Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 538: Increasing the Number of Knights
Standing on the high platform, looking down at the new knights who were about to be awarded the medals, Perfect felt happy.

The allegiance of the new knights is a happy thing for any noble lord, even for an unconventional lord like Perfect.

Moreover, compared with the oath of allegiance of these new knights, what is more gratifying for Perfectot is that she has achieved some initial results in her research on the artifact.

Her previous research results on the artifact brooch were encouraging. Based on the principle of deploying a shield using the divine gem inlaid on the brooch, she combined it with the technology analyzed from the base and integrated it into a small personal shield that could be activated autonomously.

This was the knight's medal that she had previously issued to all official knights of the White Bear Knights. While it symbolized their identity as White Bear Knights, it was also a powerful personal protective item.

This medal can even be inlaid on a special base plate and then installed on the steam knight armor to become a shield for the armor.

Of course, so far Perfect has only awarded the Knight's Medal, allowing the official knights of the White Bear Knights to have a personal protective item.

As for how to install it on the Steam Knight armor, Perfect has no plans to make this technology public at the moment.

Although he was thinking about various things in his mind, Perfecto showed no expression on his face. He just put the knight's medals on the chests of these young knights with a smile of appreciation on his face. It became the first honor in their lives.

Among these young knights, there was one who seemed particularly excited. When Perfectoct awarded him the medal, his body was even shaking with excitement.

Perfect was not surprised by this. With her current status, reputation and position, it was not uncommon for young men to wet their pants with excitement when seeing her. The fact that this young man was just trembling all over was already a minor thing.

However, considering that this might be the first time in his life that he experienced such an important moment, and if he messed up, the boy might never forgive himself for the rest of his life, Perfectcot decided to let him relax a little.

So she asked, "What's your name?"

"My lord, my name is Mitch, Mitch Fischer, the son of a worker." Mitch told Perfectcot his name loudly. He was not ashamed of coming from a working-class family.

On the contrary, he felt extremely proud and honored that he was able to grow from a child of a working-class family to a White Bear Knight.

This was particularly evident when he was arguing with those knight apprentices of noble birth about bloodline and identity. After all, Mitch had become an apprentice knight and now an official knight.

And this is the most vulnerable point for those knight apprentices who come from noble families. The family's cultivation and training since childhood have allowed them to embark on the path of becoming knights much earlier than ordinary people, but they are still no match for a guy from a working-class family, who has only received three years of knight training in total.

All I can say is that some people are truly gifted.

"Son of a worker? Then you are really excellent, young man." Perficot raised his eyebrows when he heard Mitch introduce his identity: "The Brandelis family is also a knight family. I know clearly that if you want to become a knight, you need to start training from childhood. They need to learn all kinds of noble etiquette and military knowledge, and at the same time hone their martial arts and physique.

As a worker's child, you certainly didn't have these conditions when you were young. I believe you must have put in a lot of effort to become a formal knight earlier than those noble knight apprentices."

As Perfect said this, he took the medal of knighthood from the attendant beside him, and put it on Mitch's chest, who had already puffed out his chest. Then he patted his shoulder and said, "So I believe you will not tarnish your honor, nor will you let your efforts go to waste! Work hard, young man. I look forward to the next time I award you the medal, you can tell me loudly what kind of merits you have achieved."

After that, Perfect returned to the stage, and Mitch shouted loudly: "For the North, everything for Brandelis!"

The other knights also shouted along. This has become the battle cry of the White Bear Knights now. They have become more and more fond of shouting this battle cry when fighting.

Perfect didn't mind this. After all, the White Bear Knights were her exclusive knights, and there was nothing wrong with dedicating everything to Brandlis.

"Very good, very spirited! I look forward to you making more contributions to the North!" Perfect also responded to his knight.

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After leaving the awarding ceremony, Perfect returned to his lord's mansion.

As soon as she returned to the manor, a servant reported that Princess Anne was waiting for her in the office and had been waiting for a while.

Perfect frowned slightly, not knowing what Princess Anne wanted to see him about, but he guessed that there was some trouble again.

Perfecto frowned, only because she didn't like being involved in trouble, not because she had any problem with Princess Anne.

Recently, the construction of the new city of Belloberg is in full swing. Princess Anne encountered many problems when presiding over and coordinating the construction work. Some of them she could solve by herself, but for some of them she could only ask Perfect for help.

After all, this is in the North, and what could be better to solve the problem in the North than asking the Northern Earl for help?

But this is not in line with Perfectcot's purpose of training and cultivating Princess Anne's ability to govern, so Perfectcot has been avoiding Princess Anne whenever possible during this period of time, and only helped her when he really couldn't bring himself to do so.

Although as the future empress of the empire, Princess Anne does not need to be very capable in doing things, asking her to do these things is just to let her have a general understanding of these things and become familiar with the relevant procedures.

So that if you encounter similar things in the future, you will not be deceived by the nobles and bureaucrats of the empire.

Princess Anne also understood this, so she took every task very seriously at the beginning.

But after her first visit to Perfectcot because of an engineering project that she couldn't handle and the problem was solved perfectly, Princess Anne's dependence on Perfectcot has been increasing. There has even been a voice that Perfectcot should inherit the throne since she also has the right of inheritance.

