Chapter 269: A Leisurely Day

Chapter 269: A Leisurely Day

Reivyn got a good night’s sleep. Even though he had apparently been in a coma for nearly a week, his body was still hale and hearty. His mind was taxed from the vision and stress it had been through, though he had no recollection of the events that caused his mind to break, necessitating the System to step in and fix it directly.

He had never seen a situation where the System took direct action other than the very few times it had run into apparently novel situations. Like the time he had been separated from the Veridical Realm’s System, implying each Realm had their own governing System, but the language of the Notifications indicated there were protocols in place this time around.

More and more evidence showed that the System wasn’t some passive thing. It appeared to actively monitor situations and had directives it followed. It could manipulate the Veridical Affinity, and possibly other Affinities as well. The Veridical Affinity seemed to be the bedrock upon which all other types of Mana sat, at least within the Veridical Realm.

Reivyn woke up refreshed and ready to go. He turned his Divine Sense Skill on as soon as he got up. I’ll have to get used to taking a more active role in its utilization. Until now it’s been completely passive.

He “saw” his father already awake and preparing a simple breakfast. His mother and sisters were still asleep as the sun had not fully crested the horizon. There was no reason to wake them. They weren’t part of the physical training he and Refix partook in everyday.

He made his way downstairs where Refix silently slid a plate of breakfast toward him, nodding for him to eat.

“It’s good to see you ready to get back into the swing of things,” Refix said.

“What else would I do?” Reivyn asked back. “Sleep? Hah! To me it hasn’t been several days without training, so it’s just a normal morning to me, anyway.”

“Makes sense,” Refix nodded his head as he ate.

They quickly finished their breakfast and exited the house. Just like every other morning, they made their way to Kefira’s courtyard. Kefira, Serilla, and her staff were already waiting outside for their arrival.

Reivyn prepared to start immediately, briefly inspecting everyone passively with his Skill. He paused, though, and frowned to himself as he took in Kefira’s appearance.

She must be more tired and out of it than I suspected, he thought. I’ve never seen her with bags under eyes before. I’ll make sure things are settled with the mercenaries for a while and spend some more quality time with her for a while.

Kefira acted the same as she always did, but there were little hints of exhaustion hidden in plain sight. Reivyn didn’t think anyone else noticed the bags under her eyes, but his Divine Sense Skill was powerful enough to pick up any discrepancy, no matter how small. She seemed to have a shadow over her face to Reivyn’s senses, but nobody else mentioned anything, not even Refix.

The morning training went the same as any other that Reivyn could remember, and none of the others participating said anything about his recent absences. It was true that he didn’t particularly interact with Kefira’s staff, but they didn’t even gossip about him amongst themselves. That didn’t mean they didn’t at all, but he would have expected something at his appearance. Maybe they had already got all the gossip they had in them out already, Reivyn snorted.

After working up a sweat and exhausting their bodies thoroughly, everyone cleaned up the practice yard. They never left the task to the staff whose job it technically was, but they made sure to care for their own things as much as possible. It was just good sense as well as polite. The others were just as tired, if not moreso, considering Reivyn and Refix had been doing this to their bodies for years.

“Do you want to go with me to the mercenary compound today?” Reivyn asked Kefira as he carried some training weapons back to the rack.

Kefira gave him a mildly surprised look.

“Sure, that’s fine,” she replied.

“Why so surprised?” Reivyn queried.

“You’ve just never asked me to go before,” she shrugged. “I assume because it’ll be immensely boring for me without having something in particular to do.”

“Yeah, basically. I just figured you would want to spend some time with me, while I’m awake, that is. I get the impression that the past several days have been hard on you.”

“Not particularly,” Kefira said. “ At least after knowing you were fine and just needed some time to recover. I won’t deny that spending time with you while you’re awake is much better than sitting next to a silent bedside, though.”

Reivyn frowned at the answer. He didn’t get the sense that she was trying to spare his feelings. She really felt that way.

Strange. Then is her condition from some other reason?

“Do you have something on your mind?” Reivyn asked. “How are the preparations for the wedding coming along? Not too stressful, I hope.”

“Hah, as if I have anything to say about that!” Kefira chuckled. “Everything is being handled by our mothers, which is just fine with me, actually. I was never too into the whole planning and anticipating balls and other state affairs. Not like my mother or older sisters, anyway.”

“Hmm, what about your experiments with Space Mana? Are you hitting any roadblocks or other troubles?”

“Not really, no,” Kefira shook her head. She turned and fixed Reivyn with a level look. “What’s all this about? You seem to think there’s something wrong somewhere.”

“You seem... tired,” Reivyn relented. “You have bags under your eyes, and I’ve never seen you like that before.”

