[King Gerald Pov]
"What!?" He stood up from his throne when he heard about the battle against the empire.
He took a minute to think before he sat himself down on the throne again, with an elbow on the throne and his hand stroking his beard.
"Strengthen the borders to the Empire and fortify any stronghold!" He ordered and one of the officials ran out to fulfill his orders.
"Many will take this opportunity to invade the empire, but they are fools if they think they won't fight back. Even without an emperor, they still have a strong foundation. We need to prepare for the other greedy countries that might try something!" He stated before he started giving out orders to all his officials.
After almost an hour the throne room was empty besides the king. He sat down and leaned back into the throne and sighed. 'This will be a long year...'
===
[Random Noble from The Empire Pov]
As expected, we lost and The Emperor died. Many of the greedy nobles will try to take power now, but I can't allow them to get more power than they already have, they will do only bad things with it! I don't care if I'm seen as a traitor, I will take the throne until I find someone fitting of taking my place! The Empire will stand, the foolish emperor was too racist to see the benefit of forming alliances with other races and that was his doom.
I have witnesses that the emperor turned into a demon on the battlefield, I will use that to keep the nobles loyal to the emperor away from the throne. There is still the emperor's bastard son, who was exiled. He was always a good man, and if he still has any loyalty to the empire, he will be fit to rule. Though I won't blame him if he never returns, his own country threw him out.
I have to prepare, the army is on its way back and then the rest of the people will know what happened when the soldiers speak of it. I will prepare my ascension to the throne, hopefully, it's only temporary, I'm not fit to be an emperor.
===
[3rd person]
"This is the perfect time to strike the empire back, my king!" Noble nr1 loudly stated in the meeting.
"Exactly! Now we can take back our land they stole, and even expand! Their emperor is dead and they are now weak!" Noble nr2 agreed with his friend.
This was an emergency meeting inside the throne room of the Sureal Kingdom, located just north of The Revell Empire, and has had many past aggressions against The Empire. The king agreed to the noble's suggestions and prepared an army, they would strike as at the beginning of winter, three months from now. The kingdom has had a good harvest and had enough resources to support a winter invasion, and the empire would never suspect it.
===
[Mlande Pov]
It's been a week since the battle and I've got reports that King Gerald is seeking an audience with me. I've ignored it a few days now, these past weeks I've been enjoying myself back in Yggdrasil, enjoying the company of my many children. I heard from Asea that every single elf in Yggdrasil is top their warriors. To be able to live in Yggdrasil, you must prove yourself worthy, it had apparently been like that for almost as long as they've lived in this world.
Even simple farmers or shopkeepers are the best of the best in combat. Which got me a new idea, if this is my world now, I need more knowledge and information. I plan to form a band of shadows, their sole purpose is to be collect information about the world and any kingdom, empire out there. This will take a long time as this required certain training.
The elves are all master hunters, so they already know how to mask their presence and hide in the shadows, that will be a good foundation. I got almost 2,000 skill books in my inventory that could use for this purpose, but if I mix two other skills, it will surpass the 2,000 stealth books. I have improved stealth skill called [Shadow Stalk], it is a skill that all top tier rogues or assassins had back in the game, but I only have 14 of them.
But that combined with the 32 [Master Teacher] skill books I've got, I can make it worth it. But as I mentioned, it will take a long time. I will gift 10 of the best warriors the elves can produce a [Shadow Stalk] and a [Master Teacher] each and from there, I want them to level both these skills up with the help of each other. It's hard to stalk another stalker, so they will get improved experience if they use it against each other and they can also help each other find weaknesses in the skill and that way get experience for [Master Teacher].
There are many types of teacher skills and [Master Teacher] is the second-best of 6 skills. There are Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Master, and lastly, Grandmaster. Having a Master or higher tier will allow the user to teach their students skills they own, and the higher the level of the skill they teach and the teacher level, the faster they can help their students learn it.
I do have two [Grandmaster Teacher] skill books in my inventory, will probably give one to Asea, she is the personal master of almost all elves. A [Master Teacher] can teach others to become an [Expert Teacher], so having Asea, who is unaging becomes a [Grandmaster Teacher], she can eventually get many [Master Teachers], thus strengthening my people further.
I've had Asea go out and get me the very best warriors the elves can provide for a special mission from me, I have estimated that the elves will max out the stealth in under a year, but the master teacher will take them much longer, so I plan to either create a school or have them become teachers in the empire's academy. That's the biggest school in the continent and are famous for their students. 90% of all their students become someone big in the future.
