Shattered Sanity

Just like Garron wanted, over the next few weeks, the recruits gradually began behaving themselves back home, as the constant stream of complaints from slave owners, parents, and village elders slowly diminished until it became manageable once more.

The threat of having their Soul Vessels permanently destroyed proved far more effective than any beating ever could, because after experiencing life without Aether, very few recruits were willing to risk losing access to it forever, causing even the most troublesome slaves to become noticeably more obedient while training progressed without further disruptions.

As a result, life within Ashfang Village entered a brief period of calm, with most recruits eventually settling into a predictable routine where they trained beneath Garron’s supervision during the day before returning home and resuming their ordinary lives.

However, while most recruits treated training as a part of their daily routine and only spent the required hours under Garron training, Riven gradually reached a point where training became his whole life.

Whenever he found himself alone, he practiced the Four Corner Absorption Method.

Whenever he replenished a portion of his Aether reserves, he immediately found some way to expend them again through physical drills.

And whenever exhaustion finally forced him to stop, he simply sat down and resumed circulating Aether until he had enough energy to continue.

At first, the change happened gradually enough that even he failed to notice it.

However, as the weeks passed, more and more of his life began revolving around Ascension, until eventually everything else started feeling secondary in comparison.

Meals became something he hurried through.

Sleep became something he reluctantly endured.

Even the small moments of rest scattered throughout the day gradually disappeared, as whenever an opportunity presented itself, his first instinct became training.

However, the strange thing was that he never felt forced to do any of it.

After all, most people trained because they wished to become stronger, while Riven trained because he could not bear remaining weak.

And although those two motivations sounded similar on the surface, they were fundamentally different things.

Because one was driven by desire, while the other was driven by fear.

As every time he closed his eyes, memories of helplessness eventually resurfaced one after another, bringing with them images of his father’s severed head, his mother’s suffering, Lyra being dragged away screaming, Hagrid’s whip, and countless moments where he had been too weak to do anything except endure.

Those memories followed him everywhere.

And the only thing that ever seemed capable of silencing them, even temporarily, was training.

Hence, while most recruits only trained for the necessary hours that Garron made them train, Riven became a constant training machine, who had made training his whole life.

—-------------

(Meanwhile, Garron)

Meanwhile, Garron also kept a close eye on the developments unfolding within the Yellowtail Tribe, as every few days, after concluding the week’s training, he would quietly leave Ashfang Village and make the journey eastward through Frost Valley to monitor the situation for himself, wanting to ensure that the seeds he had planted inside Sorak’s mind continued to grow exactly as intended.

Each visit left him more satisfied than the last, because not only had the anger within Yellowtail failed to diminish, but it had steadily intensified with every passing week, as conversations that began with hunting, trade, or village affairs inevitably drifted back toward Ashfang, while gatherings of elders eventually became discussions about old feuds, old massacres, and old promises of revenge that had remained unfulfilled for generations.

By now, the idea Garron had casually introduced during his first visit had spread throughout the entire tribe, as more and more Yellowtail warriors became convinced that allowing Ashfang to leave Frost Valley without consequence would be a betrayal of their ancestors, making the upcoming Moon Goddess Festival appear less like an opportunity and more like destiny itself.

As he travelled back toward Ashfang Village following what would become his final visit before the festival, Garron found himself smiling more than once during the journey, because from the very beginning this outcome had been exactly what he hoped to achieve, and judging by everything he had seen and heard, there was no longer any doubt in his mind that Yellowtail had already committed itself to war.

The conflict was coming in three days time.

And now that the attack itself seemed inevitable, Garron’s attention naturally shifted toward a far more important question, which was how exactly could he extract maximum value from this chaos?

’Raising those recruits day and night by myself will be slightly more taxing than letting them return to their own homes at night.

However, it’s nothing I can’t manage either.’

Garron thought, as he carefully refined the details of his plan while crossing the frozen wilderness, realizing that although he had originally intended to spend at least half a year more developing the children before relocating them southward, the circumstances now presented a far more profitable opportunity.

”On the night of the moon goddess festival, I can make the ultra trash group stay back for training longer than usual, as I don’t let them return until the conflict starts.

Then, as the chaos unfolds, I can entice them with an offer they won’t be able to refuse, and have them break away from the Ashfang tribe to move with me to the Empire....”

Garron plotted, as he thought about how once the conflict began, he would present the children with a choice that was not really a choice at all, offering them the option of returning to a village torn apart by violence and bloodshed, or abandoning Frost Valley entirely and following him toward what he would describe as a better future within the Empire.

The answer seemed obvious to him.

After all, most of those children already hated Ashfang Village, while many possessed little reason to remain loyal to it in the first place, as they were slaves, bastards, unwanted outcasts, and discarded children who had spent their entire lives being mistreated by the very people now expecting their loyalty, making it difficult to imagine many of them willingly choosing to remain behind once their homes were burning and their futures uncertain.

From their perspective, he would appear to be offering freedom, opportunity, and a chance to start over somewhere far away from the misery they currently endured, while the reality waiting for them beyond Frost Valley was something entirely different, because Garron understood perfectly well that most of them would simply be exchanging one form of servitude for another.

However, whether they understood that fact or not was largely irrelevant.

What mattered was that they would agree to go.

What mattered was that they would willingly sign enlistment contracts.

And what mattered most of all was that the Empire would pay him handsomely for every promising recruit he delivered, regardless of what happened to them afterward.

’And best of all, I won’t have to give that greedy bastard Torak a single copper coin,’ Garron thought with considerable satisfaction, as the village chief’s constant complaints, demands, and attempts to squeeze additional compensation from him had become increasingly irritating over the previous weeks.

”Three days..... I only have to put up with this ruse for three more days.”

Garron muttered, as he returned to his hut within Ashfang Village.