Inside the main church of the Kazar kingdom in one of the rooms, stood one of the big shots of the Holy Church and addressed a holy knight that was kneeling by his feet.
"Knight: did you call for me, Althalos-sama!"
Yes, the man who is standing in front of the holy knight is none other than Cardinal Althalos Carac, the head of the main church of the Kazar kingdom.
"Althalos: that I did, I asked for you because I have an important mission for you. I want you to head for the city of Donatis and ask its people to repent and to embrace the teachings of the Holy church once again"
"Knight: yes sir, and in case they refuse, what should I do?"
"Althalos: if that is the case which I doubt it will come to be….. purge every last rotten soul in the city, but to make sure they don't overestimate themselves or that brat they call Divine Blacksmith, take with you a hundred holy knight all equipped with magic gear to show them the power of the church"
"Knight: yes sir!"
And after the Knight left the room Althalos smiled and started muttering to himself….
"finally that town will be mine....."
===============================================
In the town of Donatis in a meeting room in the town's new management building, a group of people are having a meeting to report the town's current condition and future plans.
"Lundel: good work everyone, the town is becoming better and better thanks to your hard work"
"Military Rep: you said it! The town is becoming more and more powerful al thanks to Ruler-sama"
"Research Rep: yeah, we even found some people who used to live in the slums that had talents needed for alchemy and the crafting of magic items, I can't believe those talents were wasted in the past"
"Education Rep: and more than anything, the people who are working to copy books we have been increasing in number and right now we have enough books to start selling them if so we wanted, and just thinking about the number of capable people we are going to get from the people graduating from school is enough to make me excited"
"Lundel: that's all thanks to Ruler-sama! When I heard his speech, at first I thought that he said that only to give the people some hope to calm them down, but doing as he said proved me wrong and the townspeople are all working together to improve the living conditions of the town"
"Civil Rep: the town management and leadership methods he is making us follow are fundamentally different than anything we have seen before, the common method is to have the nobles manage the town regardless of education and ability and the management positions are given to them by the lord for political reasons alone, but what we are doing right now is having the right person do the right job and to make sure the right people are available whenever we want them all we have to do is educating the townspeople and thus having the people taking care of themselves, and since the taxes are used to make sure that the education and research are going strong the people will feel satisfied having all that money used on making their lives better which in turn increases their loyalty to the ruler which in turn reduces the crime rate in town making the people happier and more loyal to the ruler, it's a big cycle that keeps making things better and better, and when something goes wrong the people will know that the reason is something they did which makes them more inclined to fix it, and since there is no special treatment is given to anyone the people will be not afraid to say what is in their minds about the shortcomings of the people in the management helping us improve ourselves which leads to happier people and the happier the people the more loyal they are"
"Military Rep: …..Ooh.."
"Civil Rep: what's wrong with you all?"
"Education Rep: it's only that we did not think that deeply into Ruler-sama's methods and what you said surprised us"
"Civil Rep: most people will not realize and this is the most terrifying thing about this method"
"Lundel: you are right, we are really lucky to have a Ruler like him!"
"Military Rep: Ruler-sama is certainly terrifying…."
"Lundel: Oh, by the way, I received new gear for all of our soldiers from Ruler-sama"
"Military Rep: what type of gear?"
"Lundel: armor, weapons, Artifacts and magic items"
"Military Rep: that much?!"
"Lundel: more than that. All the armor and weapons are enchanted with powerful magic and let's not forget that they were all made by The Divine Blacksmith himself"
"Military Rep: Ooooh! That's awesome, I'm sure the soldiers will be happy to receive them!"
"Lundel: and he approved of our idea of having people immigrating and building villages around the town and expanding the barrier's diameter to cover them as well"
"Civil Rep: good, but we now have more work to do"
===============================================
In the Royal castle of the Kazar Kingdom, in the throne room Barda Le Duntia the lord of Duntia was kneeling in front of the king…
"Barda: your majesty I request your immediate assistance to retake my dear town from that foul commoner"
"Forten: first of all….. detain him!"
At the king's orders, the soldiers all sprang into action and detained the confused lord and the nobles who came with him.
"Barda: W-Why?... your majesty! W-What is the meaning of this?"
