Chapter 47 Recruiting Talent! Dragon Egg Hatching

Duncan never expected Anya to surprise him once again!

When he saw several attendants trailing behind Anya, he knew her mission had been accomplished.

However, Duncan did not yet know that an even bigger surprise awaited him further down the road.

Anya kept her mouth tightly shut.

Before the task was completed, she did not leak a single word, determined to give the Raven Queen Triss a massive, silent shock.

From this day forward, she, Anya, could finally stand tall and proud!

Anya had bled a small fortune this time, even giving away a large estate near the city of Rome.

Her strength might fall short of the Raven Queen Triss, but she was dead serious about fighting for her position!

Especially after the Raven Queen Triss summoned other members of the witchcraft coven, Anya's pressure instantly multiplied. Needless to say, Triss intended to distract Duncan and prevent him from getting lost solely in Anya's gentle embrace.

Fortunately, Duncan had been too busy with state affairs lately to pay attention to the other witches.

To be honest, a man couldn't go completely without such distractions, or else he would have no outlet to release the pressure. Yet, indulging in women every single day would leave no energy for anything else. Rotating through them one by one each day still only added up to seven women—Duncan knew how to prioritize the heavy matters from the light.

——"Agricultural Expert (Retinue): An expert skilled in agriculture who can improve crop yields and enhance territorial farming techniques."

——"Architect (Retinue): Reduces construction costs, improves urban layout, and decreases squalor and disorder."

——"Armorer (Retinue): Enhances forging proficiency, capable of establishing large-scale equipment smithies to produce standard military gear."

——"Judge (Retinue): An administrative official whose employment improves territorial law and order, utilizing the legal system to resolve private feuds among barbarians."

——"Military Instructor (Retinue): A retired imperial military instructor who can be rehired to conduct rigorous training and enhance the marching and combat capabilities of infantry."

A total of five retainers.

Four males and one female. Surprisingly, the architect turned out to be a woman, perhaps because her talents were overlooked within the empire.

Dear Anya had returned once again!

I missed you to death.

Every time she returned, she brought Duncan a few pleasant surprises.

Needless to say.

He would definitely have to reward her properly tonight.

On the very afternoon of Anya's return, Severus also returned from the region of Gaul, and remarkably, he too had brought along retainers.

——"Druid (Retinue): Maintains temple sanctuaries, strengthens allied morale in combat, and assists in commanding Celtic troops."

——"Drunkard (Retinue): Enhances influence. Drunkards can easily spread information in taverns, inns, bardic boxes, and similar places. They possess top-tier alcohol tolerance, can quickly break the ice in a locality, and propagate the information you require."

In simple terms, professional braggarts who spread your heroic deeds to all directions from inside a tavern. Of course, you had to pay to keep such people fed, though it did not cost much.

The talents recruited by the Raven Queen Triss had also arrived.

This time, apart from three temple guards, there was also a target marked specifically as a 'Retainer'.

——"Librarian (Retinue) (One-Star Golden): A former librarian of the Imperial Academy with profound knowledge, capable of assisting in territorial administration and strengthening influence among the upper classes. A man of profound knowledge always commands respect."

When the Raven Queen Triss made a move, she played nothing less than a trump card.

This was the first retainer Duncan had ever seen with a star-rating marker. The individual was a man in his fifties, dressed like a scholar, looking refined and well-educated, somewhat resembling an ancient Greek philosopher.

He held deep respect for the Raven Queen Triss. Upon witnessing the chaotic state of Southampton, he furrowed his brow slightly; he was Greek, and Greece was a civilized nation.

It seemed that ever since Duncan conquered the territory, many figures within the projection interface could be marked and converted into retainers.

Unlike ordinary people, most of them possessed specialized professional skills.

However, their capabilities had to be revealed over time; the appearance of a corresponding retainer marker signified that they genuinely possessed talent in that specific domain.

Trying to muddle through was impossible.

Anyone whose professional skills fell short would never trigger a retainer marker.

This made things much easier for Duncan.

He even found time to drill the reorganized army. He noticed that after an army underwent reorganization, training, and combat, an additional marker would gradually appear—not a star, but designated as 'Combat Experience +1'.

Upon focusing his attention, the text displayed: 'This troop possesses a certain degree of combat experience; their combat skills have been forged through trials to surpass ordinary units. A troop of battle-hardened veterans is the wealth of an entire nation.' [A force with rich combat experience will more easily produce combat units possessing star ratings.]

The accumulation rate of this combat experience was extremely slow.

Among the forces under Duncan's command, only the Bodyguard Unit and the British Legion led by Kveto possessed 1 point of combat experience, as they had been the core forces in the previous few battles.

If personnel were reorganized and replenished, the combat experience seemed to drop slightly.

Wars meant people died.

Accumulating this combat experience was extraordinarily difficult, yet recently, a dozen or so men had indeed transformed into one-star rated combat units.

Those who survived the battlefield of life and death had to possess genuine skills.

Night fell.

Anya rode wildly until midnight, breached multiple times over, until the oil in the candelabra ran completely dry. Finally, drained of all strength, she collapsed entirely to the side and fell into a profound slumber.

Duncan felt it was just a walk in the park.

Lately, with the overlapping effects of the Holy Grail's Blood and the Giant's Strength, his physical fitness had grown increasingly formidable, rendering him no longer afraid of being drained dry by a witch.

