The next morning I woke up the happiest man alive, I mean I was lying in a comfortable bed, in a massive tent, with two beauties in my arms, who wouldn’t be.

We had a quick breakfast, I destroyed the earth walls surrounding our camp, and we were off again.

The plan had been to do the trip in two days again, and it looked like we would definitely achieve it again.

Although our new recruits would definitely be a lot fitter when we arrived than they were when we left Stellor City.

That day, Julia and I were joined by Cat at the front of the party.

All of us running side by side.

Steps almost in perfect sync again. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"So since we’re going back to Lofie Village," Julia said. "How are we going to continue our recruitment into the mercenary company?"

That problem had actually been troubling me quite a bit since I decided that I needed to grow the mercenary company a bit.

I didn’t plan to have it be one massive organisation yet.

I didn’t have the funds available to support all of those base salaries after all.

But if we could make a name for our company, and spread word around for a bit, we could set up our ’guild’ which would not only require there to be more mercenaries, but also provide us with the funds to be able to pay them their salaries.

Another thing being well known would give us would also be the fact that we wouldn’t need to go out recruiting anymore, because the mercs would come to us.

However getting our name out there might not be as easy as it seemed.

At that time I had decided that it would be for the best to focus on the elven lands more as a start.

They might have been a race that didn’t focus all that much on warring, but they still needed guards, and protection after all.

People who would hunt beasts that plagued their villages and towns.

People who would protect them from bandits on their journeys.

And we would provide all of that to them.

Which would mean that we wouldn’t need to have that many mercenaries to start with, which would mean we didn’t over capitalize right from the start, or spread ourselves too thin.

Sometimes the fastest a business went under was because they wanted to grow too fast.

"We need to build a reputation for our company first," I answered. "To do that, we need to send a couple of our mercenaries out into the elven lands."

"We’ll have them do some odd jobs for free, maybe kill some beasts, protect some people, just spread our name, and create a reputation for us."

"At the same time, they can recruit anyone that seems worth it."

Cat and Julia were quiet for a few moments, thinking through my plans.

"How many should we send out?" Cat asked.

"We need to keep at least five men in the village to help with guard duties," I answered. "I was thinking we keep Erick and four of the new recruits in the village."

"That means we can send out seven men, which we can divide into two groups, one with four and the other three."

"In the smaller group we should have two of Erick’s stronger men, along with two of the new recruits, and then the rest in the other group."

"We need to divide them up so that the parties would be of a similar strength in the end." I finished.

We continued to discuss and plan all of this for a while longer, still travelling at the same pace.

Eventually we called a halt for lunch at around midday, we had covered quite a bit of ground in that time.

If we kept that pace we would reach Lofie just before dusk that night, which suited me perfectly.

I missed my bar after all.

"Erick," I called out when we stopped for lunch. "We were just discussing sending some men out to do some jobs in a few weeks."

"That... should be fine." Erick said. "But I don’t know if the new recruits are ready for that at the moment."

"Which is exactly why we’re going to spend some more time whipping them into shape." Julia said.

"The most important part is to teach them the importance of teamwork," Cat added.

"That’s the part they’re most lacking in at the moment," Erick nodded. "Individually their combat abilities aren’t too bad, but as soon as you have them working in teams they actually become weaker."

"I’ll leave the discussions on how to improve that to you two," I said, looking at Cat and Erick.

Julia’s combat abilities were top notch, but she had never had to work in a team after all, that’s not to say she couldn’t, it’s just that she wouldn’t be the best to teach it.

Unlike Cat and Erick who had experience with working in, and leading battalions of soldiers.

"But the plan is to divide your four men into their groups to strengthen them a bit," I said. "We’ll keep five men in the village, including you."

"You want me to stay behind?" Erick asked.

"Of course," I smiled. "You’re the captain after all, you need to stay behind to train and organise the men there, as well as any new recruits that show up along the way."

"I really don’t like leadership positions." Erick said.

"Too bad, my man," I answered. "If I’ve got to be in those positions, so do you."

Erick gave me a look that said ’why do I have to suffer because you do?’.

Which I couldn’t understand.

It’s not like I was pawning off leadership duties on him, I simply didn’t have the time to organise the men.

I was simply following basic business strategies: always hire the most capable people, and place them in positions of leadership.

Now some of you might think that I should have simply made Cat the captain, since she was just as experienced, maybe even more, in leading men as Erick.

And you would be right.

I was just afraid that that might lead to the men being a group of soldiers instead of them being my employees.

If you understand what I mean by that.

It wasn’t like I did it because I was afraid it would lead to my wives spending less time with me.

Anyway, we discussed some more of the basics and plans as we had lunch, before hitting the road again.

Or maybe I should say hitting the forest?

Whatever, we started our journey again, this time increasing the pace just a little bit.

We kept going for another few hours, this time there was no more planning, no more thinking of the future.

This time it was just me and my wives having a nice time on our journey, chatting about everything and nothing at the same time.

Eventually, just as darkness began to fall we passed the final trees, and what I saw in front of me stunned me.

"Did we get lost along the way?"