"Forten: we received a report from the guild master in Duntia saying that you have imposed additional taxes on the people of Duntia and the adventurers visiting the town to explore the dungeon and because of that the kingdom is facing a huge crisis because of that"
"Barda: T-T-There m-m-must be some sort of m-mistake!..."
"Forten: do you even know what is the crisis I talked about?! What you did is a clear breach in the contract we signed with the Adventurers guild and because of you their trust on us has been reduced and they are asking for compensation from the kingdom, dose any of you present here know what will happen to the kingdom if the Adventurers guild pulled out of our kingdom? We will not have anyone to fight the monsters for us and because of that, even our economy will suffer a huge hit!! That's why from today onwards anyone even from the royal families who dares to worsen our relationship with the Adventurers guild will be executed no questions asked!"
"Barda: Y-Y-Y-Your m-m-majesty you c-c-can't execute m-m-me! I-I-I d-d-did no such t-thing a-a-as w-worsening ….."
"Forten: SILENCE!! Not only did you impose the additional taxes but you increased them once the dungeon's monsters started overflowing and rather than helping the people you escaped with your tail between your legs!"
"Barda: ...B-B-B-But-.."
"Forten: and the biggest crime you are charged with is that it came to light that you have a connection to The Blue Sun of Hope, the two proxies you left in Duntia were members of The Blue Sun of Hope and the guild master there have personally found several corpses and evidence of demon summoning ritual in the basement of your mansion, and even the monster overflowing problem was caused by The Blue Sun of Hope, they were raising an army of wyverns at the bottom of the dungeon, if not for The Divine Blacksmith we might have been invaded by that very wyvern army, your actions have resulted to the people of Duntia losing all their trust in us and pledged their loyalty to The Divine Blacksmith!"
"Barda: …"
"Forten: bring me all the nobles who escaped Duntia regardless of age and all of them to be interrogated here in front of me and for the whole process to be broadcasted to the whole capital city to show the people what have these fools done and to make an example out of them!"
===============================================
On the seventh day, Seth went into the forest with Shin and Loti again to resume their training.
"Leo: Ryo, what are your plans after this?"
Leon Morten Kazar aka Leo is the first prince of the Kazar kingdom. After introducing himself yesterday we explained our relationship to Seth, Shin and Loti and after that, we went to sleep and in the morning after the three left for the forest Leo asked me that question.
"Ryo: it's time for me, no for Armonis to make its move"
"Leo: I see, so you are going to meet with at least?"
"Ryo: yes, that's the main reason for coming to this forest, after Shin and Loti finish their training here I'm going to the Renzhe's settlement to tell them that it's finally time to act"
"Leo: I see, sorry I was not able to change the kingdom soon enough to prevent people from suffering and now you guys are going to shoulder that burden if only I was stronger!..."
"Ryo: don't be like that, you have been working yourself to the bone for nearly ten years now and it's thanks to you that there are some good nobles and royals out there"
"Liz: Leo-sama, Ryo-sama is right, we tried to do everything by ourselves and did not make it in time, I think it's time for us to depend on our comrades to make sure that the people's future is protected"
"Leo: Liz… you are right!"
"Ryo: yeah! Leave it to us!"
"Leo: me too, if there is anything I can do to help don't hesitate to tell me!"
"Ryo: then, I want you to head for the Holy Theocracy, as the next king of this kingdom I want you to go around the poor regions throughout the Theocracy and learn how the people over there are living there lives and to look for people who share your world view but be careful so no one knows who you are"
"Leo: got it, and I want you to do something for me as well. The good nobles you talked about before, there are two of them who are in danger right now, they can't be saved by me or any of the other nobles and royals so I want you to save them"
"Ryo: they can't be saved by you?... that means some other royals are trying to screw them up using their authority to do that but in an underhanded way so if you were the one to save them that would have made the situation worse"
"Leo: yeah…"
"Ryo: got it, leave it to me! You how much I love crushing arrogant nobles like them"
"Leo: I'll leave it to you"
"Liz: Leo-sama, I think it's time…"
"Leo: you are right.."
"Ryo: Hmm?..."
"Leo: we are going to go now, thank you for helping us and thank you for the food"
"Ryo: you sure you don't want to rest more?"
