My thoughts finally abruptly ended when the door opened, and my mother came out. She wasn't smiling and quickly said, "Come in and join our discussion," She said and promptly headed back in. It had at least been a couple of hours of me waiting for them, and I wasn't in the best of moods. I was now a little hungry and annoyed from waiting in the hallway.
Still, I was the weakest, with the smallest amount of political clout coming back into the meeting. I walked in behind my mother a moment later to see a chair now waiting for me at the table with the Elders. This was much better news since small things like this usually were meant to invite you into the conversations or bring down your guard to catch you. Since there was nothing to convict me of at this point in time, I doubt it was the latter.
I walked over to the seat, sat down, and looked at the faces of the Elders. I could see some very hidden expressions of anger on the ones that wanted to use me as a breeder. Others seemed uncaring, while some looked thoughtful. It wasn't a large amount of variety this time, and I looked at them, waiting for them to restart the meeting from before after their discussions.
It took a minute for my Father to finally speak up, "So, my daughter, Chelsea," My Father began. "We have discussed while you were out of the room, and we frequently came up with a misunderstanding of what you meant on certain issues."
The fact that he admitted ignorance on the part of the Elders and himself that they didn't understand what I meant made my eyebrows shoot up. It was understandable, though, as the standing army concept was developed over hundreds of years in my previous world. In a world like this, with magic and Mana, it was more complex and would make universalizing the Army even more difficult, impeding the early growth that my previous world had.
I wanted to jump all of that early work and go for a more modern and specialized army bringing various specialties of the other Tribe's races into the picture. The only one that I didn't know what to do with was the Dragonic, as I wasn't sure how their magic and wizards worked. Their wild magic was something of a wish for the more powerful, and I couldn't understand that. To my knowledge, it was remarkably unsuited for a military format, but I never interacted with a Dragonic wizard or combated with them. Yuri was a secretary and didn't use Mana in any real way, making her a non-combatant.
"What misunderstandings do you wish for me to clear?" I asked.
"Honestly," Elder Tyrone said, suddenly jumping in. "We want you to lay out your entire plan and what advantages and disadvantages you feel come from it."
I turned to look at him, and I wanted to sigh. That was a lot, and I looked at the other Elders and saw them nodding. "Fine, Give me a minute to get my thoughts together," I said, and they all nodded again.
I thought about the presentation and what I wanted to do altogether. Whatever I did, I couldn't tell them the ultimate goal was to get rid of the tribal system overall and reform the current government system. I needed to be put in a very high position in this Army if we were going to try. Queen Mira already made it so that I would at the least control a large contingent of the Army and spellcasters just so that we could use the potions. That didn't mean that they wouldn't put someone that didn't understand what I was doing with the formate over me.
I took a breath and centered my thoughts. I looked at them all and wished that I had some experimental divisions and a small squad to show results when doing this. I had to take the shot in the dark before the war to try and save my fellow Bunny-kin or at least increase the chances of success.
"Alright, to start with," I began, "I want to restructure how the Beast-kin Nation fights wars in total. I want to accept all tribes in our nation into a single fighting force that can act as border guards voluntarily." I continued and watched the Elders listening to me before I continued, "In the long term, we can incentivize lower members of society from our own Bunny-kin to even the Rat-kin or the Wolf-kin to join us with knowledge of how to gather and store Mana inside themselves. Show them how to break through the ranks." I saw frowns on their faces as I said that, and I knew it was a hard sale for them now.
I smiled instead of looking like I was caught off guard by their reactions. "Now, I am not saying we start this way from the beginning," I told them, wishing I didn't have to, "But in the long term, we will want the military to entirely volunteer as they will be more motivated to do their best if not forced to do so. This will also help the weak become strong through training and indoctrination while we are starting to bring them up."
"What do you mean indoctrination?" My Father said suddenly, cutting in.
"Indoctrination is the process of changing how a person thinks and reacts to things. We want to do the early training in the Army we create extremely hard and make these people break. It won't matter if they even know what we are doing to them. We make them break down and destroy their mentalities," I told them, and I saw multiple horrified expressions.
"You are advocating Torturing volunteers?!" Elder Tyrone spat out, looking offended, and I wanted to spit in his face.
"Yes, and no," I told him without flinching. "What I want to do, and our nation will want to do, is scrap the previous citizen to their bedrock. Their mentalities at that moment and the previous person they were will not be entirely destroyed, but we will break the useless things we don't need from them. We then incorporate loyalty and need to follow orders into them," I continued, and I saw the Elders much more surprised and interested, "At this time, we will make it so that they learn how far they can go. Make them a group identity with the Army at the heart of it. Make it so that when we tell them to jump into fireball spells and an illusion that should cause them to fear all the way down to their bones. That even then, they will run in and kill under our order."
Silence reigned, and the Elders looked shocked at what I said, "But people like this need to be disciplined. We cannot hold them in the Army forever, so we must make it disciplined strength, and they will hold back their anger and aggression when back in our cities. All of this must be done on every member no matter where they are from society," I began anew, "We make it so that even the rich, poor, Noble, or homeless, if they join the army, they will be NOTHING." I demanded, "They will have nothing, and when they come out, they will be our soldiers. Ready to fight and die in the name of the Beast-kin nation, and that is only the start!" I finished the beginning of my pitch.
"What do you mean the start?" My mother asked, surprised.
