Toril O’Connell.

***

I knew this day would come. And though I was well prepared for it, it was unlike anything I could have foreseen.

Our return from Chaulort brought on a new phase of training. That of military science and tactics, and as Amun’s chosen knight, I had no choice but to step up to the plate of leadership. He prepared me well for this day. Thus it went starkly smoother than it had at Corvus Tower all those years ago.

In a way, it was not unlike back then. With his ability to impose himself in any situation, Amun organized a training regiment within a pre-established course of study, one he paid no regard to. Unlike then, however, our days and nights were a constant blur of struggle and hardships.

After a mere four hours of sleep, we rose with the sun to conduct PT under a gravitational field strong enough to make the heartiest of us suffer. Our combat training continued as before. Only, we were properly challenged by the now-speaking shadows whenever we weren’t overwhelmed by the thousands of dark dwarven shadows piling over each other to get at us.

For half of the week, during the night, we still followed the lifestyles our classes demanded of us. I still trained with my axe daily, augmenting it as much as possible with my Weight Magic to increase my strength. We took care of or rode the wide range of dead beasts Amun had risen. We repeatedly confirmed our convictions with ourselves before lashing out to smite all manner of beasts with every ounce of our power.

Each remaining hour of each day, besides that of leisure and rest, was my domain. Everything from the field exercises to the classroom studies was organized, taught, and supervised by me, just as Amun said I would all those years ago.

They were first taught the importance of parade and drill and learned what discipline truly was by spending hours each day marching and practicing the movements that would represent our Legions without words. Not until every movement was synchronized, every voice was matched in tone, did the drilling cease. But not entirely. They were then taught how to teach their subordinates to march. And more, how to survive.

Throughout the entirety of that month-long endeavor, Amun and the other Artificers went around to each of us to have us design our weapons and uniforms. Even I, who possessed the Storm Thief and its matching armor, had to spend hours designing wear for every occasion or environment. A template for every dress, including the materials we preferred to wear, what damage types we wished our clothes would have resistances or immunities to, what features the garbs would have, and so on and so on.

Those lists were promptly sent to Giorno in the hopes that prototypes would be finished by the time Amun learned to enchant. In the meantime, the candidates were taught how to maintain their gear. Or, it would be more apt to say they were given visceral lessons on what would happen should their equipment be unkempt. To that end, our gear was purposefully sabotaged throughout our field training, and at random. The result was a constant checking and rechecking of their and their comrades’ equipment, even while we were preparing to or retreating from our patrols.

Patrolling. Or, as I saw it, looking for a fight. That word was the basis of the entire second phase. An operation that created a mental foundation capable of supporting the fourteen battle drills we were to build atop it.

Reacting to ranged fire was the first and foremost. An act that required a squad to take pop shots from afar to suppress the enemy while another squad flanked from the sides, above, or below. Attacking as both a squad and platoon followed as the second drill. Coincidentally, it wound up being one of the longest for the candidates to master. With the endless variation of affinities and abilities, each group had to rely on teamwork and experience to yield the most use out of their ever-changing squads; but eventually, they mastered it and went on to learn how to break contact and retreat safely before moving on to master ambush reactions. And then the fun things began.

The fifth drill was to knock out a bunker. A task that many carried out using sheer ingenuity to render a bunker useless. Enter and clear a room followed. An operation that required finesse and quick reaction times. Amun’s undead made a mock town and populated it as a place overrun with hostiles. Day in and day out, we’d maneuver across the city, entering buildings in a systematic order to ascertain who was a friend and who was the foe in an instant before low-powered spells, knives, and bolts went flying.

Much the same skills were required for the next drill, enter and clear a trench. However, the next required more knowledge. It was to breach a mined wire obstacle. In other words, clear a field of traps. The skill was commonly known to be a Rogue specialty, but I couldn’t argue against the claim that everyone needed to know how to spot and disarm the things themselves. As always though, Amun taught us much more than that. He taught us how to investigate traps, and how to determine the ways they worked so they could be repurposed to our means or perhaps be improved.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

That was the eighth battle drill, marking the end of what we considered the safer drills in hindsight, for the later drills required Amun to aim his absurdly powerful magic at us.

Drill nine was reacting to indirect fire. Lightning and shadow bolts were used for the drill. For the first few minutes at least. Eventually, he started lobbing boulders at us with his gravity and laughed maniacally whenever they landed too close for comfort. Drill Ten: React to a chemical attack, was worse. With a single inhaled breath, he blew noxious gasses across the lands. Then gave us masks and protective suits before telling us to march through a field of hostile undead. The unlucky ones were those who were immune to poison. Thinking themselves safe, they inhaled deep whiffs of the stuff, only to find his darkness had augmented it to infect them with blinding fear. Thus we all learned just how horrendously uncomfortable those suits were. Carbon-laced things, able to neutralize many toxins or poisons and cause just as many chaffed rashes in exchange.

