Chapter 351 - The Next King

Since he was given the green light, Cecil immediately began working on the teleportation gate in his workshop alongside Ren.

He had asked his sister and wife to ask for permission from the school to give Ren a few days or weeks off so that they could both focus on completing the teleportation gate as soon as possible.

All of the parts including some spares and backups were piled up within the workshop. Cecil immediately sat down inside his room on his workbench and began inscribing the runic arrays on the teleportation gate parts. Ren had his own personal room and was similarly busy at work.

The first part of the teleportation gate that they needed to inscribe runes to was the base, the foundation, of the gate. This was the most important part because the main runic array had to be inscribed on this part.

The gate they were making was a permanent, large-scale, intercontinental teleportation gate that required a large base and archway which needed over a few hundred parts with over a couple of thousand runic arrays inscribed on them.

From this alone, it would without a doubt take the two a few weeks to finish, maybe even longer if either of them messes up with an inscription.

Cecil gave all of the simple and easy to do ones to Ren while he took on the more complex runic arrays. He trusted Ren enough to be able to do the simple ones quickly and not make a mistake on any of them.

During the process of working on the arrays, Ren would occasionally come by to Cecil's workshop and ask him for a little bit of help. He was a prodigy, but he wasn't a freak like his teacher.

However, Ren didn't want to commit any sort of mistake so he was wise enough to seek out help whenever he was in doubt of anything. Cecil would always stop his work to help him out whenever he had questions or needed some insight to carving out the runic arrays.

It wasn't easy since he needed to concentrate fully on the task. His mind would sometimes waver and whenever that happened, Ren knew that it was time for him to take a break and go seek out his teacher for some insight while at the same time recuperating his mind and resting his body.

Cecil's method of teaching Ren was mostly through on-hands experience. So even when they were currently working on this big project, he treated this as a lesson to his apprentice. He gave the simple arrays for Ren to inscribe so that he'd slowly get used to them before he'd then have the boy move on to more complex ones.

Ren was already knowledgeable enough to do the complex ones right away, but he just didn't have the experience that Cecil had.

Doing the simpler ones would let Ren get accustomed to the teleportation gate's commonly used runes so once he started working on the more complex ones with Cecil, he wouldn't be making any small mistakes on the simpler runes and wouldn't need to be guided by Cecil every so often.

If he did make a mistake then that was okay. Cecil didn't really care if Ren made a mistake on anything, no one was perfect and even he would sometimes lose focus and commit a mistake that would render his entire runic array useless.

However, when Ren did make a mistake, Cecil would have him analyze the problem in the runic array he inscribed, fix it, and then have him repeatedly inscribe the runic array over and over again on a blank slate or on a sheet of paper.

This was his punishment to himself whenever he committed a mistake so he carried it on over to his apprentice. It had become a forced habit that even Ren would do the same thing to himself whenever he committed a mistake during his private practices.

*****

A few days had passed and the progress of the inscriptions was going smoothly. The master and apprentice duo would scarcely make an error on their work so they were progressing very quickly.

The base of the gate had just been completely finished today and they had begun assembling it in a cordoned area located near the central area of the valley, just a distance away from the city located closer to the mouth of the valley, closer to the No-Man's Lands.

Kaiser had the military close off this particular area from everyone except the two boys who were working on the gate. Even the family wasn't allowed into the area and none of the government officials were allowed near the place.

Cecil made sure of things by setting up a large barrier around the place so that even when they weren't there working on the gate, no one else would be able to enter. The only exception was Lucia since she was able to just teleport into the barrier's interior.

Yuna would obviously not do this because she didn't want to offend her master's husband. Speaking of Yuna, she had been lazing around lately after returning from the war. No one was really upset about it but everyone from Cecil's original party knew what she was going through.

It was some odd phase that all of the ancient dragons would experience every year for a month or two. Yuna called it the Hibernation period. It was a time when her kind would feel unexplainably tired and sluggish.

In Yuna's case, she would sleep for about 2-3 days straight before waking up again. Even then she'd only be awake for a few hours before returning to sleep again. Yuna hated this time of the year because it was the worst time of the year for her.

For the most part, she'd be vulnerable to attacks and wouldn't be able to help out with anything during this period of time and according to her, she hated it even more now because she couldn't spend her time frolicking around with Silver.

The wolf in question however was now filling in Yuna's position as Lucia's assistant at the school. Naturally, after his shift was over he'd go over to stand guard by Yuna's side during most of the day.

