While Darin was busy absorbing cursed wendigo cores, terrifying northern armies with his increasingly unstable charisma, and being accidentally engaged via cat proxy, life in Fort Blackthorn was… intense.
Not quiet.
Not peaceful.
Not "holding down the fort" like some cozy country keep.
No.
It was war.
Training war.
Duchess Mary, once the blade of the North, now semi-retired only because someone had to make sure her joints still moved with violence, had taken her role very seriously.
Darin's army of four thousand?
The once-mismatched mess of mercenaries, cultists, ex-soldiers, aura knights, swamp mages, and mildly traumatized cooks?
They were her project now.
And Duchess Mary did not believe in "rest."
Day 1: The Screaming Begins
"UP!"
"DOWN!"
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T BREATHE? BREATHING IS OPTIONAL!"
The Duchess bellowed across the open training field, where men and women collapsed in slow-motion under the sun's oppressive glare. The once-cracked stones of Blackthorn's courtyard were now engraved with sweat, tears, and faint symbols of despair.
The mage circle screamed first.
Mostly because the mana training formation they were standing in had recently been upgraded with materials scavenged from the Reaper Forest. Which meant standing inside a ring of monster-enhanced runes that siphoned your mana into the atmosphere like a joyless vacuum.
Then reversed it and shoved it back into you ten times harder.
One of the older mages cried openly. "I JUST WANTED TO CAST ILLUSIONS! NOT TRANSCEND TO THE THIRD PLANE OF EXISTENCE!"
Mary clapped her hands. "Good! If you pass out, we'll throw you into the gravity well. Builds character."
Day 3: Gravity Circles Activate
"WHY CAN'T I MOVE MY LEGS?!"
"BECAUSE THE EARTH IS PUNCHING YOU BACK!"
Stage 2 and Stage 3 aura users had their own version of hell. It was called the Gravity Forge Ring, and it was every bit as fun as it sounded.
Wrought from reforged ant queen plates and runed with condensed mana conductors, these rings created an artificial gravity well meant to simulate double to quadruple natural gravitational resistance.
One particularly confident Stage 2 knight stepped into the circle on day three.
He walked in.
He came out… crawling.
"I saw my ancestors," he wheezed. "One of them offered me soup."
Day 5: The Cultists Regrets
At first, the cultists were enthusiastic.
They called it "sacred fire," "the heat of purification," and "the blessed forge of devotion." They sang.
They chanted.
They built ritual bonfires in the shape of Darin's face.
Then Duchess Mary walked in and handed them a shovel.
"Congratulations," she said. "Today, you're trench-digging. With weights."
The sect blacksmiths tried to argue. "But we're building Lord Darin's armor! Surely, we must preserve our hands!"
Mary slapped one of them with a hammer and he thanked her.
By the end of the day, the cult enchanters were muttering curses about how even the Overlord himself never trained this hard.
One of the Five Elders collapsed halfway through lap seventy around the fort and dramatically screamed, "MY BONES ARE FOR PARCHMENTS, NOT PUSH-UPS!"
Another Elder just lay face-down in a mana circle whispering, "I was promised enlightenment, not lower back damage."
The Sect Master, normally a figure of shadowy poise and unshakable dread, tried to respectfully bow out of gravity training by handing Mary a "Sacred Permission Scroll."
It was a hand-drawn piece of parchment that just said "no thank you" in very elegant calligraphy.
Mary set it on fire while smiling.
"You're doing burpees next."
The Results
They suffered.
They cried.
One man tried to fake death. He was buried and still forced to run drills when they dug him up.
And yet… it worked.
Something started to happen.
With Reaper Forest materials now melted and reforged into refined armor, with their weapons laced with monster core conductors, and with every aura knight, enchanter, and cultist stretched to their absolute limit…
They grew.
Not just in skill.
In strength.
By week two, over six hundred of Darin's soldiers had broken into Stage 2, their aura cores refined in the brutal environment Mary had cultivated.
Another one hundred and fifty Stage 2 warriors advanced to early or mid Stage 3, pushed beyond their limits by the gravity rings and enchanted combat duels hosted daily between divisions.
Some of the original Stage 3s, the elite few who had once seemed peerless—hit the middle levels of Stage 3 with thunderous breakthroughs. One aura knight literally exploded his tunic off mid-battle while roaring his advancement.
He was carried out shirtless to cheers and three marriage proposals from nearby witches.
Armor Upgrades:
The cultist blacksmiths, led by a man called Anvil-Hugger Brimm, had completed phase two of Darin's armor set.
Forged from the exoskeleton of the Ant Queen, its segmented plates shimmered with a dull crimson hue. The runes glowed faintly, etched by spellbound cultists and reinforced by the Sorceress's apprentices before she left.
It had:
Elemental resistance enchantments.
Mana-channeling channels down the arms and legs.
And a chestplate that could deflect low-tier siege bolts.
When asked how much it weighed, Brimm had laughed and said, "Enough to make the ground feel sorry."
The rest of the army followed suit. Using the ant exoskeleton reserves, reinforced with bone-laced alloy from the Reaper creatures, the soldiers were being equipped piece by piece with armor stronger than steel, lighter than plate, and terrifying to look at.
Cultist enchantments and mage enhancements meant that every third soldier now had elemental resistances, and a small number had agility or strength boosts depending on class.
The fortress smiths said, "You're not building soldiers. You're building walking nightmares."
Mary's reply was, "Good."
*****
After a grueling three weeks of drilling, sparring, rune-reading, gravity-defying, and soul-questioning work, the Duchess stood on the main courtyard wall and watched the final drills unfold.
Her eyes scanned the field.
Soldiers moved in perfect rhythm. Aura waves pulsed from their blades with terrifying unity. Mages coordinated elemental barrages like conductors of war-symphonies. Cultists and mercenaries stood side by side without stabbing each other.
Even the Sect Master stood upright again, though very carefully—and was leading a line of hooded enchanters in synchronized combat stances.
"…Huh," Mary said aloud, sipping from her goblet.
Her long-suffering butler, stepped up beside her. "Pleased, Duchess?"
She nodded once. "They'll survive the storm."
A pause.
Then she added, "…Maybe even become the storm."
In the Cult Tents…
"I saw the Overlord in a vision," whispered one of the cult elders. "He was smiling. And sweating. And very tired."
"That was a hallucination, Brother Ren'qu," someone muttered from a cot.
"I haven't felt my kneecaps in three days," another moaned.
The Sect Master walked past the tent flap, muttering to himself. "We must look strong. We must not flee. We are the darkness. The darkness cannot run from a woman with a sword and a wine addiction."
The Duchess stood on the rampart that night, overlooking the torch-lit courtyard below.
Four thousand men and women, bloodied but sharp, trained and armed with monster gear and sharpened minds. Some sitting around fires. Some meditating. Some still doing push-ups because they couldn't sleep without sobbing first.
She smiled.
And somewhere in the distance, on a battlefield far to the north—Darin sneezed and felt a sudden, horrible premonition of incoming training.
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