Chapter 132 - The Incredible Army...
The following weeks were very hectic, with the assembling of the army office, the training of the knights, and the recruiting of promising new members for our little army.
It wasn’t so hard to find potential recruits with Lovelace’s mana sense abilities. She is able to detect even the smallest fluctuations of mana, in a way that is a lot more refined than mine.
It’s a skill that can’t be imitated by the System, because it comes from her nature as an elemental being. Whatever it means to be an elemental being.
But more than that, she’s a kind of being that specializes in feeding on mana. That’s the reason her senses to detect and differentiate mana are so keen.
But all the time she spends walking around in the biggest cities looking for candidates with great mana potential is time I’m alone with the teaching tasks.
And every time a new recruit joins, I have to come back to the basics of shattering the person’s whole belief system about what magic can and cannot do.
Well, that was truer in the beginning. After we realized the difficulties of breaking those chains, she started focusing more on younger people who haven’t had any training in magic, especially from the poorer areas.
Those who came without many preconceived notions actually leaped in the understanding of systemless casting.
The screening of the candidates is handled by some of the knights, overseen by us.
Usually someone would strike a casual conversation with the target and steer it towards critical topics like the Church and the beastkin.
Then another person would come and make some derisive and racist comments, and the first one would debate with the latter one. All the while, Lovelace and I were watching and analyzing the candidate’s reactions.
Only after this first screening, if the candidate passed, would we go to the second step of Lovelace talking directly to the person and making an interview and invitation.