Chapter 66: Chapter 66 - Supporting Husband
Now if you think that at that moment I felt like the king of the world, you’d be entirely right.
I mean come on guys you know what I’m talking about right?
How would you feel if you were standing on top of a massive stone wall looking down at twelve of your mercenaries, basically your own little private army, fighting against massive wolves, while you’re holding the hands of two of the most beautiful women in the world?
I guess if you can imagine that you’d understand how I felt at that moment.
"How are they doing?" I asked Julia.
She looked down at the two groups of six mercs that were still battling the wolves.
There were only a few of them that had any affinity with magic, and in their cases their affinities weren’t very strong.
Which meant that all of them were basically front line fighters.
"They’re doing alright," Julia finally answered, just as Erick landed a brutal hit on the wolf his group was up against. "But we need to focus even more on their teamwork."
"Erick and his four men work together pretty well," Cat said. "But the rest are basically falling all over each other."
I could see what they meant, Erick and his men worked together perfectly, like a well oiled machine, but the adventurers...
Well the adventurers were another case entirely.
Luckily, Erick’s men had divided themselves up into these two groups, or else we would probably have lost some men already.
"We should probably focus on recruiting some people with magic affinities from now on," I said. "That would mean that we could divide the men into squads with frontline fighters, and magic casters to back them up."
"You want to organise them like military battalions?" Cat asked.
"Not quite that large," I answered. "But it would just make strategic sense to base our structures on that."
Now at that time, I didn’t know exactly why, but Julia and Cat gave each other these knowing looks.
Almost like each of them was planning to do something pretty big, and they knew the other one was thinking the same thing.
Obviously being a man that doesn’t like to pry too much, I ignored this.
We were still discussing some of the improvements, changes, and additions we needed to make to the mercenary company, when Erick finally landed the finishing blow on the wolf his group was facing.
"That man might be the most promising of them all," Cat said.
"I agree," Julia said.
Immediately my sympathies went out to the poor man, because if Cat and Julia decided that you were promising, that would mean that they would start to pay special attention to your training.
Which could only lead to a hell of a lot of pain.
Although said pain would come with quite a lot of improvement though.
Which also led to a wicked, yet charming, smile on my face.
You might wonder why that is.
Now let me explain this to you.
If Erick improved a lot under Julia and Cat, that would naturally lead to improvement in my small mercenary company after all, since he was responsible for training the new recruits.
Obviously this had nothing to do with the fact that more attention to his training meant less attention to my own.
That was simply a slight perk to the entire thing.
"So I guess that means you have decided that he will definitely be worth nurturing?" I asked, hoping beyond hope that that would be the case.
"Definitely," they answered together.
I was just about to get excited about this, you know because of the improvement that would mean for the company, until...
"We should train you two together." Cat said, with a smile that said she knew exactly what I had thought.
Which of course made my heart sink quite a bit.
"That would work perfectly," Julia said. "We can have you two for a session in the morning, and then Erick can spend the rest of the day training the newbies."
And just as those words fell, so did the last wolf.
"Finally," Cat sighed. "It took them long enough."
"They have a long way to go," Julia nodded.
Once again, my prayers went out to the men.
"We should probably spend the night here," I said gesturing to the inside of our makeshift barricade. "We have a perfect shelter after all."
"Sounds good," they answered together again, this time Cat was wearing a blush again though.
Down below, the men looked exhausted, some of them had even fallen down almost immediately, laying on their backs looking up at the rapidly darkening skies, their breaths coming in ragged pants.
"I know you’re tired guys!" I called down. "We’re going to spend the night here!"
The only ones that seemed completely unbothered by the entire ordeal was Erick and his men, who immediately made their way up the stairs again.
As soon as Erick made it to the top he was stopped by Cat and Julia.
"You did good," Julia said.
"Very good, for someone not trained by us," Cat nodded.
I could see Erick’s gaze slowly becoming more and more confused.
"Thank you?" He said.
"Which is why we’re going to spend a lot more time focusing on your training," Cat said with a smile.
Erick’s eyes immediately snapped to me.
I could see the pleading in them.
Now you have to understand, Erick is a man that always looks to improve himself.
He trains harder than all of his men.
I had noticed this even then, even knowing him for only a couple of weeks.
So if a man like that looks at you pleadingly when he hears that two, very strong, very dangerous people, were willing to train him, you can imagine just how horrible said training was going to be.
Being a man who always supports his wives, I could only avert my gaze, whistling a very catchy tune I remembered from Earth.
"I don’t think that would be necessary," Erick tried. "The standard training I’m undergoing under Julia should be more than enough... right?"
"Nonsense!" Cat said. "You and Daniel would improve much more drastically under the training of both me and Julia."
I almost coughed up my lungs at those words.
I had thought they meant that I would still only be sparring with one of them each day while the other focuses on Erick, but this didn’t sound like their plan at all.
"Me too?!"
