The Castle in the middle of nowhere.

Idna used one of her blocking skills and managed to shield Iris from the suddenly transformed Praetorian. His visor started glowing with the sapphire-blue light at the exact same moment his movements became much more fluent and deadlier, but despite that, the hit that aimed at Iris's chest was clumsy. Idna also knew he had done that on purpose so as to not hurt Iris.

"Girls, the Praetorians have changed! The King must have done something crazy!" Lanka cried out loud to make sure everyone heard her and added quickly, though under her breath. "Again..."

They immediately forgot about their friendly quarrel and focused solely on fighting the remaining Praetorians. The battle became more complex, but after the first shock, they managed to regain the fighting spirit and ultimately won the battle.

•••

"Now we are talking," I smirked, spending mana on the advanced upgrades that I had previously available.

I never needed at least half of the passive skills my Skeleton Praetorians had. I didn't need them to know archery or cavalry skills... Well, maybe except for really basic things. They would surely have to use horses at some point. Anyway, I could now specialise each copy of the spawner with a dedicated build, which provided me with a chosen unit type that has the proper build. It was not perfectly optimal, of course, but it had been possible for all this time. I already had a Legion spawner, which provided me with Legionnaires, Cavalry, and Archers. Now I just had to build three individual spawners instead of all of that combined, but the benefits of proper builds heavily offset the costs of creating a personalised build on each spawner.

That being said, I had to look at each spawner and decide where such drastic moves would be most beneficial. As for now, I upgraded Praetorians, and the effects were astonishing. From far inferior fighters, they drastically improved to the point where they finally deserved the name I gave them. The Praetorian Guards were the elite, so the Royal Guards of Avalon must be as well. I would not say it was cheap because it was extremely expensive, but I could afford it. The Praetorians were the first line of defence for my wives, while the Flower Girls were the last.

•••

"Dude..." Tulir looked at his gladius with disbelief.

"They are amazing! The strongest warriors of Avalon." Auburn smirked and stretched his shoulder. "Ready, boys?"

"Of course not! We are just running there to show off as much as we can until we get beaten up." Thiule laughed and turned in his tracks. "Oh, fuck... I forgot I will have to fight a small legion maniple... Sergeant Xavier, prepare the company!"

"Yes, sir!" The wolfkin saluted and started yelling at the soldiers.

"Hahaha! Shame on you, then!" Daniel closed the visor of his armour and turned away. "I hope Miss Rose will notice me!"

•••

"Thuile is preparing a company, interesting. Did he see that Galahad tried to outflank them?" I looked at the field with a smile. "The Legionnaires are still unchanged, and the Guardsmen are only level 67, so they haven't had much time to match the levels of the girls."

"Hmmm... I think this might be a more interesting battle than the fight of the Flower Girls." Irene leaned on the rampart and rested her chin on her hand, looking off into the distance. "As much as individual power and prowess are important, the same or even more can be said about unit tactics."

I just nodded and focused on the two phalanxes about to clash. Legio Aegis legionnaires were at level 70, which gave them an advantage, but the clash didn’t stall at all. I wondered for a long time how to make it even possible- I didn't want the people involved to get killed after all. But Aurora gave me an elegant solution: while my denizens could die without any consequences, the legionnaires would use special wooden training swords that might break bones and inflict intense pain, but would never kill their target. Soon I saw the first guardsmen fall and scream in pain, but the battle was still even as the right flank of Galahad's flank started to crumble. To make the battle even fairer, Galahad was not commanding directly, instead leaving it to the Centurions and Optios.

•••

Thiule raised his sword and charged his skill. As the unit commander, he was granted a special class, and among the many, the one that piqued his interest was called the Hexblade Sentinel. According to the king himself, this was a rare class, fitting for a military commander and Thiule finally understood now what his Highness had meant by that. Despite the chaos of the battle, Thiule was calm and was able to clearly and precisely give his orders to his people. The horrific screams of his fallen soldiers did not cause his resolve to waver even slightly.

"Ice Wave!" Thiule unleashed one of his newest skills, about which he was incredibly excited.

The legionnaires in front of him received huge amounts of damage and the others within the range of his skill slowed down significantly as the frost and ice buildup bound their limbs. Thiule smiled and fell back behind the lines of the Guardsmen, using his Sentinel skills to assess the flow of the battle. It went very well. Even too well, if he was to admit it to anyone. He smiled and nodded to Sergeant Xavier, who whistled loudly on the whistle he wore around his neck. The two reserve teams quickly detached from the company and hit the weakened right flank of the Legionnaire's phalanx.

"I think you got them, sir!" Xavier smiled and used his bow to shoot down a Legion Centurion he finally spotted in the crowd. "Starfire Arrow!"

With the centurion killed and the entire right flank of phalanx crushed, it was just a matter of minutes until Thiule’s company would win this battle. He 'lost' forty Guardsmen, which were a huge part of his one hundred and twenty men strong company, but they could fight and win against the superior forces of Avalon.

"Not bad at all..." Thiule looked at his subordinate with a raised brow and smirked. "How do you like your bow skills?"

