In the week we spent doing the selection and interviews to choose the thirty lamias that would enter my service, I created a "Charismatic Teacher" enchanted set. It gave me twenty points in both the Attribute and Skill. {Teaching} now allowed me to accelerate their Skill growth by 600% during our lessons for two hours per subject. These two hours were worth fourteen, but it exhausted their growth on that subject for the day.
I split their time into different lessons to cover several subjects every day. I alternated between physical and academic training, covering from weapons, Mental Resistance, dodge, music, to etiquette.
To jumpstart our training, I'd hired private instructors that had the Skills we wanted. They would train me and after I picked up the Skill, I would teach it to the girls.
> Mental Resistance (rare): Increases your resistance to mental effects by Rank x Willpower x 0.1%.
It would work against McCalister's ridiculous and borderline magical Charisma too. I had social skills in spades although it was all absorbed into the [Diplomat] profession. I thought seventy-five proficiency was low but was the proficiency of someone level one hundred doing an equal split of their Exp. Although several people like me saw a big bump on their proficiencies when Wyxnos converted the Skills almost half a century ago, the newcomers didn't have such luck. Most Skills absorbed by the Professions became unavailable and were replaced by weaker ones. If you wanted to be a master of the social world, you had to take the [Diplomat] profession or a Class that specialized in such endeavors.
There was a difference between a Class and a Profession. As the System said, a Class represented who you are to the world. A Profession, what you could do. As with [Cartographer], [Prospector], and [Miner], there was some overlap. The easiest example was between [Bard] and [Musician]. A [Musician] could inspire emotions with their songs. They made and played music as well as a [Bard] but that's the limit of what they did. A [Bard] also did music but they could weave magic into their music. The [Musician] could captivate people with their music but the [Bard] could brainwash them. [Bards] could also use poetry, acting, mix these styles, and immortalize stories in song and verse.
And most [Bards] also picked [Musician] to double-dip in their craft. Not all class x profession had such gigantic overlaps but even so, the [Bard] lacked both the magical prowess of [Mages] and the martial prowess of [Warriors].
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With the selection done, thirty eager and hormone-filled teenage lamias that just recently got access to the System moved in the duchess' barracks. We started on our first day of training. I moved to the middle of the courtyard and coiled my tail around myself.
"This formation here is called the {Snake Fortress}!" I shouted to my new recruits. "Now, come and hit me."
"Yes, Your Grace!" They shuted back.
I was circled by thirty lamia teenagers, without a Class and only recently inducted to the System stood with me in the training courtyard of my bailey complex. They held training spears, swords, and maces along with unsure faces.
I made one offer, "One gold coin for whoever can deal more than ten points of damage in a single blow. If at the end of a half-hour nobody did so, I'll pay one gold coin to the ones still standing."
That was enough to draw the boldest one among them, a red lamia named Urarze, forward with a... battle screech? Shouting lessons will be on their menu. Can't have my warriors utter such girlish and off-tune shrieks.
> Urarze stabbed you for 0 HP of damage. <---- {Mana Shield} didn't even trigger.
>
> (Base 47 x 0.5 Training Weapon x 1.24 Strength x 1.08 Skill x 0.03 Eye of the Storm x 0.75 Steel Scales x 0.6 Snake Fortress x 0.2 Tough Scales)
I cheated just a "little" bit.
The girl looked at the spear, then at me. "Try again?" I offered. "See if you can take some distance and then stab with a running start."
"Urarze," Mirarze, her clutch-sister, and a brown lamia asked, "How much damage did you cause?"
"Zero..." She mumbled.
"Stop bothering your sister and strike me, Mirarze," I taunted. She did, with a damage result worse than her sister.
"Amazing!" Mirarze gasped. "Are you a [Royal Lamia Guard] too?"
I nodded. "I am. The same as her Highness Lakerta, actually. So, you girls now come here and massage my scales. Half an hour swinging these sticks of yours! Go!"
The girls did. As they hit, I would turn around and show them where they were messing up. {Skin Sight} was a Perk perfect for a lamia, too bad they didn't get it. Our tails stayed exposed all the time, and the Perk was buffed in a recent System update. Due to this Age of Eclipse, all vision Perks gained a boost. Especially that one.
> Skin Sight (very rare): You can perceive objects and creatures around you without light at a range of [SQRT(Mind) - 3, minimum 1] meters. You have a rudimentary notion of texture and color. This ability is blocked by physical obstructions, including clothing and equipment.
It reached five meters now. Compared to normal sight, it was as good as a 48 dpi grayscale image if compared to a 32 bits Full-HD picture. For the blind Rosewise, it was everything. But having eyes on every scale had its advantages.
