Grey marched along the path towards the western bandit camp, now newly named as a barbarian outpost by their barbarian leader. It was only afternoon, right after lunch. From behind him, the 18 men he brought looked like they were raring to fight to instill fear into the Lady's enemies.

Before, they were all shameless bandits. Today, they were her Lady's operations department employees.

None of them had any more dark circles. Their bellies were fed everyday, and they were allowed to eat with their own families. That was the true magic in how the lady had saved them from the evil tyrant who shall no longer be named.

She even allowed them to work for only 10 hours a day. Some of the men questioned it in the first couple of days. Was she serious or was she going to turn back on her words and make them work 16 hours a day like the pig did?

The contract that they signed even mentioned that they would only be paid for 10 hours of the day. Any more would be something called 'unpaid overtime'. The lady advised them to keep their copy of the contract safe as it was connected to their lives.

So be it.

In return for signing the contract that bound them to the lady, they were given freedom, liberty, justice, shelter, and food. If someone were to ask Grey if he'd sign his soul to the devil that provided these benefits, he'd tell them to cease their meaningless chatter and let him sign now.

The sword on his hilt clinked as Grey took a heavy step up the mountain path. When he asked the lady for the name of the sword, she called it Aid Hawk Sword. He tried to tell his squire to clean it for him, but that proved to be impossible. His squire simply said it was as heavy as a whole vault of armour and weapons. Yet to him, it was the same weight as his old sword with even finer balance.

The reward from the lady was no mere ordinary sword. Only Grey could lift it from the ground as he was chosen by the lady to carry the Aid Hawk. The foreign lines on it shimmered with power that was somehow connected to his pitiful mana.

[Name: Grey Stormcloud]

[Mana: 120/120]

[Attribute Points: 0]

[Tenacity: 24]

[Perception: 17]

[Dexterity: 14]

[Aura: 38]

[Mana Heart: 12]

[Mana Brain: 5]

[Total Prowess: 71.95]

Every time Grey saw his status screen, he'd wince at the lost queendom he fought so hard for. The tyranny of Kingdom Dragus knew no bounds. Maybe the winds had changed as fortune was now smiling upon him. Yet revenge was no longer palatable.

He would no longer run like a coward as he did when he saw his own queendom burn to the ground in front of his eyes. The enemies shall give him death first before he'd let himself watch the company die.

And now arriving at the barbarian outpost, he shall exactly do as he was told. Take as many prisoners as you can and bring them back to be put into the production line.

When he asked the Lady what that meant, she blurted out it was basically slaves. Say no more, my Lady. The slaves will be brought to sign the soul binding contract.

"Leader Ugrukal. Show yourself, coward! Or do you wish for me to break your gate?!" Grey shouted.

The barbarians laughed at him. Some pointed in the direction of the 19 men. They were situated in the open fields between two mountains. If the barbarians had any brains, this would've been an easy fight against Grey and his men.

But they were barbarians. They didn't have any bows or arrows. All of them fought with some type of axe with crude and dull edges that acted more like hammers. They wore fur clothing that covered them from top to bottom. Only the leader wore a brakin's skull to symbolize he was the leader.

The strongest barbarian was at 82 prowess, just 10 more above him. In total, there were about 25 barbarians who had conquered the former bandit camp, and a couple of them were still injured from the previous battle.

Grey's shoulders trembled, not from fear, but from the fact that he was allowed to kill any who resisted their recruitment offer. "Barbarians, I shall give you one last bit of mercy. The lady has asked me to deliver you a message. Sign the employment contract or be prepared for death!"

"Shut up! Go back to your fancy cabins, you kingdom dwellers!" a man shouted in a booming voice, his name was Ugurkal. A fitting name for the biggest of the barbarians who probably put all his attribute points into tenacity.

"Since we are so benevolent, we shall allow you 10 minutes to decide whether to join the Lady's ranks," Grey shouted.

"Shut up, fool! We shall never join you!"