Lucia and everyone else were going about their daily lives, but one other important development was that Kaiser had finally picked the next successor to the Silvaria Kingdom's throne.

Cecil was the obvious choice but he had declined. Luca was the next best choice but he just wasn't too keen on it. Matheus wasn't present at the moment because he was still in Central Light City. Angelia was too young and she obviously didn't want any part in it, being a princess was enough for her, and whenever discussions of this came up, Gabriel would always silently disappear.

Cecil would have no problems managing the family and becoming the next Patriarch, but if he had to do that while also becoming the kingdom's next king, then, like he said, "Oh, hell no!"

He wasn't that familiar with managing the kingdom and not many people in the city even knew who he was. In his opinion, it was much better for the kingdom if the chosen heir was someone that was familiar and agreeable with its people.

Just like that, Cecil relinquished the title of Silvaria King over to his siblings. Naturally, everyone was opposed to it at first before the younger siblings of the family began playing the 'eldest' card, the 'first-born' card, and what not.

Something as glorious as becoming a king or queen of a nation was being tossed to each other by the Silvaria siblings like a hot potato. None of them wanted to take up the position, or the responsibility, so in the end, Fatima was pushed into accepting.

So now here came the problem for her. Fatima was currently Rowan's fiancée who was the crown prince of the Regulus Kingdom. Since she was already the future queen of Regulus, she naturally couldn't become the queen of Silvaria. No one could become the rulers of two nations, unless of course they merged together into one single nation.

Kaiser wasn't so ambitious as to do such a thing and Fatima herself didn't want that. So, they had to come up with a solution because Kaiser needed someone from within his immediate family to be the successor.

Kaiser wanted to determine things now so that later down the road, there won't be any disputes for the throne. Naturally, just like Cecil said, it would be better if the next ruler was well received by the people and out of all of the Silvaria siblings left, only Matheus had fit the bill in this regard since Luca had declined.

When the family called up Matheus and listened to his take on things, he naturally questioned why Cecil didn't want it. Once he got the answer, he immediately understood and thought that his brother's argument was a pretty sound one.

Since his younger brother, Luca, didn't want it, Matheus straightforwardly said that he would take up the mantle. He was the eldest brother so he might as well bite the bullet for his siblings. His eldest sister was already on her way to becoming queen of another nation so he understood why she couldn't become the next heir.

His replacement from the Sciezle family had already arrived a few days back and Matheus finished handing over his responsibilities to the new city lord. He had already packed up his belongings so he immediately started his journey back towards Silvaria City.

Matheus had previously been unsure of what to do in the future after coming back home, but now that he was going to be appointed and announced as the kingdom's crown prince, he finally found a goal to work towards.

He was already content with his current situation of helping out his family and if he really had nothing left to do after Cecil took over as Patriarch, Matheus had wanted to go and explore the outside world, but now that he was going to become the kingdom's next king, he had to push that desire back.

However, he was still rather eager to go adventuring and since this was probably going to be the last time he would venture out of his kingdom, Matheus decided to return back to Silvaria on foot.

He wanted to savor his time outside for as long as possible. He put on his armor, shouldered his backpack filled with food, water, rations, and a few of his personal items, and trudged on out of the city's gates without anyone from the city knowing he was leaving.

Matheus left anonymously because he didn't want any guards escorting him back home. This was going to be his first and last time going out on an adventure by himself.

"First time going at it alone, normally, Gabe would be the one doing something like this, but now I see why he's so adamant on staying with the exploration team. It's really thrilling!" Matheus said to himself. He had been busy helping out with the kingdom's internal affairs for most part of his time since coming to Alterna.

Even he wanted to go out and adventure like his two little brothers have done. Heck, even both his sisters have already experienced what it's been like to go out of the kingdom. The only time he went out was to meet up with Fatima a few years back at the Regulus Kingdom. Even then, he was escorted there with a company of soldiers and guards.

He couldn't wait to go at it by himself this time. While walking alone on the dirt highway and crossing through the large meadow of greenery, Matheus couldn't help but amusingly think to himself.

"Well, since I'm going to become king...doesn't that mean I'll be able to get a partner soon? Huhuhu, not long from now, Cecil won't be able to mock me for not being able to find a girlfriend!"

Matheus was rather delighted at this thought but honestly, this was a little sad. He was a few years older than Cecil and yet, his brother beat him in so many regards. Well, he was always busy and never had the time to even think about such things.

"Ahh, I wonder if I might even meet my significant other in this first and last adventure of mine~"