"Come on, do not falter," I clapped my hands to encourage them. "I want to see your arms hobbling at the end of this exercise!"
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For two months we sparred and trained weapon forms. I focused on the physical and mental conditioning of the young lamias. On an ordinary day of training, I got a message I was hoping for.
> Your curse {Major Feeblemind} was downgraded to {Feeblemind}.
>
> Feeblemind (rare): Your mental Attributes' cap is set to fifty.
With the downgrade in rarity came also a huge reduction in the cost to break the Curse. I thought about eroding {Greater Decrepitude} as well. The bump to the Attributes to raise {Surpasser} made breaking these two curses would be a priority, except that my growth had stagnated with my high level. I would have to get a whole freaking lot of Exp to gain one level now. But unless I went to a more populated center or the people of Windemere became more magical, that wasn't going to happen.
Or I could bankroll the cores to break them. That would be expensive as fuck. Or not, fucks were cheaper than cores. One could hire a [Prostitute] for less than a silver.
Seeing my mental Attribute caps above one hundred put some warmth in my chest. I now needed one hundred and thirty-four Attribute points before {Surpasser} started to take them away. But that would net me three more {Surpasser} Perks and put me very close to the next ones. I had to get a feeling for how expensive it was to break a {rare} curse, so it was set to break the next Feeblemind.
But enough of me. Back to the lamia girls. I also thought of teaching the twenty going to the academy about elementalism but decided against teaching them magic. But meditation was classified as {Rare} by the System so a lot of people had it. I added that Skill instead to their training menu. {Meditation} would help them a lot through their lives.
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It took another three months for the basic training to end. I split the lamias taking the physical path from the magical ones. The former worked to clear the requirements to pick [Royal Lamia Guard] while the latter started to walk magical paths. This way they could train their specialized skillsets.
Splitting them in two teams also let me to add the kin-folk to the training. At the end of each day, we had one huge group training session in the ballroom with everyone where I instructed them in meditation for two hours. It allowed them to unwind their day and release some stress.
They were gaining Skill ranks fast but also a small trickle of Exp. That brought us another problem.
"Your Grace, when will you allow us to spend our Exp? I could gain ten levels already," One of the lamia recruits asked at the end of the joint training session. It was one of the [Royal Guard] recruits.
"Did you unlock the Class yet? No. None of you unlocked it yet. The path we chose is a hard one. We withhold our power now, to grow in spurts later. You'll all be level fifty before the end of our first year. Do you have any idea how hard it is to reach level fifty? To climb the first rank-up? The second? The third?
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"This is a job that demands patience. The guardian needs to be aware of danger at all times. Failure to do so means death for both you and the person you are protecting."
"We don't need to protect you!" One of the lamias hissed. I knew who said it but she was well-hidden and I let it slip.
"Look to your left. Look to your right. I'm level one hundred and thirty-one. Yes, a bunch of little earthworms level fifty will not protect me. But what about your sisters? What about your House? Your nation? That's what you are protecting. Lamias had a hard time all around the world. People considered us monsters. Just like the goblins or orcs. We were hunted. Exterminated.
"Princess Lakerta never met her mother. Or her sisters. They were all slaughtered by followers of Bundeus. She grew up alone. Feared. The first time she entered a city, she was challenged, humiliated, attacked. She was strong so she prevailed and the people there learned to respect her strength. But they never considered her their equal.
"Here in Windemere, you play with the beast-kin. The silk-folk and were-kin do not mind being near you. The elves sing along with you and the eleons do not step on your tails. This place, for a lamia, is paradise. Your mother was trapped in a damp cellar, a toy for the humans. Her Highness released her from captivity and brought her along all across the ocean to live a new life.
"That's what you are protecting. And our job is not over. We need to find the white and blue lamias. Bring them here. Our sisters and nieces are out there, suffering. Disappearing."
I let the silence blanket the training hall as they digested what I told them. It was too easy to take things for granted. To forget one's heritage of abuse and slavery. That doesn't mean we should take on arms and do unto the other species what they did to ours. But we need to stay vigilant and wary lest the abuse returns. The end goal was to live in harmony and bury these prejudices away forever, but we were too different.
"You can take the easy path. But you will regret this decision should one day you need just a bit of extra power and find you can't reach that. When you need five trillion Exp for the next level as I do. Go on and allocate your Exp if you think I'm wrong."
I kept my {Appraise} active on her. Her level didn't change and she had no way to fake it. I smiled. "I wouldn't do anything to my precious wards that didn't have the best of intentions in mind. I'm not training you to become a personal army. I'm training you to become defenders. [Champions] even. It is a tough road. So hold in your Class selection. Keep your Exp unallocated now. Like grain in the millstone, grind those Skill ranks through training, instead of just putting the Skill Points. You'll be stronger that way."
