After swallowing the fifteenth beast core Caesar had finally gained 1% towards the evolution progress. Caesar sat down and his bed and pondered "It seems that I need to get purer beast cores, but how? the king"s resources are too limited"Caesar walked over to the chest filled with beast cores and stashed them inside of his spatial ring, "I can use these for the knights I am training" he thought inwardly as he got in bed and closed his eyes.
Caesar opened his eyes and saw darkness everywhere, he stood up and looked around but saw nothing. "Is this a dream?" He wondered, suddenly in front of him four roads appeared. They were red, black, white, and grey respectively. In front of each road was a stone tablet that had words etched on to it.
The red tablet said "I am the n.o.blest, but most feared"
The black tablet said "I hold the most authority, but am the weakest"
The white tablet said "I am the most loved, but the darkest"
The grey tabled said "I am only second to one, but my emotions rule me"
Caesar rubbed his chin in contemplation, "what is the meaning of the four different paths? Could they be tied into the physique evolution? If so this is the first time it has given me a hint at what the evolutions are"
Suddenly the words on the tablets disappeared and four different whispers invaded Caesar"s ears.
"Choose one" a n.o.ble voice
"Choose wisely" an old voice
"Choose me" a sweet voice
"Choose the one" a ragged voice
Caesar"s wanted to move but his body would not listen, the blood in his body was boiling in excitement. Suddenly Caesar opened his eyelids and saw a familiar ceiling, he sat up from his bed and held his forehead with his hand.
"Sigh"
Caesar let out a long sigh and got up to get dressed. Caesar choose to wear a suit that had a white b.u.t.ton-up shirt under a grey suit jacket that had black b.u.t.tons on both sides, grey and thin formal trousers and a red bow tie along with tall black boots. he didn"t want to look casual when training his knights. Caesar walked out of his room and headed towards the dining room.
Caesar was the first one to the dining table so he decided to sit down and wait for the others, "I wonder what I could do to enhance the defenses of this kingdom" Caesar contemplated while waiting for his family to arrive.
About 10 minutes later Sebastian walked through the door with plates of food in his hand, seeing Caesar already sitting at the table Sebastian"s eyes flashed with surprise "It is unusual for you to be up so early young master"
"I had trouble sleeping last night" Caesar replied smiling wryly
"Ah, I see. Your father should be back tomorrow" Sebastian said as he started placing the plates of food at the dining table.
"That"s good news, will he be back tomorrow night or in the morning?"
"I don"t know the specifics but it should be around evening"
Sebastian finished setting the table and walked upstairs to wake everyone else up, soon the rest came down the stairs and sat at the dinner table. They all enjoyed a grand breakfast, once Caesar was done eating he stood up and headed towards the door.
"I will be back in the evening, I have important things to do"
Sebastian called out from behind him "make sure you wear a coat, it"s getting quite cold as of late"
Caesar nodded and put on a crimson coat, he was quite fond of the crimson color lately.
"Creak"
Caesar walked out the manor and headed towards his carriage. After stepping in his carriage Caesar opened the front window "Head towards the training grounds" The carriage driver nodded his head and the carriage started moving forward.
Inside the Carriage, Caesar looked outside the window and took note of the foggy atmosphere "how strange, yesterday it was very clear" Caesar thought silently. Caesar didn"t think too much of it and rested while in the carriage.
About thirty minutes later the carriage arrived at the training grounds, The knights that had already arrived and begun training stopped moving and looked over… The knights seeing that same looking carriage all felt as though their souls fell out of their bodies.
Caesar stepped out of the carriage and yelled "LINE UP!" The knights scrambled towards Caesars location and lined up. After the last person lined up, Caesar opened his mouth "Today we are going to form 5 different groups with equal numbers, after each day the groups will compete with each other and the winner will get a reward from me"
The knights looked at each other with excitement in their eyes "A reward from the marshall? It has got to be amazing right?" The knights immediately started forming groups. In about 10 minutes all five of the groups were created, seeing this Caesar smiled and said: "I want each group to elect one leader, that person will arrange your positions"
The knight"s once again bustled about and finally, a leader for each group was chosen, Caesar smiled slyly. "Great, we will now start training, we will start with endurance training and end the day with sword/spear practice"
"To start off, I want you to run 21 laps…. With your armor of course"
The knight"s hearing this felt as though the sky was falling down and begrudgingly started running, after about 10 laps some knights were falling behind. Seeing this Caesar stepped forward and roared "The last 10 knights will get a punishment from me personally"
As if those in the last place gained 2 more legs they started running extraordinarily fast, once they caught up with those that were ahead of them, they started running faster as well. This continued until everyone was running with their life on the line.
About 45 minutes later all of the knights dropped down to the ground dead tired… Caesar approached them and applauded, "wow! You guys nearly all finished in a tie." Caesar than showed a sad expression "too bad I didn"t get to punish anyone this time, hopefully, next time"
All of the knights showed determined expressions and thought: "we will never let you!"
