We got Fuze and our problem-prone adventure group as well as Youm and friends. That little meeting went without problems. Kind of. Youm was being a bit rude, but I didn't really mind it. He wasn't exactly the most loyal to Falmuth in this investigation. He's just leading a group of prisoners, so nothing to worry about there.
Things went about the same. Fuze and his group would stay here to make sure we didn't pose a threat to humanity and stuff like that and Youm would still do his whole champion of humanity thing. We really needed this part to ease some of the fears other nations would have of us.
Rimuru wanted to train Youm and his group for this whole thing and I decided to take a crack at it. I wasn't going to do their whole training, but I just wanted to do something a bit light.
Which brings me to now. I was outside on a field and beside me was Hakurou. He would be accompanying me for today. I looked over at everyone in front of us. They were just mumbling with each other wondering what they would go through. I just stood there observing and they were all relaxed and chill and some were not taking things seriously. Something that would be fixed very fast under Hakurou's watch.
I decided to quickly get their attention. We had to take advantage of the daylight.
"Everyone! Listen up! If you follow our orders this will be a relatively worthwhile experience. If you don't, then none of y'all will have a good time. Very simple, right?".
Everyone just nodded.
"Alright, good. We'll start off a bit slow to see where everyone is and then you'll be passed along to this nice Kijin here.", I said while pointing to Hakurou.
"Hold on, what can this old man teach us? You seem much more reliable to be an instructor.", Youm was the one who said that and I had to quickly shoot a thought communication to Hakurou to stop him before he did anything.
'Not now, Hakurou, not now. When it's your time to train them, you can show them their mistakes.'
Hakurou just nodded, biding his time for when he would take over this whole thing.
/\\//\\//\
"Do you have any 9's?".
"Go fish.".
I'm playing Go Fish with Hakurou right now. The others were doing planks and they could only go down when I said "down". Very simple but it seems they don't listen to instructions that well.
'You're really laying it down, Hakurou. You're close to beating me.".
I took a peek and they didn't go down. Their fault. If they want to stay up, then let them stay up. I could also see Hakurou take a look. He also understood the little game I was playing with them. He shook his head after seeing them. He had his work cut out for him, but he could do it.
While we were playing, one of them wasn't able to keep up and just hit the ground. He was breathing hard and was tired. I stood up and went to him.
"What's your name?".
He looked up at me and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.
"My name is Rommel.".
"Well, 'Rommel, did I say you could go down?".
"No?".
"Then why are you one the ground? I'm sure you heard my instructions and you should follow them. Get back up.".
Rommel got back up, but he didn't last long before he was too tired.
"Did I say you could go down?". I looked up at everyone and spoke in a voice loud enough so everyone could hear me. "Listen everyone. If I tell y'all to jump, you say, 'how high?'.". I was going to go one but someone else fell to the ground as well. I just nodded my head at this. "You know what. We'll go until I'm tired. How 'bout that?".
/\\//\\//\
That was a very productive training session. I think I set the tone quite nicely. From here on out it will be all Hakurou and he's not going to let the "old man" comment slide. They're going to turn into good fighters whether they like it or not.
Not much to do other than wait for Souei to get back with any kind of information and then wait for the Charybdis attack and for Milim to get Rimuru his souls so he can evolve.
Speaking of that, I could see Milim flying away. She wasn't heading toward her domain, but more north. It seems she's going to get those souls for Rimuru. That's good. 10,000 human souls is nothing big for Milim. I'm willing to bet Rimuru just gave her honey for those souls. Hmm, speaking of power-ups, let's go check on Rhongomyniad.
/\\//\\//\
I was in the cave standing next to Rhongomyniad and it was just chugging up all the magicules. This was actually a problem since it was affecting the growth of the hipokute herbs. Which meant I would have to find another place for it to gain magicules. AKA, just go into Avalon and let it absorb all the magic there to get the power. I'll do it once Rimuru evolves.
