Those 2 professions were surprising but a welcome addition, their mother Nene was a city planner, she did things like planning where to build certain buildings, for better efficiency, her father Maon, was previously in charge of the treasury, he mainly collected taxes and gave budgets to be approved to the lord, and in some cases he could approve the budget himself, as long as the ruler had given permission to do so.
When Ars discovered their previous occupations he requested that they would help the village, they were more than happy to help.
The following 2 or 3 days were quite happy for them, after all the children managed to see the parents that they thought they would never see again, but after that time period everything went back to normal.
For another 3 months, they trained non stop, but this time all males trained, not just the guard group, and surprisingly 2 females joined the guard group. The big difference between the guard group training and the rest was the training suits, the guard group started all with the 3 times training suit this time, with the exception of Rook who started on 5 times, the others used no training suit, with the exception of Ars, who initially used a 7 times training suit, but did not belong to the military type groups.
Flashback to the first day of training…
The 2 female recruits saw everyone on the guard group wearing a suit, so they, not wanting to be looked down upon or excluded, asked to try the suits, but their requests were denied by Rook for lack of physical strength, and they weren't too happy about it… Thinking they were being excluded because they were women, and insisted on trying the suits. Ars listened to them and brought them suits with a smile on his face. Rook just looked at Ars with an annoyed face, and said "You can be such an ass!"
"Here, try them out, and you will realize why Rook decided not to let you guys wear them for now." Both of them took the suits, still feeling a bit offended, and went to put them on.
Ars and Rook waited for a while, and after almost 20 minutes with no sign of the 2 females, they decided to check on them. They found them laying on the floor not being able to move. Apparently since the suits were quite larger than them, they managed to put the upper part on, but then they couldn't move to remove it, luckly for them they were both wearing bikinis under their clothes, Ars laughing his ass off and Rook helped them remove the upper piece, and then Ars looked at them and smiled.
"Now you see why Rook didn't let you wear them straight away, I mean if you wanted to show some skin to us, you didn't need to go through all this trouble… You probably saw how thin and light the suits were when not in use and thought that the suits would actually only be cosmetic, you see these suits feel body heat and skin moisture on the inside they start restraining the user movements. That's why you thought we were being mean to you two."
"We are sorry!!" They both said loudly, while they were feeling very embarrassed, after they both apologized one of them explained "We thought we were being excluded for being female"
Ars grinned and clarified while pointing to himself and Rook "The only 2 people that have been wearing those since the start of the training are both of us, the rest had to train for at least one week, and the majority around 2 weeks, so no we are not excluding you guys. Just you guys being paranoid."
When the females heard that they realized that they were not being looked down upon, or excluded, they simply didn't have the current physical strength to wear them.
End of the flashback…
By the end of the 3 months, both females could now wear the 3 times suits without much difficulty, most of the the guards were on 5 times and the remaining ones managed to reach 6 times, Rook was at 8 times, and Ars was at 10 times.
More importantly Ars and Rook, managed to get into the cutting steel level.
Ars decided it was time to expand the village and go pick some more people, he wasn't sure from where, maybe from a dying kingdom or rescuing some people from slavers, those were the options, after all they didn't have enough money to buy them, and unless it was the last choice, they wouldn't buy them.
During the time they were training everyone finally managed to find something for them to do, some had become cooks and innkeepers, other tavern owners, now everyone had managed to get something to do.
Ars was awaiting the completion of the examination of the sample from Lily, the sample preliminary examination was done but now the computer was trying to remove problems from the sample, now it was being modified for the 4th time in attempt to optimize it, when sample examination finished for the first time, Ars was very excited, but then the computer indicated it was a preliminary examination and that it was possible to optimize it through modifications and further examinations.
Ars thought about it, and accepted it, after all the biggest problem from the akuma no mi was the inability to swim, if the computer managed to remove it, it would make it so much better. But now he was stuck waiting for the optimizations to finish.
Today the old man Oak came to talk privately with Ars, the topic, Lily.
"Sorry to bother you, but I need a favor from you…" Oak came looking tired, calm, but serious.
