Chapter 12: Dark Forest And Starving Man

Inside the royal castle of the Kazar kingdom.

Inside the king’s private chambers, a certain woman was arguing with the king with a great amount of anger in her voice.

“Woman: that’s not a reason for you to send my Lil’ Nezil-Chan away! You better order for his return right this moment”

The woman’s name is Crystal Morten Kazar. The second prince’s, Nezil Morten Kazar’s mother and the daughter of the prime minister Marrd Morten Kazar who is the uncle of the current king, Forten Morten Kazar. and the big brother of the late king.

“Forten: he is the main reason we lost one of our towns, don’t you think he needs to be banished for that?”

“Crystal: I don’t! he is the inheritor of the throne, the next king of this great kingdom. It’s only natural to get rid of those filthy insects who rebelled against him, and you! Rather than helping him, you send him to the holy theocracy for reeducation, you must have lost your mind!”

“Forten: first of all, he is not the inheritor of the throne, his recent actions proved that he is unfit to be called the crown prince, so I stripped him of his title till he proves himself to me after finishing his reeducation in the Royal Academy, previously I had planned for him to measure his worth against his brother Leon and make the one with more achievements the next king, but because of this incident I decided that the next king is Leon”

“Crystal: have you lost your mind?! Making the son of that filthy servant a king? You-…”

“Forten: shut up! Don’t you dare say anymore”

She was trembling with fear from Forten’s angry voice, the filthy servant she insulted is the late mother of the first prince Leon, she was a knight that served as one of the royal guards of the royal family. actually, she was the strongest knight in the kingdom and Forten knew her from the time he was still a prince and a member of the knights' order, he would always compete with her in swordsmanship and magic but she always had the upper hand, and once he reached 20 years old he was crowned as the king because of his father’s death and married her at the same time, most of the royal and noble families were against that because she was a commoner but the king used his authority to give her brother who is his best friend a noble title and gave him the position of a lord over the city they came from and married her.

She gave birth to a boy they named Leon but when he was ten years old there was an assassination attempt to kill Leon and his mother died protecting him, when Leon reached 15 years old he joined the adventurer guild and left the capital city to travel around the kingdom to learn more about the people and the way they lived their lives, and right now after 7 years, the first prince is known by the people of the kingdom as one of the strongest S rank adventurers.

“Crystal: f-f-fine, I’m going after my son!”

“Forten: you may not”

“Crystal: What?!”

“Forten: as a part of his banishment he is prohibited from seeing you till he comes back after 3 or 4 years”

“Crystal: why? You have no right doing that!”

“Forten: he is the way he is right now is all because of you overly spoiling him, that’s why you are prohibited from leaving the castle for the next five years”

“Crystal: b-but…..”

“Forten: no buts, now be on your way”

“Crystal: …”

After he finished his sentence the king faced the other way and walked to his desk and sat down and started writing something on a piece of paper, his wife Crystal was glaring at him silently for some time and then left the room without saying anything more.

===============================================

Inside the castle in the prime minister office, the prime minister Marrd Morten Kazar was talking to one of his supporters, the head of one of the permanent noble families.

“Marrd: I want you to go to Donatis and use your name and power as one of the ten permanent earls of the kingdom to try and retake the town, and once you do you may claim the position of a lord over that town for yourself”

“Earl: Marrd-sama, but will not that filthy adventurer stand in my way if I tried to do that?”

“Marrd: fear not, at the end of the day he is a mere adventurer he’ll not stand a chance against you if you go and take your strongest guards with you, no matter how strong he is he can’t be stronger than our finest soldiers, and from what we know right now he should be away from the town right now and so this is our chance to retake the town, the commoners should tremble in fear from hearing your name”

“Earl: you are right, I can’t believe that the king is afraid of a single adventurer, we should just show him what it means going against us nobles and turn him into a slave and order him to make weapons for us till he dies”

“Marrd: you said it, actually I’m working with some of the royal families right now to make a secret special force and send it to search for and capture him to make him our slave to produce as many soul weapons as we want and use them to drive the foolish king and his faction away and to give the throne to the second prince”

“Earl: I agree with you, this foolish king can’t rule the kingdom properly, and his son the second prince is way better than him”

“Marrd: maybe he sensed our plans and sent the second prince away to slow us down”

“Earl: maybe but once we get our hands on that adventurer we can take him and his supporters down easily and the kingdom will be ours forever!”

