Way of the Knights

---action

"No, you can't…"

*Hiss!* *Hiss!*

"You really can't, my Dad's going to kill me."

*Hiss?*

"Yep, not even one."

*Hiss*

"Oh you silly girl, you really can't eat the Mirage Hawks. They are important for my Dad's work, okay? I'll give you a whole pig later, how's that?"

*Hiss!*

"Alright, it's a deal then."

Raven shook his head at Venus' antics. She had been bugging him all day long since she really wanted to know what a Mirage Hawk would taste like but Raven adamantly refused to feed her one. She even had the heart to compromise and said that he just wanted a leg from one hawk, just a leg. But Raven found this suspicious so he refused. In the end, he compromised and said that he's going to feed her a whole pig in order to not upset her too much. 

It's only been a week since Raven had Venus with him, and she was already showing signs of a very healthy appetite. It's quite hard to believe but her growth is fast. In just a mere week, Venus already grew another meter for her length and half an inch to her girth. If this continued, Raven would eventually be able to actually ride Venus as a mount. 

Venus behaves like a child in a sense where she's curious about everything. Raven is somehow spoiling her and bringing her wherever he went, causing the snake to constantly bug him and ask what's the taste of pretty much everything that she saw aside from humans. 

Raven already introduced her to his family and friends, sufficed to say they were actually a little bit freaked out by her which made the snake very conscious. If it weren't for Raven, she might've already been sent to Maddock. Eventually, people accepted that Venus is harmless to humans with the constant explanation of Raven, unless they were trying to harm him or she was ordered to. 

Fortunately, there are some people who actually think that Venus is a good girl. The best example would be the twins, Tori and Nina. Both of them weren't even slightly afraid when she first revealed herself, they were even trying to play with her much to the fright of Eva. Nevertheless, Raven convinced her that it was fine. It was actually for the best that the three got acquainted in order for Venus to treat them as important as Raven himself. 

Raven believed that Venus had a strong memory, he could even say that though she's a snake, her brain works like that of a human due to the long nourishment she received during her incubation. Which means that it's possible for her to remember the twins as his siblings, and who knows? Maybe, in the future, this little bond of theirs might give them a pleasant surprise. 

***

Back at his office at the Academy, Raven was busy with some recent adjustments to the curriculum.

Almost every students are busy with clearing missions and fighting over the Ranking List. Based on the reports he received, the list had been extremely inconsistent not because it's malfunctioning, but because the Rankers are always changing. The longest team who held the top position only had it for a solid week before being kicked out by a black horse. This eventually became a cycle that still continues even to this day, which is really heating up the competition between students. 

Speaking of students, after finishing his adjustments on the curriculum his next task is to finish up the test papers since it's the Midterms for students.

The Midterms exam are divided into two categories: Written Exams and Field Exams. 

At first, Raven actually hesitated if he should add the written exams for the students since they will mostly forget about everything they learned inside the classroom after they graduated anyway, but he ended up adding them since he remembered the virtue to experiencing them. 

Of course, written exams does test how knowledgeable the students are but the real purpose of placing the written exams is to train the students' memory and keep it sharp. Written exams could also allow the instructors to observe how students perform under pressure. Since looking at it in a different angle, students need to not only focus on clearing missions to gain Mission Points, they also had to make sure to review the lessons they had. Sure, this will make life harder for them but it's necessary for their growth. 

The Field Exams on the other hand will be performed with their team. In some sense, it will be like a mini-tournament for all six-man cells. They will be given a task which they are required to reach the minimum boundary in order to pass. Of course, the better their performance is, the better rewards they will receive. For now, he still have to consult his colleagues about the venue of the Field Test. It will most likely going to happen at one of the more challenging arrays but for which one exactly is still unknown. 

In the middle of his work, something inside of his psyche disturbed him.

Raven frowned and checked what it was. He then saw the slave seal flashing with a brilliant light and knew that a message was sent to him. 

He dropped what he was currently doing and focused at the message that his slave gave him.

"Master. We just received news from our superiors about something. They will be sending us to a spot somewhere close to the Kingdom in order to build our new hideout. So far, they are planning to send around 300 to 500 men lead by at least three emissaries, which is awfully suspicious since it's just a construction of a hideout."

"I've tried digging up for some more insider information and managed to find out something. Apparently, there is a hidden objective for this mission. Building the hideout is just the second objective, the real reason why they are sending that many people is to escort someone who's very important. From what I heard, this person is a very powerful, they said this person is a close second to our Big Boss here. I tried squeezing some more information out of them but they were mostly clueless to who this person is. I never got the chance to meet this person either so I could only tell you this much. But if the rumors are true, then please be very careful Master and do inform me if you need me to do something."

After reading the message of the slave, Raven went into a deep thought.

'What a strange thing indeed.' He inwardly thought, 'It would've been fine if they just wanted to build hideout close to the kingdom since that won't work anyway. We will track them as soon as they enter the Yellow Zone and struck them down to prevent them from doing that.'

'What makes me curious is this mysterious person, though.' Raven frowned, 'The slave said 'Big Boss' so he must be referring to Vit'hum, however someone that is a close second to him when it comes to strength? Never heard of such an individual before in my past life. Who is it?'

Raven had long since accepted that he already changed way too much in he original timeline. He was helpless but it's better this way. However, along with those changes, many variable surfaced that Raven never knew before. One of its examples is this person that his slave talked about. 

Granted that he didn't have the chance to witness the ultimate battle of the Kingdom's forces against the Black Curtain Guild, he had a respectable position before and knew many insider knowledge that no normal citizen know of due to him inheriting his father's position. Still, one would think that he should've known if a person of such caliber sided with the Black Curtain Guild right?

But now that he thought of it, maybe this person was kept as a secret in order to be a trump card of some sorts right? If he was in their position, there is a high possibility that he would do the same. After all, the deadliest weapons are those that couldn't be seen. There's no way that this person just mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. 

Do the King and his advisors even know about this? If so, then they should've informed him by now right? After all, he's done so much for the kingdom and already proved himself their ally in many ways. Is there any reason for them to keep such an important detail away from him? 

Well, there's also the chance that they forgot to tell them but that would be dumb. He refused to believe that people of that caliber would forget to mention something like that after all this time. Which takes Raven to the most possible reason why he didn't know...

They probably didn't know that such person existed as well? That would make sense, but this would prove that the Black Curtain Guild must be hiding more from them, and that doesn't sit well with him.

"Well, I better inform them. I'm getting some bad premonitions about this...."