Two days later, Desmon entered the carriage that was waiting for him, surrounded by knights whose levels he could now see, through Jack's system.
Inside the carriage were two impeccably dressed children a few years younger than himself. One was the brown-haired Mason, while the other was the black-haired Don.
"Good Morning, Sir Desmon." Mason spoke while the butler was closing the carriage door behind Desmon, while Don simply nodded behind Mason.
"Yes, it is indeed a fair morning." Desmon ignored the lack of etiquette and sat down before motioning for the driver to start their journey to the capital.
Over the past few days, Desmon had regained control over his territory, which was slightly affected by the activities in the capital. He had then proceeded to weed out all the hidden RedForce troops and spies in his territory with incredibly efficiency due to the system he had been given, where he could see red names signifying enemies or hostiles and friendlies are green. Those who were neutral were blue.
Initially, Jack had made the colour blue for players, but he felt like it was better to make neutral NPs (Non-Players) blue. For players, he would also put blue, however, he would put [Player], [Beta-player], [Lord Player], etc before the name of said individual.
With this system in hand, Desmon had instantly converted 2 of his 4 elite knights to the faith and made them scout out the territory with their troops and kill or capture all enemies.
Using the cleaning of RedForce as an excuse, Desmon had spent exactly 9 days to completely clear his entire territory of all enemies to himself, which included spies from other nobles which he could not touch for certain legal reasons.
However, he did not take the system lightly at all, and had kept most of his troops and servants out of the system just in case. Desmon was someone like that, always cautious about things.
Even all those years ago, he had felt something was brewing within his territory and had secretly constructed escape routes for himself and his family.
However, in the process of escaping with his family, Desmon's father had suddenly vanished. And within moments of the sudden disappearance, an unusual gas had filled up the entire escape tunnel. In the confusion his senses were facing from not being able to see anything, his hand had slipped and his sister vanished as well, though not like the almost dematerialisation of his father.
Somehow, he had managed to escape the death trap within his father's mansion and met up with the four guards who were still loyal to the Bard household. Those four men were now the guard captains of the entire dukedom.
However, unlike that terrifying incident which had destroyed his already broken family, the incident at the capital was completely unexpected, since he had yet to build proper connections and sources of information within the capital.
And even if he did, it would not have made much of a difference wince even the king, whose territory the incident occurred in did not know about it. The only reason Desmon, and Don were still alive was due to Mason. The king would have been protected by his most loyal subordinate The Lion Tamala, while Sir Wint would device a method for the king to escape safely and Sir Campbell would tag along with the king, possibly giving his life to save the king.
However, Desmon did not have such capable and loyal subordinates in the capital. The only subordinates who were even comparably capable, were his 4 trusted knights who were not present in the capital at the time, since they were taking care of the territory for their lord.
That is why, once again, he had left behind those four to take care of his territory, since the two who he had converted to the System, were better in combat and military strategies, while the other two were, although weaker than the previous two, were still at Lv 21. However, these two were rather capable when it came to logistics and managing a territory as the lord.
For his safety, he had brought along quite a few soldiers and a few mages as well, who were at average Lv 13, the strongest being at Lv 18.
Any stronger than that would be considered a High Mage and would be treated as national treasures not due to their personal strength, but due to their formidable prowess when it comes to making magic tools and research in various fields.
In most kingdoms within the Central and Western continents, such High mages were the core of the industrial and magical innovations, and usually had their own magic towers built for them, with many weaker mages working for them.
By giving them more benefits that what they would get at a renowned magic tower, Desmon was able to retain these 7 mages, with 3 of them being left in his territory for safety of the region, and for them to continue their research into magic tools, spells, and their own progression into high mage.
And in addition to that, Desmon had the unusually strong Mason and Don by his side just in case things went south.
With this much preparation, Desmon set out for the noble meeting that the royal family had called for after regaining control of the capital with the help of the Church of the War God Ares.