“Marrd: yeah, and let’s not forget that the holy theocracy is on our side, I’m sure the people of Donatis will not be able to oppose you once you say that to them hahahahahahha”

“Earl: I swear on my pride, I’ll not disappoint you and take Donatis for myself hahahahahaha”

===============================================

In a dark room somewhere the two proxies who escaped Duntia were talking to someone through a crystal ball used for communication.

“Proxy No.1: …….. T-T-That’s w-what happened”

“??: whaaat?!”

“???: don’t joke around!”

“Proxy No.2: we are not joking around! What we said really did happen!”

“???: y-you are telling me that the dungeon was cleared by that adventurer?”

“Proxy No.1: yeah, he went to the dungeon and took with him two novice adventurers, and they cleared the dungeon together”

“??: novice adventurers? Did he use them as meat shields? Or as baggage carriers?”

“Proxy No.2: neither, he was teaching them how to fight all the way to the end”

“???: you are telling us he cleared the dungeon while having to take care of two kids all the way through?”

“Proxy No.1: yes”

“??: b-b-but what a-about the wyverns and No.****, was he able to take the wyverns and escape?”

“Proxy No.1: no, all of the wyverns were killed along with No.****”

“Killed!!”x2

“???: h-h-hundreds of wyverns and all of them were killed by only three people!!”

“Proxy No.1: actually no, the wyverns were killed by that adventurer alone, he summoned two types of monsters and had them kill all the wyverns and then he killed the transformed No.**** by himself using the holy magic {Holy Ray}”

“??: how can that be?! Was he not as weak as we thought? Was he not someone the elfs used to protect themselves from the Kazar kingdom and the holy church?”

“Proxy No.1: I can tell you that he was ridiculously strong, to the point of defeating both of us using his blood lust alone”

“??: to think he is this strong, but fortunately for us is that you two know his name and how he looked like, right?”

“Proxy No.2: yes…….wait,……. H-H-How?”

“Proxy No.1: How could this be?!”

“??: what happened?”

“???: what’s wrong?”

“Proxy No.2: I can’t remember his name and how he looked like!”

“Proxy No.1: me too, for some reason I don’t seem to remember! Not only that, but I can’t remember the names of the two kids who went with him nor how they looked like!”

“???: what?! What do you mean by you can’t remember? If you re joking than it’s not funny!”

“Proxy No.1: we are serious!! All we can remember is his crest for some reason”

“Proxy No.2: yeah, but how?”

“??: he must have used recognition inhabitation artifact”

“???: but recognition inhabitation artifact of this level is…”

“??: did you forget what his title is?”

“Proxy No.1: The Divine Blacksmith…..”

“??: for now quickly go back to the town and use the recording artifact on him, you came to this location using the teleport artifact but it’s one use only, that’s why you have to hurry. You can reach the town in three days if you were to ride nonstop and if you stop for rest it will take you five days, so GO!”

“yes!”x2

“???: damn you! Divine Blacksmith!!....”

===============================================

In Tris the capital city of the Holy Theocracy Trista.

Inside the living room in the Rosewald’s household mansion three people sat down to talk about the recent changes in the Royal Academy.

“Rose: Haaaah, those guys at church sure are pain…”

“Lyara: what happened, Ro-chan?”

“Rose: I was called today by the cardinals and they asked me to make it so only nobles and royals are allowed to attend the Academy”

“Oster: they must have received some pressure from the noble and royal families who are having their kids attend the Academy”

“Rose: yeah….”

“Lyara: so, did you agree to that?”

“Rose: of course not!”

“Oster: then how did you deal with their request?”

“Rose: I refused their request but they kept insisting non-stop and at the end, we came to the conclusion of raising the admission fee to five hundred gold and that if they passed the admission exam, plus adding some new teachers from the royals’ and nobles’ side”

“Lyara: they asked to add the new teachers so they get to have some authority within the Academy, right?”

