The crowd gathered, but most of the military there thought it was just a noble kid trying to use his influence to have an audience. Still, George had asked them to come, and this kid would be their future lord, so it won’t do them any good to refuse.

And as a bonus for most of the officers, they were pulled back from the front lines for a few days, allowing them to have a better rest, and maybe sneak off to find the misses for a few hours. At this thought, what’s wrong with cheering on a little kid’s antics.

“First let me reveal what I have under the big cover, you’ve all heard of it, most of you have seen it, and some might have even used it.” As he said that a few of the soldiers from his new regiment pulled the cover off to reveal a loaded trebuchet, “A trebuchet!”

This got a bunch of confusion from the crowd, he brought them all the way here to see a trebuchet.

“Is this a joke?” one of them whispered, receiving murmurs of agreement from his surroundings,

“Now, most of you will know that this humble trebuchet is the staple of siege engines used throughout the mainland for its efficiency in bringing down forts, and with an accuracy of 1/8 shots from 300 meters, on average could knock down a town wall from anywhere between a week and a month. You could knock over those walls down there in about 2 weeks” he pointed at a bunch of walls about a mile and a half away.

All of the military personnel knew this about the trebuchet and was thinking this demonstration was becoming a waste of time.

“Loose!” Fred shouted, and the soldier manning the release leaver, shot the trebuchet.

The trebuchet was aimed at the curtain wall in the distance but fell short over a mile, the crowd laughed at this, “Didn’t the kid know it wasn’t in range.” One of them commented.

“Well, I guess I wasn’t close enough, then” Fred commented out loud.

“You could say that again,” someone shouted to the jeer of the crowd.

George and Isabella were getting worried, was Fred making a fool of himself, and weren’t they here to see those tubes, what did they have to do with a trebuchet.

“Not to worry, I have another plan.” He raised his hand towards the other six objects and soldiers from his regiment lifted the covers, revealing 6, 10-foot-long tubes, “This, my friends, are what you would call a cannon, and you are here, not to watch me miss with a trebuchet, but to see what these bad boys can do.”

“You’re telling me these can hit that wall from here, how does it even swing the stones over, there is no counterweight to swing that beam.” Someone asked. The cannons on their wheels could be mistaken for a beam on a pivot.

Fred just shrugged, “Over to you captain,”

The captain went through the procedures with the men to load 4 cannons, “Ready,” the sergeants shouted once complete.

At this time, the crowd could see white cotton sticking out of all of the ears of the soldiers and then saw Fred put his in, at the start they had all been given these, but didn’t know what they were for. However, after seeing this only the non-military personnel and George, placed them in,

The captain looked back at Fred, who nodded, then returned to looking at the soldiers in ready positions. “Fire”

*Bang bang bang, bang* the military went deaf to the cacophony of cannon fire rippling and echoing across the expansive open fields. Only those who had the cotton earplugs could still hear, barely.

When everyone looked at the wall in the distance, they could all see 3 giant spider-like cracks in the walls, as well a giant tear went through the wall from bottom to top, increasing a gap until you could see about a meter of clear sky through the wall near the top.

It took them a good 30 seconds to recover their hearing while staring at the wall. A good 2 minutes went by when they recovered their wits by the shouts of the sergeants shouting ready again.

They had missed the preparation procedures, but they still recognised that this was faster than it took to reload the trebuchets. The military personnel scrambled to place their cotton earbuds in.

“Fire” the command came a few seconds later. And the thunderous boom was heard once more.

The troops continued to fire for a good 2 hours, but nobody got bored from the theatrical. And it was at that time the walls were breached, the damage caused would allow a regiment the ability to storm the opening, one bigger than what they would aim for with a trebuchet.

*Notification* a member of the Human race has invented a new siege engine. +2 free stat points awarded to all humans and all new humans born in the next 30 years

*Notification* a member of the Franconian culture has invented a new siege engine. +2 free stat points awarded to all humans and all new humans born in the next 30 years.

‘What the hell, does this mean that I won’t be able to hide any of my inventions, wait why is this being broadcasted now, was it because I gave a public demonstration. But the Astartes program wasn’t a public demonstration, maybe the system thought it was too big of a deal, I’ll have to test this out.’

