Woods

After this training and punishment, I went to sleep.

The rest of the soldiers who were left with the weights on their arms resisted. I guess the fear of receiving 5 lashes and ending up like yesterday's man was not one of their desires.

After telling the soldiers to be in the yard at 6 a.m., I left.

I went back to my room and thought about how to continue their training.

First, we have to finish the basic conditioning that I make the soldier do. It seems simple, but it is very effective in activating the soldiers quickly and preparing them mentally for other exercises.

There is a risk of injury, but I have already arranged for some healers to take care of that.

Next up will be some sword training from Elijah. I have told him to push them as hard as he can because I want all these recruits to become the best among them.

But at the same time, I will train them physically.

But that will have to wait until the soldiers are conditioned.

It will take a week or two at the most, during which I can go and explore the forests around the realm.

The Monster Hunters Guild is very active in this part, because the density of tree essence makes all these monsters mature faster and increase the population.

Come to think of it, I have never seen the tree.

It's not much of a tourist attraction. The royal family lives near the tree, and it is difficult to even approach their territory.

But that's for later. First, I have to check out the forest to see if I can do the training there.

I'll go now while Elijah makes sure the soldiers follow the regimen.

I have alerted Ingrid, Seth and Layla to meet me at the gate of the mansion.

Ingrid is an excellent fighter, Layla has greatly improved her lightning magic and Seth, despite being a fighting maniac, is very good at tracking and scouting.

When I meet them, I greet them and tell them to get in the carriage to leave.

Then we all got into the same carriage and left.

Everyone is already dressed for battle. Seth is wearing his leather armor with his green cloak for camouflage.

Layla wears her mage tunic with armor plates.

And Ingrid still wears the same black armor as always.

We walked in silence for a while until Seth spoke.

"Boss, where are we going... I don't want to waste training time with humans right now. I'm about to upgrade my core," he said annoyed.

"Seth, we have a contract with Marcus, and if he calls, we should go. Don't be an idiot and use your head," Layla replied dryly.

"Don't worry Seth, we won't kill any humans. We will explore the outer ring of the eastern forest. We don't want to go deeper, because we're not here to play, but to see how strong the beasts are and if soldiers without rank can handle them," I replied calmly.

Seth is always disrespectful to authority, but I don't mind that either. He behaves when there's a mission, and that's what matters.

When silence returned, I looked out the window.

The city in general has a certain architectural uniformity. The buildings are all in the Victorian style, with a few exceptions of very square and unattractive buildings.

We slowly approached the wall that surrounds the capital.

This wall is monstrous, with more than 60 meters high, seems to be made to defend against the giants.

The wall is made of enchanted essence stone.

This mineral is one that is created when a quarry is exposed to the essence of the tree for a long time. It happens with every mineral, and also with some living things like monsters or elves, which are themselves evolutions.

If the weapons I create were made of essence steel, I would die happy.

But that would require me to understand the composition of essence steel, and I don't think I'll be able to do that anytime soon.

Anyway, we approached the wall gate where a soldier asked us why we were going out and I showed him my noble emblem and told him I wanted to go sightseeing.

Not that the exit is restricted, but if I don't have to wait 1 hour for the soldiers to get nervous because I'm a noble, the head guard will show up. Let them advise me about the forest.

Sightseeing is more comfortable.

When we left the Wall, everything changed.

The quiet, bourgeois atmosphere that existed within the walls is no longer there.

The houses here have no particular style because they are mostly unstable. They fall apart and are made of rotten wood. There are thousands of them stuck together, while you see only dirty drysics from work walking down the street.

After passing the first wall, a view accompanies you. These are the rural villages between this wall and the next.

They are as much crop production as you can imagine.

After the houses are the plots of land where thousands of men work.

The plots cover as far as the eye can see as they prepare for the planting season.

I turn my head to look at Ingrid. She is also a Drysic, though a rare one because of her gray skin.

I wanted to see if there was any reaction, but she doesn't seem to care.

She's fine.

After wasting a lot more time in the carriage, we arrived at the second wall.

It didn't take us long as we were given a marker to enter the city.

When we came out, we came across a dirt road that led us straight into a green and red forest.

The forest is quite visible in the distance.

These carriage rides are slow....

After that we reached the outer ring of the forest, prepared our weapons and went inside.

We went inside and left Seth in front to lead us to the monsters.

Seth surveyed the terrain and kept motioning for us to follow them or stay put.

The forest is tremendously beautiful inside

The trees are red and green and their leaves are constantly falling while never seeming to end.

The whole process seems as magical as possible

The ground cannot be seen because of the amount of leaves covering it.

The only problem is that in this situation there is no sygil at all.

The leaves are dry

Seth signaled for us to stop and then to look ahead

Ahead is a 6-foot tall wolf with sharp claws. All his fur is red to blend in with the environment and he growls menacingly at Seth who already detects

"Boss, this is a rank 0 Camouflaged Wolf, basically as weak as an unranked one. Want to test his strength?"

I nodded and pushed forward with force reaching the wolf quickly.

The Wolf was surprised but still tried to bite my face.

Stupid wolf

I raised my hand and hit it with my back to which the wolf shot out and hit a tree and slid down, leaving a trail of blood on the ground.

It's very weak, perfect for soldiers.

"Hey Seth all the monsters are like that around here?"

"Yeah boss, nothing much more interesting. I understand the rank 1 monsters are further in."

"Lead the way."

And Seth followed my order while making us move much faster than before.

After 20 minutes we arrived at what to me was the same forest but Seth told me not to.

There was a bear there made entirely of stone.

The stone is easy to break for a violet core as well.

Thinking that, I moved forward and conjured a steel mace for combat.

Quickly swinging my arm the mace shot towards the bear's head.

The poor thing didn't even react when its head burst through the outer layer of stone and showed its shredded flesh.

Yes, this will do for everything.

"Seth, now take us somewhere entertaining."