They argued back no longer. Their glimmering eyes told me how much this little speech affected these young lamias.
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During these months, I tried to be productive during the extra seven hours a day I had because I didn't need to sleep. I did several things to keep boredom away. Meditate to push the curse erosion further was one of them.
I also flew around Windemere, patrolling and collecting resources, mostly stone. It took me one hour to reach the mountains and come back. I spent five hours each day harvesting stone, putting tons of material in my item box.
At my enchanting lab, I studied and dominated the {Spatial Storage} enchantment.
> Enchantment: Spatial Storage
>
> Base cost: 5. This enchantment grants (10* Rank^3) liters of space.
>
> Effect: Stores solid items in an extradimensional space. An object with this enchantment cannot be put in another extradimensional space. This item can hold an MP charge equal to (100 * Rank^3) at no cost. This stored MP can only go to pay for the upkeep of the storage. The item only drains MP to pay for its upkeep while it is not being worn. It uses 2 MP per hour liter of material stored in the item. Lowers the wearer's MP regeneration by the same amount while worn. The actual dimensions of the item don't matter, only the volume.
The rings I collected from the slavers all were ranks two or three with one shining gem at rank four. It had a setting with a small sliver of magic core and could generate and store a small amount of MP.
> Core Storage Ring (Enchanted)
>
> Estimated Value: 30 kingmetal coins.
>
> * Spatial Storage IV: This item can hold up to 640 liters of objects in an extradimensional space. It has an MP storage of 6,400 MP. 625pt.
> * MP Storage III: This item can store 2,700 MP to power its functions. 125pt.
> * MP Generator III: This item generates 3 MP every 5 minutes (36 MP/hour). 90pt.
> * Soulbound: This item can only be used by its rightful owner. Ownership can only willingly be transfered. 60pt.
>
> Total Enchantment Points: 900pt.
The slaver sold a werewolf {Princess} to the auction house for five platinum coins.
I wondered who was the [Enchanter] that created this ring. The thing was completely bonkers. Nine hundred points? How the heck were they able to cram that many points in an item? And it could indefinitely keep eighteen liters of dimensional volume on its own. Marvelous. The item wasn't affected by my wellspring.
I had to wonder, why would slavers have something so valuable on them to kidnap people? Maybe this was an heirloom. Anyway, I wouldn't get any answers from the item. With a shrug, I studied the ring to learn the new enchantments.
> Enchantment Learned: MP Storage.
>
> Base cost: 5. This enchantment creates a reservoir of (100 * Rank^3) MP to power the item's functions. Requires a Magic Core shard.
>
> Enchantment Learned: MP Generator.
>
> Base Cost 10. This enchantment generates (Rank) MP per 5 minutes. Requires a Magic Core shard. Requires MP storage.
A magic core shard by itself added one or two hundred points to the enchanted item. My suspicion was that the enchanter had some specialization to lower the cost of the enchantment. It could be possible.
During this time, I got a few visits from Kazuyran's agents. The fight to unravel the slaver rings was going well. Sadian and the church of Bundeus went back to sleeping on the same bed but the people's trust would be hard to regain. They now knew that Windemere were the ones to strike them but they couldn't do anything unless they were willing to march an army northeast to attack us. With me here, they better bring a dragon or two.
Trade sanctions didn't work in this world. They couldn't even put tariffs on our products because it would hurt the merchants more than the producers and encourage smuggling. Closing the borders or setting gated checkpoints as we did was also impossible. And Sadian had bigger problems of the cashflow nature. They had to fix the damage I caused before they could think of retaliating.
I had to trust Eric and Kazuyran to handle the situation. The Queen of Sadian wasn't stupid. She knew that whoever did all that to her kingdom was still out there. Acting in the dark would spell doom for her nation.
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Six months later, we reached the end of basic training. The top of the class reached Journeyman in their main Skills and a solid foundation to keep training on their own. It was time to move into the next phase of my plan. Take them to the Dungeon and power-level these Lamias. And build the road Eric wanted.
The {Feeblemind} curse broke. Each rarity step increased the curse's difficulty by a factof of four. From eight billions to break a {very rare} to two.
> Your {Feeblemind} was downgreaded to {Lesser Feeblemind}
>
> Lesser Feeblemind (uncommon): Your mental Attributes' cap is set to seventy-five.