"You are kindly welcome, barbarian bonehead!"

"MEN, OPEN THE DOOR. I'M GONNA KILL THAT KINGDOM DWELLER!"

However, his men had held him off, preventing their own leader from opening the gates. Unfortunately, Grey's tactic didn't work. It almost did, but someone had a slightly bigger brain than the rest of the barbarians behind the gate.

Turning back to his men, Grey looked into each of their eyes. "Men, do any of you regret this?"

"We do not, Sir Grey. We shall follow you to battle and may we die a glorious death for the Lady!" Lawrence said.

The man who spoke was one of the men Grey trusted the most from the former bandit camp. At a prowess of 68, he was very close to him in terms of power. One thing he didn't have was the sword arts of the Storm Palace that he learned since he was a child.

"Now is the time to attack!" Grey charged at the gates first. "Charge!"

The operations department employees followed him into battle while the barbarians were distracted by holding back their own leader. In just a couple of seconds, they arrived at the large wooden gate.

Grey drew Aid Hawk and activated a Storm Palace skill.

[Stormbringer Sword Arts Activated]

[Effect 1: Attack Speed Increased by 25%]

[Effect 2: Sword Reach Extended by 30%]

Swinging his sword to create a large square on the walls, the edge carved the wood as if it had just sliced through thin paper. One kick to the cut out, and the doors broke wide open, allowing the operations employees to storm the outpost.

Grey rushed in first, meeting the first barbarian. "Resistance is futile! Surrender now and be spared!"

The first barbarian came at him, one of the smaller ones. His axe was already in an overhead swing against Grey with its thick metal slab.

One swing of Aid Hawk, and the barbarian's battle axe was split in two from its metal edge all the way to where the wood held both sides of the metal.

The barbarian lost all of his fighting spirit and threw his hands up while kneeling on the ground. Everywhere else was chaos. The employees fought with valour, killing those that resisted and giving mercy to those that knelt.

Grey hadn't seen his men this riled up before. No one would've thought that this small army had an average prowess of 61.

A barbarian's overhead swing carved down towards one of his men. This man, Kurtis, did not back down. He charged forward rather than retreating. As soon as he was in the barbarian's inner space, a quick slice on the neck ended the resistance.

Apart from the musclehead, there were only 15 barbarians left.

"You kingdom dwelling bastard!" Ugrukal shouted, shaking the whole area.

"Do not resist, you dumb barbarians. Do you not value your life?!" Grey shouted.

"HAHAHAHA! An idiot that only has 72 prowess talking so mighty?" Ugrukal laughed. "Just die!"

"Ugrukal, stop! Retreat to the main base!" a barbarian woman shouted.

Ugrukal charged at Grey, his battle axe was almost bigger than Grey's whole body. In one leap, the giant battle axe descended on Grey's head, daring to split him into two even halves.

Aid Hawk met the battle axe head on, swinging in a horizontal upwards slash. Its slab of metal was nothing compared to her Lady's legendary creation. And as expected, even the giant metal slab couldn't resist the slice of Aid Hawk.

The edge of the blade met against the throat of Ugrukal, spilling large amounts of blood as he tried to cover his bleeding neck.

The Lady saved Grey's life again. Any time the sword cuts through any weaponry meant to take his life, it was all thanks to her grace. Every day, his debt increases, yet it matters not as his life was now hers and forever.

"Your leader is dead!" Grey shouted. "Cease this meaningless slaughter!"

The sounds of clashing swords stopped immediately. All barbarians looked to see their leader tighten his grip on his neck as he continued to bleed out. Sounds tried to escape from the man's mouth, stopped only by the gurgling that formed from blood entering his airways.

In just a few more moments, the life in Ugrukal's eyes slowly faded along with his slow loosening hands. The only thing that Grey would commend this stupid musclehead on was his spirit to fight till the very end.

Looking around the whole outpost, every barbarian had knelt down to surrender.

"Who is the second in command?" Grey asked.