I wonder what I would evolve into. Lancer became the goddess after holding onto Rhongomyniad for so long and as far as I can tell, I'm only a goddess based on faith right now. Not an "actual" goddess. There's also the fact that I'm a "divine spirit" and not a goddess. They should be the same, but I guess there is still a certain difference when it comes to it. I assume that once Rhongomyniad evolves, it will trigger some sort of evolution for me to become a goddess. Probably some dragon goddess or something since it was both species.
What would my skills evolve into then? Logically, if I followed it from a "low-to-high" thing. Some of my skills would evolve into Excalibur, Avalon, and Rhongomyniad. "King of Knights" would evolve into Excalibur with some possible sacrifices and so on, but now what do they evolve into? Would my "element of the red dragon" skill evolve into some kind of "Albion" skill or something? Would they just stay the same?
Hold on a minute, that just brings up a lot more possibilities. If I recall, Albion is supposed to be as old as Earth itself and is supposed to be the strongest of the dragons or something like that. How would that translate here? Definitely qualifies as True Dragon, but of what? I think Albion guarded the entrance to the Reverse Side of the World, so it would probably be something of that nature, but this all begs the question, would it evolve into some kind of Albion skill? Would I turn into a true dragon? Wouldn't that cause some conflict with evolving into a goddess? Or would it just be the skill itself? What kind of sub-skills would it even have? The closest reference is Melusine, but I very much doubt she represented what Albion could really do with his power.
Let me remember. True Dragons are supposed to be nature itself, a sort of representation of a concept, but I don't think Albion was a conceptual being, but he did represent being a guardian. A guardian to the boundary or something to the Reverse Side of the World. And if enough people believe in something like that, it will be given form. Maybe it is possible. I already have a dragon factor, and if I do get some kind of Albion skill, I might become something like a true dragon. But that all assumes most of my thinking so far is even kind of close or right.
Can a deus ex machine or something please just happen to solve this whole thing?
Maybe I'm going kind of crazy and putting way too much thought into this and possibly overanalyzing this whole thing. Makes sense when trying to understand some of the Fate lore and even more so when trying to apply it in some other universe. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's not. I think this is one of the hard ones. No point in thinking about it. It'll only make me more confused than a mosquito in a mannequin warehouse.
"Artoria! Can you hear me!? Hellooo!" I got knocked out of my stupor when I saw Rimuru yelling at me and waving his hand in front of me. I looked around and saw I was still in the cave. I was sitting on a rock right next to Rhongymyniad.
'When did I get here?'. I thought to myself. Last I remember, I was walking in the cave and then I got lost in those thoughts. I was probably on auto-pilot mode and I subconsciously made my way here since that was my intended purpose.
"What is it, Rimuru?".
"Finally! You're actually paying attention! Anyway, just wanted to tell you that Souei's back. Whatever mission you sent him on, he came back kind of quick. He's been saying something about some clowns and stuff. He didn't seem to get much information.".
"That's okay. He's gotten more than enough. We just need his 'proof' of them and that will be more than enough. Let me take care of the rest and then we can start taking the fight to a lot of people. We're going to have to send Souei and some of his spies into other nations eventually. Once again, they don't need to gather much, just little whispers here and there will be fine. I'll just blow them out of proportion and make little connections here and there to give us a 'right' to do things.".
Rimuru was looking at me a bit weirdly for a second. "What do you mean? That sounds kind of shady. And don't we need more evidence than just some 'whispers'? Do you know how it would look for us if others saw our reasoning?">
"If we just say things at face value then, yes, but if you speak with enough confidence, present your evidence in a certain way, and keep reinforcing it, then you can even get away with a lie to the point where it will become believable.".
"That sounds like something a bad guy would do.".
"We just had a conversation about this, Rimuru. Come on, it's about time we start going on an offensive. You told Milim about the souls, right? I saw her flying away from our town.".
'Yeah, it was much easier than I thought it would be. I thought human souls were valuable or something, but she just said it would be no problem as long as I gave her some more honey.".
Called it.