C28

Arriving back in Sylvian, I first went back home to the northeastern border fortress. I’ve been out for a little bit less than a year, so I’m planning on resting there for a couple of days.

There are three things I want to do while the civil war is going on.

Basic human rights for slaves. Get research started on agricultural technology. Make a rifle.

Since there’s a good chance we’ll steamroll Heiron in the soon to come war, we’ll end up capturing a bunch of slaves, so I want to convince the queen to make a couple laws for slaves.

I’m not planning on abolishing slavery and serfdom all of a sudden, but I want to force slave owners to at least keep their slaves alive, fed, clothed and sheltered, outlaw slave contracts without a time limit and guarantee that the children of slaves are born free.

I also want to prohibit slave exportation, since we can’t enforce these laws outside of the country. While this will be bad for the economy on the short term, it will be good for national pride and for the economy on the long term.

About national pride, maybe I should look for ‘self-made’ people to use for propaganda. I also want to simplify the country’s flag to make it more iconic.

Slavery around these parts is pretty bad but isn’t as bad as slavery of Africans during the colonial era, and I want to make sure it stays that way.

Cruelty aside, relying too much on slaves is bad for the country’s stability. Free people are much better for GDP-like stuff than slaves.

When it comes to agricultural technology, I want to get some people studying agriculture with a focus on nutrients and soil chemistry.

Of course, there’s no way we’ll come up with chemical formulas for stuff out of the blue, but with trial and error we should probably come up with proper knowledge on crop rotation and fertilization, maybe even domesticate some monsters.

Now to the third topic: guns. Since I’m planning to make guns based on mana cores instead of gunpowder, the only guns I’m making are a long-range sniper rifle, machine-guns and handguns.

After all, we don’t have enough trustworthy enchanters that we can teach how to make mana cores, so there’s no way we’ll have the entire army equipped with guns.

Honestly, out of those three, guns are the only topic I’m taking care of directly, the others I’m just going to ask other people to do it for me.

With my short term plans organized I wait for the jump signal from the pilots.

“You’re clear to go, Sir Lance!” Shouts the co-pilot so that I can hear him over the wind. I give them a thumbs up and jump out. I enjoy sky diving, can’t help but giggle when I’m falling, as if I’m being tickled.

When approaching the ground I activate the parachuting harness, although everyone else seems to call these feather fall harness.

As I slow down I recognize some people waiting for me on the ground.

And as I land I hear various greetings and welcomes from my family and friends. After the greetings calm down I receive some news, starting with mom. “Good news, Lance. The queen is pregnant!” She says with a smile.

Well, I guess having an heir to the crown soon will be good for the country’s stability, so yeah, good news, I nod.

Dad is the next one to speak. “Also, we’ve been receiving many letters from scholars for you. A few of them even came here to try and see you, since you were coming home we let them stay and wait for you.”

Sounds like nerds are starting to come out of the woodworks, err, I mean, respectable scholars have honored me with their attention. “I’ll talk to them over a meal after I take a quick bath.” Sounds like the days I planned for resting aren’t going to happen.

~~

I have a headache, these nerds scholars are really loud and like to shout over each other, I can barely hear my own thoughts.

“ENOUGH!” I shout with magic. “Are you scholars or bickering children?! First off, you!” I point toward an old woman and a slightly younger (but still old) woman. “Humans aren’t born innocent nor evil. Innocence and evil are arbitrary in the first place! And you!” I point towards a middle aged man. “I didn’t say that orthodox geometry is useless in real life! I said perspective-based measures are inherently flawed and if you kept reading you would see that I also said ‘although they are flawed, the flaw is small and, in practice, almost irrelevant unless you are making absurdly precise calculations’!” I take a few moments to catch my breath.

Wait a moment; they started arguing so fast I couldn’t ask what I wanted to know since we sat down. I see someone is about to speak again, so I raise my palm towards them. “Before all that, you haven’t told me yet: What in the queen’s name are you doing here?” I ask while looking at each of their eyes in turn, all five of them. Noah is also here, but he’s just looking around confused.

They exchange glances and then look back to me. An old woman answers for the group. “We wanted to know if you wanted help in writing more books.” I furrow my brows. They are here to ask for work? The hell?

