Rowan didn’t have a particularly high vitality score. He did, however, have an amazing regeneration card and the good sense not to drink himself into a stupor.
So it was that out of the group of people who stumbled their way onto the training grounds the next morning, Rowan was the only one blessedly free of any headaches, nausea, or other signs of indulging in excess. They had all agreed to meet there the night before, but none of them anticipated that just standing up straight would be so difficult.
Even Olivia had woken up wincing and glaring at the world, though she had swiftly remedied all that with a couple of choice potions. That meant that she was chipper and smiling when her parents dragged themselves over to her like zombies.
“Yes, mom, dad?” Olivia quipped like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, her grin a thing of utmost smugness.
“Give up the potions, you brat,” the baroness hissed, clearly refusing to play any of the games her daughter was up to. “Don’t forget who approved your engagement while your father was away.”
That seemed to do the trick, or Olivia just wasn’t willing to torment her parents. She quickly doled out a pair of potions to them each. Throwing back the oddly colorful concoctions, the effect on the baron couple was immediate. Stiffness left their shoulders, their postures improved, and even the bags under their eyes were partially erased.
Once more, Rowan was reminded of just how amazing his favorite alchemist actually was.
“These are the potential [Knights] you have for me, then?” Rowan muttered while the duo finished gathering themselves, eyes sweeping over the five people shuffling away from the family scene.
They were obviously suffering from the effects of last night too, but Rowan didn’t really care about that much. What was far more important to him was the apparent age of the knight hopefuls. Not a single one of them looked like they were a day older than fourteen.
And in a world where people often physically matured more quickly due to the presence of the system, that wasn’t exactly promising.
“The best that I could find.” The baron confirmed with unquestionable pride. “They all have an excellent heart card that will take them far. Not necessarily a high ranking heart card, but the point stands.”
“And how old are these potential recruits of mine?” Rowan couldn’t help the question.
“They’re from the newest batch, obviously, so they’re all around thirteen,” the baron admitted easily and without even a hint of guilt, even if the words made Rowan flinch.
That felt… young. Granted, people considered their children partial adults from the moment they awakened the system around age twelve in this new world of Rowan’s, but that didn’t mean he shared the sentiment.
In fact, in many ways, he felt that the treatment of children was odd.
They weren’t expected to marry at that age. Mercifully enough, that was reserved for late teens or early twenties. Instead, they were, if they chose to pick up a combat class, expected to readily charge at the nearest available monsters within their tier.
The only obstacles preventing more child soldiers were the long training times and absolute chore that leveling up was. Most soldiers in the frontier army were fifteen or sixteen, unless they were a real combat prodigy. However, his blessing made things a bit morally gray. Granting children access to a powerful card was practically begging them to act recklessly.
On top of all that, any [Knights] Rowan acquired would naturally be folded into his army, and that wasn’t the safest place to be.
In spite of those facts, he remained silent. He didn’t ask the potential recruits why they chose to follow the baron all the way out to the frontier and risk their lives either. Instead, he focused on the resolve in their eyes that shone through even with how dazed and wrung out some of them seemed.
“Fine,” the Stalwart Hero sighed, more than a little resigned. “Let’s see what they can do.”
—
Two spears met with a loud clack, but while one got pushed aside and driven into the ground, the other proceeded to travel along its intended trajectory and met the tender forehead of a girl with yet another thump.
A sword rose up towards Rowan’s back with power born of desperation, but he twirled out of the way with laughable ease. His perception lent him more than enough awareness to be aware of the strike from the start, to the point where he didn’t even need his boosted dexterity stat.
Of course, he swept out the wooden spear he was using for the bout and applied just enough strength to clobber the final knight prospect into near unconsciousness in retaliation.
“Stay down, if you’ve had enough.” Rowan’s voice was cold and cutting, more than enough to signal his thorough lack of amusement with their pathetic attempts to prove themselves. Or that was the attitude he was trying to project, at least. On the inside, he was cringing, stuck between trying to test them and wanting them to willingly flunk out.