However, for Perfect, she was too lazy to care about these. Why didn't she go back to the laboratory to do new research instead of wasting time arguing with a group of imperial insects?
But no matter what, she had to meet Princess Anne. As for the things the princess asked him to do, Perfectcott would help her as usual. If he could, he would help her. If he couldn't, there was nothing he could do.

"Aunt Anne, what do you want to talk to me about?" Perfecto returned to the office and greeted Princess Anne.

Although Perfect avoided Princess Anne somewhat, she would not neglect any of the necessary etiquette.

"You went to award medals to the new members of the White Bear Knights? I heard that you expanded your own order of knights, so you must be referring to the White Bear Knights, right?" Princess Anne looked at Perfect with a sad face and told her the purpose of her visit.

Although the White Bear Knights are Perfect's private armed forces, as an armed force, if the attention aroused by Perfect, the inventor of the Steam Knight, crosses a certain line, the White Bear Knights will be the first to be noticed.

Princess Anne came to see Perfectocote at this time because she was concerned about this matter.

"Yes, I expanded the current size of the White Bear Knights, increasing the number of members from 120 to 180." Perfectcot did not hide anything and readily admitted what he had done.

As for why any little disturbance in the North can attract so much attention, it is actually easy to understand. After all, the entire empire now has close relations with the North. If something really happens, there will soon be news surrounding Perfectot, not to mention that this is a formal addition of sixty people to the steam knight establishment.

If this power were placed in the Old World, it would be enough to influence the rise and fall and honor of a country. If Perfect was ambitious, he could try some tricks.

This change in power naturally attracted the attention of various forces in the North.

The emergence of Princess Anne is based on this. All forces that are friendly to the North and Perfectcot do not want any conflicts to occur between the North and the center of the empire, and naturally hope that the two can always be close.

However, such a large-scale change in the composition of the armed forces is a major event with far-reaching impacts not only for the North itself, but also for others.

But for Perfect herself, this was just the shortest way to solve the problem using the power she had when she felt that the number of White Bear Knights was no longer enough.

"You can completely form a new knightly order, why do you want to strengthen the White Bear Knights? The size of 180 people may be a bit bloated for a knightly order." Princess Anne's words were full of well-intentioned reminders, hoping to persuade Perfectcot to reduce the impact of this matter.

The size of a knightly order is clearly recorded and regulated in many places.

For example, according to the rules and standards, a knightly order should have ten flags, and each flag is composed of about 8-12 formal knights.

Usually a flag team will also add about 4-6 knight apprentices, who will follow the formal knights to learn how to become a real knight.

This is not only the rules passed down from ancient times to the present by the profession of knight, but also a more specific regulation of the Victoria Empire on the knight military system.

So in general, although a knightly order will generally not be fully staffed due to various reasons, the combat strength of at least a hundred people can still be guaranteed.

When it comes to the White Bear Knights, the number of White Bear Knights was about eighty at the beginning, and the rest were basically all knight apprentices or trainee knights.

Afterwards, the White Bear Knights received some care and entered a stage of development. Eventually, the size of the White Bear Knights was fixed at 120 official knights.

Although there are people such as knight squires or servants, these are obviously not counted in the scope of knight's combat effectiveness, not to mention that Perfect is obviously increasing the number of steam knights.

What Perfectcott had done before was to expand the White Bear Knights' original 120-man official knight establishment, adding half of the official knight quota, which was six newly formed flag teams.

In fact, many people and forces are aware of the fact that Perfect has a large number of Steam Knights.

After all, Perfect didn't hide anything when using the Autonomous Knight.

Almost everyone knows that in addition to the two knight orders, Perfecto can also bring out hundreds of autonomous knights at any time.

Obviously, it's not that no one has suggested limiting the size of the armed forces controlled by Perfect. After all, if hundreds of autonomous knights really fight, they might be able to directly inflict heavy damage on a knight order that is also equipped with steam knight armor.

However, the Autonomous Knight is ultimately still an alchemical puppet that needs to be commanded and controlled by someone. There is no essential difference between it and the alchemical puppets that Perfectcot had made in the past.

Coupled with the lobbying of some people with ulterior motives, a considerable number of people did not pay too much attention to this, and just regarded these as Perfectcot's toys, thinking that there was a gap in combat power between them and real knights.

But the increase in the number of real knights is a completely different concept, which usually means the formation of a whole new class.

So this time, Perfect increased the number of official knights of the White Bear Knights, which immediately attracted attention from all parties, even though Perfect had already had the factory produce more than two hundred autonomous knights before.

"To me, 180 people are just enough. If it is according to my idea, the White Bear Knights should be expanded to a thousand people." Perfect responded to Princess Anne's euphemistic persuasion half-jokingly, and then put forward his own reasons: "The North is in a troubled time now. If we only talk about combat power, I can take out autonomous knights at any time. This force is enough to destroy a city and a country.

But the Self-Discipline Knights cannot handle more complex problems, so I need to increase the number of White Bear Knights and let them handle various problems for me."

"Then you can just set up a new order of knights, right? It's not like the Empire won't approve your establishment, so why do you have to do this?" Princess Anne still didn't want the matter to get too awkward, so she found a reasonable explanation for Perfectot.

However, Perfect refused directly and said firmly: "The people in the North only recognize the White Bear Knight. Only the White Bear Knight can be my representative."

(End of this chapter)