The Demon King's Paladin

Chapter 152. Declaration Of Friendship

" This completes the farm. As always, only harvest every 2 weeks. I'll head back now; Paula is visiting me today after all!"

With excitement, Lily transported back to her home. With her words confirming it, this made 6 farms completed since we started the whole project. It feels good to see how far we've all come from the start. After I finished the farming work, I began to head home with Ruby by my side. It's been 2 days since Emily had started her work as my secretary. I'm glad to say that she's improved the overall workflow by a noticeable amount. To the point where I now had free time again regularly. I've spent the time training, whether it be swordsmanship training or meditating and tempering my mana. It felt good to get back to it after so long. Sarah and Anna still looked at me with lonely eyes as I refused to spar with them, but since I haven't been able to master Angel's Swordsmanship, I figure it's the safest thing to do.

" What do you plan on doing for the rest of the day, Lord Matthew?"

Ruby spoke to me. It was decided by Sarah and Anna that they would spend the day with Emily going over her approach to clerical work so they can more effectively help me moving forward. I was thankful for that. Since Sarah and Anna were with Emily and they could protect her, Ruby was working as my bodyguard for the day. Seems she wants to know what was next, honestly, I wasn't sure what to do. I thought I might do some training. So, I decided to go with that.

" I think I'll go train. I had to put it on the backburner for a while, since working on dairy products and all of the paperwork from running the Roselands caused me to focus on all of that. Now I have the time, so if you'd like, you can head back to the others if you'd like."

Ruby listened to my words. And an answer came not long after.

" I'd rather move around a bit. I'll practice my swordsmanship as well."

" That's fine, but just to let you know, under no circumstances will we spar."

" Why is that?"

" It's because of a skill I have. It... Kind of makes sparring not possible for now. I think once I master it, I can spar again, but for now, it's definitely a no regardless of who asks. That's why I was hunting so much, I thought I might master the skill, but so far no luck."

" I understand."

We made our way to the training ground near my home. I began to go over all of the forms that Crest taught me. As I went through my practice, I thought about how I should probably gift the 4 high ranking officials some ice cream. I mean they did come to my wedding and everything. Maybe I could ask Ronald for some advice when it comes to business dealings as well.

" Lord Matthew, I've been wondering this for a while. Who exactly taught you Demon Swordsmanship?"

Ruby stopped me while I was on the 3rd to last form before I finished my warmup. I turned to her after returning Scarlet to the bracelet form and answered Ruby's question.

" Crest Brightroar did."

" Crest? As in, General Crest?"

I nodded to her words. Ruby seemed very shocked by it.

" I was taught the forms by Crest, then I would spar him and King Warrick to gain live combat experience. I did it for 3 months before the Hero tried invading. I was exhausted nearly every day from that... Then there was also all of the magic training Queen Aqua had me doing as well. Honestly after that, I thought my days would be full of less work. How wrong I was huh?"

" How did you survive all of that? General Crest's training is known to break military men from how exhaustive it is."

I thought back on Crest's lessons.