After all the people present saw this message, they all looked over at Fred with shock and wonder.

But Fred and his regiment got of two new messages, depending on which one applied

*notification* you have participated in your first siege, and have managed to breach the target’s defences; Defence rank: Town, +100 free stat points

*notification* you have participated in a siege, and have managed to breach the target’s defences; Defence rank: Town, +50 free stat points

“Holy shit”, Fred commented, Isabella and George were walking over to him and overheard.

“What’s the matter?” George asked.

“I apparently participated in my first siege and won 100 points for breaching the walls.”

“You can get that by laying siege to a fake defensive structure.”

“You got something like this,”

“O yeah, you get tons of points from battles.”

*Notification* you have unlocked the Military progression for carrying out a military exercise, you have gained 200 exp for commanding a regiment in a battle, you have achieved success in a position more advanced than your qualifications in military levels. X3 exp gained,

*Notification* you have levelled up to level 3, rank recruit, +6 Military skill points

Your rank provides you with the following benefits

Unlocks access to skills with rank: military (300% exp gain due to military level bonus)

Command structure: 0, 0

Performing in roles with a higher qualification threshold than your current qualification increases your failure chance considerably.

“Huh?”

“What happened now?” George asked, Fred had suddenly gone quiet for a minute and then exclaimed in shock.

“I unlocked Military progression.”

“What?” this time, it was George and Isabella to be shocked.

“It says here I Carried out a military exercise and unlocked it”

“O, nice, normally Kids will unlock them in year 10 at school when you train in unit formations.”

“What does Military skill points do?”

“You use them to unlock military skills, like command skills, or military specialisations”

“Command skills? Military Specialisations?”

“Well, for Military Specialisations you can unlock the military swordsman, it allows you to gain synergy bonuses for fighting in a unit of swordsmen. As with Command skills, it allows you to unlock order bonuses. A common one is a rallying cry; it gives the unit you are shouting orders at, an increase in morale and may regroup them when they have broken.”

“The most popular command skill is command specialisation; it allows you to give everyone under you a bonus to whatever military specialisations you have accrued.” George paused for a minute “Although, command orders have a range, and Military specialisations that synergise in units require coherency.”

“Ooo, what about command structure, why is it listed as 0, 0?”

“The first number is how many men you can command before suffering overburdened penalties, the second number is how many units you can oversee before suffering overburdened penalties.

However, be careful with this, if you command a squad, you need to have 2-3 points in the unit count, as you have 1 point for the squad, and half a point for each team under the squad, which is usually between 2-3 teams per squad.”

Before they left both Sir George and Lord Philip ordered a gag order over the weapon, George also asked Fred if he knew of a crappier weapon, that he could get the smith to make as a decoy.

Fred offered the ballista and crossbows, weapons that Philip could take to the mainland and start producing, it would give them a much-needed power-up and once others started copying, they could bring the cannons out.

Fred ordered the regiment to relocate the trebuchet’s closer to the wall and spend the next day firing at it to cover up any traces.

___

4 months later, it was the second half of the first term, Fred, Rudy, and Delphine had started taking a new class once a week, since summer, the status class was where the teacher would explain how it worked, or at least what they knew or could presume. However, due to Fred being an inquisitive child he already knew a lot of the basics. But finally, he was being taught something new.

“So, when you cast an elemental spell, it is modified by one-quarter of your neutral mana affinity, plus all of matching affinity, plus your bloodline bonus, so for example, if you had a 20% fire affinity, and 20% bloodline affinity, and 60% neutral affinity when you use 100 points of mana into a fireball, the fireball will receive 55 points of mana.” The teacher explained

Fred also learned that he would not unlock access to classes, or for his case, legion traits until he was 11, the classes would merge general or military skills associated with the class into a profession, portfolio, giving a general bonus in exp gain and Efficiency bonus to all skills in the portfolio, as well as negative modifiers to skills that fall out of the portfolio.

This worked in the same way as the military profession.

The subclass was a way to attach external skills to your portfolio, for example, if your class was engineering, and your subclass was cybernetics, you could make biology skills fall under the portfolio of the engineering skill.

Or you could increase the bonuses to certain skills already under the engineering portfolio as specialisations at the expense of other skills.

