Country of Eruchea, The Wastelands:-

About a month had passed since the start of school.

And if there was anything that Harry had learnt in school, it was that he might be like a one-man army on the battlefield but he was nowhere close to one in the matters of governing a country!

It felt like a miracle that he had been able to drag through almost a year while managing stuff almost all alone! Especially so since Harry was a pretty lazy guy back on Earth.

Basically, the only reason he could manage the country, the army and the school for the past month was that he was literally living off the more expensive energy boosters provided by the system.

These were way more expensive than the one he used back in GDLF since these didn’t have the side effects like the old ones.

He had only recently found out about these when he felt like dying due to overwork.

He had been exploring the system store on his way to his bed when he spotted them.

These were part of the somewhat newly unlocked items that he never saw since the system never informed him.

But after seeing the price, he had decided to set up a governmental structure quickly.

And the only thing that stopped him from doing that immediately was something that would be done today.

Namely, the apparent attack on Eruchea!

Harry felt that this event was pretty close by so he figured that it’d be better to manage things himself until the battle got over.

Once that was done, he’d have ample time to train all the appointed officials in their work.

He did plan on setting up some sort of a pseudo-democracy like structure. Basically like the constitutional monarchy back in France.

That one did fail. But Harry had the confidence that he wouldn’t fail or anything since he had his system.

This was like the basics of System-type Isekai 101.

Systems usually don’t try to kill off their hosts while in other worlds. (Aside from the ones with errors or something.)

And so far, Harry felt it was safe to say that he was like the MC of a series unless it was one of those “different” series where the real MC was some random dude while the OP dude was either the side character or the villain.

So he should have something like plot armour for help if things seem to go South.

‘Well, I ain’t so lucky that I get a helpful system and I’m a part of a novel series!

The only novels I remember reading never have such a helpful system!’, Harry thought to himself as he reminisced about his past life on Etheldor.

He was on the way to his office.

It was a weekend so the school was closed.

But that didn’t mean that so was the country.

He still had to do government stuff.

Just as he reached the door, a system message popped up, almost startling him.

[This is to inform the host that the enemy has almost arrived.

They plan on deploying a smaller group for negotiations.

This system advises the host to prepare for the reception.]

They were almost here!

‘Let’s see…

I told the system to tell me when they are within range of the scouts.

I suppose that the official message should be arriving in a while.’

Harry thought to himself as he stepped into his office.

He was excited to see his country’s first fight.

But he had to act natural. Otherwise, it might look very strange to others.

Well, it was probably going to be less of a “fight” and more of a “lop-sided massacre”...

But that made Harry even more excited. The one thing he loved more than good fight scenes in stories were scenes where the bad guys were single-handedly massacred by the good guys. Or just the characters he didn’t like getting destroyed by the ones he liked.

He wasn’t a huge fan of the good guys winning just because they were good and the bad guys losing just because they were the villains. He wouldn’t go through stories where the really smart and strong bad guy was beaten up by a sissy hero.

And just a little while later, Stephen, his butler, burst into his office with the news.

Harry instantly went into acting mode and pretended to be shocked.

He quickly ordered Stephen to prepare for negotiations.

This much was supposed to be custom in all countries on Etheldor. One couldn’t just attack a country like that with zero prior notice.

They were supposed to either send a letter in advance or send a messenger asking for surrender/negotiations before they could march in with the armies.

Harry himself quickly prepared for the event.

He informed the rest of his family and rushed towards the vehicles.

These were trucks modified to be used by the royals.

Not exactly the best vehicles if one compares with Earth. But they would have to do until Harry could get around to making cars and stuff.

They did have better suspension and softer seats than those cursed carriages though!

These were painted gold and purple and had the trailer region converted into cabins for sitting. 

And these were designed to be somewhat sleeker and smaller than the regular trucks.

But still, they couldn’t be called cars. The engine was too big and consequently so were the rest of the parts.

And so, the drive to the gates of Eruchea started.

The truck Harry was in was followed by two more with the same design.

Basic security protocols that Harry had introduced for future purposes.

He did plan on having cars and security similar to The Beast before he got around to opening Eruchea to other countries.

His vehicles were also closely followed by his bodyguards riding military trucks.

These were 50 soldiers that were selected and trained personally by Harry.

They were about 50% stronger than the best Eruchean soldiers, who were in turn about 50% stronger than the best soldiers of other countries.

Such a group followed every single royal regardless of the strength of the concerned person.

Like, Harry had no real reason to be escorted like this. He could obliterate his entire escort without breaking a sweat.