Their eyes pointed to the muscly woman who had braided her long hair. She had a scar on her face that went across diagonally on her cheek. Moving towards her, Grey knelt down to meet her face to face.

"Name?" he asked.

"Yulka," she answered.

"Will all of you become employees of the Path?" Grey asked.

"Do we have a choice?"

Grey smirked. No they did not. "Stand up. We're moving back to the southern camp."

Yulka stood up, and so did the rest of the barbarians along with her.

One by one, Grey tied their arms with a thick rope, ensuring none of these muscleheads could escape. Once that was done, it was off to head back to what the Lady called 'H.Q.'

Grey still needed to get used to the terminology that the Lady used. There was no use in questioning them. Her words were absolute.

☕︎ ☼ ☕︎ ☽ ☕︎

Alex had taken a chunk of the mountain and turned it into a cube, putting it directly at the centre of the 1 by 2 km field they had behind Path HQ It was time to accomplish her promise to build a weather restriction sigil array.

Aurora did say something that the flowers preferred no rain at all since the rain would come with clouds. Not to mention, the flowers would feel bad whenever they saw clouds.

Didn't really know why flowers would have feelings, but fuck it, roll with it anyways. The flowers just needed absolutely no clouds. The deed was done.

Resource Access: Multifaceted Energy(8,000). Module Access: Force_Access_Essence. Predefined Function: Convert_To_Essence. Execute.

Resource Access: Essence(80). Assign Weather as predefined_object_group: Weather(temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, humidity, cloudiness, precipitation). Set(Atmospheric pressure: 1.2, Humidity: 0.2, Wind: area_denial(radial_push, direction: outwards)). Target_Position: Rectangle(1,2, kilometers). Target: Stone_Cube. Assign as Etching. Execute.

Essence flowed through Alex's pathways and created the pre-fabricated design onto the cube. A cloudless environment was just 3 different variables of atmosphere, humidity, and wind currents. Easy enough compared to the bullshit she had to make for Witch Raven's sunny paradise.

Fuck her even though she paid a hefty sum for it.

Etchings began to form on the cube's surface. Intricate patterns of millions of access points were marked as rhombuses. Circles with lines set across formed ambient atmosphere etheric storage. Next were the triangle patterns that had two different openings where a line trace connected them to the storage areas. And the main sequence for the while loop (forever loop) began etching itself to set the atmosphere to the correct conditions at all times.

The current atmosphere in this area of the world had an ambient ether refresh rate of 288 ether units per second per square inch. A fortunate number.

A single pulse of the etchings was all she needed to know that the artificing had succeeded and was done.

One snap of her finger, and the cube thrummed once and began. From the current rate at which the ambient ether in the atmosphere was consumed, the weather controller took up 42 ether units per second.

Nice number. Perfect, actually.

Aurora walked towards her from behind. Her eyes turned up to the sky that had clouds blocking the view of the blue sky. Those clouds began dissipating slowly as the cube continued to thrum.

"My Lady... are you a god?" she asked.

"No. I'm just a transcendent," Alex said. Haven't even reached the Divine stage yet, no point in calling herself a god.

"Only in the legends do we ever see the weather change. No archmage in history has ever done such a feat, yet you've created a... an artifact that does such a feat," Aurora said.

"It's a machine, but whatever, call it whatever you want." Alex smirked, not because she was being praised, but more so because the machine was working as intended.

Coffee, money, and artificing were her only true passions. Less so the third and way more the first and second. And now that one of the problems was fixed, Aurora had nothing else to complain about. No wonder she needed the irrigation ducts. These things don't like natural rain.

Whatever. Fantasy flowers weren't her strong suit, nor did she care. As long as it had caffeine, she'd produce it, monetize it, and make everyone addicted to it.

"You good to do whatever you have to do now?" Alex asked.

"Yes, my Lady." Aurora bowed. "Please take a rest back at the town hall. I heard Sir Grey is arriving soon."

