Hours have passed since the audience. Xavier is resting his back on the throne, eyes closing. Although his country is still under attack from the goblin invasion and a possibility of an impending threat of a demon at the border is lingering, his face does not show any tension at all, only a small smile is there. Hands tapping on the cushion, he is thinking of the harvest he had today.

The decision to summon the heroes, it was not a very easy decision to pass at all, with all kinds of obstacles and problems that may come up in the future. There is a taboo among all the humans within this world, that one shall not research or attempt to summon a hero from another world. The hero is a disruptive being that challenges the order of this world. In the past, it was not simply because the hero was betrayed that she wanted to destroy the world. The story behind was deeper than that, and that involved a lot of secrets either lost or still known within the upper society of the humans.

However, he still did it and successfully summoned the heroes. His intention was exactly as Lexar had said, to gather the knowledge to start his revolution for the country. However, it was also different from what Lexar thought. What he wanted is not the knowledge of the modern earth, but the knowledge of the ancient past, the golden era of the human. He was expecting someone from the same world as the previous hero, hoping they have the same knowledge and thinking that were used as foundations to develop the wonders of the past. But the result was disappointing.

He ended up summoning a bunch of good for nothing kids from another world. Although their knowledge and thinking are fresh, new, and worth a try, it was far from what he expected. They only knew about things such as economics, management, mathematics, physics, etc. Fields that the only scholars may get interested in studying, and perhaps, some of them can become useful. But the most disappointing thing is that they don’t know how to become strong.

The core of the previous golden age was to let the human become stronger than any other species in this world and climb on top of the food chain. The cultivator was the symbol of the achievements in the past and the previous hero was the one who brought that job to this world. She was also a martial artist who taught the people in the past how to become stronger. What about these heroes? They had never even killed an animal to feed themselves before, never held a true weapon, and only knew how to fight on the same level as the kids without having the job evaluated.

Learning all of that, he thought that his summoning was a failure. Not a single objective of his plan was achieved, and he was stuck with a bunch of helpless kids from the other world. However, after analyzing their strength, he realized the summoning was not really useless at all. They still had the strength and developing potential as the heroes.

By dividing the potential power of the heroes into many more smaller parts, it would be easier to manage the heroes than dealing with a very strong one. He had modified the ritual in order to do so to control the heroes better. Dealing with a group of weak ones is easier than dealing with a very strong one. It is the common sense of this world, where individualism is much more emphasized than on earth.

A level 50 soldiers are much more valuable than 50 level 10 soldiers. A talented scholar is much more valuable than a group of educated people. In this world Tristina, the value of a high capability individual is emphasized more than anything else. With the RPG system, the upper limit of what one person achieve can be very high, so high that one person strength can be stronger than the power of a hundred people combined together. Furthermore, with how dangerous this world is, the might and power are heavily emphasized more than anything else. This is in contrast to earth, where one individual’s power is limited by many factors, be it the environment, or the body. Because there is a limit of what one individual can do, the importance of teamwork, collaboration, being one with the community is more appreciated.

Even with their potential divided, the heroes still had tremendous potential and excellent quality to fight in the incoming battle in each of them. That’s why he had modified his plan, with the core of using the heroes’ power instead of knowledge. A new organization was created, with its focus on utilizing the heroes’ power and knowledge to fight the war in an unprecedented manner. S.W.O.R.D was created.

The heroes would be divided into different groups, each either organized with balanced roles and statuses for general purposes, or for a specialized function that is used in certain circumstances. At first, he let them stick together to show his goodwill toward them and assured their will to fight for the country. It was a move to let their guard down after summoning them to this world.

However, letting them sticking together too long is a problem. Although individualism is emphasized in this world, the power of union is also a strongly praised value as well. One dragon is now divided into a horde of lions, and a lion is much weaker than a dragon. However, they are still very dangerous when being in a pack like that. He needed to divide them further in order to weaken the overall strength of them, especially when he realized that a portion of heroes still displayed their “uncooperativeness” despite his big effort to curb their favor. It was troublesome.

Luckily, a chance showed itself while he still pondered the solution. The class was divided into two factions, and he immediately seized the chance to cut the group into two. That group led by Kaito Takehara, the active hero faction as he heard, intended to fully comply with his commands, wanting to truly integrate into this world, becoming an inseparable part of this country. It seemed like that they hated their lives in the previous world, and wanted to turn a new leaf, getting a new better life in this world. He likes that group a lot, a bunch of obedient kids ready to work at his order if given the right compensation. They are very cooperative and work according to his will, and even at times, exceed his “expectation”. To reward for their enthusiasm, he promised them a lot of things, guaranteed their positions after the war with the demons, enhancing their belief even further.