But it was decided to be the compulsory protocol to be followed when going for official business with foreigners.

Any which ways, Harry finally reached the gates, where tents had been set up with refreshments along with chairs and tables for people to rest.

The quality of the things was purposefully kept low since Harry didn’t plan on revealing anything to others.

Stuff was set up outside and everyone left their vehicles inside.

A few minutes later, the carriage was spotted with an escort of 20 soldiers.

‘The guy really did arrive in a carriage!’, Harry laughed to himself.

He had occasionally bought some live surveillance to look at the army’s travel.

That stuff didn’t come cheap!

But, the funny thing that he found was that the meatball was travelling in a carriage when going to war!

Literally everyone else was riding a horse out in the sun while that guy was sleeping away to glory in his carriage!

And even now, he came in a carriage.

Harry felt sorry for all the people that had to put up with him over the years.

As per the tradition, all the soldiers out in the open knelt down to pay respect to the incoming noble.

Knights were supposed to be the rank that stood right in between a bonafide noble and a commoner.

That’s why both nobles and commoners could become knights.

And that’s also why knights had to pay respect to all nobles.

Internal rankings of knights may vary depending on the ranking of their families.

Like, knights from families of the nobility were naturally given more respect than those who used to be commoners.

But whatever the internal rankings may be, they had to follow the basic army rankings. Pages couldn’t disrespect their seniors and knights had to follow their captain’s orders etc.

The roughness of conversations did change though.

People from lower ranks were treated in a worse manner by their seniors compared to the ones from better families.

So, even though it was compulsory to follow the seniors, the person with a lower ranking may get bullied or even punished if they don’t follow orders properly while if the person was of a high enough rank, they would most probably be let off with a verbal warning.

Coming back, Harry saw the former king exit the carriage.

“This King Harry humbly welcomes former King Wang Tian to his Country of Eruchea!”, announced Harry.

Honestly, he had forgotten the guy’s name.

He had heard his name once in a while early on, but he never bothered remembering.

Harry figured that the guy was greedy enough that they wouldn’t meet if Harry didn’t go looking for him.

He should have been relaxing in some other kingdom, sleeping, spending money and all that regular stuff.

Instead, this guy suddenly decided to attack Eruchea.

Ah well…

“Country of Eruchea! What a wonderful name for the kingdom!”, said Wang Tian when he heard the new name that had been given to his kingdom.

‘Yay! The regular lip service! I just love this stuff! NOT!’, Harry thought to himself.

‘Lemme chuck some more of my own lip service at this meatball!’

“So, Lord Wang, to what do I owe this visit? Especially with such a huge army.

Onlookers might even think that you’ve come to attack my poor country!”, said Harry while feigning a surprised expression.

Harry used somewhat bad acting this time around.

He wanted Wang Tian to know his real thoughts.

‘I mean this much should be obvious right?

Why should I waste my skills if it’s so obvious that he’s come to attack and that I know of his plans?’, Harry was just thinking this when suddenly, “You!!

How can you be so disrespectful to me!?”, shouted Wang Tian while pointing towards Harry.

“Excuse me?

Disrespectful?”

For a second, Harry got pretty confused.

Like, what in the world was this guy saying all of a sudden?

Next, Harry saw as Wang Tian moved forward, grabbed Harry’s hand and punched himself with it.

“You dare hurt me!!”

“DUDE! WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!?

WHY THE HECK ARE YOU ACTING SO CRAZY ALL OF A SUDDEN!?”

Everyone looked very shocked by Wang Tian’s behaviour.

But by this time, Harry had somewhat calmed down.

The moment Wang Tian held his hand, Harry had an inkling of the events that were to follow.

And when it happened exactly as expected, all Harry had to do was give an appropriate reaction.

But before Harry could react any further, the former king jumped backwards, out of his reach.

However, just as he was running back to his carriage, he slipped and injured himself.

And on top of that, he ended up tearing and dirtying his clothes with dirt and the blood from his scraped knee.

“Foolish King!

How dare you not only injure me further but also damage my garments!”

‘Alright! Enough of this dumb nonsense!’

Harry was done with the stupid drama.

“STOP!

MEN! Hold him down!”

Instantly, his bodyguards rushed forward and pinned him to the ground.

The knights accompanying Wang Tian drew their swords to fight back but what could they do.

It took about three soldiers to pin Wang Tian down.

Two stayed back around Harry.

So, it was 45 elite soldiers versus 20 elite knights.

And aside from having double their numbers, the soldiers had more their twice their strength.