Alex walked forward to the back door that led to H.Q. Opening the door, she moved into the town and saw that they were already opening the gates for the returning employees. Grey was one of them, and he led the group with 16 barbarians who all wore fur clothing. From their exposed limbs, it was easy to tell that all of them had muscles.

Those would be very useful employees for hauling anything. This backwater dump still had no machines such as forklifts and trucks. Manpower would have to do for now. She'd make those later using Fraedium gems as a fuel source.

This world would have to have some black liquid that everyone would fight for eventually, though. Better find that first before anyone else.

"My Lady! I have returned," Grey shouted. "Shall I bring the prisoners to the town hall?"

Alex waved them over as she was already walking towards it as well. Entering the town hall, she walked through right in the middle and sat in her usual spot on the fur-covered chair on the platform.

The barbarians came in one by one, each of their eyes glaring. There was resistance in those eyes that Alex could just stamp out after showing them what fear truly looked like. Before it got to that, negotiations were the first step to employment.

"My Lady," Grey said, kneeling on one knee. "You've bestowed a sword more wondrous than any sword I've ever encountered. I could not have defeated the barbarians if it were not for Aid Hawk's unfathomable sharpness."

Only thing that came to mind for Alex was 'What the fuck was Aid Hawk?' That was clearly just a sword made ad hoc via multiple pieces of armour and weapons.

Aid Hawk... ad hoc. Makes total sense. "Cool. So what did you bring me? Who's the leader?"

"The one in front is their second in command, My Lady. Her name is Yulka."

"A barbarian woman, how interesting."

Yulka spat at Alex's face, but the spit stopped mid air, encased in a blue outline before it fell down.

"Feisty. I like that. And those muscles, did you work out or did you get that naturally?"

"Your words are confusing, woman!"

Grey slapped her in the face. "Do not disgrace the lady with your words, barbarian. Speak politely, or else."

Alex put a hand on Grey's shoulder, pulling him back. Grey nodded in response and took a couple of steps back.

Lowering herself on the floor, Alex met the barbarian eye to eye. "Tell me, Yulka, what is it that you want? Gold? Food? Strength?"

"What I want is nothing you can provide," Yulka smirked. "Look at you. Puny and tiny compared to me. Your men only see you for your gold, nothing else."

Alex immediately held up her hand before Grey could even say anything. Sometimes loyalty was a pain in the ass.

Anyway, so this bitch here was about strength. She was expecting more from a barbarian, but then again, stereotypes had some merit to them in this case. This woman looked for strength or some form of it. But why?

And to answer that question was also to answer why they were raiding the bandit camp outposts. What was the purpose for getting the western outpost rather than just staying where they lived?

If it was just for pillaging, they would have left the camp days ago, yet they stayed and defended. Failed, but at least they did something.

What was the point of strength? Combine that question with the fact that they left their original habitats, it could only be one thing...

"You barbarians are afraid of something, am I right?" Alex's eyes turned sharp, her smirk even more so.

Yulka looked away from her eyes immediately. Her teeth gritted, eyes dilated at the question. One good thing about barbarians, or those raised in uncivilized ways, were their honesty. They couldn't hide any biological reactions.

"There's something out in the western side of Hadstead, isn't there?" Alex asked, turning Yulka's head with two fingers on her chin to meet her eyes.

Yulka gritted her teeth. She tried resisting, pulling her head away, but the slender fingers of Alex didn't budge one bit.

"Are you going to tell me now?"

"If I tell you, will you spare me and my comrades?"

"Do you one better. I'll hire you."

"Hire me?"

"I'll give you shelter, pay, dental, benefits, hazard pay, worker's compensation. All the benefits blue collar workers like you would get," Alex said. "Attractive, right?"

"Shelter... you kingdom dwellers lie all the time. We asked the Dragus king for shelter. He turned us away and gave no reason why."

Alex took her hand off Yulka's chin and fetched a contract from her space storage while also instantly inking it with blue collar specific details. Handing it over to the woman in front of her, Yulka took it and her eyes read along the contract.

