“Do you have any thoughts on the matter,”

“No, my liege” Christopher “it has been 5 minutes I would need time to think on this matter”

“This could have drastic consequences”

“My Liege, My Liege” another person rushed through the door to the king’s study. “Did you receive the message?”

“I did prime minister, calm down, you’re just in time, we were about to discuss this matter.”

The prime minister looked at the three other people in the room. “Greetings, Court Philosopher Christopher, Greetings Spymaster, Arkin, and quartermaster Lohan”

“Greetings Prime minister Thaddeus” the three responded in kind.

“What priorities do we set first with this.” The king started

“Well, we haven’t received a culture bonus, so I suggest we make contact with our informants across borders to find out if they have.” The spymaster responded

“I agree, looking at the description of this race, it could raise the military prowess of a nation” Lohan seconded.

“Great, we will do that” the king Greenlit the suggestion

“We also need to discuss our plan with this race,” Christopher chimed in for the next priority

“What do you mean?”

“If this person is an enemy national, do we prioritise capture or kill. If it’s one of our people, how do we tread around the nobility if he landed in one of their lands? Hopefully, he is a direct subject of my liege but the odds of that are stacked against us.”

“I see, spymaster, perform two investigations one into enemy nations and another into our lands, but try to hide the internal investigation behind the external one, no doubt the nobility will get wind of our investigation, but hopefully they will be occupied with the foreign one.”

“Will do sire.”

“What about if this person is a member of Nobility” Thaddeus responded

“Hmm… that would be difficult” the king responded

“You can try a marriage proposal,” Christopher said “according to the description this race has a dominant bloodline”

“Are you asking me to dilute the royal blood,”

“The system gave this race a dominant Bloodline, the person in question may use this as a justification to overthrow you, my liege.” Christopher retorted, “If you bring in this race to the royal bloodline, it not only acts to strengthen your legitimacy, but we would be able to argue over the title of the emperor and the legacy of the western heavenly empire”

At first, the king was annoyed at the philosopher’s brazen remarks, but the mention of the imperial thrown enticed him as well as sticking it to his long-time rival. The duchies of Franconia were currently too strong and refused to entertain the kings wishes of being crowned emperor “all alright I’ll think about your suggestion.”, alright we will postpone tomorrow’s court session until tomorrow afternoon, in the morning, Prime minister, contact the church and see what their take is on this. Quartermaster, many of the nobles have family in the military, try to gage any responses from them, Christopher, go to the university and see what they are making of this. And Arkin you already have your orders.”

“We oblige my Liege,” they said in unison

“Alright dismissed, Prime minister, please stay behind.”

After the others left the king turned to Thaddeus, “Any news on my brother’s end”

“Yes, my Liege he has managed to procure a few crates of this cherry wine over on the colony,”

“That’s great, my sons are catching up to me, so I’d have to move fast. However. This news might be a blessing in disguise, a nice distraction while I’m gone,”

“When are you planning on going into hiding?”

“Probably next year, I want my advisors to create hype around this new race and start putting pressure on our rival, hopefully, it will cause my sons to tread carefully,”

“How long do you expect to be gone?”

“Well my estimates based on last time puts me at 5 years to get back to my original status, but with this new wine, I might be able to bring it down to 3.5-4 years.”

“Is it that good?”

“it’s a pity an earth elemental version hasn’t been made; you have to try it to believe it”

___

It had been a week since Fred had ‘woken up’ from the ordeal, he was extremely surprised with the new ‘organ’, he didn’t know the ascension process could do that, although its name didn’t match with its description. When he tried looking at the organ with a Nature Crystal is no longer identified as a separate organism, and the sinews that he used to connect to the brain stem were gone. Instead, it connected to the spinal cord like every other organ, he also noticed his bones and muscles were slightly denser. It looks like the process is working. He noticed another organ that was about 1/100th of the size of his new organ that was attached to it. When he checked his log to go back to the Astartes traits, he noticed a (+) sign on the description of the organ.

Gene seed organ: Increases body development through chemical and hormone treatment. Controls bodily functions and increases recovery rate. Produces stem cells to allow for new organ growth to fully transform into an Astartes. Reproduces a copy of itself for the purpose of transplanting.

‘Wow so it kept the reproduction aspect of the leach, but what is this about new organ growth for the full transformation process.’ He scanned his body again and noticed a tumour growing from where the heart meets the brain’s artery and another one connected to the oesophagus.