On the other hand, that “uncooperative” group is led by their former leader Ishida Shirogane. He is an intelligent kid, the type that is oriented toward mastering knowledge and management. All of his qualities resemble a scholar, an excellent one at that, excelled in both working with specialized skills and performing general tasks, unlike those narrow-minded ones, who only know about their work. Most of the useful knowledge from the other world came from him. A very annoying piece, being both useful and troublesome at the same time. That kid has been trying to sniff around the reasons behind the summoning, investigate the country’s both light side and dark side. Given enough time, Ishida may grow into a capable man with his far and wide view on the future. It’s too bad that he has exposed himself too early. Although he has been trying to do it secretly, those actions did not escape Xavier’s surveillance and he did not even realize that.

That’s why Xavier has a plan. Since that kid loves sticking nose around a lot, he will have another place to stick his nose in. Those ambitious and suspicious nobles have been testing Xavier’s nerve for a while recently. It will be a good thing if the hero can dig out something, giving the king a chance to remove those nobles.

If someone believes in something, he will lean to believe evidence and facts that support his belief more than anything else. A person who thinks Xavier is suspicious tends to believe another person who also doubts Xavier. The knight captain that is assigned to Ishida group will play such a role. By creating many chances for the heroes to investigate, no doubt that the knight captain will gain that hero’s trust, and with time, that knight captain will become the “true companion” to the hero. And to do so, Xavier needs to let a few of his secrets exposed.

In reality, there is also a third group, but it is not really considered a different group. This group composes of indecisive kids, who cannot decide their future. They do not know what to do, who to believe, and their purposes in the future. A bunch of sheep will go along the flow but stand still persistently as one whole group if confused when there are many ways. Either faction, Kaito or Ishida, requires one to act wholeheartedly and pursue the objective until the end. The heroes know that once they follow either side, they cannot turn back anymore, making them indecisive.

The higher the risk the better the reward, no pain no gain. Both sides know these two phrases. For Kaito faction, to get the reward they desire, they have to get involved deeply with Vahalla, dealing with the royalty and the nobles, and that means sooner or later, they will participate into the political conflict of this country. The political war is always dirty. Kaito Takehara, though looks like a hot-blooded, impulsive teenager at glance, actually knows of this risk. By entangling themselves into this messy network of political power of Vahalla, they may be dragged into the dirty political battlefield, but they can avoid the risk of being isolated and cut off once the war with the demon end. Their existence will tie together with the benefits of some factions, thus there will be people protecting them once the time comes. That’s the danger of joining this faction.

Ishida faction’s risk is easy to see. If they uncover a bad secret of this country, they will face this whole country as an enemy. It will be very hard to escape as they will have no side to support them, neither the other human countries nor the demon. There are countless bad consequences that are imaginable when in such situation.

Facing such choices, they opted to stay silent, doing nothing and not choosing any side. However, they know that they cannot keep being indecisive forever and has to choose a side eventually OR find another course of action. That's where Xavier uses the knife to further divide this class.

Though Kaito’s group is obedient, their way of doing risks damaging the current balance of political parties in this country. The more heroes joining them, the more complicated the situation may turn in the future. The best way to deal with this third group is to give them purposes in the future, purposes that will not let them join either of the current factions. S.W.O.R.D tried to investigate each of their habits, their dreams, and their original plans for the future in the old world. The organization will design a dream, a future plan for each of the hero, then create a scenario, an opportunity for the hero to pursue and chase that dream. Those scenarios can be varied. It can be a coincident meeting with the future other-half in a difficult situation, a random talk where two persons happen to realize they are chasing the same dream, or an elopement of two people that runs away from their responsibility.

The irony is that this plan came up when he studied “marketing” from one hero. He taught the scholars the importance of using empathy and people’s emotion to appeal to people’s approval of the revolutions they are conducting. A vision toward a better and desirable dream for everyone can let people have a positive outlook on the proposal, allowing it to have more acceptance. To portray that vision, an advertisement is needed, and that advertisement will be in a form of a story, a touching story that will be sung and told by the bards to the mass. At that time, while attending the lecture, Xavier had an idea, if we could tailor a touching story for just one specific person, would it be much more effective than the stories for the whole mass?