Chapter 200: 200. One month later

William ran on a mountainous trail winding up a dry mountain along with the rest of the unit.

The only distinct sounds were heavy breaths and the clank of heavy mana restriction chains.

A month had passed without much commotion, but for the students it was nothing less than hell; they were going through military training, which had turned out to be much more difficult compared to the rumors that they had heard.

Their day started before the even sun rose; they were to report to the drill grounds where the officers restrained their hands with heavy mana-restricting chains that suppressed almost all traces of mana, stopping any ciculation and these chains turned their bodies as good a mortals.

The unit had to complete a 50-mile circuit before the sun rose above the valley.

At first it seemed doable for the students, but slowly they realized how vital mana was for their bodies, in a way they had never thought they would.

Their bodies felt suffocated without it, and the real torture started midway of the long run when random monsters attacked them from their blind spots.

On the first day of the training several competitive students had chosen to not run along the whole unit and instead they had considered it more like a race with the goal to reach the end first.

William was also one of them. The only difference was that he had crossed the circuit fastest while he had also dealt with the monsters that crossed their path a bit too often.

The rest of the brave souls had been shaken midway when reality had setteled upon them, they had been exhausted, and without any mana they recovered stamina at a snails pace and the worst thing was that they had been greeted by monsters along the path.

The ambition to compete with their unit and act like a lone wolf had ended up pretty badly for them. It was the first teaching the trainers wanted to imopart on them, that was to stick together as a whole unit and fight together.

From the next day on, the whole unit had decided to stick together through out the run and to deal with monsters together which turned out to be much easier.

Except for William, but the reason why he didn’t join the unit was not because he wanted to show off his strength.

Infact, he had instructed the system to block all his cores and effects of his physique during the run.

He still chose not to stick with the unit for two reasons.

First, he had his own training goals that he had to achieve. After these drills were over, for the rest of the time, they were instructed to invest in cultivation.

William wanted to save as much time as possible from these drills so that he could enter his domain and cultivate.

The second reason was that whenever these students would return from the 50-mile run, they always found their archon standing unfazed and not even complaining for once about the exhaustion while giving a ten times better performance than them, heck he didn’t even spare them a glance.

That attitude of William made any complaints among rest of students about the harsh training die down, moreover the students thrived and worked harder than before, some with the goal to cross him while others out of inspiration.

William was trying to lead by example.

The students, whether they wanted to acknowledge it or not, still had an unspoken understanding among them that they considered William their de facto leader.

This understanding had been slowly forming from the time when the academy had been attacked during their trials and William had taken the charge to unite them put up a resistance against an adversary they all feared.

William being the archon of 1st years also had the weight to remain at the top no matter what, at least in the eyes of others.

He had noticed their reaction on the first day.

When his peers saw how effortlessly he had reached the base; William had seen clenched fists and determination-filled eyes among the students.

William smiled, he did not mind motivating them daily. he thought before his thoughts to another topic.

“Academy used deception again, didn’t they?” he muttered as he climbed down the mountain now.

Almost one month had passed, and yet they had to face any demonic threats.

The colonel had warned the students on the first day that their base was located near the abyssal node of the western front.

At first, William had believed it for a few days, the way the colonel had given his speech, but then gradually he realised mismatch.

If the acadmy had decided to keep the location of the bases a top-notch secret from even the top leaders then why would a colonel reveal it so easily on the first day of the induction?

Turns out they were trying the game of deception to lure enemies into traps.

Since the academy was short on light stones, they could not detect demonic spies anymore using large-scale purification arrays, and there was a chance that the cults were now sending normal individuals as spies that were not brain-seeded at all.

So to counter this, the academy and celestial army’s leadership were spreading misinformation about every step.

For example, if some spy got aware that the training base of academy students was near the western abyssal node and managed to send the information back by any means, then the demons or cultists, for the sake of attacking the top hundred first year students of the academy, might walk into a direct trap laid out by the army.

And that was not something William was thinking out of a hunch, this had actually happened.

At the start of the month William had established a mental hive connecting with his countless slaves as well as servants.

Through the hive, everyone could communicate with anyone that was part of the hive and that would be free of cost, unlike before when William’s SP was deducted for every link established.

Just yesterday he had received a weekly report from Barash, who had collected and condensed the collectected intelligence of that week from all the slaves in different cults they had been placed.

This was a job William had assigned to Barash at the start of the month, and while Barash and Ronin kept increasing his slave network slowly, almost 800 individuals had already been enslaved by the slave mark.

During yesterday’s report Barash had informed William that the Lilith cult had received the information about 1st year academy students being trained near the abyssal node of the western front in camp number 6.

The cult’s forces had attacked the exact camp, but all they had done was walk into a preset trap.

All that greeted them was the encirclement of abyssal extermination unit, The warriors then carried out a one-sided massacre; the leaders were captured, and the Lilith cult’s major bases were compromised.

[They really played nasty, just like you.]

“I am truly in a good mood right now.” William smiled as he ran towards the end of the circuit.

The only thing left to do on the celestial army’s part was to catch the Lilith’s cult spy, but the scope was too large for suspecting anyone atleast for William since information was limited on him.

The piece of misinformation might have been spread to several distinct individuals, and since he was not aware of how the army had utilized this fact in their own plan of deception he could do nothing and just sit back and watch for now.

After all, it was not just the induction speech where this fact might have been revealed.

William said, “Well, I will be thrilled to know if one of the students was a spy.”

[Yeah, that would be crazy.]

————————

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep