The following weeks were very hectic, with the assembling of the army office, the training of the knights, and the recruiting of promising new mbers for our little army.
It wasn’t so hard to find potential recruits with Lovelace’s mana sense abilities. She is able to detect even the smallest fluctuations of mana, in a way that is a lot more refined than mine.
It’s a skill that can’t be imitated by the System, because it cos from her nature as an elental being. Whatever it ans to be an elental being.
But more than that, she’s a kind of being that specializes in feeding on mana. That’s the reason her senses to detect and differentiate mana are so keen.
But all the ti she spends walking around in the biggest cities looking for candidates with great mana potential is ti I’m alone with the teaching tasks.
And every ti a new recruit joins, I have to co back to the basics of shattering the person’s whole belief system about what magic can and cannot do.
Well, that was truer in the beginning. After we realized the difficulties of breaking those chains, she started focusing more on younger people who haven’t had any training in magic, especially from the poorer areas.
Those who ca without many preconceived notions actually leaped in the understanding of systemless casting.
The screening of the candidates is handled by so of the knights, overseen by us.
Usually soone would strike a casual conversation with the target and steer it towards critical topics like the Church and the beastkin.
Then another person would co and make so derisive and racist comnts, and the first one would debate with the latter one. All the while, Lovelace and I were watching and analyzing the candidate’s reactions.
Only after this first screening, if the candidate passed, would we go to the second step of Lovelace talking directly to the person and making an interview and invitation.
That first debate actually cut a lot of candidates out. Even things like discreetly nodding to the racist remarks while not saying anything were enough to dismiss them.
By the ti Lovelace talked to them, we already had a clear view of where their heart lies.
As most of the recruits are commoners from poorer areas, they usually have a lot of suspicions about a woman who appears out of nowhere saying that she is the court wizard and wants to recruit them.
After all, it does sound kinda like the Nigerian Prince email. It’s too good to be true. But, in our case, it is true, and Lovelace has the ans to prove it.
After two weeks, our little army has sixty people, and they are progressing smoothly. The knights of the core group have already mastered so basic arias of their elents of choice, and Seufroy has pulled off the portal opening aria.
The office area has rooms for two hundred and fifty people to live in, including collective kitchens and bathrooms, though I sealed the bathroom off because it is a complete ss.
After all, it’s the bathroom intended for the use of slaves. Even in the day, things like hygiene standards, comfort, and privacy were not issues the caretakers cared about.
The new recruits are living in those old rooms, and I ordered the building of so bathrooms outside.
The whole complex of the arena looks now, to the outsider eye, like an old ruin that is being occupied by so squatters. As the residents that were living here before were refugees, everyone would just assu that any other person that they see here is also a refugee.
As long as there isn’t a rise in criminal activity in the region, nobody will give a damn about it. Maybe the local law enforcers, but uncle Jyllian has already taken care of that side.
And, with the arena’s solid resistance and the mana and sound barriers closing off the space, nobody will suspect the training that is happening daily inside.
When the beastkin cos, we’ll have to rethink so things, but, for now, it’s working.
:::
"Do you think that they will accept?"
"I have no doubts about it."
"Why? They have their own lives and culture already. I don’t know if they would be that eager to throw it all away to co help the people who have oppressed them for so long."
"That is a solid point, Lovelace, but... the way the Loa helped back then, and the way they guided to rescue you. I think that they had planned this from the beginning."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because so of the Loa were originally humans and lived in a ti when that place was a lush jungle. They want their people to escape the Barrens or rescue the Barrens. They don’t want to see their people struggling to just survive, day after day."
"And you think that they saw in you a person potentially capable of helping them achieve that?"
"Well, at least soone who would be able to shake the status quo. They had certainly seen my title back then. They knew that I was royal, and they probably knew who my mother is and all about my family, even before eting Oya."
"You’ve talked about that Oya before... she’s the deity from your world, right?"
"Yes... she is a deity from a people who lived as victims of slavery for centuries. Her people were hunted to be sold as slaves on other continents, just like the beastkin are."
"I didn’t know that..."
"Yeah, practically none of the dia you accessed ntions that. This is not sothing that appears much in the bigger narrative. But it’s a fact that’s there."
"And she said that she sent you here..."
"No, she said that the goddess made a summoning of heroes, and that I and other people who were nearby were caught in the explosion that accompanied the summoning spell."
"But we haven’t heard anything about any heroes."
"It’s because she managed to influence my own birth to happen exactly..."
"Exactly what?"
"Exactly seventeen years before the hero summoning... Which ans that she will summon the heroes to this world in less than two years."
"What? How didn’t you say anything about that before?"
"I forgot... At the ti, the hero summoning didn’t strike as being of much importance..."
"But now that we are preparing to go up in arms against her Church believing she is absent."
"She probably still is. Maybe even asleep or sothing. And when she wakes up she’ll be in such dire straits that she’ll resort to the hero summoning spell. Wait. Wait. Would it be because of our uprising?"
"It might be... if we are successful, it would be a heavy blow to her."
Is being here to lead that uprising the factor that leads to the summoning that causes to be here in the first place... or would the uprising happen anyway?
There was already a lot of stuff brewing in this country. Maybe this uprising was fated to happen anyway.
I guess I’ll never know.
"Aurea. I need you to tell exactly everything that that goddess said."
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