I decided to continue reading it after I paused on chapter 119. I got to 194 and it's subpar. Sure as the author bragginly pointed out, his protagonist isn't a Gary Stu, there is no harem or face slapping, but still the story is dull and amateurish. What's with those names, I don't see much consistency in them you see among tipical names in the same language. Why the hell is author explaining an imaginary board game, I couldn't care less. It just doesn't feel like reading something from an experienced novelist. I loved Tales of The Reincarnated Lord but this... I don't know maybe my taste matured or this ain't as good.
I'm uptodate with MTL raws, so I could spoil some things if you're interested. But without too much spoilers, the MC will be in more battles.
I find it awesome, Sometimes I can see the brilliance I saw in TRL but only here and there. In any case the author said it would be a slower novel than TRL and it is, but it quite reqwarding when things play together.
Spoil away, obviously MC will be in more battles but I care most about him actually doing something like reorganizing the army, making new weapons, kingdom building...
Spoiler: Some spoilers Okay, so he'll show pretty exquisite commanding skills later on. Even becoming a theatre commander for 100-200k troops, in preparation for another war there, which they know is coming within a few years. He goes on the offensive instead and trounces them . That of course sparks another war. On a bigger scale. Where he's not really the theatre commander officially, but all the other generals (5 in total) mostly agree with him due to his troops being the best, the other troops knowing about him and somewhat being led by him earlier and that he's an excellent commander. But, he's also had a hand in inventing a revolver, a bolt-action rifle (those two very limited due to production constraints , ammo supply and costs), some primitive mines, and what's effectively a primitive mortar (the concept's the same, but from what I gather it's something resembling a very small catapult to lobby the shells, not actually a mortar pipe. And everyone else has adapted the mortar in some form or other, so he's up against them as well now. As for kingdom building... he's one of the 5 generals of the overseas colonies, currently fighting to preserve their lands, while their home continent is going through a civil war, where both of the factions had in essence told them to betray the colonies, or in some way betrayed the colonies themselves. So they're pretty cut off. And they've done some things that they would probably be punished for when the civil war is over. And one of the generals did remark while drunk that the MC is the only one of the 5 who could plausibly rebel because 1: Youngest, Best, Most Skillful 2: Highest prestige in the entire army 3: Lacks the awe of the royal family. For the other 4 generals, two are traditionalists & friends, one of them still has their family living near the national capitol, so they would obey their dismissal or punishment. Another is also a traditionalist, but he's willing to speak out about his dissatisfactions and would follow the MC to rebel if MC does rebel. And the last, he's responsible for logistics, so he wouldn't be able to rebel, but if one of the factions wins, he might be able to alleviate the situation, if the other faction wins, out of luck. Basically, they're trying to become selfreliant and selfsupplying to fend off a superpower for the 5th time currently, and the both factions of the civil war have both done something that would be considered treasonous to the nation with that nation, impacting the colonies severely. I'm honestly not sure if there'll ever be actual kingdombuilding per se, but a military government or some sort of representative government might occur.
It sounds like he's building his own country like in Tales while being a subordinate in name only. Makes sense that's he's cut off or otherwise he wouldn't be able to do so.