"Leo: yeah, hearing that the Renzhe are going to start moving we need to go and tell our friends all around the kingdom about that to help by providing the info they want to accomplish their mission"
"Ryo: I see, Oh before you go here take your ring back, I have made it so the space inside it is infinite and I have placed a lot of food inside it"
"Leo: Oooh! Ryo! Thank you very much, you are really my best friend!"
"Liz: Grrr..."
"Ryo: Liz, you don't need to be that mad at him"
"Liz: but Ryo-sama! He is going to buy even more useless weapons and place them in that ring!"
"Ryo: about that, here this ring is for you Liz, this one is linked to Leo's ring but you can use it to control his ring at will to make it so he can't use the ring or even you can use it to destroy the weapons he has in there"
"Leo: NO! DON'T, Liz you can't take that ring! And you Ryo you devil don't go giving her something evil like that!"
"Liz: Shut up! Thank you very much Ryo-sama, I'm going to make sure all of his weapons are destroyed by the end of today!"
"Leo: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!......"
And that's how Liz walked away dragging the crying Leo behind her.
After they left I went back to my training and this time I was able to understand the process to create layers of mana more than before and thus started to slightly change the way I did it and made it easier than before, but just getting used to the new idea I came up with took me the whole day and Seth and the guys were back before I even noticed.
"Shin: Emm? Where did Leo-san and Liz-san go?"
"Ryo: they left already, they have a lot to do after all"
"Loti: what? They should have stayed and rested for some more time"
"Ryo: Don't forget that they are S rank adventurers and they have their work to do, just like us. Forget about that for now, how did your training go today?"
"Loti: about that… hehehehe"
"Shin: we were only injured once today! In the course of the past six days, we learned how to sense the presence of other living things and to distinguish between hostile and non-hostile ones and today we were able to use that to reduce the number of times we are injured to only once during the whole day"
"Loti: and we are able to withstand pain more than before too"
"Ryo: those are all essential abilities for adventurers and you were supposed to take your time learning about them as you advance the ranks as adventurers, but since learned how to use them this quickly you still lack the experience to make good use of them but don't worry, the next stage of your training will cover that"
"Shin: Erm… Sensei about your promise…."
"Ryo: all you have to do is to stay uninjured for three days straight and I'll make the new gear for you two plus the secret reward I told you about"
"Yes!"x2
On the eighth day, the three of them went into the forest and left me alone as usual but today I had different plans.
"Ryo: Kage, take my place and guard the campsite, I'll be in the workshop to work on some new things"
*Yes! Leave it to me*
I used my key and went to my workshop to start a new project, I want to make it so I can mass-produce the things I want even when I'm not in the workshop.
I started by creating conveyor belts out of iron and brass and after that, I rearranged all of my machines in a grid so I can connect them with the conveyor belts, and after I connected all of the machines using the conveyor belts I started enchanting the machines and the conveyor belts with {Efficiency}, {Mana Manipulation}, {Regeneration}, {Storage}, {Telekinesis}, {Teleport}, {Gift}, {Enchant}, {Overload}, {Scan}, {Hijack}, {Copy}.
It took me a lot of time doing all of this and I was not done yet but Seth and the guys will be back soon so I decided to continue what I was doing tomorrow and went back, and then when they came back both Shin and Loti were smiling happily.
"Ryo: so? How did it go?"
"Zero injuries!"x2
"Ryo: good job! Both of you"
In the ninth day after they left, I went back to the workshop and started creating two golems, I made them out of Mithril and used the magic cores of Queen Giant Ant and the Queen Giant Bee I got from Duntia and made them so they can learn how to use the workshop from step by step, both of them were two meters high and their hands were made to incorporate many tools and equipment and painted one of them white and the other one black and named White and Black.
After that, I activated both of them in learning mode and they started following me and observing every move I made, I started making short swords out of iron using the machinery of the workshop, I started by taking a bar of iron and heated it in the mana furnace and then I used the power hammer that works with mana to shape the heated iron bar into a sword shape and then used the grinding machine to make the shape more uniform and to sharpen the blade after that, I heat treated the blade to make it harder and stronger and after that, I made the hilt, guard and sheath out of wood and then I covered the sheath with leather and as a finishing touch, I branded the sword with my crest, and after that, I did the same while making a kunai, shuriken, throwing needles and different types of swords and with that, the day came to an end. Today as well, Shin and Loti were uninjured.
