Chapter 18:- Meeting between Dukes and King [I]

In the middle of the night, while everyone in the castle was sleeping there was a certain person who couldn't close his eyes no matter how much he tried. Every time he closed his eyes, images of that nightmare event would flash before his eyes. After reading that letter, Aditya couldn't get rid of the uneasiness in his heart. He felt the time was running out.

"This should be the library." Walking into the castle library with a candle in his hand, Aditya noticed that the entire library was collecting dust and had become a home for the spiders. Spider web was everywhere.

"I should tell someone to clean the library." He then began to aimlessly go through all the books that were preserved in the library. Some books were old as the Istarin Kingdom. All the books in the library were enchanted with rune magic. The rune magic kept the books preserved.

The library was massive. It was about 50 meters in size. The library had about 29 meters tall. The massive bookshelves reached 29 meters and had countless books which were collected by all previous generations of Istarin Kings. (The library looked something like this)

"If I am not mistaken, this library is supposed to be the main treasure trove of the Istarin King. This library was created by the first Istarin King. This library is old as the Istarin Kingdom. During a certain period of Istarin history, the Istarin King of that time destroyed the 3 sects and took away their treasure due to certain crimes that they committed. All battle techniques used by those 3 sects were also placed in this library." Aditya's goal was to find a powerful skill for his use.

In this world, just like cultivators, the skills were also divided into two. For body cultivators, battle techniques were most effective as they couldn't use elemental powers. While magical cultivators tent use spells depending on their natural affinity. A magical cultivator can't use battle techniques while a body cultivator can't use skills that were meant for magical cultivators. However, there were also third kinds of cultivators who cultivated both body and magical cultivation. But those cultivators also had a limit. Since they had to cultivate on both paths, their cultivation speed was a lot slower than an average cultivator.

Aditya didn't need to cultivate as leveling up was giving him both cultivation path powers. As he continued to claim through levels, his body was getting stronger while his mana reserve was also increasing. Unlike everyone in this world, he can use both path techniques without any limit.

"What is this?" After searching for 19 minutes, Aditya found a book that was covered in dust and was left in a corner. The cover of the book was black in color with the words [Aura of Soul Fire] written on the top.

"This book does have an interesting name." Curiously he decided to read the description of the Aura of Soul fire.

[Aura of Soul Fire: -

[Description] - A special type of skill that can be learned by both body and magical path cultivators. There is no requirement to learn this skill. This skill itself is a passive skill that will increase the user's stats after reaching a certain limit.

[Function] - Since this skill is a passive skill, the user won't have to spend any mana to activate this skill. This skill works by collecting a small part of the enemy's soul killed by the host. When a certain amount of soul energy is collected by the user, this skill will increase the user's stats by 40% for a temporary period of time. The boost in the user's stats will disappear after 10 minutes.

Note: - This skill is totally passive. The activation of this Skill cannot be decided by the user.]

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"This is a nice skill. I would learn it." With instant learning and adaptation, Aditya's compression speed was 25 times faster than the average human. In a few hours or so he managed to finish learning this skill.

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Aditya was so lost in reading books that he didn't notice when the entire night passed. All the slaves including 7 future generals woke up very early in the morning. After waking up, everyone washed up and gathered in the training ground.

"Everyone, we will start with jogging around the castle." Yesterday, thanks to the pill that Julia prepared, almost every slave had undergone some changes. Their bodies were now more energetic than before.

Wearing simple clothes everyone started running. The generals run at the front while only Henry was in the back. He purposely stayed at the back to see if any recruit was skipping the training. While running at the front, the other 5 generals occasionally glanced at Amber.

"Why all of you're looking at me like this?" Amber asked with a confused face. Unlike others, Amber's mana heart has been repaired, within a week's time, she was sure that she would recover her second-order cultivation. Amber could have run faster but she choose to run along with everyone.

"Yesterday, high Highness told us that he had a way of repairing our crippled mana heart. Now seeing your mana heart crippled, we are wondering when our turn will come?" Scott spoke on behalf of everyone.

"Don't worry, according to lady Julia, the ingredients should arrive today. As soon as the ingredients come, lady Julia will call you for a small surgery."

"By the way, what happened to Miss Amber's body? You now look so beautiful." Eleanor, being a woman was curious about how Amber suddenly became so beautiful.

"Thank you for the compliment. When my mana heart was repaired, through some fortune I managed to awake my Royal Fox queen bloodline." With the awakening of her bloodline, not just her charms, but even her physical stats also have improved a lot. Her current mana was on Peak-first-order.

"Wait a minute, you really awakened your Royal Fox queen bloodline?" Unlike others, Josh was a beast-man and knew more about the royal fox queen bloodline. Unlike other clans or tribes, the fox tribe was one of those tribes where a fox woman was the ruler. Not just any fox woman can awake their fox queen bloodline. Only the descendants of the royal family can awake the Royal Fox queen bloodline.

"Then, you're really a descendant of the Royal family?" Josh asked with a shocked look. Amber nodded her head slightly without much care.

"What is this royal family we're talking about?" Hearing the familiar voice, everyone nearly fell down when they found their king running with them.

"Your Majesty, when did you come here?"

