Chapter 318: Enraged Franky

Adrian stood near the edge of the camp and watched the soldiers marching away into the darkness.

There were seven thousand of them heading back home. They walked in tight, disciplined formations. Each squad carried glowing magical torches that covered the dirt road in a bright, flickering orange light.

The remaining soldiers from the other noble territories were already gathered around their own campfires near their pitched tents. They had their wooden bowls of food resting on their laps. They just sat there and watched the massive Oresfall army leave in total silence.

Adrian looked at the torches his men were holding.

It was the exact same torch design that he had manufactured in the dungeon. The internal mechanics were heavily derived from Aria’s original mana engineering creation. He looked pretty proud of this fact as he watched the glowing lights disappear over the horizon.

He turned to look at Aria standing right next to him.

He patted her head.

"I told you right?" Adrian said.

Aria looked up at him.

"The thing that you made is going to be used by every single person in our territory."

Aria nodded. She looked a little proud of herself too.

Up until now, she had been ignoring her studies in mana engineering, runesmithing, and enchanting. She just didn’t really see that big of a return on investment from it. Instead, she had just focused entirely on her physical strength. She put a massive amount of effort into conditioning her body and testing out a few combat spells here and there.

She looked up at him again and tugged his sleeve.

"Papa, can you teach me?" she asked.

Adrian raised an eyebrow.

"Because I want to try and make more things," she added.

Adrian looked down at her and nodded slowly.

’I am just so rusty right now though,’ he thought to himself.

He had been using the system so much for all of his manufacturing that he couldn’t exactly teach her everything properly without it. Nothing was at the top of his head right now. Everything he had learned back in the magic academy was basically half-forgotten because he just relied on the system to do the heavy lifting.

He let out a quiet sigh. He felt a little dejected at his own incompetence.

He really had been depending on the system a bit too much lately. But it wasn’t like he regretted it. The system just pushed the limits of what he could do. If it was just him without the system, he wouldn’t even be able to use his dungeon to its fullest extent.

Without the Dungeon Link giving him the ability to control the dungeon in ways he could never do without it, most of the crazy things he had built wouldn’t have been possible.

He patted Aria’s head again.

"Yeah sure, I’ll teach you."

’I’ll teach you by asking the system for help of course,’ he added in his head.

If he tried to teach her just by himself, he was pretty sure he would just give her half-knowledge. And giving a genius half-knowledge wasn’t exactly a good idea.

He looked down at Aria as she turned her head to watch the soldiers marching.

His own knowledge was pretty limited at the moment but she was a literal genius. The system was basically just a supercomputer that ran calculations and simulations for him. It lacked a soul. When it came to real creative ideas, having a human capable enough and knowledgeable enough to expand their horizons was a much better option.

He turned around and walked back toward his own camp.

His remaining thousand soldiers were already busy setting up their tents in perfectly straight lines. Adrian watched them work for a second before looking over at Claire, Serena, and Celeste who were busy setting up their own gear near the center of the camp.

Then he felt a sudden tug on his pants.

He turned around to look at Aria.

She was just staring straight up at him with big eyes.

"Papa, can we eat something?"

Adrian raised an eyebrow.

"Didn’t you just eat like two hours ago?"

Aria nodded.

"But Papa, I’m still hungry."

Adrian just stared at her.

He let out a short chuckle. "You’re still hungry huh?"

Aria nodded again.

"Okay then fine," Adrian sighed. "I’ll cook something for you."

She immediately shook her head.

"No Papa. I want to cook."

Adrian paused. He looked a little surprised by that.

"Okay fine. What do you want to cook then?"

"Chicken," Aria said. "The golden chicken."

"Okay fine. Let’s just wait for our tents to be set up and then I’ll help you cook."

Aria nodded happily.

The rest of the night passed by in a blur. They set up a small cooking station right outside his tent and Adrian ended up eating a lot more fried chicken than he probably should have.

He went to sleep with a really stuffed stomach.

Aria was exactly the same. But even after all that eating, there was still a bit of fried chicken just sitting on her plate left completely uneaten.

The next morning, Adrian woke up early and got straight back to work.

He stepped out of his tent and started telling his soldiers to do various chores like organizing items and getting the camp ready. But the main task he gave them was something else entirely.

He basically told them to go grab the soldiers from the other territories and force them to train.

And that was exactly what they did.

Adrian was literally making soldiers run drills in the middle of a war situation. He was forcing men who were supposed to march into actual combat in a few days to do physical training.

Obviously the other nobles didn’t exactly like what was going on.

The first one to come over and talk to Adrian about it was none other than Count Frankenstein.

The man marched straight up to Adrian’s tent, looking furious.

"Baron Adrian, what do you think you are doing?" Frankenstein demanded. "Why are you tiring them out?"