It was to provide 1.8 gold per barbarian per year, and there were 16 of them. If Alex didn't start Star Cubs in half a year, she'd be bankrupt. But she wasn't just any schmuck. There was still her emergency angel investment from the kingdom's castle vault. But clearly, it wasn't going to go that way, for now anyway.

Turning her head to Grey, she saw he had a weird look on his face after she produced the contract. A strange expression that looked something in between awe and fear... which reminded her of her paper situation.

She only had 2 cases of A4 paper in her space storage. That was 5000 sheets of paper each. Each contract was about 5 sheets of paper, and she was already printing the terms double sided.

The paper she used was just completely ordinary paper, no magic or anything, but it was the only pure white sheet of paper she had. Paper in this world was still yellowish, which was ugly and less durable.

"I've read the contract. What do we have to do to accept it?" Yulka asked.

"Just sign it," Alex materialized a pen into her hand and extended it to her.

Taking it, Yulka made eye contact with her again. "Is this contract soul binding?"

"It's a binding agreement," Alex said. "What else would it be?"

Yulka bit her lips, enough to make it bleed. "We will... sign it," she sighed, taking the pen and then signing the contract.

The deal was done.

"The rest of the barbarians can sign theirs later," Alex said, scanning the rest of them. "So what's got you spooked?"

"An orange dragon has taken Dweller's cave in the western part of the mountains as its home," Yulka said, clenching her fist. "It has driven out most of our tribe to different places in Hadstead. Parts of our tribe travelled north, we travelled east and ended up occupying the camp your men call 'western bandit camp.'"

An orange dragon? The fuck? Haven't heard that one before.

"What's unique about this dragon? Why is it orange?" Alex asked.

"I do not know why its colour is orange. But I've seen the liquid breath the dragon uses. Its effect was worse than any other dragon that produces flames..."

"What does it do?"

"It melts your body."

"Can it melt metal?"

"It has melted our metal shields, wood, and anything it comes in contact with. Nothing is safe."

Alex threw 15 other contracts to Grey, totalling 75 sheets of A4 paper (8.5 x 11 paper). All of them had the terms, conditions, pay, and benefits printed on them already.

"Have the rest of them sign the paper," Alex said.

Grey caught the stack of paper and saw the first page detailing the terms and conditions of having to do manual labour. 

When he looked back up, the Lady was gone without a trace. Yulka continued sitting in the centre of the town hall as if her mind was at a loss.

Grey thought that just from the annual salary alone of 1.8 gold per year to barbarians was already generous, as the barbarians didn't even care for gold. The Lady was truly benevolent to all her subjects.

Walking over to each one of the barbarians, he counted exactly 10 women and 6 men left. It was unsurprising that the women surrendered faster than the men who threw themselves at swords to die a meaningless death.

Grey smiled widely as he saw each one of them sign the soul binding contract. Once they signed, they would always be bound to the Lady's will and wishes no matter what. In exchange, they were granted her magnanimity.

Suddenly, a commotion could be heard coming from outside the town hall. Grey rushed to the exit, and all the barbarians along with Yulka followed him from behind. What they saw was something not even the heroes in the Capital Kingdom of Pandor could accomplish.

The Lady had dragged over the massive orange dragon, its legs and arms bound, its mouth tied tightly shut with ropes made of light. The barbarians rushed out of the town hall, all of them stopping just before Alex and prostating themselves in front of her.

"My Lady! We shall follow you as our goddess of battle. Whatever you command, we shall follow. Should you order us to jump off a cliff, we will do so in your glory!" Yulka shouted, raising her head up as the other barbarians followed. "Comrades, chant with me. Long live the Goddess of Might!"

"Long live the Goddess of Might!" the rest of the barbarians chanted.

Once again, the Lady never failed to amaze Grey. None of the heroes of the capital had ever felled an orange dragon, let alone captured one alive. She truly was their goddess.