"This is the only active bow skill that the Guardian class possesses, sir! The other one is just a Projectile Weapon Proficiency skill, a passive skill that allows us to use bows, I guess, sir. It’s strange that it’s not Archery Proficiency, but whatever. However, I love this active skill! It's a charge-type skill with the cooldown equal to the time that was put into charging the skill. The longer I charge it, the more powerful and devastating the attack will be, but the more mana it will use, the longer I need to charge it. At some point, it changes into an area of effect skill, sir!"

"An incredible skill indeed." Thiule nodded in amazement. "Not so long ago, I would have just called this skill amazing, Sargent. But it would be a lie now. This skill is the most perfect skill for a Guardsman class. I can't even grasp the full potential of its effectiveness when repelling a siege or exchanging rapid fire... The King is truly an incredible man."

"How so, sir?" Xavier was intrigued and used his skill in rapid succession, sending four arrows at four different targets, damaging them significantly.

"King Theon himself created this class from scratch."

"Right... I still tend to forget that he is not a human..."

•••

"Excellent display of prowess, Captain Thiule! I am impressed." Lanka smiled sweetly when she approached Captain Thiule.

"L...l...lady Lanka!" Thiule stuttered and bowed to her. God, she is gorgeous. "Thank you, my Lady."

"Allow me to tend to your people so they can prepare for the next round." Oh, definitely I want to be your lady, you handsome... She smiled warmly at her thoughts and quickly made a worried face. "I am sure that the King is already implementing some changes to his legion."

"That would be incredible, my Lady! I will be in your debt!" He said it without thought, though he could swear that the incredibly beautiful Nekomi smirked slightly.

"Mass Grand Heal!" A yellow, almost gold light blazed over the incapacitated Guardsmen who quickly returned to their ranks, bowing in gratitude to the incredible healer. "I'll surely come to check up on you after the next fight. See you later, Captain Thiule."

After Lanka Goldentail bounded off in excitement towards the Flower Girls, who had to rest a bit longer for some reason, Auburn came by and slapped Thiule's back.

"This, my friend, was just incredible!"

"Yes, winning against the legion was incredible, indeed." Thiule stared at the Nekomi, who was graciously walking toward the rest of her party.

"What?! Hell no, dude. I meant that you have a serious chance with Lady Lanka!"

•••

"I think this requires much less work around than before!" I clapped my hands in excitement.

"Why are you so happy? They wiped out the entire maniple!" Luna tilted her head and looked straight into my eyes.

"Of course I am happy! I created the Guardsmen class with the old system, without even half of the skills and personal options I wanted them to have. Just look at them now!" I was proud of them. "Even the Captain utilised most of his active and passive skills! You saw how calm he was? It's those passive skills; Brave Heart protects him from the most mental type attacks, and Sentinel's Soul prevents him from panicking during even the bloodiest of battles. These skills have other uses as well, but I wanted to check if these two in particular would work."

"So this was not the test of the legion's power against the Mortals, but a test of the Guardsmen?" Luna turned around and crossed her arms. "So now you are going to adjust the Legion?"

"Most probably. However, this change is much more complicated. First of all, my heavy infantry is composed of three types of units I will effectively lose. What was considered Hastati, Principes and Triarii, were Skeleton Warriors, Skeleton Knights and Skeleton Paladins respectively, but these classes were not optimal at all. Who would think that Skeletons can't fully use holy magic? Or why the hell does the Warrior class have just a few group skills?" I shrugged. "Thus redesigning my Legions will be much more complicated."

"So, what's your plan now?" Amber took a seat near the tea table and took a sip of her drink. "I am sure you have something in mind."

"Indeed. The Guardsmen class is extremely promising, but contrary to what you are thinking, I can't just copy it and call it a day." I took out a very large sheet of paper, more fitting for a map than a note, and put it on the table near Amber.

My wives looked at it in silence when an enormous skill tree started growing. Each character attribute had its own active and passive skills, which could become even more powerful, depending on the statistics of a person. The tree grew and soon enough it covered the entire scroll. They looked at me in utter shock.

"These three and a half thousand abilities are all the ones a person of this world could potentially use." I took out a second, much bigger scroll and smiled. "And these are well over ten thousand skills that monsters, gods, and dungeons could have. As you can see, there are some blank spots on both lists. It's not because they are secrets, but because the list never was closed. Some skills double, many of them are useless, and some of them are straight-up broken. I am going to spend a lot of time fine-tuning my legions before I reshape them to my liking."

"Do you think we could use some of these skills?" Irene nervously asked, looking at the giant skill tree.

"Ask the World's Words, Honey. But I'm almost sure that as long as you meet all the requirements for the skill, you can use it." I shrugged and saw them eyeing the list. "Don't rush it since I have no clue how to reset your skills without overriding your class. You have to be especially careful, Irene!"

"Oh, don't worry about it, Darling. We just need to ask our immortal friends to learn this one skill though..." Irene tapped on God's skill tree and I laughed, amused.

"Oh, I think all of them should learn it."

The Gods may allow those who beg them to reset their skill points and allocate them anew. Can be performed as a mass blessing as well.

Untiered skill.

100 faith points per target.