After all, to an outside observer, Rowan was abusing a group of young teens. Rowan’s sensibilities agreed with the sentiment wholeheartedly.
Unfortunately, what he needed wasn’t an amazing card or the right kind of background. Those things were likely to help the recruits along, of course, but ultimately, they weren’t that important. What he did need was the grit and determination to keep going.
He needed the sort of recruit who would keep pushing when their limbs were almost torn off in the hopes of getting out of combat alive. And he so very desperately wanted them to stay alive if he did take them on as his [Knights].
Three of the recruits showed that resolve.
A red-haired spear wielder, a rarity that had Rowan raising his eyebrow questioningly at the baron, a plucky young swordsman, and a shield-hammer combo wielding brute of a man. Well, boy, but with his stature and size, Rowan really had trouble associating the knight prospect with a thirteen-year-old.
Those three were still struggling. Still trying to stand and crawl back into some semblance of a stance to continue fighting. That was in spite of the way Rowan had dismantled them, especially the shield wielder at that.
The boy’s left arm, the one he used to lug his shield around, was broken. The fingers of his right hand were in only marginally better state, but you could spot the swelling and redness with ease.
The spear wielder’s forehead was red, weeping a bit of blood, and looked like it had the beginnings of horns growing out of it. She insisted on trying to meet his strikes each and every time with flashy, overhead blocks. So, Rowan kept beating on her in hopes she would learn. Today was clearly not the day that would happen though.
The swordsman was the worst off out of the trio.
His left leg dangled behind him, his left arm was stained with blood where Rowan ran it through to stop him from wielding both hands for his strikes, he had multiple lacerations along his right shoulder, and the bump on the back of his head, coupled with the way he stumbled with unfocused eyes, hinted at a concussion.
Gods damn it, I’m going to have to accept them at this point, aren’t I? Rowan took a deep breath, then let it out in one, frustrated gust.
He really didn’t want to.
“That’s enough,” Rowan snapped, irritated at himself, the baron, and the world he’d been thrown into in general. The kids froze, trying to focus on him through bleary eyes as he stomped off in Olivia’s direction.
He threw the practice spear aside, a frown thoroughly dominating his features. It faltered a little when Olivia closed the distance between them and enveloped him in a hug, but even that wasn’t quite enough.
“How are you feeling?” she asked quietly, eyes rowing over his face in search of an answer she failed to readily find with how closed-off his expression had grown towards the end of sparring.
“Like I just beat up a bunch of children who I now feel obligated to accept into an army that’s going to be trying to commit a very elaborate suicide in the future.”
Olivia winced, but didn’t really have a good answer to that. Instead, she pulled out one of her potions and proffered it to him. He recognized it immediately as a very mild healing and stamina potion blend. “Want a pick me up?”
“No, thanks love,” Rowan mumbled, for once, entirely indifferent to the presence of her parents as he leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. “I’m just in a bad mood. Save the potion for them. Speaking of, could you heal them up for me, please?”
“Of course,” Olivia answered with a smile and one final hug, before quickly heading in the direction of the suffering knight hopefuls.
Rowan wanted to continue his stomping tantrum all the way up to his quarters, but he had an obligation to stick around and talk to the kids. So he waited, giving the baron a chance to strike.
“Well? What do you think about your prospective recruits?” Kayden asked conversationally, though he did keep a careful eye on the way Rowan scowled at him.
“They are… fine,” the hero snapped, then paused and tried to moderate his response. A deep breath and a moment to let the tension bleed out of his shoulders did enough to let him at least maintain civility. “They show promise. I hate how young they are.”
Both of the statements were true.
Frankly, the swordsman and the spear user were almost as good as Rowan was, in terms of pure skill. Now, that might seem like a boast on Rowan’s part, or failure on theirs, considering the fact that the hero had only been fighting for a couple months at best.
