As time passed I was discovering more and more things about the system and how the system was helping, especially in the lower levels, I made diagrams with how the energy moved through my body, and this helped me focus a lot on training and this was reflected on the rising of the levels of my swordsmanship.

 

I had a second presentation for my father, and this one was not completely unexpected, but I still had to make it, for this one it was only my dad on his office.

 

- Dad I came with another project, this one is a bit easier to make and it involves very little magic.

 

- Carter show me what you have? – says my father with a smile.

 

- You are happy? – I ask confused.

 

- Yeah because I got a report from the sewer project, in just the first 6 months of this project starting to work it has already shown a difference in the city hospital. – says my dad.

 

- How much of a difference? – I ask confused – the report should wait for at least a year, or I am wrong about it?

 

- In some way you are wrong, at least with the military and the hospitals we keep a constant monitoring so we can react as soon as something happens, so we get small updates every month about the number of patients, the amounts of dead and the amounts of births – says my dad – so far there has been a reduction on the number of patients that came to the city hospital, the reduction has been enough to at least divert some more patients from the frontlines to the city and this has reduced the amount of dead soldiers slightly.

 

- Oh that is nice.

 

- Now tell me about this new project – say my dad

 

- Well the project is simple and is to make roads, there was a type of road that was really good specially to move soldiers and supplies, and they lasted a very long time.

 

I show in one of the canvas that I brought, the pictures of a roman road and how to build it, the type of rocks and all the other different little things at least as I remember them from watching several documentaries.

 

- Son the amount of magic needed for this is too much, we cannot ask the mages to make a road this complicated, till now most of the roads are just earth trails that had been hardened by the mages. – says my dad after seeing how complex the pictures look.

 

- Dad most of the road does not have to be done with magic, let me explain, the first layer, the one closer to the ground is just like what we have right now, compacted earth, but most of the other is just stone in different sizes and with some filling to ensure that the layer is properly secured.

 

I continue explaining to my father step by step how to make this type of road, how this can be done just by physical labor and how magic can be used just to help at certain stages to make the work go faster, finally after hours of explaining he understand the benefits of this type of road and why it would be needed, he also understand that not everything has to be done by magic, he can easily take some of the soldiers that has completed the service at the frontlines and hire them to work on making these roads.

 

- Carter I will make the main road from the city to the fort on this type of road, if this road works as you say I will make it so that we build more of them. – says my dad with a bit of worry on his face.

 

I do not know what else to say and after I leave him, he is making the main road and one of the ones with the most use into a roman road, I suspect he is doing it because of what I said of this road needing less maintenance and being able to transport larger loads on the wagons, especially since this road is the main supplier for the fort.

 

After this I continue with my normal schedule and finally one day my blacksmith teacher gave me some news.

 

- Time for you to forge young man. – says Bart.

 

- Oh really? – I ask surprised.

 

- Yep time to make your own tools.

 

- What do I need to make?

 

- Well you will need a set of tongs and a set of hammers – Bart says and shows me all the tools that I need to make by showing me the rack he has with his own personal tools – once you finish making these we will start you making nails and some pots and pans, step by step as I see your work get better I will teach you how to make more.

 

From that day I started forging, making my tools was very rough and I only made very few, my teacher did not let me make more because he said I did not have the skill to make them better, and then I started to make Nails, at the beginning each nail took me around 10 minutes to make, but as time went by I was able to reduce the time, I could prepare the necessary rods I needed for an entire week at the smelter, and then be able to produce nails at a very nice pace.

 

I needed lots and lots of patience it had taken more than 2 years for me to start forging, but I was able to learn a lot, I learned how to use the smelter and prepare ingots of the different ores we received, some were copper, most were iron, also I studied most of the books in my first year, by the second year most of my time in the smithy was doing something, either helping with the forge by using the bellows and moving materials making sure the forge had enough magical energy to work and ensuring that my teacher had enough materials from the warehouse to complete his projects, I was never on my own with the forge or the smelter, always using them under supervision.

 

My other studies were coming along nicely and one day I asked my dad to go to the fort I wanted to see the frontlines.

 

- Dad I would like to go to the fort and see the frontlines.

 

- Carter it is early for this – says my father

 

- Dad I have an idea, and sadly I need to see more of the demons and our own soldiers, especially when they are fighting to see if my idea is correct or if I’m just running after an illusion. – I say

 

At this my dad sort of does a double take on me.

