CHAPTER 14 - THEY ARE BACK!

Olivier woke up from his bed early in the morning, his body was still aching in different areas. Despite his body's strong regeneration which could rival or maybe even excel Kratos' regeneration speed, he was worn out after all the strict training routines in the last seven days.

Somehow, his invitation to spar with the barbarians to build trust with each other turned into a massive brawling-fest where each barbarian participated. Olivier sparred with each and every single one of them, getting quite a beating. However, with Kratos' guidance, he improved rapidly in both aspects of battle and swordsmanship. After undergoing strict training and sparring with the barbarians every day, Olivier had grown quite strong. He could now defeat two barbarians' soldiers at the same time and gain victory against the barbarian captains. He still has a long way to go before he could earn the qualification to challenge Kratos. He was still the insurmountable mountain he was since day 1 of their meeting.

Kratos had told him that the only reason he won was due to his superior strength and the regeneration speed of his body. But, he was happy anyway. With his improved Fiend Body Art, his body would only grow stronger with each refinement. He was already aware of the anomaly that occurred during his body refinement.

Olivier had tried several methods to figure out the abilities and uses of his birthmark, He had probed it with his energy but it had no reaction. Under Kratos's suggestion, he tried to take one of Kratos' full-strength strikes without putting up any defense. Kratos had assured him that he could stop his attack before it touches him but the birthmark had been activated at that moment. A white shield of light covered his body that easily blocked the strike. After it was over, the white light was retracted inside the birthmark and there was no movement from it ever since.

Olivier did not try anything since then. He had confirmed that the birthmark was beneficial to him and it could protect his life. So, he just accepted it as soon as one of the perks of rebirth.

Olivier also had tremendous progress in his archery. The archers were a bunch of cold beautiful women who did not interact much with others. They seemed nonchalant and uninterested to talk more than necessary. Boy was he wrong. Those sharpshooting beauties were like speaking canon who would never stop once they start talking about archery.

Olivier was once again reminded of the true nature of women. Back on Earth, He had a stand-up comedian talk about the 100% effective way to pick up women. In that show, the comedian had said that to pick up women like a professional all he had to do was ask a question about topic of their interest for example Make-up and just listen to them rant and rave crazily, take off your coat, and smile occasionally saying ambiguous words like 'now way', 'you are crazy', 'no you did not ', etc. And God was he right.

Olivier now knew the name of all the sixteen archers, the name of their bows, and even their arrows. The only sad thing was the archers only talked about archery otherwise Olivier was confident he could extract all the information about the whole archer race from them. sadly, the only information he got other than archery was the worship for the Archer Queen, Rosa.

Olivier also had learned the unique eye skills of the archers, the Oculus eyes. According to Aria, the oculus eyes was one of the most powerful eye technique for archery. Oculus eyes could grant you the ability to see far into distance and flaws in your movement at the first level. At the second level, one could see an invisible trajectory in the air and if one shoots arrows following the trajectory, the arrows could directly bypass through the defense of the opponent. It was a sure-kill move that required a lot of energy to execute that move. Meanwhile, at the third stage, one could control objects in the air with their eyes, project fear unto your opponent's minds, and many more.

Olivier was amazed by the applications of the oculus eyes. He was already imagining shooting lasers like Superman through his eyes. He trained with Aria daily and eye training was also added to their bust archery training schedule.

Meanwhile. The legacy village was developing rapidly under the guidance of Saya and the hard work of two builders, Bryan, and Erwin. Seeing them exhausted every day Olivier wanted to hire a new builder as soon as possible. Sadly, he did not have the luxury to search for gems by removing the trees and stone by spending resources. Only by using the special method by the builders to remove the trees and stones by using gold and minerals could gems be found. Sadly all of the gems he had, were used by him in body refinement. Olivier did not know how long it would take him to gather 500 gems altogether to hire another builder. Until then, he could only trouble the two available builders.

During the last seven days, the resource collectors of the legacy village had been upgraded to level 6. Each resource collector could produce about 1300 resources every hour. As a result, The village could mine more than 90,000 resources every day. Thus, he had a lot of resources to spare. In order to use the resources to their full potential, Olivier invested in defense. Although he had no idea when would those defensive buildings would be useful, he still built and developed them.

At this point, the legacy village had two canons at level 4. Upgrading a canon to level 4 only required him to spend 16,000 gold and the upgrade time was only fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, the cost of upgrading the archer towers was a little bit higher, he had to spend 20,000 gold to upgrade the archer tower to level 4. Bryan had to work for three hours without taking any break to upgrade the archer tower. Olivier was also thinking of investing his resources to build a mortar. A mortar is a defensive structure that consists of a tubular launcher, it is kind of similar to a canon while instead of firing bullets at its targets, a mortar launches its shells into the air. The shell upon hitting the ground exploded dealing splash damage to its surrounding. Unlike a canon, a mortar does not deal targeted damage so there is a chance of harming allies in the vicinity. So, he was a little on building the mortar since he had to use it to defend the village. so, there is always the chance of harming his own people.

The village was developing greatly on the political level too. Since Olivier became familiar with the archers and the barbarians developing friendships with them, the whole village would usually gather at the army camp to watch Olivier spar. The spar became a platform for the two races to communicate with each other. Due to the constitution which promoted equality, the archers and barbarians usually treated each other with respect which further led to the development of a neighbor-like relationship between archers and the barbarians. Olivier could already see a future where the two races fight arms to arms against their enemies. He was really excited to witness his vision coming true.