I think they will have to go there and teach, but the empire has never had elves there before due to their racist emperor and many nobles trying to get their hands on elven girls for slavery.
===
[3rd Person Pov]
There were currently thousands of elves gathered by a newly made arena in Yggdrasil and it was made known that Mlade, their god had a special mission for the top 10 warriors of the elves, and everyone was eager to show their worth. The fighting had been going on for several days already and Asea was watching over the fights herself, she needed to make sure that the warriors that win are truly worthy. She took her job very seriously.
The arena that Mlande had created was big enough to hold over 10 separate battles at the same time, so that sped things along, but it still took days to get to the last few hundred. The rest were just spectators and were curious to see who would win.
There were sounds of the clashes of steel, everyone fought with real weapons as Mlande had put an area of effect heal on the arena, that would last until went out of mana, but since he had unlimited mana when inside his domain in this new world, it never ended.
===
[Mlande Pov]
Asea had just reported the ending of the proving and I was on my way to greet the 10 elven warriors that were chosen. I had taken the time, while relaxing, to look at all my skill books and plan for the future. I'm so glad I was such a hoarder, in the game, you could have as many skills as possible, but more skills meant more skills to level up. I had played the game every day for almost 19 years so I had, of course, maxed all my skills. Also, in the game, these skills cost mana, but here in this world it is seen as a gift from the gods and doesn't use mana.
The only restriction with skills were elemental ones. I only had nature as an element and therefore could not learn skills such as [Fireball]. That, however, was only in the game, I tried to learn a skill I always wanted before and I was able to learn it; [Wings of Liberty].
[Wings of Liberty] was not like other skills that required a certain affinity, this skill was class-specific. Only druids could use it, as it added wings to your back which allowed the user to fly. There were many skills like this, but [Wings of Liberty] was the best of them, and it was a unique skill. I had the only copy and nobody knew about it, hehe.
Compared to other skills, it had improved flight speed, and the wings were permanent and could be hidden. This meant that I now have wings, they are currently hidden, but I still have them and I can feel them. This skill also doesn't have any levels and is just a passive, which means that I know have an extra pair of limbs I have perfect control over. It felt like I've had these wings my entire life.
Back to the elven warriors, we arrived in a courtyard where the ten warriors were kneeling. I smiled when I saw them and I went up to each of them and greeted them. I spoke to all of them about what they had done in this life and what their goals were. All the elves were over 300 years old, and have very high combat experience, one of the elves was a high elf.
High Elves are royalty, but they have no real duty to that throne. Any high elf have the right to leave and live as any normal elf if they want to. High elves and regular forest elves were almost identical, high elves had higher life expectancy and talent, meaning they learn faster and were often stronger than the forest elves. Humans would not see any difference, but elves would because the high elves had a certain royal aura to them that all elves can feel.
After speaking with them all and getting them to relax a bit, as they were very tense, I started to explain a part of my plan to them. How I plan to gift them two skills and how I want them to quickly max the level of these skills. I want them to first focus on the stealth skill and then the teacher. I told them how I plan to eventually send them to an academy as teachers where they will teach both close combats, ranged combat, and nature magic to those who have that affinity there.
I told them not to teach out skills unless they plan on taking that person as a personal disciple. We spoke for a few hours going through my plan I had and with the help of both Asea and the elves, we improved on the plan. Asea took it upon herself to start leveling up her [Grandmaster Teacher] skill and quickly get us more [Master Teachers], I told her not to overwork herself, but she didn't seem to listen to that. I will make sure she gets rest though.
The 10 elven warriors got their first mission, which was to follow me when I go to other kingdoms and visit, and their mission was to not get caught. Not by me, I can always sense them, no matter if they use stealth of not, but from the kingdoms. When I visit new kingdoms or empires, I'm certain that I will be invited into the royal castle or palaces, seeing as how I'm a god and most people have heard of me by now. So getting in those places unseen, even with stealth will be hard, they will need to work together and be on the lookout for anything that can detect stealth.
With Asea gone on her newfound mission and the shadow elves, that I now call the 10 warriors, on my tail, I plan to visit Gerald again. I know he'd heard about the battle against the empire and knowing his personality, he and his family are probably a bit worried about me. I smile thinking of that family, I'm glad I allied with them, they are great people and great leaders.
Also, I wonder how far the kids have leveled their skills. We'll see.