章 26: Brain-trust

'Shit, shit, shit, shit...'

Pacing around the throne room, I had a hard time calming down, as I could only envision all the plans that I was planning on planning falling apart before I even got the chance to plan them.

Luckily, I had my reliable brain-trust with me for this one, standing lined up on the side of the throne room, all looking at me with confused expressions.

On the far right we had Gob, now somehow have been able to have found himself real armor made out of metal.

Then we had Pi, lovely as always in her charming little dress flapping her insect-like wings to keep herself in the air.

After that, we had Gorp 1, which I to be honest had no idea why I brought it here. It was just a big bird after all.

Lastly, we had two newcomers to the team in the form of Skeleone and Skeletwo, two clattering bodies of bones with one holding the mace I had gifted him and the other a long bow, as well as a leather quiver on his back full with steel arrows.

Facing my group of questionably chosen individuals, all of them looking quite small from my new point of view, I waited for suggestions.

Pi was the first one to give it a try, creating a cloud of rainbow sparkles as she energetically declared, "Pi!"

Shaking my head, I wasn't quite into it, "No, that would take too much time."

Following her, Skeleone took a shot, gesturing wildly with his bony hands as if he didn't have any lungs to talk with. After allowing him a few moments of swinging his arms, which I absolutely couldn't understand, I pretended to think about it.

"No, that will probably not work either."

Turning my gaze toward the one hope I had left, as I doubted that either Gorp 1 or Skeletwo had anything of value to add to the conversation, Gob rubbed his green cheek a bit.

"Hmm... If I may be so impertinent master, isn't there only one thing we can do, gob? I think we have to slowly start expanding our kingdom to the outside of the Cradle."

"Cradle?"

"Gob, the Cradle of Malevolence, our home, master."

'Oh dear god...'

I knew that Tatiana had looked at me a bit weirdly whenever I had called this area the Dead Valley, but as she hadn't corrected me, I had still been lost in the thought that it didn't have a real name, which allowed me to call it whatever I wanted.

Obviously, this had not been the case.

'Keep it together, Aldric! You cannot show weakness in front of your subjects!'

What Gob said did make a lot of sense. Even if I wanted to simply force my way out of the Cradle and take control of the other demons, that could only spell disaster. Because even if I did somehow manage to survive while venturing out there and I did make contact with a demon, would it even listen to what I had to say when I was this weak?

Setting aside the incident with the dwarfs, which was clearly not a fair representation of how things would go if I met them during more normal circumstances, I knew that I still had a long way to go.

That being said, I also didn't think that I was so weak that I wouldn't stand a chance if I was to go up against the roc again, not that I thought I would suddenly be favored against it.

The problem was that no matter how powerful my magic was, it didn't matter much if it managed to get close to me, and in memory that bird had been so fast that I wasn't sure how to keep it from doing so.

'But what if I went there with an army?'

Even if my monsters had an average level of 7 right now, which I only knew due to the fact that Gob was making sure to keep records of all my underlings' levels, even ants could bring down an elephant if there were enough of them.

'It's good that the skeletons and the fairies all start at level 9 at least.'

There was also the fact that I doubted that I could grow much stronger in the Cradle, or at least not grow in a way that was efficient enough to justify continuing to mass-murdering weak monsters here.

'But that creates yet another problem...'

My army right now consisted of about 200 weak little green creatures, fifty borps, forty fairies, and some mermen who couldn't leave the artificial lake outside of the goblin village. So if I wanted to make sure we didn't just get destroyed as soon as we ventured out there, I felt like I probably would be forced to increase our numbers.

But that would mean I would have to postpone summoning my first sin, which was likely something that I should try to not do as Tatiana's explanation had made it sound like they were quite important.

"How many more tribes are there in the Cradle that we might be able to recruit to our side?"

"Gob, there are about ten tribes of varying monsters, all inhabiting about a hundred, but I doubt that more than six of those will join us."

'That's still a lot...'

If we could gain another six hundred troops, that would more than double what we had right now.

'Surely that has to be enough, right?'

"Gob, I want you to prepare the army and go around the Cradle. Do anything and everything you can to increase our forces as quickly as possible."

Saluting me with a resolved face, my current military commander confirmed my orders with a"Gob!"

****

[Selene's Pov]

Channeling the mana inside my body, I raised my arm aiming at the training dummy before me, standing a bit farther away on the training grounds.

"[Fireball]!"

*Fwosh!*

My hand could feel a bit of the heat that was expelled from the ball of flames that was created in front of my open palm, a flame that I launched forward at the dummy.

*Bom!*

A small explosion rang out as the fiery orb made contact with the unliving being ahead, and as the dust settled, I could see that the usually brown training dummy was now painted black with soot from the flames.

"That's no good, Selene. It still takes too long for you both to conjure your magic and launch it."

The one that was currently talking was Rolcert Maz, the court magician as well as the current teacher for all of us who had picked a magic-related class.

Wearing a long, blue robe adorned with golden markings, I knew that the bald, slim man was a lot older than his sleek skin suggested.

For these last couple of weeks, all of us had gotten to stay at the royal abode as well as get the opportunity to be trained within our different specializations. And for me, I thought of Rolcert's teachings to be incredibly valuable.

Though Beldroth had already told us that no status could ever make up using your body and mana clumsily, having been shown the correct way of circulating mana and molding it into spells I finally realized what Beldroth was talking about.

Despite my not having increased my levels, I could feel myself getting more powerful for every day that I had spent practicing on these sand-covered training grounds, or at least I was using the power that I had with a lot more efficiency.

Something that was extremely important.

Because after the banquet that had been held when we came here, the king announced the creation of the hero party, the main force that would be going against the demon king when the time came.

"Take a ten-minute break, Selene, while I help some of your friends."

"Alright."

As Rolcert went to assist another classmate of mine, I couldn't help but turn my gaze toward the brown-haired boy that was now getting yelled at by a blonde man with a physique resembling that of an ogre.

The hero of this story; the man who had accepted the king's proposal to create a smaller party made up of elites, George Fischer himself, as well as the man who had picked the unique class hero. Yet, I knew that his reasoning hadn't actually been part of any military tactics at all.

No, he had decided to suggest this so that he could spare as many of us as possible from having to fight. Instead of all of us having to live our lives fighting demons and monsters, he took a step forward to absorb as much of the pressure as possible.

And that was also the reason why I decided to join him.

He had argued a lot with me after the banquet, telling me that there was no need for me to join him, but I just couldn't allow that.

So in the end, I had become part of the hero's party. A party that would consist of me, George, Olivia, Jeffrey, Stephanie, and Julia, a girl who had been reborn as a dwarf and who had picked the class hunter.

That was why I had to become stronger, as strong as I possibly could. For the sake of my other classmates, so that they might have a chance to live a normal life even in this kind of world.

We would be going up against the demon king by ourselves, and therefore I had to make sure I was strong enough to bring him down.