Ben left his office and was spotted by Baynard who was greeting customers at the front door and telling them where they could find certain products in the store. Baynard left the front door to meet Ben as he walked down the central hallway.

"Good morning my lord, we had a messenger stop by the here yesterday from the Royal Palace. It seems the king would like you to stop by and see him when you arrived back to the city."

Ben knit his brows and asked, "Did they say if there was a problem? I hope that damn Trareniel King isn't staring more trouble."

Baynard frowned and shook his head. "They did not give any additional information to what it pertained to, but I do not believe it was an urgent matter by the way the messenger relayed the message."

Ben smiled and said, "Thank you, Baynard, I should head over then and see how I can help the king."

Ben went back into his office and cast Disguise. He changed into one of the formal black suits sold in his store and left to see the king.

Notice] Spell: [Disguise Self has increased! Disguise Self: Apprentice: Level 2!]

Inside the palace, he went directly to the throne room after asking for the king's current location. He found him on his throne and as always he was swarmed by Court Assistants and Palace Officials.

When King Sletten saw Ben enter the throne room he dismissed everyone around him. The pack of hungry court employees walked off to the side and began to quietly talk amongst one another.

The king wore a wry smile while shaking his head as Ben approached and said, "I have no idea how to address you now. There has never been a noble subject of a kingdom who is also a king of his own country."

"It is a strange set of circumstances your majesty but please just address me as Archduke King when I am in your throne room. There is no reason to make things difficult by referring to two kings." Ben replied.

"As expected of Archduke King your humility is an example for all to learn from. Let me get to the point then of why I asked you to visit us. The army I sent to the town of Brandas which was sacked has been cleaned of enemy bodies and the dead subjects have all been properly buried."

When Ben heard the King mention the dead subjects he thought the king was going to ask about Mythia's missing family at first. He chose to keep silent and let the king continue without interrupting him.

"The dead enemies whom your men dispatched were stripped of any weapons armor and valuables that may be of use. When they were stripped down and prepared for burial my men found some of them had tattoos on their upper right arms. These tattoos were of a dagger with blood dripping from the tip."

The king picked a parchment from the table beside his throne and handed to Ben. It was painting of a dagger held point downward. It had blood on the blade and you could see three drops falling from the blades tip.

"I had some of my people investigate this tattoo and found it belongs to a clan of bandits known as The Bloody Blades. They are a bandit group who resides in the Trareniel Kingdom. From what I have been told they are required to kill an innocent person in front of one of the clan's officers to join this faction. Now you may be wondering why I am telling you all this and that's because the men whom you dispatched in that little girl Mythia's house were all members of this bandit clan. When they were stripped down and examined each of them had the bloody dagger tattoo on their upper right arms! "

Ben face turned extremely ugly when he heard what the king told him and asked, "How is it possible these murderous bastards were able to sneak into the Trareniel Kingdom's ranks?"

The King shook his head and said, "You are wrong Archduke King they never snuck into the ranks they were recruited by the Trareniel King. Instead of sending men out to exterminate them, King Soren Knotley specifically hired them for their ruthless deeds. His plan was to exterminate the majority of Aregard's population during the invasion so who better to have help with this than a gang of sanguinary bandits."

"This shameless, conniving, son of a bitch just continues to make it all the more easier for me to march into his kingdom and end his miserable existence," Ben replied as his temper continued to rise.

The King then said, "Reports from a few people I sent to infiltrate Trareniel capital tell me that his people feel the same way. The army he had recruited was supposed to only be a paid training session for the men of his kingdom. They had put out notices to the people that they could earn decent money by joining the Kings training session.

They were only supposed to patrol the northern Trareniel border while learning how to properly fight for a few months. This made a large majority of the kingdom's men join due to the number of coins offered. The training session went on like planned for a couple of months up until the Royal Cultivators and the rogue mage came along. The aggressively explained one morning they were going to invade the Aregard Kingdom.

The men had no choice but to invade or be put to death and because their names were recorded upon joining they could not escape or their families would be executed. Someone from the Trareniel Palace who had lost a family member in the invasion leaked this sensitive information to the subjects of the kingdom as revenge against the king. Now the entire populace is on the edge of revolting against the Trareniel king and he doesn't have many troops left to defend against the people if they do decide to revolt."

Ben sighed and said, "If his troop numbers are low it will make things easier on me when I decide to invade after this coming winter. It will also help win the people of Trareniel over to my side without a drop in morale from being conquered due to their hate for him."

The king gave a wry smile and said, "This is true and false. The people may welcome you over the original king who ruthlessly sent their loved ones to their deaths, but there are rumors of King Knotley somehow pressuring the kingdom of Brandomma into sending him troops to defend his capital. Your declaration of war has forced him to somehow blackmail his Brandomma allies into sending him aid. After Brandomma lost their royal cultivator talong with a few hundred men they had sent to aid the invasion were ready to break off the alliance. King Knotley must have gained some damaging information on Brandomma to force them into considering to still help him."

