How much a dedicated and hardworking person can achieve in a short time is impressive. In the next two weeks all the leather needed for armor was ready. And the armor making process began. I secretly provided the goblins with weapons we produced in excess as for my agreement with Gezek. Gezek laid low, just attacking livestock and gathering numbers for now. When the time came he was going to make his move too. 

Also we started to build massive amounts of timber boards. I sold those to a tight lipped merchant my spy bards find for me. This was a rather lucrative deal. I suspected that guy also had dealings with bandits but that didn’t matter. He provided us with necessary supply while I started to gain money while trading instead of losing it. 

The teams grow in skill too. They started to be more and more daring. They started to hunt down entire wolf packs and even bears with their encirclement tactics. Surprisingly we didn’t lose any man.

In the one and a half mouth mark which only one month away from agreed upon coordinated attack time. My cult completed their leather armors. They were not half bad as individual fighters at this point but the more impressive thing was they were very good at fighting as a unit.

At this time my fire magic wasn’t half bad and although I can’t use truth magic to make people say the truth I could turn some mana into the truth-mind magic mana which reacted when a lie was told knowingly. Also I started using this truth magic on animals for making mind bridges. I was able to make squirrels and birds dizzy. But not more than that. But I assumed if I trained that magic enough I would easily control wild animals.

Two weeks to go time there was not much wildlife left in the zone we were in. So I decided we needed to hunt down the bandits around us. That would provide us additional resources, weapons and armor. Also would make my warriors to understand fighting against other humans better.

The spy bards looked for nearby threats from the start and they learned the location of 5 bandit hideouts. Their numbers were too low for being a threat to us. I didn’t concern myself with them. But this time they were just prey. We raided them in the dawn five consecutive days so they didn’t learn they were hunted. Hunt was successful. We killed and captured bandits. We saved kidnap villagers, found some money, weapons which were mostly too low quality for us, so we just sold them to the merchant. 

We released the villagers giving them enough food for the trip and dropping them places they can safely return to their homes. But bandits were given two options either repent which ment joining us or die. They mostly chose the former. My numbers swell to 110. The newcomers lacked my original troops formal training but they had some real world experience. Newcomers became more and more converted in a short time. They were first fearful so they acted they believed intensely but faking belief has a side effect, if you constantly do something you actually start to believe in it.

I armed former bandits with weapons and armor we made. The cult didn’t know me as their leader but my father decided to introduce me as the sword of Altus. The military commander. They didn’t disagree because they had immense respect for my father but if from the start I would tell them a kid 16 year of age is their leader they would have refused me.