It was essentially a 5v1 match if one factored in everything.

About 5 seconds later, all the enemy soldiers were disarmed.

The look of utter disbelief on Wang Tian’s face was priceless!

‘If he’s like this now, what’s he gonna be like once I’m done?’, Harry giggled to himself.

“I get it!

You came here with a friend or something.

And so you shamelessly decided to make it look like I hurt you so that he would take pity and launch an attack against me!

Am I right?”

“Hah!

You can do nothing to save yourselves!

It’s already too late!

No matter what you do, King Qin Tao of the Showa Kingdom will destroy you!”, shouted Wang Tian as he spitted on Harry’s face.

Harry wiped his face with a very annoyed look.

“Oh! So it’s the Showa Kingdom!

Thanks for telling me the king’s name too!

You see, I’m somewhat bad at General Knowledge. Never really paid attention in school.

But keeping that aside, we need to deal with you first!

And I plan on doing that the same way you did. Like a shameless man!

Paint!”

Harry snapped his fingers.

Wang Tian thought he was being shameless by doing that comedy show earlier.

But what he didn’t know was that Harry had his training from the king of shamelessness, Landon Barn!

He had always wanted to pull off that level of shamelessness in front of his enemies.

And a few minutes later, one of the soldiers came back with a few buckets filled with paint, a palette and a few brushes.

“Don’t worry, I won’t waste it by putting it on you!

I just got the paint because I don’t have a camera!”

Yes, honestly, he would have preferred clicking photos. But cameras were a bit out of reach for now.

‘Hey system, you got any painting skill sets that I can buy?’

[There is.

However, this system advises buying the entire advanced arts and crafts set.

The information included in the entire set is only a bit more and even the price is only a little more.]

‘Right! That makes sense. If I want to paint as nicely as I want to currently, I do need a lot of extra skills! Go right ahead!’

[Understood.

5000 SP has been deducted.

Installing knowledge bank.]

This purchase took quite the toll on both his wallet as well as his mind.

The sensation of injecting information was never a pleasant one.

Harry moved in front of the carriage and started painting.

Using his high-speed skills, he painted a large painting of the scene of Wang Tian using Harry’s hand to punch himself within five minutes.

And he did this with photorealistic accuracy.

The winds generated were so much that all the moisture in the paint dried up as he painted.

If not for the protective barrier that the system always put when Harry exceeded certain speeds, everything nearby would have been blown to smithereens.

Next, he picked up Wang Tian and stuffed him into the carriage like he was throwing garbage in the garbage chute.

Once that was done, he ordered all his escorting knights to rush back to their army.

And naturally, all the knights ran with their tails between their legs, taking the carriage along.

Once they had travelled a little, Harry turned to the nearest soldier.

“Okay then, go and get the weapons ready. Our country’s about to have its first fight.”

The soldier gave a short salute and rushed inside.

It was obvious that the battle would happen.

That’s why the military was already assembled nearby with cannons, automated rifles, sniper rifles, grenades and all that gear.

And within two minutes, Harry saw the cannons sitting on top of the walls.

He too proceeded to climb to the top.

They had about 10 minutes before the army would be within range of attack.

Harry had to use these ten minutes.

The thing was that he had received a little mission from the system as an extension of the mission about the defence of Eruchea.

It stated that he had to be careful while attacking.

The only troops he could harm were the ones of Wang Tian.

He couldn’t harm the ones Qin Tian brought.

They would be dealt with by the system. Their memories of this battle would be wiped clean and replaced with something else.

They were supposed to be nice guys, unlike Wang Tian’s group.

Thankfully for Harry, not only were the two groups wearing different armours, making them easily differentiable, they were also largely different in number.

Wang Tian brought like ten thousand soldiers while Qin Tao brought only one thousand.

Now, if they stayed separated, it would be very, very easy to finish the missions.

“And considering how knights were trained and stuff, it was likely that both groups would not mingle. Especially if we announce our intentions beforehand.”, said Harry as he explained the plan to his troops.

He saw the enemy assemble in front of the walls and picked up the megaphone. (It was just a frustum-like cone to amplify voice, not the electronic one.)

“King Qin Tao of Showa Kingdom, this is King of Eruchea!

I request you to stand aside!

We do not wish to harm you or your soldiers.

The ones we fight today are Wang Tian and his soldiers.

I wish that you and your knights do not mingle with them during the battle.”

Harry kept the megaphone down.

His responsibility of telling them was over.

The minor issues and casualties would be taken care of by the system.

A smile appeared on Harry’s face as he spoke.

“Time to paint...”