“… Are you guys… Unemployed?” I ask cautiously and receive various expressions as an answer. My palm proceeds to cover my face. Of course they are.

“Lance, what’s going on?” Asks Noah. Oh the (arbitrary) innocence of this little brother of mine. He just liked to listen to this bunch of nerds, so he came along for the meal.

“Nothing much, Noah. I just have more work to do than I expected.” More things to talk to the queen about I guess.

~~

Turns out a lot of scholars rely on teaching basic education to the children of merchants as their main profession. Although a lot of them started working on the schools and others are working in places without schools, a considerable number of them are now unemployed.

Since this is the case, I’m adding ‘convincing the queen to start a higher education program’ to my to-do list.

“So you guys are going to the capital already, even though you just arrived?” Asks Athena. I’m hanging out with my friends and siblings near the training grounds after a little bit of training.

That is: Ellie, Theo, Chiara, Athena and Noah. I still haven’t found out where the orphans are, but they aren’t here and should have already finished training.

Mattias is also here, but I don’t really consider him a friend since he’s always so strict and professional, I think I’ve never seen him smile.

“Not immediately, I still need to go through a bunch of letters, but after that we’ll need to take the train.” This time Chiara will be coming with me as a bodyguard instead of teacher, just like Ellie and Theo. She got a lot stronger while I was away.

“Just because there’s a bunch of scholars unemployed? I’m pretty sure they can wait a couple days, you should stay for longer.” Athena Insists.

“No, no. Not just that, there are other things I need to do, and more importantly, I need to keep an eye on the queen’s health.” I answer.

Theo answers that. “Doesn’t her majesty have a ton of healers with her? Why would you need to be there?”

“Well, I just don’t feel comfortable leaving it to other people.” I explain with a shrug. The amount of things that can go wrong are simply too many, I’m feeling a little paranoid. “I also want to do a healing tour to commemorate the occasion on the way.”

“Healing tour?” All of them ask, almost synchronized.

“Yeah, I’ll go to the capital by train and heal people for free at every stop.”

“That’s my son, always so nice to the masses.” Mother says as she approaches. She has a big smile on her face, and I have a bad feeling about this. “It’s been a while since we last sparred hasn’t it?” She asks with her hand on my shoulder.

I narrow my eyes in suspicion, but nod anyways.

We get in position with blunt steel long swords.

After three exchanges she manages to disarm me… What?

“Is this son of mine going soft? Tsk, tsk. That’s no good.” She says with an annoying grin on her face while raising her chin so she’s looking down on me. This woman… She’s holding a grudge from the last sparring session!

“I wasn’t ready that time! Let’s go again!” I really want to wipe that smirk off her face, I don’t care if I seem like a sore loser. She only smiles wider and gets in a stance as an answer.

I concentrate harder this time, she clearly worked hard in learning from Chiara’s style and even improved on it. Her blows carry both superhuman strength and precision, my sword almost leaves my hand multiple times but I hold on.

Every exchange leaves me open to the next attack, so I need to compensate for that in a hurry, leaving no space for me to counter.

If this keeps going I’m just going to run out of mana first, so I steady my feet and pretend to go for an attack that parries hers while threatening her with the point of the sword.

She reacts by dedicating herself to the blow harder, trying to just use brute strength to get my sword out of the way.

I let go of the sword and lunge towards her, since she expected her sword to encounter mine it just keeps moving, leaving her side open.

If I can’t beat her with the sword, I’ll beat her unarmed.

I go straight for grabbing her wrist, she lets go of the sword with that hand and tries to use the other to hit me with the sword, but I drop to the floor while using all my weight to pull her with me her blow once again just ‘whoosh’ hits the air.

Now I’m on my back while she’s on a half kneeling position to my side. The sword that missed last time now falls onto me again from overhead but the distance between me and mom is too short so I just reach for her neck.

And then the leg that was kneeling springs out all of a sudden and hits the side of my head.

I black out for a second, but when my vision comes back, mom has her sword on my neck while breathing heavily.

