(IN) Chapter 071 - Maine's Military Might!

"Duke! What did I tell you about kicking down doors?" Vivian scolded Duke with a strict tone.

"U-Uh don't kick the door, ma'am!" Duke immediately took up a militaristic position.

"Do it again" Vivian angrily ordered as Duke went through the process of opening the Study's doors.

*Knock Knock* "Why, kind sirs, ladies, and gentlemen, may this poor lowly fellow enter the o so sanctified study room?"

[Wait! Why are you entering like a servant?! Aren't you supposed to be the Lord!?" Anna asked herself, hearing Duke's over the top respectfulness...

"Good! Next time you enter, make sure to now three times instead of two!" Vivian, not realizing the errors of what had just happened, haphazardly continued to teach Duke, overly humble manners.

[Haha, she's more like a mother than a wife...] Annie laughed to herself thinking Duke and Vivian's relationship was quite peculiar, while Benjamin, the man with previous marriage experience, on the other hand, remembered his past relationship with his wife that was exactly like Duke and Vivian's.

[Ahh, yes... The stereotypical 'boys will be boys' attitude of the husband, and the ever nagging wife, haha... Seems like the two's relationship is quite nice... quite nice...] Benjamin looked back to a time when he was still young.

He was quite the opposite of his currently refined and gentlemanly stature back then, and in fact, he was a lot much like Duke in the sense that he too lacked manners like the young Count, and was often scolded by his headstrong wife...

Benjamin slightly laughed as he remembered how annoyed he would get when his wife started to bicker non-stop...

[I miss my wife]

A lingering sentiment passed through the wind, thinking himself the fool to ignore his wife's incessantly repeating words... Oh how much the current Benjamin would give just to hear 5 minutes of his wife's nagging again.

"What did you need Duke?" Vivian asked as she continued working through the tall mountain of paperwork in front of her.

"Hmm, I just thought maybe you three might be tired from all the work and would like to go out for a bit?" Duke asked the three undead looking office workers. But of course, no matter how haggard Vivian looked to Duke, she was still the cutest in his eyes!

"Haa... I can't... There's just too much work" Vivian explained as the eyes of Benjamin and Anna drooped, realizing their moment of opportunity for a break was denied by their boss.

"He he... I knew you'd say that! So I prepared something... What if I tell you, that me and Galleo found a new way to make money? Hmmm?" Duke insisted finally catching Vivian's attention, and of course, winning over the tired Benjamin and Anna's gratitude/adoration.

Duke held Vivian's hand as he dragged her towards the place he wanted to show her. Bouncing along the road.

Normally Vivian would've immediately unhanded herself from Duke's grasps, but strangely, this time both parties kept quiet. Who knows? Maybe this time both of them wanted to stay like this...

As Duke and Vivian were walking towards their destination, they passed through the training fields where the experienced Knights were sparring with 3-5 Civilian Trainees along with the new Professional Recruits. All sparrers wore padded clothing suggested by Duke learning about Galleo's Three Laws of Motion from Galleo... Duke thought the padded cloth could stop some of the injuries sustained by the sparrer so they could spar longer without rest.

But the most intriguing thing about the training area was it's structural and almost conveyor-belt like efficiency.

The Civilians and New Recruits rotated around the experienced Knights, while the Knights who were too tired also changed places with Knights who were resting or were hitting the training dummies on the edges of the training field.

The rested sparred, the tired rested for 5-10 minutes, and after resting they go to the dummy area at the edges of the field where they would, later on, be called on to replace tired sparrers.

Such a simple system designed by Duke and tweaked a little by Byran and trial and error had been going on every day on a daily basis since Duke had returned from the bandit subjugation and thought up of such a system.

At first, it was just the 75 official soldiers stationed at Maine under Duke's command. Then when the Mandatory Civilian Training was initiated two weeks ago, the Civilians and Trainees also came and trained with the Knights.

Since the Knights trained every day the whole day with 3-5 sparring partners each, the old men's sharp battle instincts rekindled and even sharpened even more at frighteningly quick paces.

Of course, the Civilians/Recruits too were developing quickly. In fact, they developed so fast that more than a fourth of the 5000 could be considered real Soldiers now. Although it was still a little bit slow due to their large numbers, they are rotated in days so their growth wasn't as fast as the Knights.

Duke too joined them in this grueling training where masses of people attacked him all at once. If it was a Civilian attacking, Duke acted as a punching bag, while if it's a Knight attacking, he either dodged or counter-attacked.

Duke was indeed developing quite fast, Byran was even being forced to use 50% of his power now!

*Sssk! Ssk! Ssk!" Three silent arrows hit their mark and a hunter wearing a leather tunic and a wolf's head triumphantly stood, smiling.

This was Rudon, a skilled local hunter along with his fellow hunters from the many Villages around Maine who had joined Duke after Grain prices dropped, making the need for supplementary hunted meat unnecessary...

Next to him was a familiar woman who suddenly smacked the wolf-head wearing archer, probably after he said something inappropriate...

Cynthia, also wearing a leather tunic greeted Duke and Vivian's arrival along with her husband.

The newly formed Hunters group also formed a conveyer-belt-like system where the Archers that were training archery continuously fired their bows, practicing bow speed and accuracy, while the Runners training their running speed went off to quickly fetch arrows after a brief pause systematically made by the Archers to give the Runners time to fetch arrows.

Cynthia too was part of the Runners group, helping her husband train...

What surprised Duke here were the 10 Bandits Duke spared had also joined the Runners group of Hunters.

It looked like since the 10 Past-Bandits were just 9 youths and 1 old man forced by their 'comrades' to be meat shields, Cynthia, Rudon, and the other Village-Hunters quickly forgave the young boys...

But not all was fine and dandy within the Hunter group as Waxer, the former Bandit leader was also part of the group, tutoring some in Archery...

Apparently Waxer's vast knowledge as a previous bandit gave him a lot of skill when it came to the scouting and archery. And so Byran felt it would be best if he was sent there under the supervision of Rudon to train the new recruits/civilian trainees...

Thanks to this the Hunters were constantly on edge with one another.

Waxer bowed lightly when he saw Duke but immediately went back to the job he was doing making Cynthia storm away, unable to take his impudent behavior, and also probably unable to take in her hatred for the murderer, Rudon soon followed to comfort his wife making Duke sigh on the side...

Duke hoped this wouldn't lead to further trouble...

[Maybe I should remove Waxer from the Hunter Squadron after we get more trained Archers in the future... hmmm] Duke thought to himself.

"Ah! Bran~! You there!" Duke pointed to a slightly dashing and robust young man who had improved quite a bit since joining Duke and getting enough food to eat.

This young man was Brandus or simply called Bran, he became quite a good friend of Duke during their siege against Waxer's gang...

And so he called the man over and introduced him to Vivian:

"Vivian, this bloke right here's my good buddy Bran, were quite close, aren't we bro?!" Duke elbowed Bran, making the young man blush a little bit as he replied:

"Y-Yeah... Friends..." Bran happily accepted his new title as 'friend'... Before this, he had thought they were only comrade at arms at most. Bran liked the feeling of having a friend since his family died.

"He's going ta be your personal bodyguard from now on!" Duke confidently stated as he thought Bardis and Dan might have to join in the expedition along with Byran, next time a treat appeared once again.

"Nice to meet you sir Bran" Vivian smiled as she shook Bran's hand.

"A-Ah, yes ma'am! Likewise" Still slightly blushing, Bran shook back, fumbling his words a bit due to his nervousness...

Vivian giggled at the fumbling youth their age... She thought he was a little bit cute.