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That was, however, a gross underestimation of the effects of his tier ups.
Nearly every class Rowan picked came with a direct upgrade to his base ability to wield a spear. All of them made it easier to use his weapon and master it, pushing the spear to the farthest reaches of its potential.
Now, Rowan wasn’t exactly there yet. Not by a mile. However, he did have the solid foundation hammered into him by the baron and his otherworldly arrival benefits. He’d taken that, and then improved it through a whole lot of encounters with monsters.
Live combat was a great teacher by necessity, and he’d even had the chance to spy on some of the other spear users, their training, and the way they fought. Most of what he saw didn’t apply to him. After all, those spear men tended to fight in formations, under strictly controlled and organized maneuvers. But that wasn’t to say they didn’t have a trick or two to teach him still.
So, while Rowan was by no means a master of the spear, he was very solidly an advanced wielder of it, thanks to all the system nonsense.
The fact that the kids were almost there as well? It was impressive.
Even the two Rowan had handily laid out to the point where they took their lot in life and passed out were similarly promising. They just didn’t have the grit needed to punish themselves in a silly attempt to throw away their lives faster.
“Will you be accepting them?” the baron pushed again, eyes briefly going to the trio Olivia was doing her best to patch up.
They were quickly getting better, seeing as the potions of an epic ranked alchemist were some of the very best you could ever get your hands on.
Rowan’s first instinct was to say no, just because he wanted to. “Yes,” he growled instead. “Yes, I will. The three of them, at least. The other two just won’t cut it out in the wastes. I refuse to feed them to monsters.”
Rowan thought that he saw a brief flash of some emotion in the baron’s eyes. Understanding, perhaps? Or pity? It didn’t matter because it vanished as quickly as it appeared. “That is reasonable. I’m happy to know you at least found the other three to your liking.”
Liking was a very strong word, but Rowan wasn’t about to continue acting like a petulant teen forever. “Thank you for all your effort. I’m going to talk to them and see if they actually want to join up now that they understand the risks and suffering a bit better. Just… if you look for more candidates…”
“Yes?”
The tug of war between his gratitude that the man cared and was trying warred with Rowan’s innate disgust over the whole thing. “Just… I’d prefer it if they were, a bit older, perhaps?”
“That would be difficult, lad. Not many good prospects around that aren’t already beholden to one lord or another. You need either a solid foundation, or the best possible high-tier you can find. Most people who are still stuck at common are stuck there for a reason.”
Rowan disagreed with that, with his own army being a great example of people who just needed one opportunity to advance their station in life, but he wasn’t about to fight with his finance’s father over the subject just yet.
One day, when all the major threats were gone and he could sit down and do something about all the rampant discrimination? Sure. But not before then.
“All I’m asking is that you try,” Rowan insisted again and waited for the baron to nod before turning to observe his future knights again.
The trio was finally more or less in shambling shape, so Olivia led them in his direction. Thinking about just how he wanted to handle the encounter, Rowan decided to keep things simple.
“Can you maybe take care of those two?” he asked the baron couple, and at their nod, moved on. He offered Olivia his hand. She took it with a smile, and Rowan turned towards his mansion.
It still felt weird to refer to the structure as such. In Rowan’s mind, it was the mayor’s mansion for the longest time. It may have belonged to him by virtue of the king’s say so and the previous owner’s death, but it still didn’t feel quite real.
It didn’t feel like he deserved it.
But, for better or for worse, Rowan lost a lot of that compunction after returning with Blake in tow. He’d risked his life, bled and fought, and protected the town. Well, city now, he supposed. If that didn’t make him worthy of laying claim to a single fancy home, what did?
Rowan was still doing his best to ignore the fact that he’d ‘inherited’ all the servants that came attached with it though.
A small, somewhat petty part of Rowan did find amusement in the way the trio lumbered behind the couple like zombies. The healing potions did a thoroughly amazing job of healing up their injuries, but the effect they had on stamina was minimal.