“Rose: yeah, but I have some ideas on how to deal with the new teachers”

“Lyara: I have an idea! How about we have Ryo-kun a commoner attend the Academy and with that, he can prove to the whole world commoners can be better than nobles and royals”

“Rose: if that’s the case we can have Li-chan attend as my niece Rosewald Lira and have her work together with him and break the noses of any arrogant fools who try to underestimate them”

“Lyara: I’ll call him right now………. Hello Ryo-kun!”

(Hello auntie Lya)

“Lyara: how have you been?”

(good, how are things over there)

“Lyara: good. by the way, where are you right now?”

(in the Dark Forest two days from Duntia)

“Lyara: what are you doing there?”

(collecting some materials along with some other things)

“Lyara: for your shop right?”

(Yeah since I opened a new shop in Duntia I want to stock the shop up)

“Lyara: were you able to profit a lot from your shop in Elven?”

(yeah more than I expected especially recently, Elven opened up to adventurers visiting them and a lot of adventurers were buying my gear)

“Lyara: good to hear that you are doing fine. I called you today to ask something of you, can I?”

(of course, you are like a mother to me and I’m ready to help you with anything you want!)

“Lyara: hehehe, thank you Ryo-kun! What I wanted to ask of you is that I want you to attend the Royal Academy with Li-chan”

(I was thinking of doing the same, there is a lot of things I want to learn about)

“Lyara: that’s good to hear, but the problem is that the admission fee was raised to five hundred gold…..”

(no problem, I have a hundred times that amount right now)

“Lyara: good, then be sure to come to the Holy Theocracy in five months, the new year starts in six months from now and I want you to come one month prior to the start of the new Academic year”

(got it!)

“Lyara: then, bye-bye and take care of yourself!”

(yeah)

===============================================

“Rigel: yeah, he must be one of the Blue Sun of Hope”

“Ryo: Blue Sun of Hope? What is that?”

“Rigel: that is the name of a very huge evil cult, they are people who believe in the destruction and suffering of other people, from what we know, they believe that the founder of the cult will be reincarnated one day in one of the members of the cult and for that to happen they need to spread destruction throughout the whole world, they are known to use artificial miasma harvested from the places they caused the people living there a lot of grief and despair to summon demons into themselves and they think of this as an evolution, at the end of the day we don’t know a lot about them and what makes them believe in what they believe in, they are a group of evildoers that cause a great deal of inconvenience for everyone else”

“Ryo: do you know anything about their base of operation or something like that?”

“Rigel: unfortunately I have no information regarding that, but they can be found in every big city, they also work as a criminal organization and take on jobs like assassination and kidnapping and many other things”

“Ryo: I see”

“Rigel: the problem is that they have sponsors amongst the high-ups of the human countries and because of that it became difficult to catch them because their sponsors will always help them get away with what they do”

“Ryo: and this time their target was this town”

“Rigel: yeah….”

“Ryo: then you have to report this to that lord of yours, right? Where are those two proxies?”

“Rigel: about that, when we were watching you through the recording crystal they were present with us watching but as soon as you defeated that demon they went out running and they have been missing since then”

“Ryo: I have a bad feeling about this! Do you think they are connected to the Blue Sun of Hope somehow?”

“Rigel: …..maybe, but they are nowhere to be found now”

“Ryo: let's go to the lord’s mansion and see if we can find anything strange!”

“Rigel: yeah!”

We started running towards the lord’s mansion where the two proxies lived since coming to this town, we were accompanied by Shin and Loti and three S rank adventurers and some of the town’s influenced people, once we arrived at the lord’s mansion we found that the soldiers they had with them were nowhere to be found, we entered the mansion and I felt a strange presence coming from the basement and we headed there together, once we reached the door to the basement {Analyze} warned me that what lays behind the door is a lot of miasma, I warned those around me and had them stand close to me so I can use {Holy Barrier} to protect them from the miasma, I opened the door and what we saw shocked all of us.

“Ryo: this is…”

“Rigel: this is bad! We have to do something about this or the whole town can be in danger!”

All of us nodded to the guild master’s words, what was behind the door was a sight of ten human corpses littering the ground with black daggers stuck to their chests, I asked the people around me if they knew who the corpses belonged to and they told me that they were solders sent by the Lord to keep the town safe along with the proxies but were reported to have died in battle against the monsters and when we were busy talking about that the corpses started moving suddenly and started attacking us, they have come back as zombies.