"You guys managed to finish the 21 laps twice as fast compared to last time, I"m shocked… now we will start sparring, I want all five groups to split up and have a mock battle against each other. This is just a test, the real battle will be later tonight"
"Yes sir!" the knight"s roared in response
The five groups soon separated from each other and started getting in fighting positions, before they started Caesar walked in the middle of the fighting grounds with a few large carts full of wooden swords. "There are about 2500 swords in these carts, come to pick your weapon"s up 1 group at a time"
The first group soon came and grabbed their swords, their expressions were filled with shock as they held the swords "s-so heavy?" Caesar smiled deviously and said "they are about three times as heavy as your normal swords, they will temper your muscles"
The Knights showed faces of agony as they wielded their swords and walked back to their respective positions. Once all five groups got their swords Caesar clapped and roared.
"We will have no dirty play or you will get a punishment by me, we will also have all 5 groups face each other at the same time creating a battle where the danger lies on all sides…. BEGIN!"
The knight"s started rushing at each other and facing off, about 1 hour later the victor was decided "congratulation group 1, you have won the first mock battle" Group 1 roared in response.
"Yeahh!"
"We did it!"
*snap*
Caesar snapped and huge pots full of stew were brought out by some chef"s, Caesar smiled towards all of the knight"s "Eat slowly, you need to feed the muscles you have overworked"
"Sweeet!"
The Knights rushed over to the food and all got large helpings, they started gulping down the food like no tomorrow, their muscles that were spasming due to overwork were now calming down.
"Oh my G.o.d it feels like my stomach is burning"
"What the h.e.l.l is this feeling?"
The knight"s felt as though something was dissolving in their stomachs, this of course was diluted parts of a beast core, Caesar had mixed a beast core in the stew prior. Caesar soon smiled towards the knight"s "don"t worry, it is nothing harmful"
The knights all looked at Caesar with doubt "You rea.s.suring us makes us more convinced you put something in here" They all thought inwardly but didn"t dare to voice it out.
After everyone ate Caesar soon began their next training… "To digest your food we need to run a bit more right? run 10 more laps"
"Y-you monster!" The knights all thought as they started running, every time they looked at Caesar"s smile they felt chills run up their spine and they started running faster. Soon all of the knights were once again finished running.
"Gasp"
As the knights were gasping for breath Caesar walked over and clapped his hands, "it"s time for the battle… The penalty for the losing groups will be to personally train with me, the reward will naturally be to not train with me"
"Y-you monster! It"s practically a lose-lose situation" the Knight"s all thought to themselves as they looked at the enemy groups with killing intent.
"BEGIN!"
At Caesars call the knight"s all rushed forward and engaged in an intense battle, after about an hour of battling. "Congratulations group 3, you do not need to train with me. You may go home" The knight"s in group three all smiled with glee and looked at the others with disdain as they ran away.
All the knights looked at their backs with hatred "tomorrow we are all going to attack you first" they thought inwardly.
Caesar"s footsteps brought them all back from their thoughts, Caesar had picked up two of the heavy swords and walked towards them with a sly smile "now then, shall we punish the losers"
"Mama I miss you"
"G.o.d save my soul"
"Tell my family I love them"
Screams could be heard from the training grounds for an hour or so before they finally stopped… Caesar looked at all of the troops twitching on the grounds with pained expressions with a smile. "Meet here at the same time tomorrow, you are all dismissed" The Knights didn"t even have enough energy to respond before Caesar had already gotten on his carriage and drove away.
Caesar opened the front window and said, "go towards Danny"s workshop, I"m curious as to how much progress they have made" The carriage driver nodded and changed directions.
Caesar closed the window and thought to himself "this carriage driver is truly a man of few words, well no matter" The carriage moved slowly through the foggy roads until it finally reached Danny"s workshop.
Caesar hopped off the carriage and approached the workshop, Caesar opened the door and saw Danny with red eyes giggling… Caesar walked towards Danny and the rest of the engineers and asked: "how is the progress?"
Danny looked up and saw Caesar first surprise flashed in his eyes then excitement, "m-mephesto We have created quite a few of these crossbow"s and I must say they are excellent. Danny handed Caesar one of the crossbows with trembling hands.
Caesar grabbed the crossbow and inspected it "this is quite nice Danny, I"m impressed" Caesar took one of the arrows already prepared on Danny"s desk and loaded the crossbow, Caesar aimed at a nearby wall and pulled the trigger.
"Whish"
The arrow flew through the wall and penetrated a nearby tree, Caesar nodded with satisfaction "this is good, I want you to ma.s.s produce these crossbows for the upcoming battle"
"Y-yes Mephesto, however, I was wondering if there were any other inventions you could let me create," Danny said with a very eager expression and stars in his eyes
Caesar stroked his chin in contemplation "hmmm… I can bring you something new in a week from now, but first I want you to prioritize the crossbow and ballista" Caesar said with a smile….
"Okay Master Mephesto, I will make sure not to disappoint you"
"Good, I will make sure the king awards all of you with appropriate funding," Caesar said as he walked out of the door and went inside of his carriage.
Caesar smiled widely inside and thought "I wonder if I should let Danny and his crew create a trebuchet or two haha"Caesar"s laughter echoed throughout the carriage