So, he treated his stroll to the kitchen, and then to one of the upstairs meeting rooms, like one final part of their test.
None of them failed.
So it was that the Stalwart hero found himself seated across from three young teenagers in a comfortably luxurious room in his mansion, ignoring the way they eyed the basket full of finger foods with amusement.
Rowan cleared his throat. “First, I need you to know I am genuinely impressed with the way you handled yourselves. It is not easy to keep pushing past your breaking point like that, and that you did, speaks volumes of your dedication, grit, and bravery.”
They perked up at that, shooting each other small smiles. Rowan wasn’t sure if they knew each well, but even if they were near complete strangers, a sense of camaraderie seemed to have grown between them due to his test.
“Having said that, I want to have a chat with you all before I officially make you [Knights]. First, do any of you actually know what that means?”
For a few moments, no one spoke, before the oddly muscled boy finally found his voice. “Um, it has something to do with your class, my lord? Baron Kayden told us you are looking for eight people to join you, but… isn’t that more than a party? Don’t you have your own party already, too?”
He seemed deathly afraid of even speaking out so much, so Rowan offered the boy a reassuring smile and a nod. “Excellent questions. Yes, I do. And yes, it is. You see, my class is somewhat unique, from what I’ve been told. I have the ability to designate eight [Knights] and share certain benefits with them.”
Rowan stopped there, curious whether any of them would be brave enough to venture any further questions on their own. The spear user finally did, though her voice broke the first time she attempted to speak. When she finally managed, it was mouse-like and hesitant. “What kind of benefits?”
“Another good question. Well, for me, I get a percentage of the stats my [Knights] have, and even get a share of some of their experience gain. Don’t worry, I don’t ‘steal’ the stats or anything. Actually, I’m not sure if experience is siphoned away or just shared, still need to test that out.”
“And the [Knights]?” she asked again, this time far more sure of herself. His praise was working as intended.
Rowan leaned forward with a smile at the question. “The [Knights] get to pick one of the cards I have in my deck. When they do, they get a copy of that card to use as they wish, and it doesn’t count against their own deck. For the record, I have epic tier cards in there.”
The effect was as immediate as it was predictable. The flash of desire, bordering on greed, flared up in each and every one of them.
Rowan could perfectly understand.
All of them were barely awakened. Level one, each and every one of them. The baron had apparently kept them as such, declining to let them level up until they were either accepted into the hero’s service or turned down in order to maximize the benefits Rowan would get.
Naturally, that meant that the trio was far, far away from even making it to uncommon. Their cards, likewise, were confined to the common tier, or if they were particularly lucky, they had one or two uncommon cards from their inheritance.
Even if their families somehow had an epic card lying around, they would have to make it all the way up to rare before they could ever equip them in their decks. That’s how the rules of the system were: one tier higher than your own was all that you could equip.
So, to hear that he could make it possible for them to wield an epic tier card from the very start? One that didn’t even take up a slot in their decks? Yeah, that had more than a little appeal.
In fact, rare or even epic tier individuals would likely feel tempted as well. A whole additional card, at the tier where cards were rare and getting a useful one is even more difficult? If Rowan’s regeneration card was common knowledge, he could easily see powerhouses applying to ‘assist’ him with his duties to the frontier at the cost of giving them access to a [Knight] slot.
Granted, none of them knew that Rowan was capable of feeling the emotions of everyone he designated as a [Knight], but then again, that was a secret he wasn’t about to share with anyone but his closest allies.
“What kind of cards do you have?” the swordsman asked hungrily before flushing when all eyes turned on him. “Um, lord, sir?”
The way he tacked on the attempt at politeness gave Rowan a good-natured chuckle. He didn’t rush to assure him it was okay to be casual. Unfortunately, the last few months in his new world had taught him better.
