Unfortunately, one man's objection was no match for the other soldiers, who didn't know the truth.
This was a perfect chance to slack off. Even if their opponent was Master Yupa, the greatest swordsman of the Sea of Corruption, he was still an ordinary man.
They, on the other hand, were warriors who had received the blessing of the divine tree. However they looked at it, their chances of winning were high.
Besides, it was ten against one.
They would win!
Then the fight began.
"So fast!"
"Wha-?"
"L-Lord Yupa, I surren-"
The fight soon ended.
The whole thing took less than thirty seconds.
As Mu En had expected, Yupa, who could fight a member of the Golden Folk to a draw on his own strength, won with ease.
Before him, the Blessed, who had no combat experience and nothing but brute strength, were no different from the likes of Yiduo and Barton.
As for the formidable-looking Order's Blade, it was even more useless.
If they couldn't land a hit, what did the weapon's capabilities matter?
Yupa didn't even need to draw his own weapon. Using only a wooden training sword, he knocked all ten of the eager blessed warriors unconscious.
Left with no choice, Mu En used Erdtree's Favor again to wake the unconscious soldiers.
Yupa stood among the soldiers sprawled across the ground, his gaze passing over every face filled with defeat and disbelief. He said coldly:
"Your backhand is weak, your forehand posture is correct but your technique is poor, your footwork is sloppy, and your reactions are slow. Not one of your moves is up to par."
"You think you can defeat me like that? You think you can slack off and take a holiday?"
Yupa raised the wooden sword over his head and swung it down hard.
Crack!!!
The hardwood sword, heavier and sturdier than an ordinary iron sword, burst apart in midair under Yupa's immense strength.
As the blessed warriors stared in stunned silence, Instructor Yupa gave his first order:
"Get up, all of you. Keep fighting me until someone lands a hit!"
He sighed softly as he watched the soldiers scramble to their feet.
Ever since fighting Nausicaä to a draw, Yupa had felt a heavy weight on his heart.
Now, that weight had finally lifted.
It wasn't that the Erdtree's blessing was too powerful. His prized pupil, Nausicaä, had simply grown faster than he had expected.
How could a god's handout compare to a body honed through long training?
With that thought, Yupa grew more dissatisfied the longer he looked at these new "students," who couldn't even hold their swords properly.
Even Nausicaä, who had neglected her practice somewhat lately, was ten times better than these rookies!
He casually blocked a soldier's full-force downward strike with his wooden sword, his arm not budging an inch.
"Your grip is loose, your slashes have no form, and you're full of openings!"
"If even one of you fails to meet my standards before dark, I will punish the entire group."
"Believe me, you won't want to experience that... Do you hear me?!"
If one of them slacked off, the whole team would be punished?
Even if they didn't care themselves, their teammates' fists were not to be taken lightly.
"Yes!!!"
The soldiers gave it two hundred percent, charging desperately at Yupa, hoping just to touch the hem of his clothes.
Seeing this, Yupa nodded in satisfaction.
He didn't care much for the blessing, but this "collective sense of honor" Lord Divine Tree had mentioned really did seem effective.
It seemed he would have to ask Nausicaä for more advice when he had time.
Nearby, Nausicaä and Mu En quietly watched the soldiers spar with Yupa in the rain.
"What's wrong?"
Mu En noticed the corner of the red-haired girl's mouth twitch as she sheltered from the rain beneath his treetop, an adorable expression on her face as if she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"Nothing. I just remembered something from when I was little. Master Yupa used to expect the same of me."
"He was always trying to get a few children my age to learn swordsmanship with me, but hardly any of them could endure his rigorous training."
"After a while, none of my friends dared come and play with me... Looking at it now, Master Yupa seems to have fallen back into his old habits."
Hearing Nausicaä's amusing childhood story, he suddenly remembered that Por, Kamlin, and the others were just about the same age as Nausicaä.
Did this count as escaping it once, only to escape it again?
Watching the soldiers swing their swords with all their might amid Yupa's shouts, Mu En sighed inwardly.
He only hoped they would prove worthy of the Runes he had invested in them.
Although dark clouds still covered the sky, the rain soon eased.
The matter Mu En had previously asked Gol to prepare had finally made some progress as well.
Toward evening, several carts piled high with bulging burlap sacks stopped at the edge of the "Golden Forest," the nickname the villagers had given the woods after the celebration.
The short, stout old man with a graying beard came before Mu En with several other craftsmen, all adopting respectful postures.
"The 'props' you asked us to make in a hurry are ready. The work wasn't difficult, since the raw material was only wood. We could use machine tools to produce them in batches."
"But aren't you worried someone might copy them? Even the other nations around the Sea of Corruption use metal currency circulated from Tolmekia."
Nausicaä untied a sack. It was packed full of small, round wooden discs, neatly cut and polished, all looking exactly alike.
"Wooden discs?"
"For now. But soon, they'll become something useful for motivating the villagers to work."
Since Mu En hadn't had time to tell her yet, she didn't know the secret behind the discs.
Nausicaä was utterly puzzled. Could these little things, which could neither be eaten nor drunk, really achieve the effect Mr. Tree had described?
At Mu En's signal, the craftsmen spread moisture-resistant cowhides over a clearing in the woods and emptied every cartload of wooden discs onto them.
Then golden light flickered, and all the discs changed.
A mark made of four nested golden rings had been branded onto the surface of every disc.
"This is..."
Mu En had marked every one of the more than ten thousand wooden discs, including the one in Nausicaä's hand, with a simplified version of the Elden Ring.
The Valley of the Wind lacked the technology to mint metal currency in large quantities, and it had no steel to spare.
So Mu En had come up with an inexpensive, high-quality wooden "equivalent."
As for why he didn't simply use physical Golden Rune 1, 2, 3, 4, and other Rune fragments...
It wasn't that he couldn't make them, but that they were expensive.
Considering that the discs would circulate as currency for a long time to come, if he really used physical Runes to make them, he couldn't squeeze out enough even if he were roasted over a fire.
Now, however, branding more than ten thousand wooden discs had consumed no more than the feedback from one ordinary Blessed over a single day.
Converted to the value shown on the game skin, it probably wouldn't even reach a hundred points.
As for the counterfeiting problem Gol had mentioned, there was even less reason to worry.
"Try directing the energy in your bodies to touch it."
After becoming Blessed, one could sense and direct the energy flowing within one's body. That energy was actually the Golden Runes contained within the Blessed.
And when Rune energy touched the mark, the wooden disc immediately shone with brilliant golden light.
"I see!" Gol exclaimed, an expression of admiration on his face. "With your divine power guaranteeing them, no one can counterfeit this money... uh, I mean, these 'work points.'"
It seemed his earlier concern had been somewhat unnecessary before Lord Divine Tree.
"Nausicaä, for the next two days, help Beruto speed up the crops' growth. I need to see the granaries filled again. Only then can the plans that follow proceed smoothly."
"I understand, Mr. Tree."
Nausicaä had understood what Mu En intended to do before Gol did.
She only hoped people would be willing to accept such a change...