I guess shortening the distance against a self-strengthening pro wasn’t my brightest idea, but I got pretty far since she relies on her sword so much.

More importantly, the annoying grin is gone from her face, so that means it’s my turn to grin. “Still think I’m going soft?”

“Humph, you only got lucky.” Hearing that only makes me smile more.

… But not before I heal my head that hurts like hell.

~~

The letters from scholars were either unemployed ones looking for work or just scholars trying to ask me about one thing or another, for example one of them was asking about the bathroom I designed for the royal castle, more specifically the toilet.

So I didn’t take too long in writing back, since most of them will be getting the same answer of ‘I’ll talk to the queen about it, ok?’

Coming with me are the three tournament girls, Noah, Gray (big doggo), Mattias + twenty men who are either knights or sorcerers. Are they multiplying?

We are taking armored half-track vehicles to Turin, where we will take the train all the way to the capital while healing people on every stop. We are using half-tracks instead of normal cars because there’s still no proper road between the fortress and Turin.

You’d think the fortress would be a priority for road construction, but in truth, the barbarians aren’t seen as that big of a deal now that they can’t sneak through due to the scouting devices spread throughout the border.

So railroads and roads are being built in other places, including Endel.

Gray is walking until we get to Turin, then he will be taking the train with us. A war horse wouldn’t be able to keep up, but he’s fine.

Noah is coming too since he never went to the capital, and now is as good a time as any.

The trip to Turin was uneventful, large groups of bandits don’t even exist anymore. Any bandit nowadays will be in small teams, disguised as just another traveler, without proper armor or weapons. Harder to find but their threat has also lowered.

We didn’t keep other travelers company like when I came through here with mom a long time ago, but I told one of the servants to ask people we came across if they had any wounded that needed healing, but there were only a couple.

About three quarters of the way to Turin we came across two well-guarded carriages. I watched from the window as the servant asked them if they wanted any healing.

While watching with a bored expression, I felt a hint of a familiar smell that I couldn’t quite remember, so I enhanced my sense of smell to see if I recognize it.

Oh, that’s blood.

“Sir Lance, they have no wounded, shall we go on?” The servant asks me.

“They don’t?” I ask in return. Now isn’t that quite suspicious? “Let me talk to them myself.” I say as I get out of the car. I send a discrete signal to the bodyguards to prepare for combat. Mattias and Ellie move to my sides and I enhance all my senses and charge up in mental power.

As I approach them the smell of blood becomes clearer.

“Hey, you.” I call out to the guard that was talking to my servant. “Have you seen any bandits around these parts?”

I can feel him getting tense, but no sign of guilt. The smell of blood isn’t coming from him either. “No, sir. If there are any bandits, they have avoided us, Sir Lance.” It’s normal for him to know who I am just by seeing my three-pointed-star pupils.

At this point the rest of the guards and the people inside the carriages come out. “Something wrong, sir?” Asks a woman around my mother’s age.

“No, not quite. You see, I feel the scent of blood coming from someone around here. And this friend here” I point to the man I was talking to. “Said you haven’t run into any bandits…”

The woman is tense as well, but like the guard she doesn’t give me any sign of guilt. “Oh, it must be rabbit blood. One of our men killed one earlier.” She points to a man with a bow and quiver near the back.

“I see. Come over here, friend.” I beckon him.

He approaches and indeed the smell of blood is coming from him. “Have you killed any humans recently?” I ask.

He swallows his saliva before he answers. “No, Sir Lance.” His mind is tense but still no guilt.

“Oh well, sorry about stopping you.” I signal my men to relax.

“Paranoid much?” Asks Ellie with a smirk. I just give her a short glare as answer.

Looking at the carriages’ people who are now relaxing, I notice the woman who acted like a leader earlier has a sword on her waist. “Excuse me, madam. Could you lend me that sword for a second?”

She tenses herself slightly but obeys. I take a few minutes to enchant the sword. The sword itself is similar to a small backsword, convenient to carry around. “Here you go.” I return the sword. “Sorry again, farewell.” I say and signal my men to get a move on.

‘Am I getting stressed out?’ Is what I think while I hear the goodbyes from the people we stoped.

Next stop is Turin.