CHAPTER 19 – REST

It was currently two days before the scheduled monthly inspection for the recruits. I had spent six out of seven days a week, working with each group in a slightly different way, trying to find the optimum way to train them.

While I believed that the way I was training them was already revolutionary. There was still always space for improvement, complacency is the bane of progression. There was no way, I could start letting it all slide before, I even have this all up and running.

Nonetheless, I was also giving myself and the recruits time to rest in between. It was one thing to train and work hard, it was another to over exhaust yourself. Today was also the last day of training for the week, and tomorrow would be the rest day. Finally, after it would be the monthly inspection.

This time’s inspection would be much more important than all the previous ones. For the first time they would demonstrate their abilities in the event of an actual battle or mission. Not only this, but also because I had invited my brother Claude, the King of Kar to also come and observe the progress of these recruits.

I Supervised the two squads navigate through some trees, trying to locate the other team first, in a training mission that simulated search and eliminate operations. These two squads had the best results out of my whole group. They weren’t the best in the sense that they had extremely skilled members that excelled in their individual classes. They were the best at thinking creatively and had excellent critical thinking abilities. They were able to look at a situation objectively and find out how the opposing team would react and go from there.

I always enjoyed watching these two groups go against each other. You would never know what they would do next, or who would win in the end.

One of the groups had sent a scout out and created false tracks, that led them through a long detour and ended in an ambush. They even left a shield and spear at the ambush point to distract the enemy into thinking that they were standing there unaware.

However, even with this ambush the opposing team were not complacent and were ready for an ambush and were able to ward off their attackers.

From here a melee started. The light infantry tried to get past the heavy infantry to get to the archers. While the heavy infantry guarded the archers. The archers took opportunistic shots at everyone. Through an intense battle eventually, the group that had performed the ambush got the win as they were able to tire their opponents using the ambush first.

This confrontation showed that when two equally matched teams went against each other, the one that had better tactical training would win. The day after tomorrow would be the time to show that, the era for pure physical training was over. Tactical training was the way to go, even if they were not officers or elites. The new standard would be that all soldiers are trained as elites while the elites would train in unconventional warfare and the likes.

With the match over, I had the two teams gather together to discuss how they thought they went and what they could do to improve. I also had them add what skill they needed or would like to learn.

These reflections after each battle served as a basis for their critical thinking ability. It got them to get in a habit to reflect on how they went, and what they could do to improve. As a bonus it also served as a teaching guide for future recruits, we were always trying to improve our teaching method.

The squad that performed the ambush went first in reflecting how they went. They noted that their use of decoys would have been more efficient if it was a full set of armour weapons and shields, as it would lower the enemy’s suspicion more. They also noted that they could have used spare armour if it was available. They identified that they could have stationed the two archers up on trees this would have limited the enemy’s choices in the attack. While also freeing up the heavy infantry giving them a chance to join in attacking the enemy archers.

Up next for their reflection was the other squad. They had performed marvellously throughout the mission but had slipped up due to becoming tired and letting down their guard. That acknowledged this fact and proposed that situational training be more diversified and include more ambush scenarios. I agreed with this aspect as ambushes were hard to prevent and harder to guard against they needed every bit of training they could get.

With this all down I dismissed all the recruits telling them to rest well tomorrow as the inspection was due on the day after tomorrow. I let them know that while they could train tomorrow, I encouraged them to limit it to only be during the morning as I did not want them exhausted for the demonstration, they were the stars of the show after all.

Once all of this was out of the way I headed back to the villa to review all my course work that had piled up for the week. My friends and classmates were in a similar situation as they too had prioritised getting experience as officers by working with their recruits during weekdays.

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I speed through a portion of the coursework before it was time for dinner, and Erika called me out to eat. Having only finished a quarter of the work that needed to be done by Monday, which also happened to be the day of the inspection. I could only choose to continue working through them after dinner, as I wanted to relax tomorrow and not be bogged down with homework. Causing me to think about how pitiful, I and all students were even in a fantasy world homework still plagued our nights.

When I woke up the next morning tired and not well-rested, I came to realise that as the goddess of the night's rest it was abnormal that I was not getting the rest that I deserved. Recently, I have tried to force my way through everything. I guess this is what it's like to be on a tight schedule with a deadline.