"Not long ago. I came when you guys were talking about Amber's mana heart." Aditya replied. After a whole night of studying, his body was a little stiff. So he felt it would be better to do some training. This should also help him in clearing his mind.

"Long time ago, in the Lunar Continent, which is also known as the beast-men continent, there was an Empire that was ruled by the Fox race people. According to the legend passed down in our tribe, the Empress of that Empire had a Royal Fox Queen bloodline. Although no one knows how a mighty empire fell down, it is believed that the many fox tribes have the Royal Fox bloodline descendants. After countless generations, the original bloodline lost its purity, thus becoming nearly impossible to awaken the bloodline."

"It looks like in the future, I will have to go to this Lunar Continent." Aditya wanted to meet more beast-men. Their way of life was completely different from humans. The beast race people were divided into thousands of small tribes. Unlike other races, beast race people are very honest and direct. Beast race doesn't have any politics. The strongest gets to become the tribe leader while others follow their leader. Due to the evil nature of humans and other races, the Beast-race people don't really welcome any outsiders on their continent.

After training for an hour which hardly made Aditya sweat, he took a shower and joined everyone for breakfast. After breakfast, it was time for the meeting.

In a large hall that had a luxurious red and white carpet, at the end of the hall, there was a golden throne. Climbing the stairs, Aditya had his way to the throne. For the first time, he sat on the throne with a serious look.

On both sides of the carpet, white flowers were placed. Behind the throne, slightly 2 meters above the Istarin Kingdom flag was placed on the wall. The flag was red in color and had a Crescent Moon symbol in the center.

7 meters away from the throne, Julia, Watson, Amber, and the other 6 generals stood there looking at Aditya.

"Your Majesty, the artifact is ready to use." Watson changed the way he normally addressed Aditya. He took out a Crescent-shaped black earring and put it on his right ear.

[Good Morning, King Aditya. I believe this is our first time having a meeting. Although you can only hear our voices. My name is Marvin Sarlus. I am the head of the Sarlus Noble household that has once sworn to serve the Istarin Kingdom forever. I am the governor of the Vrane City.] Everyone in the hall was able to hear the voice of a middle-aged man. His tone was neither slow nor too fast. His deep voice was authoritative. Everyone noticed the way the Duke of Sarlus house addressed their king.

[I don't have the same patient as Duke Sarlus. So I will keep this quick. I am the Duke and also the ruler of the Zraka city. My name is Ryan Eastgard. I don't care about your reason for calling this meeting using the artifact left by our ancestors.] Instead of showing a frowning look, Aditya strangely smiled and listened.

[I and my Eastgard noble house won't serve an alcohol addict. In case, you're unaware, let me say it directly, I, formerly known as Duke Eastgard, declare independence from the Istarin Kingdom. The Zraka city and the surroundings will be under my control.] Watson angrily clenched his fists in anger. Duke Eastgard had some balls daring to say these words to the King's face. It was not just Watson, even Amber, Scott, Josh, Nathan, Henry, Eleanor, Tyler, and Julia all looked angry.

[King Aditya, I share the same feelings as Duke Eastgard. You became the King 3 years ago. Never even for once, you bothered to have a meeting with your Kingdom's Dukes. This itself was a slap to our faces. You wasted this Kingdom's wealth on partying and drinking alcohol. Under your negligence, the Kingdom's economy has fallen. Food prices rose rapidly. The common people were unable to afford even their daily meals. Because of your negligence toward the Kingdom, hundreds of thousands of people have suffered. Do you have a single idea of how many people were forced to leave this Kingdom because of the ever-increasing food prices?]

[Under your rule, the crime rate in this Kingdom has increased rapidly. Your reputation has badly impacted this Kingdom's name. Now whenever our Kingdom's name is mentioned to a foreign, the only thing they do is laugh and humiliate the Istarin name. Our Kingdom used to be a 3-star Kingdom. We used to have the same military power as our neighboring Kingdoms. After you took the throne, you dismissed the army, under your lack of care, all the soldiers lost their jobs, causing our military strength to fall. Now if you're to lose both of our supports, this Kingdom will be weaker than a one-star Kingdom. If Duke Eastgard and I weren't holding back the small invading forces from two Kingdoms, by now this entire Kingdom would have fallen.]

Aditya clenched his fists tightly while looking down. He was responsible for the suffering of the people. Because of him, the kingdom lost its prestige. Because of him, this kingdom was having food storage problems. It was only of his uncare, that the crimes of this Kingdom rapidly rose. Each of Duke Sarlus's words hit Aditya's heart.

From the beginning, even Aditya himself knew and always was guilty of what he was doing to this Kingdom. When Isaac took out Aditya's body, all those feelings of guilt, sadness, and depression were also passed to the current Aditya.

The previous Aditya wanted to escape this world by drowning himself in Alcohol, while this Aditya slowly wanted to fix his past mistakes and bring this Kingdom back to its original state.

[Hmph! What's the use of telling him these things? It's not like he cares. The only reason why he called for his meeting was to ask for taxes as he is out of money to buy alcohol.]

[Duke Ryan, while it's true that in the past I was an addict. But I have changed now. And my reason for calling his meeting is completely different. Whether you like it or not, I am the King and I will protect this Kingdom.]

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