James watched the Collective Energy tick up rapidly as the battle ended. Almost 2000 soldiers died in total, from both sides of the field. This alone had given him nearly 2500 Collective Energy, much to his joy.
And Armin was clearly not done yet, as he had ordered half his men to march into the enemy kingdom, and slaughter anyone they could get their hands on within the next week before returning.
James was both happy with his, and hesitant. He had set a precedent before, that when a lot of people died or were killed, the fertility of the people would increase. And the rulers of the various kingdoms had understood this, or had a vague understanding of the correlation at least.
'This might cause a lot of infighting…' James mused for a while.
'But infighting is good. As long as they can keep the number of Jerries stable by having more children, infighting will improve the cycle of gathering Collective Energy. With more Collective Energy, the population can be increased further. Hmm, but they should not entirely kill out the enemy population. Hmm… this is good,' James nodded as he sent over another revelation to the kings of the various kingdoms, and the tribe leaders of the remains of the once possible kingdom.
Then, he used up the Collective Energy to allow for more children to be born across all the kingdoms.
…
Armin, who was trotting home while planning his next move, froze on the spot for a moment. The guards around him stiffened and pulled out their weapons while encircling their king. Thankfully, the frozen state did not last for too long, as Armin recovered and motioned for everyone to return to how they were with the wave of his gauntlet.
'I can kill as I please, and that would increase the fertility of my people, but I must at least leave behind 20% of the original population in all the places I destroy. 20% is a good figure. It is enough for their kingdom not to collapse completely, but not enough for them to pose a significant danger to my kingdom anytime soon,' Armin quickly came to the conclusion.
After the fighting, and relieving his stress and anger on the enemies, he had entered a period of near complete calm and inner peace, which allowed him to calmly think about actions and their consequences.
"Send word to general Eren, tell him to leave 20% of the population of the kingdom alive," Armin motioned to a messenger, who nodded and turned around.
Unlike normal soldiers in armour of differing kinds, messengers only wore cloth, allowing them incredible freedom of movement, speed, and stamina. This, along with the fact that only the fastest were chosen to become messengers, resulted in a rather fast delivery service for military purposes only.
{AN: Shorter chapter to bring back the 1k words per chapter average}
Word Count: words