 

- Sometimes I forget that you have more experience than your brothers, so you are not asking to go because of childhood curiosity? – He asks

 

- Dad I cannot say I don’t have curiosity about what is happening, but I understand how damaging this can be, I do not want to go too close to the frontlines, I just want to go to the fort and do meditation exercises and see how the magic interact between our soldiers and well the demons themselves – I say this and well I cannot avoid sounding suspicious, I have not told my dad that I can see some Pearl colored energy whenever the soldiers are training.

 

- Ok I will let you go, next week you will go with your uncle Richard who is now at home to the fort and you will stay with him, from what you have told me you only need to watch from a distance, since your uncle is an archer you will stay with him at all times, understood? – says my father.

 

- I understand.

 

The week passed and I was ready to go to the fort with my uncle, we got into a carriage to go to the fort, I would have loved to go in a horse, but they have not started my equestrian lessons, with how busy I have been, I’m quite sure I will have to make some time at one point for those lessons, the trip was not nice, the first hundred meters were really nice because of the people that had started to make the roads I told my father, but the rest of the 100 km trip was just a pain to go through.

 

When we reached the port it was late afternoon, the fort looked rough, sturdy, and there was lots of troops, people were tense, and I did not know why so I did what I always do, ask questions, this time from my uncle Richard.

 

- Uncle, why is the people at the fort so tense? – I ask.

 

- Well Carter, It is mostly because of timing, over the next few days we are expecting the demons to attack, they attack the fort around once a month, mostly with goblins, for some reasons the demons appear to have an unlimited amount of goblins. – answer my uncle

 

- The books I read in the library talk about several other races of demons, like Orcs and Undeads, why do they not attack with those?

 

- We do not know completely, for some reasons the demons cannot make the goblins or the orcs into undeads, most of the undeads are from animals or people from our world, so you can sometimes see undead wolves or bears or eagles, they also make undead of humans, elves, dwarves, pixies and other sentient races, the undeads made from our races are more powerful than those made from animals. – He starts explaining before bringing himself back to explain the question – now why they do not attack with Orcs or Undeads, I think is mostly because of resources, there are several scholars in the kingdom that believe that the goblin require very little to be made by the enemy, as such they can just use them to keep the pressure.

 

He takes a breath and signals to the guards at the gates of the fort, they recognize him and after checking his papers let us pass to enter the fort, at this point he goes back to me and continues talking.

 

- The scholars think that making orcs and undeads take more resources or maybe something else, and making an attack to our defenses so that they can win require such numbers that they take their time building the armies of demons for those periods of time when they launch their conquest wars, this fort only has around 5 thousand soldiers and we get attacked every month by around 30 thousand goblins, with all our defenses and with the magics and other stuff we still get some people wounded and others dead every month since they outnumber us 6 to 1. – says my uncle

 

Some of the facts that he is telling me while accurate, I feel that they do not reveal the whole truth, whenever they had the big wars, the information from the heroes pretty much let you see that they attack with millions of orcs, undeads, goblins and other demonic races, the heroes tend to use weapons and magics that wipe out extremely large quantities of these enemies, so my suspicion is that they can produce so many they tend to garrison most of what they produce in the demonic lands while they prepare for some kind of trigger to start their big war, anyways I cannot really fault my uncle or the scholars of these world they are doing the best they can with what they have.

 

We after walking and having a lot of soldiers ignore us, finally reach one of the towers on the walls, and what I see is just not that great, the land in front of the fort a natural funnel where there is a cliff with a waterfall to our north, and more cliffs towards the south, the fort is at the end of a mountain road that goes down some distance, so whatever tries to attack the fort has to come from the west through the road straight into a killing zone, I remember what I know of geography and well I see why these was chosen as one of the points to have our defense, most of the defensive lines are like this, using the natural features of the terrain to make our defense better.

 

The thing that truly jumps to my eyes is that the road is tainted in a greenish way, and from what I know the blood of goblins and orcs is green, how much blood they have spill on these road to look so nasty.

 

- Uncle, that looks nasty, I think I’m going to go to rest, we should wait until they attack I want to see the demons and our forces fighting.

 

- It’s okay Carter, I understand the view is not pleasant, we will sleep in one of the rooms for officers, there are several in the fort, since the forts is designed to house more soldiers that what it has right now, I would also like for you to explain to me what you are trying to find out, but we can do that tomorrow – He says after he sees me yawning, and he directs me towards the inside of the forts towards the rooms we will use to sleep.