The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Sebastian offered five hundred soldiers, but he demanded payment for their services. In other words, it was a rent. The price wasn’t high for Adrian, but for any other Baron, this would have been a hard deal to accept.

He was asking for 10 bronze per soldier, which meant that Adrian had to pay 50 silvers every single day for keeping the 500 soldiers.

Adrian wrote back immediately, agreeing to the offer and packed sixty gold coins into a small cloth back and gave it to the messenger.

Three days later, the Kaldwin army marched into Oresfall.

A total of five hundred men and this was more than enough to keep his borders and the inside of his territory safe for the most part.

He split the three hundred men into two groups.

"Two hundred of you will patrol the borders, splitting into a group of 100 for night and day shifts." Adrian ordered the Kaldwin captain. "Nobody smuggles iron out without paying taxes. The remaining three hundred will split into day and night shifts too, but they’ll be in charge of keeping the barony safe on the inside. You will be with this group, and your task is to keep the peace and keep the people safe. Kill any wild animals that wander in."

The Kaldwin soldiers saluted and marched off to their posts.

Adrian put Burke in charge of the construction hiring while Damian handled the military recruits.

The process was simple, Burke would give jobs to anyone who wants it while Damian would just make the people wait until the next morning until Adrian came to check on them.

After all, soldiers and construction workers were different and Adrian wished to hire the soldiers directly.

With this, the entirety of Oresfall fell into a constant daily cycle. While the population began to grow at an exponential rate, the soldiers and workers had their own routine. The new recruits just joined them and followed along.

Soldiers woke up at four in the morning, headed to the dungeon, sold all the ingots to Adrian and began their knight training, which went on until late afternoon when they’d stop and go to bed.

As for the workers, they’d wake up at seven and by this time, the soldiers would be done with the dungeon so the workers went in. They repeated the same process and instead of training, they’d go and build. They stopped working once the sun went down and unlike the knights, they would go to the dungeon again before sleeping.

A week or so later, Adrian gathered all the kids and separated them into two groups. First was the group of five who had mana veins and the other group was for those who didn’t.

He looked at them all and spoke, "Firstly, how many of you know about mana veins and mages?"

Octavia raised her hand and Adrian nodded at her.

"Mages can use magic but I don’t know what mana veins are."

"Well, yes. Mages can use magic and mana veins are the magical pathways inside the bodies of people that allows them to become mages. Without mana veins, one cannot use magic and not everyone is born with them. It’s very rare." he said and pointed at the group of five.

"You guys." he said, "Are the ones with mana veins."

He then looked at the other group, "And you guys don’t have them. Of course, don’t be discouraged because you can all become knights anyways. Everyone has their own role to play and no one is more important than the other."

Then, he pointed at a tower of books.

"Each one of you take one book and go to Claire. Tell her that you’re there for special knight training."

He watched as they grabbed their books and left before he focused on the remaining five.

"You guys are a bit special. With different blessings and curses so I have a special book for you guys. On top of that, this isn’t any random knight training method. You’ll all be Knights who can use the mana in your mana veins, which means that even as an F rank knight, if you have a 1st magic circle in your mana heart, you can be multiple times stronger than other F rank knights. You’ll probably even be able to beat D or E rank knights. This is the power I can give you, and in return, all I ask is for your loyalty."

The five of them knelt and brought their fists to their chest, a classic knightly salute.

Seeing this, Adrian exhaled and continued, "I’ll also have you know that your training will be multiple times harder than the regular knights. This is because you’ll need to temper your body to be able to withstand the mana from your mana veins. Since I’m a mage too, I’ll be joining you on your training."

He then distributed the five unique books to them.

Octavia’s blessing boosted her stats at night and her curse didn’t allow her to use magic, which was similar to Adrian’s Pacifist’s Shackles that didn’t allow him to use weapons made for war.

Her knight’s manual was the one that was more of a "jack of all trades" compared to the others. It didn’t focus on a single weapon or technique and just focused on enhancing her strength, vitality, agility and stamina.

The next one was Tessa. With her iron skin that boosted her defense and a curse that didn’t really affect her combat, Adrian gave her the same knight’s manual that Octavia got. The reason for this was simple, their blessings and curses weren’t complicated and nor did they require him to find specific loopholes to make them affective.

Milo came next and he was the same. With a blessing that slowed down time for 5 seconds and a curse that took away his lifespan whenever he used the blessing, there was no actual way to bypass it. He got the same manual too.

It was Hugo and Vance that needed unique methods.