“To answer the unasked question, yes, I have a damage-oriented combat card. It’s rare, but it’s powerful. No, not all of you can use it properly. Only she could.” He motioned at the spear user, who grinned like she’d won the lottery. “I also don’t recommend you pick that card if you do decide to join as my [Knights].”
“Why not, my lord? It’s an epic tier card, right? That means nothing could stop me from getting up the tiers!” The girl was practically bouncing in her seat, eyes sparkling in her eyes.
Rowan really hated to be the bearer of bad news.
“My build is a bit… unusual. The card is powerful, yes, way more powerful than people typically associate with spear cards.” Wasn’t that an understatement? “But it would also outright kill you if you’re not careful when using it. It draws on your mana, life force, blood and even flesh to fuel its might. You’re more likely to turn into a desiccated corpse than win if you use it.”
Rowan tried to break the news gently, but all three of them paled and immediately shot him odd looks. Probably because he was not a desiccated corpse.
“What I do recommend you pick is my regeneration card. It’s at the epic rank, too, and it saved my life way more times than I can even count.” Rowan shuddered a little, incapable of keeping bad memories at bay entirely.
He needed the assistance of his heart card and its ability to make emotions feel like distant inconveniences to deal with the worst of his traumas at first. Now, Olivia’s cuddles mostly kept nightmares at bay.
In spite of that…
The memories flashed through him like daggers. Teeth digging into his skin, his eyeballs popping like grapes. Corrosive blood sweeping over his body, threatening to eat it away until it was nothing but a rapidly melting skeleton. Fire and concussive force playing havoc with his body, until there was no discernible difference between his skin and his leather armor that had fused together.
Rowan shuddered.
Without that particular card that had started off a not-so-humble rare tier won from a demon, Rowan would probably look more like the Frankenstein’s monster than a human. He really didn’t fancy the thought of being little more than a mound of scar tissue.
Predictably, the thought of the card appealed most to the shield and hammer user, who leaned forward eagerly. “A regeneration card, my lord?”
Rowan was more than happy to move on from his traumas, and so launched into an explanation immediately.
“Correct. It can restore your body fully back to a pristine state, and even has some effect on soul injuries, according to what we’ve been able to observe. It also has the nice added benefit of improving stamina. You’ll never be forced to stop fighting until you’re somehow put down or your enemies are dead if you use it right.”
He did neglect to mention that most of his own staying power was owed to Gluttonous Banquet, a card that let him gorge on food well past his normal capacity and store away the energy it produced for future use. He could, in fact, store thirty times more energy than his body could naturally manage.
This synergized perfectly with both his regeneration card that dipped into that energy pool, and his suicidal attack card that drained his body of all it could offer.
All together, he could hit much harder than he should, and if his defenses were paper thin, well, he could come back from some serious punishment.
In fact, Rowan wasn’t exactly sure he could die until all his energy was exhausted.
“Now, I could do something reckless like cut off my own arm to show you just how the card works, but I don’t want to ruin the upholstery with my blood, and my lovely fiancée here would probably kill me if I did something that stupid. So, you’ll have to trust me when I say nothing short of complete bodily destruction will be able to kill you if you pick that card.”
Rowan planned to provide his [Knights] with a card that could keep them in the fight longer. He did, after all, have both the rare and uncommon tier versions of the Gluttonous Banquet at one point or another. Getting more of those wasn’t impossible.
“Before all of that, however…” Rowan paused, letting his eyes drift over the kids sitting across from him. Hope. Worry. Intrigue. Desire. So many emotion warred on their faces. “I’d like to get to know you a bit better. Why sign up for this? Kayden did not tell you about the benefits, obviously. So, why decide to come here just so you can become one of my [Knights]?”
Rowan wasn’t going to turn them away just because they failed to provide a good answer to the question. Still, Rowan felt compelled to know. If their motivations and personal ambitions would be better served elsewhere? He was going to do his very best to get them there.
The Stalwart Hero made himself comfortable, ready to push until he had all the details he wanted.