“Really?” Kefira was genuinely surprised. “I hadn’t noticed. Then again if anyone did notice, it would be you. I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary off the top of my head. I feel fine. It must just be the accumulation of stress I felt earlier, and now I’m finally able to relax.”

“Probably. That makes as much sense as anything else. Either way, I still wanted to spend more time with you. Ever since we got back from Vairo, things have been going so quickly. One thing after another has prevented us from spending as much time together as we would have liked.”

“Sergeant, send word to the captains to meet me in my office as soon as possible,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. He performed a brisk about-face and left to attend to the new duty.

The other captains all had offices in the same building, so it didn’t take long for them to arrive. There weren’t enough seats for all the captains, but there wouldn’t have been even if Kefira and Serilla hadn’t claimed two of their own prompting Reivyn to acquire a third. The other captains deferred to Jekle for him to take the lone seat available, but he shook his head and stood with the other captains, leaving the lone chair empty.

“I won’t take up much of your time,” Reivyn said. “I’ve been thinking, and from what I’ve seen here,” he gestured to the small stack of papers, “and the performance of the men and yourselves, I’ve decided to give each of you a chance at command for the next deployments.”

Reivyn looked each of his officers in the eyes and noticed a spark of interest. Good, they’re eager. If one or more of them had been hesitant over that proclamation, I would probably see about replacing them soon.

Reivyn nodded his head before continuing.

“That is, of course, if the next terms don’t require our entire contingent. As long as the next time someone seeks assistance from us it’s under the same terms of sending a company, it’ll be one of you.

“Now you all know I’ve been with Jekle as my right-hand man from the beginning. Heck, if you want to count the forming of this mercenary company as the beginning, then he’s been my right-hand since before the beginning. I have every trust and confidence in his abilities.”

He gave Jekle a stern look before continuing.

“That being said, I won’t play favorites. Each of you now has the task of formulating a training schedule for your companies. On top of that, I want you each to prepare multiple strategies for different terrains and environments. This will be a good exercise for your lieutenants, as well, so get them on board, too.

“The selection of the captain receiving the first command will be based on the performance of your men in a mock campaign as well as how prepared you all each are individually as commanders to assume command.

“I haven’t determined the specifics of the mock campaigns, but assume it’ll be at least a week in the field. First place will obviously get command. Second place will be the company in reserve in case of needing reinforcements. The reserve company will also be in-line for deployment if a new assignment comes while the first company is still deployed. If that happens, third place will move up to the reserve positions, so on and so forth.

“Any questions?”

The other captains maintained their bearing in front of Reivyn and didn’t look around at each other.

“No, sir,” they each responded.

“Good. I’ll work on setting up the specifics for the mock campaign. I’ll give you the general information, but expect some surprises. You can’t always expect to have all the information up front when heading into conflict, so that’ll be part of the evaluation.

“Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” the captains each performed an about-face and marched out of the office.

Reivyn quickly went through the rest of the paperwork on his desk. Most of it had to do with finalizing things on the battalion level that his captains simply weren’t authorized to sign-off on. Reivyn wouldn’t have minded one of them stepping up, but now that the officers were members of the regular imperial army, they had to follow their rules for certain things.

Now that I think about it, I’ll simply file the paperwork through Kayzor to appoint Jekle as the XO and have him act in command if I’m ever incapacitated again. I had simply never even considered the possibility of losing consciousness for an extended period of time and hadn’t made ample preparation for such an eventuality. Bad on my part.

Reivyn finished signing the paperwork and neatly stacked it on his desk where it could be picked up and delivered to the relevant recipients. He turned to Kefira and Serilla who were still whispering together in the corner.

“Well, that was pretty painless,” Reivyn said to them. “Much faster than I thought it would take, honestly.” I didn’t even have time to flicker my Divine Sense Skill.

He went ahead and activated it once more.

“Done already?” Kefira asked, sitting up straight to look at him.

“Yup, and the captains now have something to keep themselves busy for the next week or so. I’ll have to do my part, but I think I can knock it out pretty quick.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Kefira smiled as she stood up. Serilla followed taking her place just behind Kefira as the trio made their way out of the office. The sergeant at the front desk made to stand, but Reivyn waved him back into his seat.

“That’ll be all for today, sergeant,” Reivyn said. “Excellent work for everyone the past couple of days while I’ve been absent. Unless something is urgent, just place it on my desk like you’ve been doing. If it is urgent, contact General Kayzor and have him make a judgment or send a runner to the Imperial Palace if he’s out of pocket.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant affirmed.

With that taken care of, Reivyn reached out and took Kefira’s hand. The trio left the barracks and walked back to the city to take a leisurely stroll for the rest of the morning. Reivyn was determined to spend the whole day with Kefira, and so they did just that. It was a relaxing time, and Reivyn hoped it would alleviate some of the stress that had built up in Kefira over the past several days.