"Just one more day, and the dragon egg will hatch."

Duncan's current focus remained firmly on Southampton. As a port town with an exceptional geographical location, it took priority for development.

He occasionally entrusted the training of the troops to automation while occasionally stepping in personally, though his personal training yielded results inferior to the automated system.

Having reorganized the foreign mercenary legions, Duncan also scattered his scouts.

He certainly had not forgotten Scandinavia.

As a lord, Duncan did not have the time to scour the entire world for supernatural monsters, so naturally, he dispatched his subordinates to gather intelligence.

Who was best suited for this?

Without a doubt, the Saxon foreign mercenaries.

First, let them sniff out some intelligence on monsters—which region they were in, where rumors of supernatural entities existed—and only after confirmation would Duncan set out, sparing himself the waste of time spent searching mountains and wildernesses for half a month only to find absolutely nothing.

In the Middle Ages, those supernatural creatures had all but faded into myth.

If Duncan went searching on his own, he would likely have to tour the entire European continent, traveling all the way to Northern and Eastern Europe before possibly finding one; they were gradually fading out of the era anyway.

It was simply a matter of spending a little extra money for maximum efficiency!

The British Isles were not going to be at war every single day; for now, he was simply learning more skills—a bit of everything—just in case his future avatars could put them to use.

Merlin made no moves whatsoever.

Perhaps because Duncan had settled Duchess Igraine, he no longer needed to worry about the birth of King Arthur, causing him to behave much more docilely. Word had it, however, that King Uther had suffered minor setbacks on the battlefield recently. As for anything else, Duncan always felt that Igraine's gaze carried a strange undertone when she looked at him—a reverence laced with something indescribable. Last time he went to Cornwall to recruit cavalry, she personally led a group of maids to prepare his room, make his bed, and arrange his daily meals with utmost dedication, showing not a shred of a duchess's airs.

Morose officially became the Duchess of Cornwall, inheriting the estate of the Duke of Tintagel, though she held no political power, save for a dozen guards protecting her safety.

The inheritance of the Duke of Tintagel was more than enough for her to live comfortably for several lifetimes.

Time slipped away silently.

The next day, Duncan handed over his current affairs to others and devoted his undivided attention to observing the dragon egg hatching, preparing to load his second avatar.

Dimensional Space.

As Duncan's consciousness returned, the projection interface before him surfaced with new information.

"Loading Avatar Number Two!"

"Breaching dimensional barrier, entering reality space."

"Loading complete."

Inside a completely enclosed subterranean ice cave.

Suddenly.

The dragon egg before him began to tremble, followed immediately by a small, delicate dragon claw breaking through the shell. A fierce yet tender dragon head poked out, opening its mouth to speak its true name in innate Draconic: "Augustus!"

So agonizing.

The moment Duncan loaded in, he understood why the soul compatibility was so abysmal.

He was currently crawling on all fours, with wings on his back, a very long neck, starving and weak, his soul seemingly operating on a completely different frequency from his physical body.

The flesh of an alien lifeform rejected the human soul form, resulting in extremely low compatibility and highly inconvenient controls.

"This is so excruciating."

"Crawling around on all fours every day—who could possibly endure this!"

Duncan directly entered the dimensional space, operating from a god's-eye perspective to control the hatchling as it gnawed on the dragon shell. It was hard and tasteless, nearly choking the young dragon half to death.

This was attack, and this was defense.

What was this?

Draconic?

No! It was a Dragon Shout!

A Dragon Shout was, simply put, Draconic magic—a language possessing supernatural power that generated specific magical effects when vocalized.

Right now, it was grayed out, but when focusing intent upon it, it displayed as 'Dragon Language: Frost'.

"The magical power level of this world seems quite high?"

Duncan waited for the young dragon's stamina bar to refill before beginning to dig a tunnel; without digging, there was no way out, trapping him permanently inside the subterranean ice cave.

At this moment.

A line of text materialized on the projection interface—"I must go fish!" (Draconic ancestral memory)

The intelligence level of a newly hatched dragon was relatively low, little better than a clever beast.

Yet they were naturally endowed with an elder—meaning inherited draconian memories, containing a certain degree of knowledge and instinct that instructed them on what to do next.

Hungry? Go catch and eat fish.

This mechanism functioned just like a quest hint, telling the young dragon how to grow step by step and even instructing them on how to evade danger.

"Interesting!"

"The racial traits of dragons are truly monstrous!"

Dragon claws scraping against ice.

Duncan controlled the young dragon to dig for quite a while until it finally dropped into water. It possessed innate underwater breathing; on the projection interface, mirroring an underwater world, the hatchling swam smoother than it walked. Duncan realized that had he controlled a human avatar here, he probably would have drowned instantly.

Hands, feet, and wings were completely uncoordinated.

Attack!

Duncan controlled Avatar Number Two to strike with precision, clamping its jaws onto a fat fish before swimming back upward.

——"I should eat and sleep well."

——"Young dragons are weak."

——"Hide."

Interesting.

Duncan felt that this second avatar was just like a character in a game he was playing, where the draconian ancestral memories automatically prompted the next course of action.

Yet no sooner had it finished eating the fish than the hatchling displayed a drowsy marker, indicating a need for rest.

And it had barely played for any time at all?