“Ryo: {Purification}!”

“Rigel: thank you! You saved us”

I used {Purification} to kill the zombies that attacked us, after that I used {Purification: Large} to get rid of all the miasma in the room, after that, we started inspecting the place and found out that all these people died inside magic formations drawn on the ground and all the black daggers had the symbol of the Blue Sun of Hope engraved on them.

“Ryo: with this, we are certain now that they are from the Blue Sun of Hope”

“Rigel: yeah!”

We searched around the mansion more but we didn’t find anything out of place other than the basement, after that we went back to the guild meeting room to discuss what to do from now on and they asked me to place them under my rule as a part of my domain as I did with Donatis, agreed on the condition that if the town’s people want the same thing.

They went out and informed everyone in the town on what happened and showed them the recording of me Shin and Loti fighting in the dungeon and what we found under the lord’s mansion, all the people agreed on me declaring their town as my domain and after that, I gave them the same speech I gave to the people of Donatis and had them select someone to act as the acting lord and they started celebrating right after everything was done and said. after that, I gave them their share of the materials I got from the dungeon, they were especially happy to receive the giant bee honey because they can make healing potions from it, after that, I asked the man who is to be the acting lord to build a shop for me and asked him to make it resembles the one in Elven, I had asked Rex before to send me drawings of the shop over there and I asked the acting lord to make it the same.

At night before going to sleep Shin and Loti came to visit me and asked me about my plans from now on.

“Ryo: I plan to take the long way heading for the capital city”

“Shin: actually, I have something to ask of you, can I?”

“Ryo: go ahead”

“Shin: we want to go with you! If possible that is…”

“Ryo: can I ask you why?”

“Shin: I became adventurer to get stronger to protect those dear to me and fighting in the dungeon with you taught us a lot of things we didn’t know before and so I was hoping to have you train both of us, please!”

“Loti: please!”

“Ryo: so the boy who is the head of a noble family wants to get stronger so he can protect his half demonkin half beastman lover, right?”

“Shin: wh-! …”

“Loti: H-H-How?!”

Right after I said my line Shin jumped in front of Loti to protect her from me and Loti grabbed her hat from both sides to make sure that her ears are hidden.

“Ryo: no need to be wary of me, I’m not going to discriminate against her just because she is not a human, I myself grow up in a village where humans beastmen and demonkin lived together in harmony”

“Loti: really! You have lived with demonkin?”

“Ryo: yeah, two vampire couple, I even learned how to use dark magic from them”

“Shin: but how did you learn about us?”

“Ryo: you know the magic {Appraisal}? I have a skill that works like that but mine works on people as well, that’s how I learned about you two”

“Shin: that’s amazing! It must be very useful to know everything you want about the people you are dealing with”

“Ryo: but it does come with the condition that I need to have enough information about the things I’m using it on”

“Loti: what was the information you needed to know so you can use that skill on us?”

“Ryo: the way you talked, the way you moved and your mana signature”

“Loti: I see”

“Shin: erm, about what I asked you before…”

“Ryo: I can take you with me but the training will be very hard you know, are you sure you want me to train you?”

“Shin: for reference only, how hard the training will be?”

“Ryo: you will not die at least”

“Shin: *gulp*……. No problem bring it on!”

“Loti: Y-Y-Yeah p-please teach us sensei!”

“Ryo: okay then, we are departing tomorrow morning be prepared”

“Y-Yes sir!”x2

..

.

The next morning we were standing at the east gate of the town saying goodbye to the people of Duntia and after finishing that we passed through the new barrier I installed yesterday and headed north-east of the town, I have left four Shadow Hounds in the town to protect it and the people were happy to have titan class monsters protecting them and started thanking me once again, on the way Shin and Loti started asking me about our destination.

“Shin: sensei, where are we going next?”

“Ryo: we are heading to the Dark Forest, over there you two are going to start your first lesson so be prepared”

“Shin: G-Got it!” “Loti: Y-Yes!”

We arrived at the perimeter of the Dark Forest in no time thanks to Kage’s speed, I have activated the stealth function of the carriage to make it so no one will figure out where we are heading.

