Chapter 14

A thousand men were marching towards a forest, three hundred cavalry were riding their horses. And a dozen or so horses were pulling carts full of food and water, with some beer snuck in. At the very front of the march was a man riding a majestic war horse, he wore heavy armor that covered most of his body with chainmail covering most of the others. He had a scar over one of his eyes and he had a sword at his waist and a shield on his back.

He was knight Shook. A veteran knight who fought other kingdoms and had managed to bring his unit to safety even when surrounded by enemies. He was ranked a hundred and sixty eight in the kingdom knight rank, this rank did not include the knights who have been blessed, but that doesn't mean he can't compare. In the whole kingdom, only a hundred sixty seven of them, not including those who have been blessed, were considered better than him.

So he rode with a sense of superiority and strength. Of course to almost anyone in the military of Domana, he was like a child trying to show off, after all, who would blatantly show of their strength and most importantly weakness.

Following him were a dozen knights, they were also very strong knights, almost comparable to the soldiers of Domana, almost. They were the subordinates of Knight Shook. They were also very well equipped, not as well as Shook, but much better than normal knights.

To any noble. This force would be a threatening force that would scare people shitless, but to Author, who had dozens of soldiers, a over a dozen squires, he was not scared, that was because the squires he had could trample the knights they used. So he wasn't scared at all.

Everyday more soldiers are made and more squires are created, and this time, he would level them up without fear of money, in the past, he barely made any money between the buying of items, food, equipment, and more, as well as the wages of the troops, he had to worry about money at every turn, but now that he taught a decent amount of the peasants how to creat valuable goods he could sell and the factory that creates a lot of medium quality ale that could be sold for a good prices, he no longer really needs to worry about the price and wages, because he is gaining money fast, even when he spends a lot of money on other stuff

And thanks to the refugees that come in waves, his village has over a thousand people working. The village originally carried twenty thousand people, so much of the village is still unused.

But no matter, in a few months, the village will be stuffed with people. After all, at the rate people were coming, it wouldn't take long before the village was full, and by then he would need to create more houses or another village, but this one would need to be build from the ground up instead of taking a random village he was given by his father. And he knew just the place. A few dozen or a hundred kilometers away, to the west, there was the sea, he could use it for larger trade than the small caravans that come once or twice a week. Not only that, but he could also do fishing, whaling, or creating salt, currently he was buying salt from the caravans because this world doesn't have salt readily available for the common people, and what salt there was, it was expensive, like really expensive.

So he would make his own salt from seawater. He could the. Sell them at high prices as well. That was why he plans on creating a village west of where he was.

He took a look at his soldiers training and decided to expand his core. He would need that for the future. He sat down and closed the windows, expanding his core. He could feel that his core was at just the edge of making it through to the realms of expert. Thus he expanded his core diligently. Gathering energy from the air and into his body. He then felt his core expand at a fast rate, energy burst from the atmosphere and into Author's body.

While this happened, the monsters in the forest grew restless. They could feel the energy, energy that they wanted. Similar to their own. Monsters have a core, called a magic stone. The problem is that they don't exactly how to expand that core and increase their power. The only way they really know is to eat those with cores and hope the cores they ate increases their own.

Now, they were shown a large tasty treat, practically being dangled right in front of them. So they rushed towards the village, hoping to the be one that eats the core. They formed a beast tide and started to stampede towards the village. Ignoring each other and what they were doing in the past, they now had a new objective, to eat Author, and obviously the troops under him would not allow the monsters to do that.

"Form a line." Nick ordered the people.

So they formed a barrier, one of shields and spears, once the monster tide was within a few hundred meters away a voice shouted.

"Shot your arrows!" Olivia shouted. Her voice boomed throughout the air and into the ears of the people.

The soldiers shot their loaded crossbows and the bolts that were released created a cloud of bolts.

The bolts pierces the heads of many of the monsters, killing them. But this did not faze any of them. The monsters just continued to charge towards the village. All with reckless abandon.

"Load the next barrage." Olivia shouted. The soldiers loaded the next bolts and aimed towards the monsters. Ready to fire on the order.

"Fire." She shouted the word resognated with the people and they shot their crossbows. The bolts once again flew across the field and landed on an unfortunate target, the monster would trip and fall over, resulting in them being trampled on to death, they would die from the bolt striking their vitals, or they would tank it and continue charging.

"Raise your spears and shields, the crossbows will do us no good in close range!" Olivia shouted.

The soldiers and squires raised their shields and got ready for impact. The monster charged forward and right into the barrier of shields.