8 Preparation

The entire day was spent imparting the incantations of the two spirit arts to the expedition members.

Before Kael ascended to the Guardian Rank in the past, he spent his time and energy devoted to the learning of several hundred spirit arts. Once one was Guardian Rank or above, they were able to use magic arts, which was a kind of skill that was much more immensely powerful than spirit arts in terms of its nature and spirituality.

Now however, spirit arts would suffice in helping Kael to tide through the days before he was able to utilize those magic arts.

Over the next few days, Kael focused solely on familiarizing the cultivators with the two spirit arts. First, they had to execute Spirit Steps. Then, they have to execute Sunlight Throw using pebbles. Kael was able to point out the flaws in execution for each and every single member. Then he corrected their mistakes after pointing it out, enabling the expedition members to reach a higher level in terms of their combat abilities.

Patten Eagle nodded in approval as he walked around to see the progress of the cultivators. Even his own men, the Beastmasters, were learning something fruitful and were being productive as well. He was happy that his decision to listen and recruit Kael was a correct one.

This man seemed selfless, as if he had nothing to lose by imparting his own personal spirit arts to strangers. After all they were merely together for a common purpose of harvesting Whitemoon Stones and not truly buddies that were going through thick and thin together. 50 gold and an item bag seemed too little as compensation if this expedition worked out successfully.

Little did Patten Eagle know that Kael as the Invoker treated these spirit arts as playthings and that he didn't mind at all spreading a bit of his vast knowledge to other people.

After the team was proficient in their individual combat tactics, next came the tactics on a team level.

"Each team comprises of someone in the Beastmaster profession as the team captain. He is in charge of issuing orders when combating against the Whitemoon Goblins. The Beastmaster will also serve as the core and tank of the team. This means that the Beastmaster will take the brunt of the damage inflicted by the Whitemoon Goblins. Since according to the intel provided by the City Lord, the Whitemoon Goblins are mainly melee attackers and only a few of them are ranged attackers, this means that it will be easy for the Beastmaster to block the goblins' melee attacks." Kael began explaining the tactics to the expedition members.

"When filtering and assigning all of you to the different teams, I have already taken into account your various expertise. I noticed that all of you are at least at the Commoner Rank Lower Phase, however hardly anyone of you took up a profession, apart from the Beastmasters under the City Lord. I have thus categorized all of you into two main categories: melee support and ranged support…"

Kael continued explaining the tactics to the expedition members, and they nodded in agreement. This seemed logical and fair to them. None of them was onerously burdened with too much responsibilities. Furthermore, there was at least one miner in each team. This meant that four people would be on guard while the member was busy with extracting the Whitemoon Stone from the ore mine.

Whitemoon Stone didn't come in chunks where one could hack and mine easily. It had to be extracted from the mineral veins using incantations and spirit arts. Only those who knew the mining art would be able to mine these stones. Naturally, they wouldn't be as selfless as Kael to impart their knowledge to their peers. If not, their main source of income and purpose of being in the group would be greatly diminished. Nobody was that foolish.

After the explanation was the practice. Since there was no more Whitemoon Goblins to do target practice on, the members had to pit themselves against different teams. The city square had 5 teams fighting against 5 teams while the rest of the crowd who had nothing better to do joined the excitement and watched on.

Once again, Kael pointed out the flaws of the teams on a tactical level. He elaborated on the timings of attack of the melee supports, and also how the ranged support should only focus fire on individual opponents when they are sure they wouldn't attract too much aggro onto themselves, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of the Beastmaster tanks.

The training continued for 5 days.

Finally, the expedition team was ready. Patten Eagle rode on a wild boar, as do the other Beastmasters. It was their signature mount. Everyone else, however, was going to travel on foot. Only Kael was the exception, who was given a horse mount.

"Alright. I believe everyone here has improved leaps and bounds in terms of your individual combat ability and tactical awareness on a team level. Now is the time to prove yourselves. Now we will enter deep into the Whitemoon Mine to search for what we have been looking for: the Whitemoon Stones! Everyone here has seen how ferocious the Whitemoon Goblins can be, but I believe that everyone here can hold their grounds against these goblins! Have faith in yourselves and in your team. Onwards we march!"

After gathering and motivating everyone at the city square, Patten Eagle led the expedition out of Fledgling City towards the Whitemoon Mine.

The Whitemoon Mine was located 60 miles away from Fledgling City, thus it took the expedition team an entire day of trekking before they finally reached the destination. Along the way, there was not much obstructions. The demonic beasts didn't dare to approach a contingent of 50 cultivators with their meagre strength. Those that did have the strength to oppose such a massive group were all hidden in the depths of the forests and caves. Thus, it was a smooth journey till the mines.