The Dark Forest is known as the S rank adventurers’ hunting ground all because it was so dark as if it was at night the whole time and because it was filled with monsters that adapted to the environment of the constant darkness and thus all the monsters here use surprise attacks to hunt their prey, and after explaining that to Shin and Loti they became afraid and looked at as if to ask what are they going to do in here so I smiled kindly at them and said….

“Ryo: you two are going to spend your day fighting the monsters in the forest to learn how to adapt to the situations facing you as fast as possible and to learn how to formulate the appropriate plan for the situation you are in, and you are not allowed to come back unless ten hours pass for you inside the forest or if one of you is fatally wounded”

“Shin: Y-Y-You a-are c-c-coming with u-us, r-r-right?”

“Ryo: no, but Seth will be with you but he is will not fight with you and will only act if one of you is fatally wounded”

“Shin: no no no! that’s impossible! This place is way above our level, we will die!”

“Ryo: don’t worry, I choose this place because we don’t have enough time to take your training slowly and training this way is the best for your situation right now, by having a non-human lover you are going against the church and so you need to learn about how to adapt to the situation you are in as fast as possible and to be able to deal with surprise attacks properly, and you Loti you need to become strong if you don’t want to hold Shin back and you need to learn how to use your racial treats if you want to protect Shin in the future and this forest is the perfect place for that”

“Shin: ……but”

“Ryo: then let’s do this if you both are able to go uninjured for three days straight you pass the first lesson and if you do I’m going to make new gear for both of you that is way better than the one you have right now plus a secret reward that is way better than any gear you’ll ever use”

“*gulp*”x2

“Shin: r-really!?”

“Loti: b-b-better than this bow…..”

“Ryo: yeah, I promise”

“Shin: okay got it!”

“Loti: are you going to stay here alone?”

“Ryo: yes, after setting up the camp I’m going to start my own training as well”

“Shin: training?”

“Ryo: yeah, I have no talent for magic and I have less mana than most people, that’s why I train my mana control to compensate for that and in hopes that my mana capacity will increase”

“Shin: and despite that, you still made it to SS rank!?”

“Ryo: magic is not everything in this world, weapons, gear, martial arts, many other things you can train yourself in to get stronger, plus magic is not the only use of mana, right”

“Shin: you are right, there are a lot of things other than magic that can make you stronger!”

After that, the three of them entered the forest and I placed the carriage in my {Storage} and asked Kage and his kids to go and scout the perimeter of the Dark Forest, and then I started setting the camp, I used one of the barrier orbs I had with me to erect a barrier 20 meters wide and erected two tents, one for Shin and Loti and the other one for me and Seth. after that, I made a small hole in the middle of the area covered by the barrier and packed stones that had the same size around the edge of the hole, and then I placed a grill made out of iron above the fire pit. After that, I made a stone stove next to it, and then I made a seating area near the fire pit.

I sat down and started my Ryuken training by stacking as many mana barriers around my body as I could and try to maintain them for 30 minutes, and then I added one more barrier on top of the existing ones and try to maintain for another 30 minutes but I failed after only 5 minutes, I kept trying non-stop till Seth came back with both of them dangling from his shoulders, it seems they almost died more than ten times in the span of the ten hours they spent in the forest and each time that happened he would use the healing wand I gave to him, and as for me I was able to keep the extra barrier for 10 minutes maximum in the span of today’s ten hours of training.

I had Seth make dinner for all of us and after eating we went to sleep right away, in the morning the three of them went into the forest right after eating breakfast and I started my training the same way I did yesterday, and today finally I was able to keep the added barrier for full 30 minutes before the end of the day, and then the forest training team came back the same way they did yesterday dangling from Seth’s shoulders but it seems they were able to reduce the number of times they came close to death by a lot.

In the fourth day, I was able to increase the number of barriers by three and I was able to keep them up for more than 30 minutes, and as for the forest training team this time Shin and Loti came back walking by themselves for the first time since the start of this training.

During the sixth day, Kage contacted me about something he found near the forest.

*I found two humans near the northern side of the forest, a man and a woman, the man is laying on the ground and the woman is sitting next to him, they seem to be in a bad shape!*

“Ryo: wait for me, I’m coming!”