‘What the hell, is it really converting the super-soldier program to the Astartes program, I hope not, at least not completely, having a single rib plate would be really bad for mobility. Plus, the success rate for Astartes transformations is abysmal.’

___

Now Fred had completed the first phrase Astartes program all that was left was for him to do is drink that nasty concoction every month until he was 16 years of age at that point it should be at 100% assimilation, he decided to speak to the family about the Furnace.

“I want to build a foundry,”

“What’s that?” George questioned.

“it’s like a smith shop but on a grander scale, it would allow us to process better types of steel and at much higher quantities and using the blast furnaces we can speed up the process of weapon production by quite a bit, and the price of steel would go down.”

“Isn’t that bad for business.”

“Well, it would mean that we would be able to consume a good portion of the weapons market. As well as allowing the maintenance of our troops to be cheaper. Or make them better equipped, I noticed most of our soldiers wear light chainmail or just gambeson. With our own weapons factory, we could make their armour as good as dismounted knights.”

“That could work, I mean that would be amazing if we can pull it off.”

“Plus, as mom mentioned over the wine discussion, the emperor would have to ascend soon for fear of his sons catching up. I believe he will go into hiding for this period leaving a proxy in charge.”

Yeah, I agree, and this would be the best time for the princes to act up, even if they don’t stage an open revolt, it would be a great time for the families supporting them to start fighting over land”

“This Steel business could give our families on the mainland some much-needed supplies.”

“But if we want to sell abroad, we will only be able to sell ingots for armour as a lot of people need custom fitting for the armour to be practical.”

“Well, we can sell the steel in sheet formats allowing for their blacksmiths to save time by just working on fitting the steel.”

“it would be rough to convince blacksmiths to agree, it’s unusual for labour to be divided between people, normally one blacksmith would work on a piece of armour from ore to finished product.”

“Which is utter stupidity”

“What do you mean,”

“If we can separate each process to a different person, each person will grow their specific skill for that one process instead of each person developing partial skills for all projects”, “our foundry can work solely on the smelting process and therefore it can dedicate all of its time developing that process.”

“I see what you mean, so what do you want and need.”

“Well, I need trustworthy blacksmiths, who are willing to train multiple apprentices.”

“How big is this operation?”

“Well although this operation is going to be big, I want quite a few trained blacksmiths for other projects as well.”

“Also, Father’s land to the south, you said it has a copper mine,”

“Yes, but copper isn’t used that much and therefore the mine isn’t that developed, why? Do you want it?”

“Yeah, it would be nice to have access to it earlier than when I turn 18.”

“What do you want with it?”

“I want to make a certain weapon with it but, it sounds ridiculous on paper, you won’t believe me till you see it in action.”

“Okay,” that seemed to get George intrigued. “Anything else?”

“At the moment, not really, it won’t be until we set the foundations that we will be able to see where we stand.”

“Fair enough,”

His mother chimed in this time; she was enjoying watching the two men discuss the future, but she had some news for Fred. “you’ll have to write down your instructions for the foundry Fred as you won’t be here to oversee it for a while.”

“What? Where am I going?”

“You have already turned 4 now which means you will be going to Ludnus for September to attend school.”

“School?”

“Yes, you need to play with kids your age. Your cousins from your father’s sides are going too. Their father is your father’s youngest brother, and he has the strongest bond with your father out of all the brothers.”

“But Mooom, I don’t want to go to school”

“Tough, you are going and that’s final,”

Fred sulked a bit after that, while George just laughed. He had forgotten that Isabella and George had spoken that his formal education was going to start when he turned 4 but thought he would still be in the castle for it.

___

Fred spent the next two months going over details of the blast furnace and the sketches of the foundry. They would be starting small but would need to expand in the future.

And now it was time to leave, Fred was going with Jessica, Philip, one of George’s lieutenants and the cousins who arrived yesterday. The brother, Rudy, was 4 months older than Fred, but his guardian on the colony had taken him on frequent hunting trips to exterminate goblins in the southwestern tip to speed up his levelling, due to the proximity of the border conflicts Goblins didn’t have room to grow near Poliutonnes, but Fred delayed his ascension to finalise the Astartes program

Rudy had ascended about 1 month before Fred but that still made him 3 months late age-wise. Which caused him to smack talk Fred and challenge him, Fred just grabbed the little shit by the face-pulling him a step closer then shoving Rudy’s head backwards making him fall over. And that was the end of him.