"I mean, that will be where we start to create the soldiers. Something of one year of training should be enough for the beginning parts of the training, and from there, we must instill a set of divisions." I told them, and more surprise on their faces. "No point in putting a Wizard specializing in fire magic somewhere they are not needed. They would be terrible for the front line, correct?" I asked.
Nods went around, and I smiled as I knew I was starting to get them on board. "So after all wizards, soldiers, and fighters go through basic training; they will be trained into a specialty. Maybe something like the long-range task force, front-line, or close-range fighters. Down from there, we need to go into the organization of these groups," I told them, and I knew I had their attention.
"I want to fundamentally change how we think of combat by simply throwing our soldiers and tribesmen at the enemy. The more powerful or greater skill the other side has won. That is flawed and only suitable to the A ranked powerhouses that I do not understand." I finished, and I saw nods all around. "But when it comes to us C ranked, and B ranked or lower ranks in the D, E, and F ranks, we are the main attacking power of nations. We are the ones who fight and die most often trying to keep the A ranks out of the battles." more nods happened, and I continued a little slower, "Imagine a B ranker distracted against another weaker undistracted B ranker?" I asked. "The B ranker of lower rank can use C and D ranked members in a group to help give them the advantage in a fight even if they might lose members." I saw hard faces at the cold calculation in my words.
"What I want to create is a squad system." I began to change, "Something like four to twelve members in each squad that has its own leader for their squad. Then we move up to have four squads in a platoon with a leader leading those other four squads. That leader will be in the Lead squad and as responsible for all four of those squads. This leads us to the next force multiplier of a Company. A Company is four platoons with a dedicated leader to that company with support staff. Moving up from there, we will have four companies in what we can call a battalion with its own dedicated leader. Moving up from there, we continue again with four in each as the ranks go up."
I saw a little confusion, and I grinned, "The reason for this system and its benefits is that you will be creating leaders throughout this Army's ranks. So that there is always someone who can lead and create a dedicated circle of military leaders for our nation and filter out those who shouldn't lead our Army." I told them and saw some nods, "That isn't all this does either," I continued and saw their attention quickly refocus as I led them in my pitch. "First, this makes it easier for the higher-ups to order the soldiers and our tribesmen around. We can move leaders around because, with the basic training, they will all be indoctrinated to follow the orders of their superiors without question." I took a deep breath and saw more nods. "There are more benefits even than that," I continued on, "The flexibility this will give our Army doing various things will be immense. We can order a single squad to go out into the dark, and we would already have an entire system to support them. All you would have to do is tell them to go and how many you want to send. Need a company to deploy to the east flank? Suddenly you have four platoons moving with a simple mana message to one person. It will increase our reaction time and ability to deploy more and more people. Do we only need one battalion or maybe two? You can send it with a simple mana message or two to their leaders, and they can dispatch those who are in the best position. They will send their mana messages, and you already have troops moving as they do not have to gather soldiers. They have their squads which should already be tight-knit and used to working with each other, mold into larger groups and ready to go with minimum notice."
Surprise marked their reactions as they were going through what an advantage that would be overall in the long term. "This is all something that will increase our advantages and organization before the war even starts. It will make the soldiers and tribesmen feel close to each other and increase the overall strength into a cohesive whole that we can track and manage. At this point in time, I cannot say how strong the other tribes are at this point. I cannot tell you how many Dragonic members will be joining the Bager-kin or us will be bringing to the war effort." My words made the Elders all frown as they followed every word I said as gold.
"This system will also allow us to gather talent of other tribes and even more benefits in many different ways." I continued selling it to them. "There are almost no downsides that I can think of to this system, although I am sure there are minor ones that exist." I lied, easily glossing over how an Army or military system can uplift those most affected by the current education system. "But they are all completely overlapped with just some of the major improvements to communication and organization that this would bring our nation. Not only that," I said and the Elders looked almost overwhelmed, "We can create multiple branches of this so that we will also have a specialized force for fighting out at sea as well! Different types of combat? Different armies or navies set up to train them and break them down in the proper mindset that type of fighting requires!" I let them settle in as the surprise became complete, and I saw them thinking about what it all could mean. "Last but definitely most important," I said, gathering attention again. "We can go this for logistics and background work so the top like us and A rankers can just ask someone to have the supplies or if we have the supplies ready. We would have a core of members ready to bring supplies to the front, all trained for fighting as well. Attack the backlines? They will not find a weak group of enslaved criminals. Instead, they will be met with a motivated group of soldiers that have been working together and moving supplies with a mindset for bringing those supplies to the front because they know how important they are."
I leaned back in my chair, "That is my basic pitch and what I wanted to test in the most general sense with this coming war. I wanted to experiment and show the results an organization like this could bring if scaled up from what I brought up with Queen Mira." I told them and saw overly shocked faces. "That is right; I am using Queen Mira to show you what a standing military could do for our nation in the long term."
My words sunk in, and silence reigned in the room. "Please," I said at last, breaking an almost ten-minute silence, "Ask your questions, and I will do my best to answer with what I have been thinking of. These are all thoughts in my head, so I may not have answers for all of them. But that should dissuade us from this plan. If we do it, we can think of ways to solve those problems before they become problems." I told them with a large smile.
I looked at each Elder and my Father and Mother. I held their eyes for a moment showing a confident expression that hid the anxiety in my heart that they wouldn't accept this long-term plan. Or that it was already too late for the Beast-kin nation.