A few months after her Father left Ava was strolling around the tribe with her mother.

Nothing from her Father or the elven army had been heard upon as of yet, the human army would take over a year to assemble and for an army of that size it would take many months to reach the elven territory borders.

The Evergreen clan has called upon her Father and other tribes to get all the man power possible to lie in wait and build deep fortifications to defend against them.

She was concerned about the other clans roles in the clash though. From what she heard the human empire army was ginormous, the only advantage the Elves had was in the quality of their combatants and being on home soil.

Elves has far more elites than the humans, yet the elven territory had been more than enough to contain its population for thousands of years for a reason. The fertility rate of elves was not high, the growth of the elven population has been excruciatingly slow, apparently the humans outnumbered them over fifty times in the human empires territory alone and this difference would be even larger if the human kingdoms didn’t have constant conflicts and wars among each other.

The Royal clan of the elves have been around a long time. Elves had longevity over humans, they lived ten times longer naturally, and this only increased during cultivation.

Some of the founders of the elven coalition was around even now.

Nonetheless even with the humans having a great advantage, the Evergreen clan seemed to be the only one who had moved to the borders to meet the humans.

The updates from the messengers concerned her. They told the tribe the Royal clan of the elves had everything under control, yet this did nothing to comfort her.

It made her want to speed up her training and Cense agreed. Apparently saturating her body with Qi since she was born has done wonders for her body, it would be no problem for her to start training her body even as a child, besides any potential damage can be healed with attracting water attributed elemental force into her body.

From her meditation practice with Cense she had learnt to attract elemental Qi into her body without him.

It didn’t speed up her practice as a mage since they relied on spiritual energy to progress through the tiers, as you required a suitable amount of spiritual energy per tier to harness more elemental Qi to channel into your spells.

Nonetheless it was useful though even if she did not have the ability to cast spells yet, she can attract water attributed Qi inside her body to speed up the natural healing processes and promote recovery even if it wasn’t as effective as a spell would be.

That was why she innocently tried to pose the question of her joining the other kids training with Hoatan on the third time of her coincidentally passing by them in the training area.

Her Mother was strongly averse to it at first, even after she used her best puppy dog eyes, after all the kids of the tribe began training at six. These kids were all at least twice her age.

“Ava… you can play with them you’re older, at the moment this is too…” Her mother found it difficult to find the words to deny her with her bringing out all the cuteness she could muster.

She had already subtly made her mother refer to her as ‘Ava’ from her pretending to struggle to say her full name when she was younger, saying ‘Ava, Ava, Ava!’ until her mother gave up trying to make her pronounce her full name.

Though she grew to like referring to her like this as well.

“Please momma, I can do it!” Ava said protesting.

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Her Mother was about to argue her point again until Hoatan who noticed their little argument stopped instruction the other children and approached them.

“What does the problem seem to be here?” He asked.

“She has been watching you for the past few days and wants to now be a warrior like her Father, I’ve tried to talk her out of it…” Loriel grew upset as she thought about her child seeming to just want to grow to be strong like her Father.

“Hmm.” Hoatan mumbled thoughtfully.

“Ugh please let me join sir I promise I won’t let you down” Ava asked ignoring her mothers protests.

“Alright sure.” Hoatan said to both her and Loriels shock.

“What! Are you crazy? I know you didn’t approve of me marrying my husband because of me not being good enough but that doesn’t mean you should take it out on her.” Her mothers eyes turned fierce for a moment as they glared at the older elf.

At that moment she realised her mother was far stronger than she thought, standing up to the most powerful and senior elf in the tribe despite her fathers absence made her far braver than Hoatan ever gave her credit for.

Hoatan eyes grew as a brief glint of respect filled them before reverting to his usual cold expression said, “I would never harm the child of my chieftain. I wanted to be by his side one last time however I promised I would remain to protect his family at all costs. I don’t see a problem with her joining the training, she’s a strong girl for her age and we usually let the youngins like her practice with the others until they’re tired, she won’t be forced to do anything she doesn’t want to do, she’s a child Loriel, it’s natural she looks up to her Father and wants to follow him, besides it let’s her take her mind of the damn war and she can interact with the other children.”

Her Mother couldn’t field much of a protest after Hoatian made a strong argument and she couldn’t find it in her heart to refuse her.

Soon she found herself lined up with the other children as her Mother watched her worriedly in the background.

The sun was bright today over the tribe. Large trees surrounded the area of the tribe offering some relief from the glaring rays as she felt the heat on her skin.

A moderate group of children lined up beside her. She was the youngest and smallest of the lot numbering around fifty.

Considering the elven tribe had over a thousand elves living here it wasn’t a particular high number.

Especially considering this was all the children in the tribe up to the age of sixteen.

Hoatan briefly introduced her to the animated group of children who seemed surprised a child so young was joining them until they realised who she was.

The tribe chieftain was a legend among the elves, being the first senior warrior the tribe had in a long time. It brought the tribe great pride, although only children they understood how great a senior warrior is.

Ava being his only child, it was only natural she would follow her fathers footsteps.

After the introductions was complete, Hoatan split them into three groups. She was put into the one which held the children aged six to nine, whereas the other two groups held the older children.

Two other older men went to teach the other two groups whereas Hoatan came to hers.

“If you want to be a great warrior serving the tribe you must train hard from a young age! The foundations of a warrior is all built on having a strong body, too often warriors don’t realise this soon enough and later in life cannot increase further as a warrior due to their Battle Qi reaching their bodies limit!” Hoatan glared fiercely at the young children ensuring they understood. The children looked back seriously, not daring to make a sound.

Ava nodded, this was similar to what Cense told her.

“Now we may not have resources compared to the larger tribes, but all Elves will have equal opportunity to train and grow their strength to be worthy of respect. If you show sufficient talent and effort you may even be recruited by a larger tribe, maybe some of you will have the honour to be under the Royal clan themselves. However none of this is possible if you don’t exercise and build your strength in the most ancient way possible, is that understood?” Hoatan asked sweeping his gaze over the children.

None of the children backed down from his glare and seemed eager to follow his orders.

Hoatan let out a satisfied smile, especially when he saw Ava’s resolve, “Good. Now to remind you form is important, if you’re tired and it gets sloppy, it’s best to just give it day and rest for the next session. Now let’s begin!”

Ava’s eyes grew wide thinking this was a bit more intense than Hoatan made out.

Nonetheless this did little to damp her enthusiasm, she was ready to begin her training.

Cense felt satisfied watching Ava. So far she had rose up to every challenge so far, now he wanted to see how she will progress when her training steps up once again.