Chapter 54: Black Dragon Serpent (Part 1)
The same day that Ivy told me that a black dragon serpent was potentially residing in the forest, I went to the adventurer’s guild to report it.
Lately, adventurers had been hunting many monsters in the forest, although they had yet to manage to reach as far as my treehouse. But I knew there were a few parties of experienced individuals, so I thought that if the guild posted a request for the monster, someone would eventually hunt it down.
Right after, I went to the knight’s barracks to check on them and their training. When I arrived, I saw the knights sparring against their commander, one by one, while Harvey watched from the sidelines.
I noticed the knights had improved their techniques significantly since we started the training. The individuals with the lowest amount of MP were taught how to cast spells that would enhance their physical abilities in close combat, while the knights with the highest MP pools were taught more intricate spells to attack from the backlines.
It seemed strange to me that all these knights had this potential in them, but the kingdom never took advantage of it and just left them as the weakest knights.
"Hey Harvey, how did you guys end up as the weakest?" I asked without moving my gaze from the sparring knights.
Harvey smiled softly and explained to me that everyone in the 4th Knight’s Order, except for the commander, used to be commoners, including himself.
He told me that there was a "Supreme Commander" of the knights who was in charge of overseeing all of the orders, delegating the commanders for each group, and only answered to the king and queen’s mandates.
It was the supreme commander’s idea to fill the 4th order with the ex-commoners, saying that nobles shouldn’t mingle with the likes of them. Luckily, Thomas stepped up and said that he would take care of the 4th order, and being the only noble in the group, the supreme commander accepted his proposal.
However, even having a noble as the leader didn’t convince the supreme commander, and the 4th knight’s order was deprived of training on purpose since he didn’t want ex-commoners to become more powerful than full-blooded nobles.
Every two years, a knights’ tournament was held in the capital, where all seven orders competed in sparring matches to see which knight’s order was the strongest in the kingdom. Every time, the 4th order was last place, thus gaining the nickname of the "weakest knights."