Warlord: King of All Clans

Like the members of the Order of the Rose and the Order of the Griffin, most of the members of the Order of the Wind are descendants of small and medium-sized nobles.

The ten Wind Knights who swore allegiance to Leo were basically the same as Knight Solovy, the redundant sons of the Northern Banner Family.

Since they had no family business to inherit, they had no choice but to go out and work hard.

A small number of these Wind Knights returned home to help their brothers rebuild the family business after retirement, while most of them stayed in the territory of the Grand Duke of the North and became Corner Flag Knights loyal to the Grand Duke, but they were also able to give back to their families.

After all, high-end talents are moving to developed regions, and small places cannot retain talents. This is the same in any world.

Knight Solovy is a minority. Apart from helping his brothers or nephews to develop and expand the Petukhov family, he himself has almost no benefits when he returns.

Although Count Freilov immediately gave him a piece of pioneering knight territory, the annual income from this small rural village with a population of 500 was not as high as his salary when serving in the Knights of the Wind.

It can only be said that the Petukhov family does have a good family tradition. The whole family tightened their belts to cultivate an extraordinary person, and the latter did not leave and never come back.

Leo's choice also puzzled many people. Many people did not say it on the surface, but secretly cursed him for being ungrateful.

After becoming the adopted son of the Grand Duke of the North, no one expected that he would not stay by the Grand Duke's side and accept this huge wealth. Instead, he took the retainers and supplies given by the Grand Duke of the North and turned around and returned to his hometown.

If he is valued by the Grand Duke of the North, he may become a powerful figure like the chief or deputy chief of the Knights of the Wind in time.

Also with the Northern Banner, Edward Gladstone of Isembol only had three knighthoods, each with less than 800 people.

Barlow Bridget, the deputy commander of the Knights of the Wind, has ten knight lords, each with more than a thousand men.

The family’s ancestral home is a small town of tens of thousands of people.

In the Bridget family, not counting the powerful outsiders worshipped by the family, there are twelve extraordinary knights with the surname "Bridget" in their names, four of whom serve in the Knights of the Wind.

The number of proletarian knights and heavy-armored elites trained by the family is as high as three digits.

Such a family, if placed in the southern border, would be better than 80% of the viscount and baron families.

What future can I have if I return to the countryside? I will be a local rich man for the rest of my life!

Leo Mondo, who was envied and hated by all the noble children in the Frovald human army, has already started his journey home.

The ten carriages that they brought with them when they set out have now been expanded to twenty, loaded with rewards and spoils.

It was not only a reward from the Grand Duke of the North, but Count Hermann Frylov, the de jure overlord and direct feudal lord of the River Reach, also gave priority to Leo in calculating his military merits and issued rewards as soon as possible.

Because Leo joined the army on behalf of his father and was a substitute knight, according to the northern tradition, all the military exploits he obtained belonged to his father-in-law, Urian Lavard.

As for his own military achievements, unless he received extra rewards like the Grand Duke of the North, he could only ask his father-in-law for it himself.

So Leo also brought back an official title from Count Fruilov's Mansion.

Ulian Lavad was officially promoted to the Knight of the Isenpol Banner, and had the right to form legions and command battlefields in the Isenpol area.

Hekou Town, Hewan Town, and Gravel Castle were promoted from pioneering knight territories to formal knight territories and belonged to the Uliyan family.

A new Fangqi family was born.

The Northern Earl's tendency towards centralization is very obvious. Although he still follows the feudal lord system of the empire, he also retains the traditions of the era of kings.

Not only did they seize the legal right of inheritance to the land and were unwilling to continue distributing hereditary titles, their control over local armed forces was much stricter than in the other two territories.

Ordinary corner flag knights only have the power to lead their own knight retinues in battle. Any attempt to privately recruit other corner flags to carry out military activities is considered an act of rebellion.

Only the square flag knights have the power to form a legion and lead the corner flags to suppress bandits, patrol, quell rebellions, and respond to calls from their lords to fight.