In the tenth day, I started teaching White&Black how to make enchanted gear, I started by having them make a short sword each the same one I made yesterday, and they started working on it without any problems at all and the result was perfect and both the swords were completely identical, and after that, I used {Enchant} to add magical effects to it.
And then after that, I had them make a lot of weapons and armor and had them enchant all of them and left them to it and went back to the camp and since I was a little bit earlier today I decided to make dinner for all of us.
And when they came back both Shin and Loti were smiling at me silently so I figured out that they were uninjured today as well.
"Ryo: as promised I'll make your new gear tomorrow and for today I made a lot of food for all of us so eat as much as you want"
"HOORAAAAY!"x2
===============================================
In the Royal castle of the Kazar kingdom in the private chamber of the second queen Crystal Morten Kazar.
"Crystal: damn that fool of a man! Coward! How can a coward like him be a king!...."
Crystal sat on her bed and continued cursing the king for some time but a knock on the door interrupted her.
*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
"Crystal: …..Come in!"
"?: mom what is the meaning of this? And what is happening in the castle?"
The one who was knocking on the door was the first princess of the kingdom, Crystal's daughter Crysta Morten Kazar.
Crysta was staying in the territory of one of the Royal families for the past three months and when she came back she found the castle in a huge uproar and noble families are being detained one after the other, and when she asked one of the servants about what was going on she was told that the noble families of Duntia are suspected of treason and having a connection with the Blue Sun of Hope and are being interrogated right now in front of everyone.
She was mad at her father for dragging the nobles honor through the mud by doing this in public and she was even angrier when she heard that the reason for the nobles to be suspected is the adventurers guild. And when she asked for more details she was told about The Divine Blacksmith and what happened to Donatis, Duntia, her brother and mother that's why she dashed straight to her mother's room.
"Crystal: Oh Crysta-chan you came back already? How was your stay?"
"Crysta: never mind that right now, what is the meaning of all of this?"
"Crystal: as you can see it's all the handiwork of your father…"
"Crysta: why didn't grandpa stop him?"
"Crystal: in the time with Donatis he tried but the existence of that Divine Blacksmith ruined everything and when I tried to help your brother this is what happened to me, and the time with Duntia the Adventurers guild HQ ruined everything and now he can't do anything to stop your father. If only Nezil-chan was the king that commoner calling himself would have been killed ages ago"
"Crysta: can't Nezil nii-san take the throne using the help of the Royal faction? He is the crown prince after all"
"Crystal: he is not anymore, the crown prince is the kid of that servant Leon, your father did this to ruin everything for the Royal faction"
"Crysta: but why? What did my brother do to deserve this?"
"Crystal: he tried to retake Donatis but that Divine Blacksmith put a stop to that and your father rather than declaring the Divine Blacksmith rebel he was scared of him and banished your brother instead"
"Crysta: ... Coward.."
"Crystal: that's right, that's why I want you to support your brother in the Holy Theocracy, I want you to go there next year once you are 15 years old till then don't leave the castle no matter what, I want you to lay low and to not attract the attention of your father and his King faction, we don't want them to stand in our way when the time for you to go to the Holy Theocracy"
"Crysta: yes! I do everything I can to support Nezil nii-san!"
"Crystal: good, that's my girl"
It seems Crysta has taken after her mother a little bit too much…
===============================================
Ryo's POV…
In the morning of the next day, when I woke up and went outside my tent I found both Shin and Loti standing up in front of my tent with bags under their eyes.
"Ryo: what happened? Did you sleep last night?"
"Shin: we were too excited to sleep last night…"
"Ryo: excited?"
"Loti: just thinking about the Gear you are going to make for us... and remembering you say that they are going to be better than the ones we have right now was enough to keep us awake all night…"
"Ryo: I see, I'll make them right after we finish eating. Come on let's go"
"Yes"x2
After eating breakfast we moved to an empty space inside the barrier and took my portable workshop out from {Storage}, the portable workshop consisted of a mana furnace and an Adamantite anvil and a workbench. Shin and Loti were surprised to see the equipment I took out but they were excited about what I'm going to make more than anything and did not ask me about them.