I would hope that after the inspection tomorrow things would be easier, but I could see that it would only get worse if my new squadron formation strategy is well accepted. At that point, I would not just have to supervise my own recruits but also all other recruits as well. Just thinking about it made me feel tired.

However, I shouldn’t be thinking about all those complicated things right now. Today is my rested day and I should do just that. I needed to live up to my name as the goddess of rest. As such the first thing will do this morning is to continue to sleep in.

When lunchtime arrived, Erika who was worried about me sleeping in for so long, came to wake me up for lunch. Still feeling a little tired and sleepy I just lazily stood there while she helped me dress. Completely unaware of what she had dressed me in.

It was only when I reached the dining room and Catrina who had started to eat first without waiting for me, choked on her food asked me.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

Unsure of what she meant exactly, I started to speak.

“Normal clothes what are you on about?”

However, the next second I regretted letting Erika do whatever she wanted. Looking down at the clothes I was wearing, I could see a lot of ribbons, frills, and laces. Rushing back to my room to look properly in the mirror, I found a cute twelve-year-old girl in Lolita fashion looking back at me. Calling out to Erika, I started to complain about my current attire and had her help me change out of it.

I may be the goddess of youth and to a certain extent the goddess of lolis but that didn’t mean that I wanted to be dressed as one. I still had the memories of my past life. Just thinking about that cutie dress made me cringe, but apparently, Erika did not see the problem and thought that it suited me.

When I asked her where it was from, as I don’t recall ever having it tailored. She explained to me that she saw it at a new boutique that had just opened. When she saw it, she thought it would look good on me so she brought it with her own money, hoping I would like it.

Now knowing the full story, I felt apologetic, as I had just yelled at her, when she was just trying to be nice. I promised her that I would wear it occasionally. Nonetheless, I was still worried knowing that she has discovered Lolita fashion. Will she continue to make me wear other clothes like this. Hoping to stop the threat before it fully arises, I made sure to tell Erika that I didn’t need new clothing and that she shouldn’t waste her money on these things.

However, still not understanding what I was hinting at, she told me that it was fine as she had a saving of four thousand gold coins. Shocked about the amount of money Erika had. I asked her if being a maid was actually a well-paid occupation, that allowed her to save up so much money. She informed me that it was because she was serving as both my personal knight and maid that pushed up her salary. Additionally, her parents regularly send her money, as they were afraid that she doesn’t have enough money to spend. However, as when she is working, she would be in a maid uniform and eat here, she didn’t need to spend money at all. So, she was able to save up a fortune that was even more than all the allowance I ever received.

Returning to the dining room, I sat back down ignoring all the snickers I was getting from my friends, and started to have my lunch. Once they had calmed down from their laughter, I asked them what they were going to do for the day. As I still didn’t have a club, I usually spent my rest days training or visiting clubs that my friends were part of. My favourite was still the club for the weary student. Those alpacas had a fluffiness of eleven out of ten. They were completely out of this world.

The reply I got from them were the same old story they would be headed to their clubs while Hilda and Chandra were going to study and work on their homework and Lyn would join them later.

Unsure of what to do I, just summoned Skoll and Hat out in their large dog form so I could groom them. While I didn’t need to manually groom them every time I summon them, as they are always spotless no matter how dirty they were when I returned them to the crystal hair accessories. It was still calming and felt nice to brush their soft fur. Plus, they enjoyed it as much as I did if not more.

Having soon finished grooming them I resummoned them into their larger form so that I could ride them. Getting onto Skoll’s back I had them circle around the academy without a destination in mind. Over the months the students at the academy had long become accustomed to seeing the two sky wolves run effortlessly through the sky and no longer stopped what they were doing and stared at them.

Flying over the barracks of the recruits I could see that some of them were training with the knight course students most likely preparing for the inspection tomorrow. By the looks of things, they were well within the standards of the current Kar armies. That would be to say that they were progressing remarkably well but compared to the recruits that I had trained they were like children playing around.

It reminded me of when my friends and I didn’t have proper training and were just playing around with wooden swords imitating the guards and knights from the palace. In just a few short years we had completely changed into fighters that could even outmatch most of the royal knights.

It was all thanks to general Harlow. Speaking of general Harlow, I haven’t seen him in nearly half a year. I wonder if he’s okay helping the Zenith army repeal the monsters. The last time I heard any news from him was a few months ago from one of the generals who said he was fine. I’m going to have to ask them or Claude tomorrow about the situation.