I used {Shadow Arts: Shadow Exchange} to teleport to where Kage was standing, the humans he talked about were 100 meters away from him sitting the shadow of a big boulder to hide from the sun, I recognized both of them and so I jumped on Kage's back and approached them, the woman was wearing a maid uniform and had two swords on her hips and the man was wearing leather armour and had a huge sword on his back, the woman had a short black hair and green eyes and the man was blond and had blue eyes, the woman noticed us and drew her swords but stopped once she noticed me on top of Kage’s head.

“Woman: long time no see Ryo-sama”

“Ryo: yo Liz, I am surprised to see that you are still alive following that idiot over there”

“Liz: you really said it!”

“Ryo: so, what happened to you two this time?”

“Liz: same as last time, we run out of food”

“Ryo: again?! What about the {Storage} ring I gave to you guys before?”

“Liz: he refused to let me manage the ring and had been filling the ring with weapons and when I asked him about the amount of food left in the ring and he said that he stacked enough, but I discovered yesterday that all the space inside the ring was filled with weapons and not food which leads to our situation right now, both of us are starving and we run out of energy to be able to hunt for monsters to eat and so we stopped here in hopes a monster will think of us as easy prey and attack us we would have killed it for food”

“Ryo: and what about him?”

“Liz: he was bored and fall asleep”

“Ryo: for goodness sake…. Wake him up and come with me, I’ll share some of my food with you”

“Liz: sorry to trouble you, Leo-sama! Wake up! Please wake up! You little….*Slap*”

Liz tried waking up the sleeping idiot but he did not respond, she got mad and smacked him on the back of his head and finally, he was up.

“Leo: whaah!.... why did you do that Liz?! It hurts you know!”

“Liz: I know that’s why I did it but never mind that right now, help has come”

“Leo: what? are there any monsters attacking us finally?”

“Ryo: yes me!”

“Leo: Hiiii!......wait? Ryo? That’s you?”

“Ryo: yeah it’s me”

“Leo: what are you doing here?”

“Ryo: Liz asked me to take away the ring I gave to you one year ago”

“Leo: whaaaat?! No, absolutely not! I’m not going to hand it over! Wait, where did my ring go?”

“Liz: here take this, Ryo-sama”

“Leo: Nooooooo! The ring, since when was it with you?!”

“Liz: I took it when you were asleep”

“Leo: w-w-why?”

“Liz: to destroy it”

“Leo: please don’t, Ryo please give me my ring back! I have a lot of beautiful weapons put in there! Please don’t destroy it!”

“Liz: quit down!”

“Leo: ….. yes ma’am”

“Ryo: now let's go to my campsite, I have plenty of food to share with you”

“Liz: yes”

“Leo: ….. yes”

Leo’s full name is Leon Morten Kazar, he is the first prince of the Kazar kingdom and Liz is his maid\wife, they have been traveling all around the kingdom for years now and both of them are S rank adventurers, Leo is a weapons maniac who is collecting weapons from all over the place, both of them were found near Armonis one year ago starving by Urak, and that’s how I came to know them both and even gave Leo one of the prototypes of a storage ring I made back then, but the one I gave to them had limited space inside of it and it seems that he used the space for weapons rather than food and lied to Liz about it.

Despite him being the first prince of the Kazar kingdom, Leo is a good man who’d never discriminate against other races and would never look down on commoners and he is working as an adventurer right now just to help the people of his kingdom, Liz was his maid since they were little kids and he married her when they were 15 years old and since then they have been traveling from place to place and helping the people of the kingdom as adventurers.

We reached the camp and I gave Liz some ingredients and she started making food for everyone, by the time the food was ready Seth Shin and Loti came back and were surprised to find that I had company.

“Leo: I’m starving let’s eat quickly!”

And with that, we started eating without answering the questions Shin and Loti had in their minds and Seth seemed to not care about the small details. after all the food was gone Shin asked about the identity of the two visitors.

“Leo: Sorry for the late introduction I was starving and could not wait any longer. My name is Leon Morten Kazar, first prince of the Kazar kingdom and she is my wife Liz”

“Liz: nice to meet you”

“Whaaaaaattt!?”x2