However, the new Count Fruilov never mentioned his loyalty from beginning to end.

With the elven demigod and the Grand Duke of the North backing him, Leo Mundo is no longer a small character that a half-crippled earl like him can look down on with condescension.

His top priority now is to restore the economic order of the main city of Frovald, and to take back the ruling rights of the two cities of Ilanrado and Isenbol from his two younger brothers.

On the way home, Leo looked back at his troops.

Twelve of the fifty Riverbend infantrymen were killed, and nine of the Wildfolk hunters were killed.

Apart from the clearing operations in the Melesi area in the early stages of the war, the Isenpol Corps basically did not participate in frontal combat. However, in just one month of the initial clearing operations, the 3,000-man Isenpol Corps suffered casualties of 1,000 men.

The Rivermen and Wildfolk Hunters were the most elite part of the civilian army of the Isembol Legion, but they still could not escape unscathed when faced with the orcs' axes and the trolls' javelins.

They were already very lucky that they were never dragged to the top of the city wall of Frovald.

Of the Count's main army of 20,000 men, at least 7,000 were killed in less than half a year!

Because the land in the North cannot support so many full-time soldiers, the army in the North takes the elite route. The soldiers in the Earl's main legion are at least regular soldiers, and there are also a large number of armored knights and heavy armored elites.

These armored knights and heavy-armored elites are the core troops carefully trained by the Earl's family, as well as the square flag knights and corner flag knights recruited from all over the country.

This meant that in this battle, almost a quarter of the North’s grassroots backbone forces were lost.

A regular soldier needs to be carefully selected from conscripts and spend three years training.

On average, for every ten regular infantrymen, only one can become strong enough to wear hundreds of pounds of heavy armor to fight and kill the enemy, becoming a qualified heavy armor elite, through extensive training and meat supplementation.

The cost of armored knights is even higher. Not only does it require lengthy training and financial investment, but it also requires at least an estate to support them.

It will take at least ten years to replenish these elite troops lost in the battle!

Of the twenty-six corner flags that Isenbol sent to the battle, thirteen were killed in battle, which was exactly half the death rate. The remaining manor knights, proletarian knights and knights' squires suffered even heavier casualties.

But the rest of the people were very happy. This was a racial war and only half of the officers died.

Moreover, among the thirteen corner flags, five participated in the raid of the Extraordinary Legion and died in the hunting base behind the Orcs.

Leo, on the other hand, was very safe from beginning to end.

He was protected by four Rose Knights, and his own strength was also quite impressive. Ordinary soldiers could not get close to him or break his defense.

A low-level transcendent would be courting death if he came up, and a mid-level transcendent would not be able to kill him quickly if he got close - in fact, under the siege of five elite transcendent knights, the mid-level transcendent had to retreat.

As for the high-level strongmen, the human race has more of them, and there are always corresponding strongmen watching them, so it is not Leo's turn to face them.

The Grand Duke of the North once told him that even a raid on a rear base, let alone a conventional battlefield, would not be a life-or-death situation for him.

Thirty percent of the Extraordinary Legion were killed in the first battle. Most of them were armored knights who charged into battle, or low-level Extraordinary people who broke away from the battle formation in the chaos. Among the one hundred Wind Knights who were the core combat force, only fifteen were killed in the battle.

Leo is protected by the Rose Knight, so the danger level is lower and the probability of death is less than 10%.

In the eyes of the Grand Duke of the North, this is not a war, but a way to gild one's reputation.

But Leo doesn't think so. Using his modern half of the brain, doesn't a 99% survival rate mean certain death?

So he insisted that he was also "a general who died in a hundred battles and a warrior who returned after ten years", and that he had made great contributions to this war, and used this reason to extort three hundred gold coins from the Grand Duke of the North.

The Northern Duke was deeply moved and bought this imperial saying for three hundred gold coins and had it framed in his living room.