Ben gritted his teeth and said, "Blackmailed or not Brandomma knows I am coming for this King Knotle and they participated in the invasion. If they chose to stand in my way then I will put them next on my list of enemies. This also goes for the Bloody Blades, I will find them and pull them out by the roots. I plan to have around two thousand fully trained soldiers by the time I invade the Trareniel Kingdom so even if the entire population of Brandomma stands on the Trareniel capital walls they will not stop us."

The King had told Ben everything he had found out so Ben left the palace. When he had recast his DIsguise spell he found he could now change the color of his hair aftering leveling it up. It seemed that the higher the DIsguise level was the more freedom he would have to alter his appearance.

He went around the city with his DIsguise and secretly visited each of his businesses. The customer numbers seemed to still be a little low due to the damage of Trareniel closing their borders. Trade was once again beginning to make its way back to Aregard through the Avalon Kingdom's roads but it would still be some time before things were back to normal again.

Ben found his businesses were running smoothly and his employees were professional and courteous. The customers seemed to enjoy the venues they visited and it looked like his employees had settled into their jobs.

Once he had covertly checked in to see how everything was operating, Ben cast Zoom to teleport to his office in Wolfmere. Now that Ben's Wolfmere store was becoming known around the Ciral capital it was time to expose the people of Wolfmere to almost everything he had for sale. This would help him also generate more profits at this location and help him through the economic crunch in Goldcrest.

He took some time to fill the other departments to the point they were selling most of the products which were sold at his Goldcrest location. He also hired a few more merchants to cover the newly opened departments.

A few more beds were added to the upstairs apartment before Ben returned to the fortress. Now standing in his Qi Chamber Ben swallowed a couple Mana Infusion pills to restore his lost Mana Points.

There wasn't much for him to currently do so he relaxed in his Qi Chamber for the remainder of the day and night.

Early the next morning he had the stable hands hitch up the horses to four carriages. As they were busy with preparing the carriages, Ben walked over to the Barracks and met up with the forty knights and forty archers and escorted them to the Stables he had just left.

The four carriages soon left for the Aregard border fortifications and they replaced the twenty untrained knights and twenty untrained archers with the trained troops he brought from the Barracks.

Ben had the untrained knights drive the carriages full of troops who were being replaced back to the fortress Stables. Now that there were always soldiers patrolling the walls they would open the Gatehouse for them without Ben needing to come along.

While they were presently at the Aregard fortifications Ben refilled the covered iron and copper stockpiles. These were the stockpiles he allowed the Aregard court traders who worked for the king to take for free. Ben explained the situation to the replacements on how the Aregard palace traders were allowed to take the ore. He also instructed them on how to keep the border open for any travelers, traders, or merchants.

They did a quick tour of the area and Ben showed them the facilities and the tower they would live in. These troops would live out here protecting the border for the next month or two. After they put some time in patrolling the border he would replace them with a fresh group of troops.

Ben led the other two carriages south through the Wayward Woodlands and replaced the untrained troops again. These replacement troops were also given instructions and shown around before Ben returned to the fortress.

The stable hands had already unhitched the other two carriages that had returned with the untrained troops the previous day. The troops who arrived by themselves were patiently waiting in a temporary camp near the Stables for Ben to return. They had no place to go so they just set up a camp on an empty lot out of the way while awaiting orders.

They packed up the camp and went over to the training fields were the untrained troops were introduced and handed off to the generals. For now, they would train with the other troops and be assigned rooms in the second Barracks later on.

While Ben was in the area he decided to stop in at the Wizardry School and check in on the twenty Fairy Magi. He found them on the map in the school's training room. When he originally built this place up until now he never looked around inside the other rooms.

He had been in the school's recruitment room but there was a couple classrooms, a training room, a weight training room, and an assembly hall. Ben went into the training room and was surprised to feel the instant change in Mana density.

Athena explained that the training room had a few complex Mana gathering formations under the floors. This would help any magi training in here to rapidly regenerate their Mana. These formations gave them the assistance to continuously cast spells without having to sit around for hours as their Mana recovered.

Ben began to grow curious about formations and asked Athena if there was any way for him to learn how to make them. She showed him a skill to make formations sold through the System Store for 5000g.

It's expensive but he thought if he could raise this skill to a high level he could begin to make these impressive formations and it might be possible for him to even improve upon them.

He remembered how Athena had explained how dense areas of Mana and Qi could make monsters. What if he could create complex Mana and Qi formations together? Would it be possible to build a controlled monster spawn?

If so he could build a secure arena where people could fight against monsters. Ben could increase his skill levels and possibly use it to train his troops for combat.

'I will need to make a mental note to buy this skill and begin to experiment with it once my businesses pick up again. Right now it is difficult to drop 5k in gold coins on one skill when I need to recruit more troops, prepare for the winter, and be ready to invade Trareniel. I feel like the longer I allow him to sit on his throne the more damage he is going to cause Aregard and me. It is risky to leave him alone all winter after I officially declared war, but I need the time to properly prepare. If Bradomma is sending him military aid I want to have enough trained military power to handle them as well.'

Ben decided to spend some time with the Fairies in the training room. He trained his spells alongside them and watched to see how much they had learned with their newly learned spells.