I started with Shin's gear first. I started by making the armor first, I took out some Mithril and started making the breastplate, the design I have in mind for Shin's armor is the same as the one the Holy knights in light novels have. a shining white armor lined and decorated in blood-red color, I made the white parts out of Mithril and the red parts out of Hihi'irokane which were the lining and the joints of the breastplate and some decorations here and there. After that, I made a red cape to go with the breastplate, and then I engraved my crest on the chest part of the breastplate and stitched the crest on the cape as well. And after that, I made the leggings, gauntlets, and sabatons with the same design.
And next is the sword and the shield, I started by making the shield first and made a tower shield that can cover his whole body, I made the shield to look like a rectangular with a vertical inward curve and made it with the same design I used for the armor and decorated the front of it with the image of a red dragon swallowing the moon and holding my crest in his hand, the dragon is made to look like Scarlet when he was alive and I made it out of Hihi'irokane and some of Scarlet's actual scales, and then I lined the front of the shield with a frame made out of Hihi'irokane.
As for the sword I decided to make a holy greatsword for him. I used a shining white Mithril-Adamantite alloy to make the blade of the greatsword and then I used a golden Mithril-Hihi'irokane alloy to make the curved crossguard, hilt and ricasso parts of the sword and then I used pure Hihi'irokane to remake the fuller and central ridge parts of the blade. After that, I made the grip by braiding stripes of Scarlet's leather. After that, I made the scabbard out of living wood and then layered some braided red wyvern leather over the living wood scabbard and held everything in place with a chape and locket made out of a mixture of the white alloy and the golden alloy and then decorated the whole thing with my crest in the middle of the scabbard and with magic characters made out of the two alloys, I made it so the golden alloy would fade into the white one as you go from the locket to the chape.
And then I went back to the sword and decorated the fuller part of the blade with the same magic characters and made it so the golden alloy would fade into the white one as you go towards the tip of the sword and with that Shin's armor is done.
And for Loti's gear, I made the chest part of the armor out of Hihi'irokane and then made the rest of her armor out of a mixture of red and blue wyvern's leather in the same style found in games and light novels and then I made a black robe with a hood and a red-blue half-face mask out of the wyvern leather. After that, I made the pants out of the same red-blue wyvern leather and then made the boots in the same way.
After that, I started covering the armor and the pants with a mixture of Scarlet's and the wyvern's scales and after that, I lined the boots with the same alloys I used for Shin's gear and then infused some lines made out of the same alloys on the back of the robe and the half-face mask. And after that, I inscribed my crest on the armor, pants, and the back of the robe and then I made gloves out of Scarlet's leather to complete the protective gear.
And for the weapon, I made a blade-bow out of living wood and Hihi'irokane that can be used short-range as well as long-range, I made the bowstring out of Adamantite and then I enchanted the bow with the primary enchants to make it so it can be used without arrows. After that, I made the grip out of braided wyvern leather and then I decorated the bow with the golden and white alloys and added magic characters made out of Hihi'irokane to the bow and after that, I added my crest to the sides of the bow as the finishing touch.
After that, I enchanted the gear I made for Shin and Loti with skills and magic to give the gear some interesting abilities. After that, I took out two earrings made out of Mithril and Blood beads and gave one to Shin and one to Loti. It was already in the afternoon when I was done with everything.
"Ryo: here you go! Your new gear is in your hands now"
"…"x2
"Ryo: what's wrong?"
"Shin: .... The materials you have been using.... What were they?"
"Ryo: Mithril, Hihi'irokane, Adamantite, wyvern leather and scales, living wood and some Elder Dragon's leather and scales"
"WHAAAAATT?!"x2
"Shin: y-y-you u-used such e-expensive materials t-to make those for us?! And by Elder Dragon, you mean a real E-Elder D-D-Dragon?"
"Ryo: yes, I did promise you both to make you a gear that is way better than the ones you have right now after all"
"Loti: … b-b-but-"
"Ryo: no buts, the two of you have proved to me that you deserve the gear I made for you, with this you have the strength to protect your beloved ones so you must do it without fail"
"Yes!"x2
"Ryo: now, after eating lunch I'm going to spend the rest of the day explaining to you two about your new gear and earring artifacts and starting from tomorrow you both are going to spend the next three days inside the forest alone to gain combat experience using your new gear, so be prepared"
"Y-Yes, sir!"
===============================================
The next morning Shin, Loti and Kage departed to the forest after taking enough food and water with them.