As usual, after waking up, Olivier donned on his clothes and looked out of the window beside his bed. He could see the sun rising on the horizon spreading its brilliance onto the world. Looking at the birds flying in the distance as the golden rays of the sun penetrate through the fog covering the hills in the distance, Olivier sighed with amazement. When he was a child on earth, he would always draw this view like all the children when asked to draw something by his teacher. And this view always reminded him of those days.

Sighing, Olivier picked the bow and the quilts which were lying beside his bed and donned them on his back. Picking the broadsword, he left the room. Passing through several structures, he arrives at the army camp. One of the army camps was always bustling with laughter and the angry shout of the barbarians meanwhile the other camp was always silent.

When Olivier arrived at the Barbarian army camp, he could hear the shouts and exclaims of the barbarians.

" Guys, Oliv is here!".

"Morning Olivier".

"Hahaha.... Today will be interesting".

....

"Haha.. Morning guys. Did you sleep well?" Olivier greeted the crowd with a big smile.

"Of course, we slept well. Watching your ass get beat, I had the nicest dream". One of the Barbarians among the crowd replied.

"Oh.. Miguel, I see you are as lively as ever. We should have a bout later today to connect more". Olivier replied with a hint of teasing causing Miguel to instantly shut up. This caused a roar of laughter to resound in the surrounding.

"After the last beating, he does not dare to challenge Olivier anymore".

"He got it real bad last time".

The other barbarians teased Miguel as they joked. Miguel turned beet red with embarrassment but he still shouted back indignantly, "You guys are all the same as me. Do any of you dare to challenge Olivier again? If any of you guys dare to challenge Olivier today, I will acknowledge you as my grandfather".

"Who needs a grandson like you".

"My grandson would never be a loser like you".

Barbarians replied back sarcastically and laughed loudly but their laughter was a little strained. When Olivier came to spar with them a week ago, they all accepted his challenge. Some of them had even given Olivier quite a beating as well. But the next when they fought again, they had to exert their all just to gain a narrow victory. On the third day, they lost to Olivier by a small margin, and the next they were having a hard time keeping up with him. The day before yesterday was their worst day as all those who had given Olivier a beating before got beat up quite badly by him. Yesterday, he had even taken two of them a single time and won. He had even sparred against one of their captains and gained a victory.

From then on, nobody wanted to challenge this monster called Olivie who could improve faster than running. But, they liked talking and chatting with him as he always talked about interesting stuff which they had never heard before. They enjoyed his stand-up comedy the most which he had performed once before. Some of the barbarians had even tried to perform stand-up as well imitating him. All in all, Olivier was quite close to the barbarians.

Hearing the commotion, Kratos and the four captains came out of their tent.

"Good morning, Uncle Kratos".Olivier greeted Kratos with a smile. Kratos also showed a rare smile greeting back, "Morning".

"Hey, morning to you too. Bjorn, Birfer, Erne, Erik". Olivier greeted the four captains as well. He had gotten quite familiar with them over these days.

"Morning Oliv".

"Morning morning. We should spar today".

"Good morning".

Three of the captains greeted Olivier back but one of them did not causing Olivier to turn his gaze to him. Sensing his gaze, the third captain greeted awkwardly, "G...goo..good m...morning".

"What's up with him? He was fine the day before". Olivier turned to one of the captains and asked. His name was Bjorn. He was great at communication and well-liked by all the barbarians. Bjorn replied with a teasing tone," Erik has been sulking since he lost to you. He said that you won by coincidence".

"Shut up. I, Erik have always accepted my wins and losses graciously". Erik shouted back causing all the captains to laugh.

"If you want a rematch again, we can fight again today". Olivier smiled inviting Erik for a rematch causing him to smile.

"Then we shall fight again". Erik replied instantly.

Just then a commotion was heard outside.

"looks like the archers are here as well. Let's go and greet them". Oliviers smiled and walked outside of their camp. Several beauties with pink hair and green dress were waiting outside. They all had a cape with a hood on their back which covered the bow and arrows they were carrying on their back.

Olivier moved forward and did a formal bow like a soldier greeting them as he said, "Olivier greets my ladies".

This caused them to smile as some of the lively ones returned the greeting in a more exaggerated manner. "We greet lord chief Olivier".

Olivie laughed out loudly. "Mina, you are getting better and better with your greeting. You could totally pass as a palace maid". Olivier teased.

"humph..". She snorted and asked in an excited manner, "Are you guys going to fight again?"

Olivier nodded causing all the archers to smile. They were excited to watch the battle. Olivier's progress was very fast making each of his battle thrilling to watch. Olivier sometimes sparred with the archers as well and while he was away training, the archers and the barbarians sparred against each other as well.

Olivier had developed a good relationship with archers as well. He was helpless against those cold ones like Aria but he was jolly with some of the lively ones like Mina. Meanwhile, archers liked Olivier as well. He was kind and respectful to all the archers. He was polite to all of them and they could sense that he was never out of line. He also had some unique perspectives about archery. Some of them were quite bizarre but they were things they had never thought of. Most of all, Olivier was always passionate about archery. He always said that being an archer was cool. This made the archer quite pleased.

Olivier walked to the center of the space between the two army camps. This area was designated especially for fighting. He cleared his throat and called out in a loud voice, "We will begin today's sparring session. Anyone who would like to challenge me can step on the stage".

The crowds cheered loudly as Erik jumped on the stage.

"I will fight you". He drew his broadsword. Just as they were about to begin, they stopped and turned towards the east. A girl with pink hair was running towards them with shaky steps. She had bruises all over her face and her clothes were torn and several areas.

When she saw the crowd, she uttered a few words and collapsed on the ground and lost consciousness before completing her sentences.

"They are back!"