corvettes. If our corvettes were to really destroy an enemy ship, they would use missiles anyway. Installing such big cannons on them would be impractical. That's why we lowered the calibre of the corvette's main gun to 100mm, keeping a balance between the power, range, and fire rate it provides in the compact sizes."

"Hmmm... In terms of power, it's probably still enough to destroy most of the ships corvettes would face. It was also a logical change once the corvettes were not considered as vital parts of the fleet composition..." I nodded. "What about the rest of the systems?"

"The best we could fit in, my Lord." He quickly confirmed what I wanted to hear. "We installed the best radars and detection systems we could. Those ships are as good as the rest of the fleet in terms of detection and identification of any potential threat. Any savings on those systems would defeat the purpose of the corvettes as patrol ships."

"Excellent." I nodded with satisfaction. "How big a crew do they need to operate?"

"The skeleton crew is just fifteen people. Normally, it will facilitate twenty sailors, four officers, four Mages who operate various systems, and sixteen Marines. Marines will also serve as pilots for the assault craft and gunships." He explained proudly.

"What's the estimated mission time between the resupply?"

"Up to half a year." He smiled.

"Very well. It's always better to have more than enough supplies than to have short legs..." I hummed as we visited each section.

The ship was very practical and, as I delved deeper into its documentation, it became obvious that design changes only helped the project. Narrowing the ship's role to a patrol ship, didn't exclude it from being capable of the escort role. However, focusing only on the main aspect where we really needed corvettes was a good move. The project itself was refined in every aspect, keeping the most reasonable balance between crew size, mission time, and, most importantly, offence and defence systems.

"So how long will it take your shipyards to build these ships?" I asked as I took the ship's plans.

"About two months in emergency mode, my Lord. Normally, it should take half a year to build them properly and, without any mistakes, that might happen now. But, thanks to their sizes, we can build fifteen ships at once... Though, we won't have enough resources to keep up with production."

"We don't have to build them continuously..." I shrugged. "Another twenty of them would free up most of the remaining destroyers that are currently patrolling the central Arcadia and provinces. I realise that we should have at least one hundred of them but, realistically, we need about twenty, maybe twenty-five for now. Then we could focus on expanding the fleets and maybe introducing new ship classes. I'm aware that only our dreadnoughts are built to last. Every other ship is going to break down sooner rather than later when we have to build them this quickly."

"That shouldn't be a problem, my Lord!" John smiled as we stepped off the ship and gave it to its newest crew. "The first ten ships are ready to deploy the moment their crews board them. The next fifteen corvettes' keels were laid down before we embarked to Avalon."

"Excellent." I nodded. "Since we brought up construction mistakes and subsequent failures... Do we know what happened with HMS Falcata during the last mission?"

"We... We aren't sure. There were a lot of stress points that shouldn't have come out so early in the ship's usage, but they weren't anywhere near critical." He very slowly shook his head in denial. "We triple checked the reactor that failed and its systems. Then we checked the second reactor, the procedures, and cross-questioned the crew about the accident. There was nothing concerning in their testimonies or strained in the structure to the point where it could fail the way it failed. Nonetheless, we replaced Falcata's reactors and cooling system to be safe. But, I guess, it was indeed a failure caused by their rushed production."

"Hmmm... I hate inconclusive investigations."

"I don't believe anyone likes them..." He smiled apologetically.

I sighed as I teleported us to the Gardens where our wives and Verka were lying on the grass or sitting on swivelling garden chairs. They laughed and discussed a very interesting topic, judging by their slightly flushed cheeks and raised voices. It was good to see them happy.

"Thank you, my Lord." He whispered with a warm smile, watching his wife lying on the soft garden bed and talking happily about something we couldn't hear.

"What for, exactly?" I shot him a surprised gaze and sat on the garden sofa. I pointed him to an empty chair where he sat with an awkward expression.

"Everything, I guess?" He forced a smile and sighed heavily. "But mostly for all the opportunities you gave us and the peace we enjoy." He raised his hand to stop my sarcastic remark that was, indeed, incoming, and smiled more softly. "I know that we are at war but what does it mean for the common people of Arcadia? More information about the war effort in newspapers, some resource shortages, and an increased amount of hunting and gathering quests at the Adventurers Guild. Yes... War stories are circulating and some rumours are spreading, but that's it. For us, people who learnt to hide at the very sound of the word war, this is... wrong. Wrong and wonderful at the same time! The Guardsmen are protecting our cities and towns, and some of them even see the enemy... But we are not bleeding and dying in our wars."

"You're welcome." I chuckled, but then I shrugged. "I wonder how long it will take for them to stop thinking it's not their concern at all..."

"I suppose not that long..." He sighed heavily as he looked at me with shock that quickly turned into guilt. "But I'm still grateful for everything, my Lord."

I mulled over what he said and smiled. He relaxed seeing it and I took a drink from the tray held by one of my Slime Butlers. He took one as well and smiled afterwards.

"In my opinion, there are enough soldiers who will never forget the true face of war and who will, inevitably, keep the people aware of how lucky they are..."

"We will see... People tend to have a very short memory and quickly take comforts for granted..." I said and took a sip of a cold and refreshing drink. There was a subtle hint of alcohol in it, but it wasn't a strong drink. Perfect for the occasion, I guess.

He grimly nodded and stayed quiet for a longer while. "I will make sure that at least my child knows how much we owe you and the Empresses, my Lord."

•••

Islur Tawal Ebrus looked at his reflection in the mirror and fixed his student attire with shaking hands. Behind him, in the large common room of the Ebrusian Embassy, timidly waited twenty young people in similar uniforms and faces permanently fixed with shocked and excited expressions. They were overwhelmed by Avalon in the same way he was when he saw the capital of Arcadia for the first time. He smiled, remembering their eagerness once he offered them to join him. They were still excited but also anxious...

He also chuckled, remembering the meeting with his father.

After they returned home, his father spent a few hours talking with Goddesses Arletta and Minister Tyklas. After that discussion, he spent another few hours talking just with him. With a great deal of surprise, Islur realised that he didn't see his father as the most powerful figure in the world, as he used to, before his expedition and meeting with Emperor Theon Avalon. In comparison to that powerful man, his father was old and frail. But, that unexpectedly changed Islur. He saw his father as someone exceptional and strong, as someone who loved him and their people.

"I've decided that you will attend the Royal University of Arcadia, my Son." He said with a slightly worried voice, as if he expected Islur to disobey or protest. But now Islur knew better.

"Thank you, Father." He warmly smiled, surprising his father completely. "I assume there will be others who will go with me?"

"I... Yes. I don't know how many can go but..." The old king was confused but happy.

"I will take care of it, Father! You don't have to bother yourself with it." Islur honestly smiled and slammed his fist on his chest. "I know exactly who should go with me!"

"You... You do?" King Sawal Talos Ebrus gave his son an incredulous gaze.

"Indeed! There are some very talented apprentices of our Royal Scholars, whose education in Arcadia will benefit our Kingdom! I believe that we could squeeze one or two inheritors out of the grand houses, but I'm not sure if they would benefit from the lessons we were offered... Well, I can ask them if anyone is interested but I'm sure most of them will pass."

Sawal looked at the young man in front of him, blinking furiously and barely recognising his son. He felt tears of pride welling in his eyes.

"You changed, Islur... I needed much more time to realise what you have realised." The King said as he stood up from his throne and grabbed the Prince in his iron hug. "I can only hope that your further presence in Arcadia will help you grow even further..."

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