During this lesson, Fred got a notification that the human race had claimed land from the wood elves, giving him 15 stat points for race and 15 for culture. Both Rudy and Delphine had received this notification as well.

This coincided with a letter they received 2 weeks later at Ludnus, telling him, the troops had completed the construction of the Mine fort.

This was behind schedule as they started receiving heavy resistance in the late summer, early autumn, the second river fort would now be postponed until spring.

He also got word from the crop harvest that the manure mix with Nature powder was the best yielding, while to his surprise, all the ones with Nature Crystal dust didn’t do too well and had beaten the fields with no improvements 2 to 1.

As well, Matt had achieved his ascension before he started puberty. Making him the 3rd Astartes.

___

In the spring, the fertilizer solution was carried out over 1/5 of the farmlands for the first year. It was still better to tread carefully with the changes for now.

The irrigation channels were being built connecting to the river, but it would take roughly 5 years to cover all of the farmlands. However, this would allow them to monitor the effects it had and allow time for corrections or redactions to the plans.

George had also mentioned that they have started reworking the roads to the forts on this side of the river, with the concrete mix, allowing for the heavy iron to traverse at a reasonable speed without damaging the road that much, they were also planning to mothball the middle fort for now, as the extra forts would be drawing more manpower to garrison

___

When he returned for the summer, his foundry was already starting to receive Iron from the new mountain, as they had started mining it, and had opened up the last Furnace that was built, while construction was underway for two more.

The foundry was big enough for another 2, summing up to 10 furnaces, and the lands around it allowed for expansion if needed. Fred was considering separating the copper furnace to a smaller foundry in the future, but for now, it was good enough.

A 3rd of the mainland troops were heading home as well, now they no longer needed to push into the elven territory, they didn’t need so many men over here. They were going with a large order of Armour and weapons, as escorts to drop off at the Castilian order down south; before returning to their hometowns. It was now time for the families to focus on that conflict

Another 3rd was planning to leave come, the end of summer, and the final 3rd mid-autumn before it became storm season. Each group would be escorting another batch of armour and weapons, the trade ships were considerably more valuable now, and they didn’t want to take the risk against privateers.

Fred, Isabella, and George had another discussion about Rudy and Delphine, all three of them were now level ten, and would be ready to ascend by the end of summer.

“I’ll go and visit your father regarding this matter, this should only take a couple of weeks there and back.” George offered to go.

“We would need to speak to the two’s father to postpone the ascension, in case they start it before George gets back.” Isabella chimed in.

“Ok then” Fred responded.

Fred had another conundrum, what was he going to do for his ascension, he hadn’t maxed out his exp yet and so, he didn’t know what his requests would be yet, but was hoping he wouldn’t only receive a quest for the Esper Program, that wasn’t even ready yet, he had only acquired 40% of his plants.

He was now seven and wanted to start it before puberty as his brain would still be in the child development phase, giving him the most gains.

While he hadn’t received his quests, the quests usually took into consideration any goals the person was aiming for. His most ideal goal at the moment is to go for increasing his lightning affinity, he wanted to have a high affinity in lightning, and it might help his Esper abilities as well.

___

George returned followed by two little kids one girl and one boy, aged 3-4,

“George, I thought you were interested in my mother? Now to think you had another woman all this time.”

Isabella blushed from this statement while George’s face went dark, however, another man came through the door straight after, Fred felt like he recognised him from somewhere, but felt a gush of wind run past him. Before realising what had happened, he saw his mom in this man’s embrace, while they kissed. His hands were all over her back and rump.

A few minutes they separated, and both exclaimed, “I’ve missed you.”

“Ow, owowowow, ow ow ow,” the man fell to the floor into the fetal position clutching his groin.

Isabella was stunned by this sudden development, then heard Fred Speak “You little shit bag, who the fuck gave you permission to have your way with my mother.”

As Isabella turned, she caught him retracting a raised fist. Isabella didn’t know if to be angry or proud at what Fred had done.

“I am your father,” the man on the floor groaned out.

“And?... wait, what?” he turned to Isabella and George, “What?”

At this point, two more kids came in, one, a girl, a bit older than Fred, and the other a boy in his early teens as well as a woman, a few years Isabella’s senior.