My only solace was that Jaimess, being partly carbon, still had to wear one. I gained some comfort with the next drill though. React to an explosion. Being immune to shockwaves and kinetic energy respectively left both me and Ed laughing alongside Amun at the flying bodies of our comrades. But of course, he still found ways to make us suffer with his gravity.

Like everyone else, the last three operations left me in a state of awe. Mounted operations, they were called, with the twelfth through fourteenth being dismount, mount, and perform actions while mounted respectively. In this regard, a ‘mount’ referred to any vehicle, either living or engineered. While the same in theory, they were wildly different in practice. A horse would never run into a wall, for example.

For weeks we trained in those drills. We patrolled tirelessly throughout the day and night on foot, on the backs of undead beasts, or huddled inside the growling cages of moving steel Amun colloquially referred to as vehicles. Each day, the squad and platoon leaders were chosen by me or Amun or both and evaluated by everyone from the Doppelgangers to the undead. And through this continuing throughout the breadth of training, the candidates were taught how to lead.

The following phase taught us how to teach. And in the latter half of that month, our teachings grew to encompass extreme survival. On Amun’s order, the candidates- all of us- were captured by the undead, pulled into the Shadow Realm, and kicked out in some other remote area of the Wilds to be tortured and interrogated. Our Doppelgangers, close companions always, turned against us for that long week and a half. They used our deepest secrets as weapons. Exploited our insecurities. They pushed our buttons while Zaraxus and his minions pulled fingernails and broke bones. And then, we were presented with an opportunity to escape. An obvious route to freedom that even the heartiest- or dumbest of us- couldn’t ignore.

We were meant to take it of course. All so we could be chased and hunted, and through that, learn how to evade capture and resist the temptation of a painless future. But it was more than that. It also served as a grim reminder to all.

There was no betraying the Legions.

I can honestly say it was one of the most difficult things I’ve had yet to endure, just as Amun said. But the worst was yet to come.

After our escape, we were to rendezvous for retaliation. That was to say, a culmination exercise unlike any other. The Crucible, Amun called it, but it was no different from the long war we had against the Necro Army on paper. In reality, it was a glimpse into how we would operate in the future.

Just like he did when we slayed the Necro King’s storm giant, we were crammed into hollowed boulders and hurled across the skies. Unlike then, however, the boulders broke apart at the zenith of their paths, separating into squat chunks of earth that landed a candidate safely in a lonely region of the wilds. There was one for each of us, a zone of exploration no smaller than an Odissian county, filled with not only monsters but undead as well.

We spent the entirety of that final month living rough while attempting to achieve objectives that varied for each of us. Hunting. Fighting. Sabotaging. Maneuvering, in my case, closer to the undead stronghold throughout the day and night. Our communications ran through our clones. Through them, we were able to outmaneuver and close in on our objects in a systematic fashion, ‘raising’ any undead we felled as our comrades and utilizing whatever resources they dropped for ourselves. Though, like in the mock town, not everyone we encountered was hostile. Some undead acted as citizens or, in some cases, entire families needing saving. Others, on rare occasions, offered their services or gave us information in exchange for our help. But in all cases, we were judged on how we efficiently we uplifted, destroyed, or otherwise interacted with them.

The beginning of the last week of our studies marked our return to Noctis Reach. I had never seen so big a smile on Amun’s face as I did that day. He beamed at each of our sullied faces with unbridled pride, a rarity for one such as him. He repeatedly congratulated us on our efforts before we feasted and bathed and partied for what felt like two tendays straight. But the next day, we were out on the shores of the lake, conducting our final task. Operator licensing.

Like virtually everything else, the final versions of the steel carriages, wheeled cages, motorized boats, buzzing planes, and other vehicles had to wait until enchantments were a part of our repertoire before they were released. But that didn’t stop Amun from creating their non-magical counterparts and having us learn to use them. A seemingly daunting task, but a fairly simple one. Still, though, we provided far too much entertainment for Amun and his undead dwarves. We crashed and burned what felt to be thousands of times; but eventually, we got the hang of ‘driving’ within the week and were told to look forward to upgraded locomotive aids in the near future. And now, after that arduous journey, the coveted time was finally upon us.

It was time to evolve.