That meant this one would require only five hundred millions. A "bargain". It eroded into {Minor Feeblemind} that had the caps at ninety-five just to stop you from getting the {Pinnacle of...} Perks and then a hundred thirty million to completely vanish. My mental Attributes now could reach a hundred-sixty like the others. I also broke {Unspeakable Curses} and {Forced Shift [moon-bound]}. That was three less entries in my curse roster.
I started to erode the {Unskilled} curse next, to allow me to train to Journeyman naturally. It would allow me to raise a lot of Skills into the master category once I used {Suppress Curse} on it. The amount of bonus I would get from collecting these Master perks was mouth-watering. I refrained from attempting to break it faster because it was futile.
With the second team of servants in charge of the duchess mansion, I took off to build a road with the others, an entourage of sixty-four people. We hired extra people to handle our supply train as I didn't want to expose my item box. I brought Nenandil with me out in the open, though. I made a decision to not keep her hidden for too long and if anyone connected the dots, well, good for them.
Even with magic, making a road was hard work. I was in no hurry so I let the brown lamias that had magical inclinations work their {Earth Magic} Skill as they helped pack the dirt with their magic. Nenandil and I just cleared the path, a straight line from Windemere to the dwarven outpost. It would become a town in a few years, more so with the road.
We terraformed the path to keep the road from having any steep rises or descents. The stone I collected went into filling the depressions as we flattened the terrain around the road and stored any extra material.
We could see the dwarven outpost behind a hill. I spun two hundred thousand MP and shaved the hill clearly, sending the whole mound to storage. The terrain became eerie flat. The road continued and I wondered. While I couldn't store the world in the {Infinite Item Box}, I could shave it little by little.
...
The world spun before me. My heart raced as the floodgates opened.
...
I could destroy the world one chunk of dirt at a time. Drain the oceans, one magically frozen iceberg after another. What would you do, cursed gods?
The dark thoughts returned with a vengeance. I clutched my chest and felt the bitter eruption of regret, despair, outrage, and anguish. My mask fell and I shifted back to my normal form. I almost turned the Manastorm on. Almost.
"Lakerta!" Nenandil shouted. "Get a hold of yourself!"
The lamias and the kin were looking at me with fear and confusion.
I stared at my hands, noticing the skin color. My pale blue tail with yellow dots was out in the open for all to see.
"Matriarch?" Laika asked.
"Princess Lakerta?" Mirarze gasped.
"Here! And, here too?" I confessed. At their puzzled looks, I sighed and explained. "Hello. I'm {Princess} Lakerta the blue lamia. I'm also the reincarnation of the moon-bound Matriarch. Among a lot of other things. I shifted back to the "Duchess Nagini" disguise. "I need to remain hidden while I prepare to fight with an ancient and very powerful enemy. He can't know I'm out and about, that's the reason for the deception. Can I trust you to keep this secret?"
The kin and lamias nodded. The supply train hirelings too. "Back to work! We got a road to finish!"
We built the "last mile" (not a real mile) of the road without further incidents.
After meeting with the dwarves, I split the sixty trainees in two groups which would be randomly sorted each day. I wanted everyone to get to know everyone and avoid creating cliques. Integrating the kin and lamias was essential. We ground the Dungeon nonstop for three months. That was enough to make all of them reach the first rank-up along with a squad of fresh dwarves. I ground more Exp so they could get a head start on their new ranked Classes. I expected everyone to be level sixty-one by the time we made it back home. The jump from forty to sixty-one required almost as many Exp points as going from zero to forty.
The dwarves I let go once they ranked up. Alfondric's clan was growing each year as more and more dwarves came to share the riches of the mountain mines and Dungeon. So long they passed the test of the "Tabard of Windemere", I was fine having them here but they could look after themselves.
Finally, one year after they started training with me, the lamias and kin picked and ranked up their Classes all at once. The massive influx of Skill Points had several of them reaching the Master ranks in their main Skills, be it weapons or spellcasting. The people of this world were warriors at their cores even if their Class was not [Warrior].
We got a half-dozen [Royal Lamia Defenders], a few [Royal Lamia Champions] and a handful each of [Royal Lamia Sentinels] and [Royal Lamia Knights]. The sentinels had detection perks and the knights were offensive-focused. While the Defenders speciated into {Earth Lamia} and a few {Wood Lamia}, all of the knights were {Fire Lamia}. We had a veritable elemental convergence now if you counted my water/ice powers.
On the magical side, we had mostly [Royal Lamia Sorceresses], with a few [Royal Lamia Shamans] that could use healing magic and two [Royal Lamia Wizards].
And to my delight, Laika and the kin maids ranked up into [Royal Beastkin Battle Maids]. My very own Pleiades. I just needed one hirsute and hunky combat butler now.