This time Kage is the one going with them and not Seth because I need Seth to help me create a new summoning spell along with the secret present for Shin and Loti.
After their departure, I took Seth and went to the lab to start working on the new spell, I took out all the magic cores of the wyverns we killed in Duntia and used {Intake} on them and had Seth do the same. after that, I started working on a spell that lets me summon an army of Shadow Wyverns but unlike {Homura Bito} that lets me summon a hundred skeletons maximum and {Minions} that lets me summon three hundred small animals maximum, I want this spell to summon any number needed of Shadow Wyverns and thanks to {Analyze} I was able to understand how the dungeon was able to summon that number of wyverns and all I have to do is to incorporate that in the new spell.
The work on the spell took us half the day and we were done creating it by the afternoon and I have named the new spell {Shadow Wyverns} and in the meantime, I had ordered White&Black to create a huge number of steel rings so that I can enchant them later turning them into artifacts and thanks to their ability to learn and improve they became better at managing the workshop.
We spent the rest of the day teaching White&Black how to make other things in preparation for the future, I had to do this because I needed to send more weapons to my gear shops in Elven and Duntia and because there was a huge amount of raw materials in {Storage} and I thought its waste not using some of them.
On the next day, I spent the whole day creating the secret present for Shin and Loti and that alone took me the whole day, and then I spent the rest of my time enchanting some of the weapons, armor and artifacts that White&Black had made.
In the third day, I took Seth with me and headed for the mountains at the end of the Dark Forest using {Flash Step} and even with that it took us more than two hours to reach the foot of one of the mountains, as we advanced more in this direction the forest became darker and darker and then we reached a certain spot in the darkness and stopped there.
"Seth: is this our destination?"
"Ryo: yes, you don't seem shaken at all being dragged all the way here without telling you anything?"
"Seth: well, I know of certain people that like living in such places and I can see that you know as well"
"Ryo: yeah..... here they come"
Suddenly a big group of people surrounded us from all directions and stood in the darkness only their heads could be seen, on top of that, all of them wore white Oni masks making them even creepier. There was only one amongst them that wore a different black mask and that said person started walking towards us and then kneeled in front of me.
"Ryo: it has been a long time no see, Renzhe clan!"
"Renzhe Leader: that it was, young master!"
Right after that all of the clan members surrounding us kneeled as their leader did.
"Ryo: hear me out! It's finally time for us to make our move, I am here to give you the mission you all have been honing your fangs to achieve and the strength you need to do so"
"OOOOOOHHH!"
"Ryo: your job is to free every beastmen and elf slaves in this country, and don't forget to leave my crest in every cell you free slaves from to make it known to all that it was The Divine Blacksmith who freed the slaves. After that, take the slaves back to Armonis and I want some of you to remain there and train the beastmen who wish to join you. and lastly, I want you to collect informations about the nobles, royals and the church for me and to hunt down The Blue Sun of Hope because they made themselves my enemy"
"OOOOOOHHH!"
"Ryo: here take this {Storage} ring, it's full of weapons, armor and artifacts I made especially for you use them however you see fit and you'll find small books in the ring make sure every one of you takes one, how to use the things in the {Storage} ring is written in there and if you damage your weapons and armor have Urak fix them for you"
"YES, SIR!!"
The Renzhe is a clan of beastmen who came from the beastmen country Hartia to save the enslaved beastmen in the Kazar kingdom but they are an independent force that is not under Hartia's rule, they are what is known as a clan of assassins who would do everything they can to save their brethren and were known as terrorists in the past because they were attacking the nobles and royals of the kingdom, the kingdom decided to hunt them down in the past but they suddenly disappeared and the reason of that was Armonis Lyara, she reached out to them and convinced them to work for her to make a place for all races to live peacefully and that's how she met Nash and Celeca since he was saved by them in the past and was living with them since then and Celeca is a member of the clan that fall in love with him and married him.
When they agreed to work for Lyara she asked them to divide into small clans and to scatter all over the kingdom and lay low till the time come for them to move again, they would send one of them once every year to Armonis to report what they found and to get some informations back from Nash and Celeca and that's how I came to know Armonis villagers who don't actually live in it.
*NOTE: Thank you DestroyerMon for proofreading this chapter for me as well.*