The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

"Everywhere." Adrian handed him a sealed letter of authority. "Visit every single neighboring territory. I need food. Buy flour, rice, potatoes, and onions in massive bulk. Buy live animals. Cows, chickens, pigs."

Adrian leaned forward.

"Pay them fifty percent upfront." Adrian instructed. "Tell them they get the other fifty percent when their own soldiers deliver the goods to Oresfall. They carry the risk of transport."

Cassius nodded slowly. "And if they refuse to use their own troops?"

"Offer them a trade." Adrian smiled. "Tell them we will supply them with a steady stream of iron and steel ingots at ninety percent of the market price. But they have to handle the logistics."

Cassius grinned. It was a brilliant, aggressive trade strategy.

"I will secure the deals, Lord Adrian." Cassius bowed. "You will have more food than you know what to do with."

Cassius grabbed the letter and left to gather the gold.

Adrian looked out his window. The sheds stretched for miles. The training field was packed with soldiers swinging wooden swords.

His fortress was finally taking shape.

Adrian sat in his study and stared at the translucent blue screen floating in front of him, saying that it had finished absorbing all the data from the books he had provided.

He tapped his finger against the wooden desk. He scrolled through the new information the system provided. The knight manuals he bought from the black market were completely incomplete. They were fragmented pieces of garbage. But the system did not care about missing pages. After all, information was still information. The dungeon could compile the broken data and still use it.

’System.’ Adrian thought. ’Take every single book we copied, the knight training books, mana breathing methods and spell books. Use all of these and make me a top tier knight manual.’

The system screen flashed.

’Actually, wait.’ Adrian thought. ’Do not just make a generic one.’

He leaned back in his chair. He noticed a massive flaw in the standard knight training. Most all-rounder manuals created knights who were jacks of all trades but masters of none. The most lethal fighters in this world were specialists.

’Make specialized manuals.’ Adrian commanded. ’I want a top tier manual specifically designed for cavalry knights wielding glaive type weapons. The weapon needs to slash and thrust perfectly.’

[Affermative.]

’Next.’ Adrian thought. ’Make a top tier manual for a sword knight. But skip the traditional single sword. Build a manual optimized for dual wielding swords and a combination of shield and sword.’

The system prompted him for mana to fuel the creation process, and Adrian didn’t even think about it as he let it eat up his dungeon’s mana reserves.

[Compiling all data. Creating specialized top tier manuals. Estimated time to completion: 48 hours.]

"Two days is good." Adrian muttered.

Adrian closed the screen and got up. He left the study and walked down to the first floor. The fifty teens were waiting for him, ready to start their training.

He rounded them up in the main hallway. The teenagers looked incredibly excited and nervous. They were wearing clean clothes now and all the grime was washed off their faces.

"Follow me." Adrian said.

He led the massive group outside and they walked straight up to the dungeon entrance.

On the way, Adrian used dungeon link and made a "software update". He also gave his dungeon a very specific set of instructions since he had big plans based on this. Though this also came with a minor inconvenience, but Adrian didn’t mind it.

Once they got there, the kids stared at the tree that looked like it had a naturally formed hole at the base, but they could all tell that this was actually a dungeon entrance.

Adrian got them all inside and walked behind them. He guided them to the gacha wheel and pointed at the glass orb attached to it.

"Listen up." Adrian told the kids. "I need all of you to line up. Place your hand on the glass orb, and the rest will happen on it’s own."

The kids nodded nervously and formed a line.

The first kid stepped up and placed his hand on the orb but nothing happened. Adrian let all of them do it and only once the entire party was done, did multiple small iron ingots clatter out of a slot at the bottom.

Adrian did not care about the iron. He was staring at his system screen hovering in front of him instead.

The new software update gave his dungeon the ability to store exactly 1 point of mana from each person inside a mana crystal. This crystal did not have a rank limit like the normal one and it could keep ranking up as it stored more mana.

When the kids pushed their mana into the orb, the dungeon read their entire biological signature using it. It collected their name, mana capacity, skills, blessings, curses and everything else.

The power system of this world was extremely rigid. Almost everyone received a blessing from a god or a demon at birth but the other party would almost always try to counter this blessing.

Most commoners received useless trades like a minor stamina boost paired with a peanut allergy. Or they received a lifespan extension. A commoner meant to die at sixty might get a divine blessing for ten extra years. The demons would immediately counter it with a curse that shaved off ten years or maybe more. Lifespan blessings were basically scams.

Thirty eight kids out of the fifty had standard lifespan trades, which meant that they were just regular people.

Seven other kids had minor stamina buffs and weird weaknesses. One kid could not swim, while another kid could not eat spicy food.

But five kids were different.

Adrian stared at the glowing text. Five of these kids had massive blessings and annoying curses. And more importantly, all five of them possessed mana veins.

Two of them had A rank and B rank mana veins while the other three had D rank ones.

Adrian stared in disbelief as he looked at their status screens.