She had even visited the other two families and had urged the leaders to vacate their positions voluntarily.

If the princess hadn’t come here to target him, he wouldn’t even have paid any attention to her. But now that he was, he could tell how outstanding the woman was. She was an incredibly skilled politician with a focus on efficiency instead of verbose bull**.

In the short time she had been in the city, she had managed to solidify the power structure and had basically designed the entire framework that Byzantium city could follow in the years to come. The new framework she devised incorporated the strength of all the families of the city instead of just the top families.

It was a carefully planned failsafe in case the incident with Hunter family repeated itself. After all, there was a crazy mage capable of causing celestial phenomenon residing in the city.

Under this new framework, the low and mid-tier families focusing on business for their growth formed a top force and could use their combined strength to pressurize the behemoths if a need ever arose.

Zach came to admire the princess a lot. He was surprised that there was such a person in the royal family given that all his experience with the royals came from Prince Kolt who was practically rubbish compared to his other siblings.

The difference was so much that if all the scions of the royal family sat at the same table, Kolt wouldn’t even qualify to share the same room as them.

Zach hadn’t even met this princess yet, but he had already felt the changes her policies had brought in the city. She was efficient and effective but had a very low presence as if she didn’t like to be in the limelight even though she was a princess.

Zach was intrigued but not so much that he would leave everything to go and pay her a visit. He believed that there would be time to do so at a later date and time. For now, he had to focus on building up the strength of his family.

The current strength he wielded was far from enough because the element of surprise he had been relying on so far was no longer available. Every single person in the city knew that he had rained down meteor showers on his enemies and had extinguished the entire Hunter family using a single attack.

There was no one who would dare to underestimate him after that. Therefore, the only enemies he would be facing in the future would be those confident enough to take him on despite knowing his true strength.

And for that, he needed to build up his personal strength and that of his family.

After thoroughly researching all the factors that were and could contribute to his future strength, he discerned that he would need to have an army that was roughly a hundred thousand in number if he wanted to make a stand against any invading force even if it was the royal family.

Zach took everything into account when coming up with this number. This was the maximum number of troops, army, navy and air force combined, that he could support using his technology and the financial resources left behind by the Hunter family for him.

Following the demise of the Hunter family, the royal family had authorized that the lands of the Hunter family would be his territory along with his status elevation. It also included the claim on the businesses that the Hunter family was operating at the time. 𝒃𝒆𝙣𝒐𝒗𝙚𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝒎

He already had a land-based force that he had trained himself and was led by Diana. He had chalked out a plan for the establishment of the naval hub on the island he had chosen far south of Greenland.

It would act as a logistics center for all his trade, a safehouse if he ever needed one, and a naval base for all his deadly maritime monsters from the future. Even a world full of magic could never come close to what he had in his arsenal, and he was assured of its maritime superiority before even building the naval base he had in mind.

But his ambition was far from ordinary. It wasn’t easy converting his hopes to reality especially when he was so lacking in manpower. His followers were few in number as he had never actively recruited any members for his family. He had been hellbent on gathering only loyal and trustworthy people around himself.

The minimum requirement for building a force of a hundred thousand was an even bigger population consisting of people who would be willing to die for the Smith family and would be willing to dedicate their lives and their loyalty to them.

If it was some kind of cheap novel, people would have surely congregated around Zach due to his overflowing charisma. But it was neither a novel nor the world Zach was familiar with. The only one he could trust was himself and the people in his family who had been with him from the very beginning and had made it with him through thick and thin.

Unfortunately, Zach believed in solid and tangible reality that would smack him in the face with truth instead of giving him false hope.

As such, he had become quite pragmatic. He recognized his situation as if from an objective point of view and was painfully aware of the conditions he had to meet in order to realize his vision of building a force capable of confronting and threatening the royal family.

The first and the easiest of those conditions was to find and own a place that was vast enough to accommodate all his loyal followers and the people he intended to lead. It had to be an extremely large tract of land because the population he had in mind was the second biggest hurdle in the development of his force.

The geographical location of the land didn’t matter much since he was planning on occupying a large enough area but it would be extremely helpful if it was by the edge of the sea so he would always have a connection with the ocean.

It would be of use in case they needed to make an emergency escape towards the naval base.

It would also be convenient to have a port in his territory so he would be able to implement an intermodal transportation system using the combination of sea and road.

His businesses would be able to expand further by using his services and it would also be quite economical considering the gigantic size and capacity of a freight ship that could carry several thousand times the load that a fleet of trucks could.

But there was a catch, of course.

He needed at the very least a million followers to realize his plans. Only then would he be able to undertake development projects on a large scale.

He severely needed specialists in every field. He couldn’t keep on pushing his soldiers to do all kinds of civil jobs for him as well just because they were good with technology.

Moreover, only a population of more than a million could enable him to have a force of able men numbering more than a hundred thousand.

Building a force was an extensive project that would require him to take care of the families of the people he was recruiting. Therefore, a population of million might as well have less than three hundred thousand adult men who could be used for his designs.

Lastly, he needed to introduce a better management system than was already in place. Since the size of the current Smith family wasn’t very large, he had been managing things on his own or Diana had been helping him out from time to time.

As a result, the workload was quite low compared to what awaited him if he put his plans into action in future.

A capable manager was worth a thousand workers because he could effectively increase the efficiency of the workplace by a huge margin just based on his capabilities alone.

Zach needed such people to lighten his load so he could focus on directing instead of teaching and managing. Moreover, the businesses he had inherited from the Hunter family thanks to his new status as a Viscount were without any figurehead. He needed some able men to take those positions so as to build a stable source of finance for his group.

A good administrative team could very well build a stable society that wouldn’t need any help from the outside. Zach intended to develop the Smith family towards that line as well. He didn’t want to rely on anyone else. Only by developing based on indigenous methods would the Smith family have less and less weaknesses that the empire could exploit.

But such elites were like stars at noon. They were extremely hard to come by in this backward world. Even if there were such elites, they were heavily reliant on their magical capabilities. They wouldn’t even begin to understand the greatness of technology that Zach had to offer.

As such, Zach initiated a course for all the servants and the warriors of the Smith family. He was going to turn them all into elites and specialists. He was even hoping to develop some managerial talents from among them.

Zach not only trusted these people but was also already sure of their loyalty towards the family. He hoped that these people would form the core of the Smith family in the future and would help him sustain the pressure of managing a large family in the future.