"Tha...nk Yo...u."

Even though she had a very hard time speaking, the lady said this to Weiss. Her voice was hoarse but still the gratitude and sincerity in her voice was very clear that even Weiss was able to understand it.

Weiss did not say anything back and just simply patted her head gently. Then she thought about something for a bit and reassured the lady.

"I will cure you so that you will be able to move again. Do not worry. And I might even be able to give you your the strength as a knight back. But do not put too much hope in that."

Hearing what Weiss said, the lady's eyes widened even in her injured state. She had never thought that anyone would have the means to get her strength back.

She was well aware of how bad her injuries actually were. So even though Weiss asked her to not hope too much, this lady actually had no hope for her recovery at all to begin with. So any improvement to her condition would be like a miracle to her.

...

The busy night passed quietly without any trouble and soon the rays of the morning sun covered the world. That was when the journey of this large group of freed slaves restarted.

After a getting a belly full of food and a good sleep for the night, all the people were feeling exceptionally energetic. They had never felt this good in a long time.

Even though there were quite a few somewhat dangerous areas on the way, this group was never attacked even once. And the reason for that was the size of the group.

Even poweful monster beasts would think twice before attacking a large group of humans with more than 100 people.

If all of them started to attack it together, even though a monster beast might be able to kill a decent amount if not all of them, there was a chance of it getting badly injured in the process and even dying.

So without a very good reason, no beasts with even a shred of intelligence would go out of their way to attack the a large group of humans like this.

But it was actually Weiss who was doing the attacking and was hunting some beasts in the forest.

Even though she had made Karl to buy a large amount of food, most of it was was vegetables and such which were not too costly.

As for the meat that generally had a high price point, Weiss was planning to get them in various forests located along the way. There was no reason for Weiss to waste money by buying things that she could easily get by working a little hard.

Even after the windfall that she had gotten in the bandit hideout, she had used up almost all of that money in buying carriages and horses. They were not cheap at all.

Fortunately for her, she had again managed to fill her pockets with even more money after looting the Shadeshifters Company. Without this, Weiss actually would have been broke again.

...

After 9 days of journey, finally, Weiss and her large group managed to enter the Souran territory. The reason for this extra delay was the size of the group but it was actually not a big deal to Weiss.

She would much rather delay the journey for a few days than to get her new residents hurt. The weather in this northern part was also colder, so in order to allow the people to adjust to it properly, Weiss intentionally had slowed down the journey.

...

As the carriages started entering the village, the people inside found many of the other villagers looking at them curiously. But none of them were surprised.

That was because one day before reaching the village, Weiss had sent Karl away to inform Robin and the other villagers about the arrival of the new residents. They needed to be prepared in order to welcome them and also to build new homes for their new neighbours.

Actually building houses here would not take too much time. Most of the houses in the Souran village were made from the wood and the forest had a lot of them. So in a week or two, at least the basic structure of the houses could be prepared.

As for that week, Weiss was planning to keep all the residents in her castle. The first Baron Souran was related to the magus world, so even though he had failed to become a proper magus, he at least did not lack money.

For that reason, he had spent a stupid amount of money in building this castle and it was also extra large in size. Even when the previous baron was in charge, 90 percent the of the rooms in the castle were always locked.

So keeping a few hundred people in the castle was not a big deal. They just needed to clean it up a little. And with the extra hands on board now, even that was not anything troublesome.

...

After taking some time to settle everyone down, Weiss and Karl started a little meeting. Karl had helped Weiss a lot in this outing, so she was also going to help him out.

Other than the people and money, another great find that Weiss had gotten from this outing was new knight's secret arts, seven in total.

Both of the leaders had their own personal secret arts that none of the members of the organisation knew.

And the Shadeshifters organisation themselves had five other secert arts which were open for the members to practice, obviously after they had contributed enough to the Shadeshifters.

The quality of the five general secret arts were very low. Even the low quality Fierce Bull Secret Art was better than them.

The chance of someone becoming a proper knight with these inferior arts was quite low. That was also one of the reasons why the Shadeshifters had not given birth to any new knights.

But still, even with an inferior quality, these secret arts were still secret arts. So at least Weiss could use them as reference.

She could even try to improve them but from what she had seen, it looked like it would be better if she just created a brand new, less complex secret art on her own instead of modifying these ones.

This new secret art would be something that Weiss would make the residents of her territory to practice. Not just a selected few but all the residents.

And if anyone among them was found to have a decent talent as a knight, Weiss was going to create a personalised secret art for them.

Instead of getting a lot of soldiers, Weiss was planning to build a small army with the average strength of each of the soldiers there being super high. And she also wanted to have more official knights under her.

But it would take some time for this plan of hers to come to fruition. So Weiss was not going to make haste and she would take one step at a time.

As for Karl, as he was the first knight under her, he would have a lot of duties in the future. But first, she needed to take care of the Night Crow which he was still a part of. And this was the exact topic that Weiss was going to discuss with Karl now.

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