George and the few knights in the front courtyard just stood there in shock. His sister Dauphine seemed amused, Fred seemed to have the impression she was fed up with Rudy’s antic and was glad someone put him in his place. Isabella was glad Fred did something as she was rearing to go ad Rudy for the comments he made and didn’t think she could hold herself back any longer. The only one who seemed to care about Rudy was his maid, who rushed over to help him up.

“This isn’t over,” Rudy commented as he walked away.

“Sounds like loser talk to me”

Rudy turned sideways, to look back, but didn’t stop walking away, “What you say to me?”

“If you stopped walking away you wouldn’t have problems hearing.”

Rudy just gritted his teeth and kept walking away

“Did you have to rile him up so much,” George commented,

“He would try to get me back anyway, he’s just more likely to not think his actions through if he is riled up so much”

George couldn’t argue with that, it sounded very logical.

After the heartfelt goodbyes, the 3 got on the same carriage while the servants rode the one behind them and the knights of the two families riding horses, as Fred was looking at the colour standards of both families, Fred remarked at how familiar the colours were, “how close are the two families.” He mused audibly,

“What do you mean?” Dauphine asked

“See how the standards are matching colours with just the coat of arms differing slightly.”

“O yeah, it’s always been like that”

“I was just curious about the closeness of the two families, it was as if, when they designed the flags, they did it together to minimise their troops from mistaking each other for enemies on the battlefields.”

“of course, we originate from the same family,” this time Rudy spoke, he seemed to be in a better mood, probably because he could teach Fred something.

“Really?”

“Yes, originally the family was house Plantagenet-Ansul, and at the end of that family, they held two duchies, hence the double-barrel name, with de Anjou between the realms, the last head of this house was known as David de Plantagenet-Ansul, he had two twin sons, each one refused to be superior over the other in rank, so they split the duchies, the silver lion is the crest of de Plantagenet with the silver colour representing de Plantagenet’s affinity with metal, The Red Lion on the other crest represent the fire of de Ansul, if you saw the Earl of De Anjou, they have a light blue lion with the same tri-colours representing lighting affinity.

“Why is Plantagenets lightning bolt behind the crest going from the top right to bottom left, and the de Ansul going bottom right to top left?”

That’s because our duchy is south of De Anjou and your mothers are north of De Anjou.

“Where are our lands anyway, Mother hasn’t gone into the details saying I have to wait for my formal education to start?”

Rudy had a smug expression, obviously happy to have one over on Fred and was about to answer when Dauphine chimed in “It’s just west of the capital duchy, it incorporates the lands between the Castilian Conquista order and the independent Duchy of Brittany.”

“If the families are related by linage why are the affinities different?”

“Well, the original family had both affinities as each duchy has a few strong mana springs of the respective affinity with metal to the south duchy and fire in the north duchy.”

“Are there metal mines in your duchy?”

“There are Metal mines in both duchies, but we’ve minded most of what’s near the top, and now most mines are flooded with water and unusable. Because of that, we are setting up colonies in Albion as well as the Castilian Conquista order is a joint project between the 3 families to wrestle land off the Dwarven nation of Nova Carthage in Iberia.”

‘Wow so there is a nation of dwarves in Spain, I only knew of the ones in the mountains up north, but at best their political body is nothing more than a tribal federation of a few towns and villages.”

“What about other duchies in the kingdom, are they running low on metals. And if so what’s their plans to fix it?”

“Yeah, they are suffering quite a bit as well, it’s currently a race to procure metals now, the duchies of greater Normandy have colonies in Albion, to the east of us. And there is a rumour they are venturing to the northlands in the northeast. House burgundy has a union over the trader states of the lowlands and is fighting for control over the rhine mountains with the Western heavenly empire as they border the north-west of the Western Heavenly empire, Savoy next to the High elven republics are fighting over the Apennines with them, however, the Wester Heavenly empire and the eastern heavenly empire each used to control those lands, so they are also trying a reconquest.”

“And finally, Toulouse, they have the Catalonian Conquista order, fighting on the east side of Nova Carthage,” Delphine added the last bit, it seems she was fed up with listening to her Brother’s Monologing “by the way, do you know how long this trip will take?”

Fred could finally answer a question, “well as long as we don’t have too many detours it should take a little less than 400 chapters”

“?”, “?”

“Sorry I meant a week”, ‘bloody uncultured scrubs don’t even know about references.’