"No need to apologize, what do you need??" Ars was curious, Oak was at the very best an introvert, at worst he could be considered anti-social, and would only talk with people if he needed or if they were part of his group of friends, so for him to come to talk was probably something important to him.
"I never spoke of Lily's mother, for a single reason…." he stopped talking for a few seconds, looking conflicted, but then he sighed and continued " In simple terms we don't get along, but Lily needs her, I don't have that much time left, maybe a few years, I know it, I can feel it…. I was hoping, that you could go to her current location, and come back with her… "
"Sure we can pick her up soon, on our next trip, anything else i should know???" Ars, still surprised and confused, looked at Oak.
"She might be on the crazy side…Ho, and she might hate me, since I was the one who kicked her out of Lily's life…" Oak's face had become a mix between regret and anger, when he spoke that last sentence.
"How crazy are we talking about?"
"Well, while she was pregnant, she tried to get into a fist fight with a sea king, because it had eaten the fish she had on her line… She is explosive, short tempered and rushes at almost anything head on without thinking about the consequences of her actions… And since she kinda kept bringing danger towards Lily, I might have tried to push her away from our lives, which led to even more crazy actions from her. So I kicked her out after losing my patience. You can think of her as a big wild child, and at that point in my life I had no time to babysit an adult that behaved like a child so .... Yeah, I chose to send her away, while paying someone to keep an eye on her until we left with you."
"Give me her location, and I will try to get her….but I can't promise anything. And what is her name?" Ars decided that he could try but he wouldn't force the woman to come back if she didn't want to.
"Fierzy, her name was Fierzy", Oak got up and left looking like he had lost a war.
Two days later the guard team split into 2, one half would stay, the other would go on the ship.
Ars had originally planned to let Rook go this time, but with the need to pick up Lily's mother, he decided it was best if he went. He had talked to Rook about the change in plans, and Rook agreed it was better if Ars went.
He looked at the guards, and he realized some were wearing the training suits, and smiled.
"You can all remove the suits, while we are away, only use them when training, and reduce the training to only mornings. The ones coming with me on the ship with me, can also leave them here, you can put them back on when we come back. "
They all saluted Ars, and went to remove the suits. When they came back, everyone went to say their farewells to friends and family. They would return not too far off into the future, but it would take at least 2 weeks, and maybe if things got delayed, likely close to a month.
They departed and quickly sailed towards the location indicated by Oak, on the way there, they found a group of pirates. At the start they ignored them, they had better things to do than to crush a few idiotic pirates, but the pirates decided to pick a fight, so Ars decided to destroy them.
Ars quickly gave orders to his men "Raise the sails, and prepare yourselves to board the pirate ship."
His soldiers were nervous, it would be their first time fighting pirates, and Ars could easily see the fear and anticipation towards the incoming fight. Ars all of sudden was happy he decided to fight them, this would give his men the experience and confidence they needed for the future.
In a few seconds the pirates were upon them, then they tried to board first, and quickly regretted that decision, while Ars soldiers were nervous, with all the training they did they quickly crushed the pirates that tried to board, and at that point Ars soldiers realized they had nothing to fear from these pirates, they were stronger than them in all areas, at the same time Ars realized that, his men attacks were stiff, and realized they had forgot to add sparring to the training, Ars made a mental note to talk to Rook about sparing during training when he came back to the island.
Ars then joined the fight, now they were the ones boarding, and the pirates got overwhelmed instantly, Ars could cut through their weapons and armors with little effort, and Ars soldiers were much stronger than the pirates.
Ars looked at his men and pointed towards one of the ship paths to the interior of the ship "Check the ship for survivors and things we can use, but be careful, there might be some pirate hiding, waiting to ambush."
"Yes, sir." They all collectively exclaimed, and then carefully checked the ship, but other than having found some berries, they didn't find anything noteworthy.
Ars looked at the ship, sighed and commented "At least we got a new ship!"
Then, Ars group split into 2, one would take their ship, the others the new one. Finally, after close to one week they arrived at their destination.