Chapter 55

With his friends and girlfriend's blessings, the next morning Timothy quickly headed over to the office that handles giving out missions and creating squads for said missions for students and instructors. Some who were given special positions within the Grey Imperial Academy would sometimes apply as an instructor role for these missions since it was a great way to earn some additional income while their positions within their own forces remained intact. Majority of forces wanted even their executive or elder ranked individuals to contribute to the force and the best way for many would include taking up odd jobs and starting businesses that would break off a piece of their overall sales to the force.

As he walked inside, it looked to be that not a single student was present but only one secretary looking woman who was middle aged and looking through a small stack of applications. Timothy was unsure why such a scene looked like this , but after pondering about it for some time, he realized that chances were that many of the students who were accepted were immediately made into a squad and sent out immediately and since most missions would last at least two months upwards to several years, it explained why there was not a line in front of him of students.

"Hello, my name is Timothy and I am in the third year class. I just became a true rank three dual expert and was told that I could submit an application here in order to head to the outside world with a squad and instructor to temper myself?" Since no one else besides him and the woman were present, Timothy was as pleasant as he could be as he inquired with the woman concerning the entire process. To his surprise, the night before the military sent out an emergency request to every academy to make several emergency squads to send out right away.

From the reports given to the higher ups in the military, there were several signs that a very large demonic beast horde was currently in the process of forming and the best way to prevent a large scale battle which would end up greatly damaging many expensive barriers, it would be much easier to send in many squads of students in order to kill off smaller groups of low level demonic beasts. In case the squads were to be wiped out, the Imperial Family issued an emergency order to many trusted forces in a way to beef up the overall military might in those particular areas but they were mainly there to help defend their empire rather than going into the areas to slay the demonic beasts.

From what the woman had claimed, it seemed like many lower tier mercenary groups were directly hired from military representatives to do the same thing but not every area was covered completely which was a big cause for concern. And so after giving his application to the woman, Timothy was told to prepare because in one week, he would be assigned to a squad and would be meeting with the squad at the west entrance of the campus so that they could head out immediately from there.

Due to the emergency orders being given, Timothy was given special permission to use whatever materials someone at his blacksmith star level could use in order to make any additional preparations in which he felt fit. The Imperial Family was not frugal when it came to the safety of the empire and in a way, they were sending out many students of the younger generation of the commoner class to possibly their deaths so the least that they could do was give Timothy among many others with similar accolades such resources.

The night before the big day, Timothy and the others head out to the Flying Sword Clan's restaurant, the force that Andrew's father was solely supplying weapons and armor to on a regular basis now, in order to make sure that they could send Timothy off properly since there was no telling if he would even be able to make it back. Due to the emergency orders, Ian's family also requested that he momentarily give up his studies in order to be hired on by them and given a military but supportive role. Not just that, but Nora's father wanted her to head towards the Grand Marshal Castle, home to a well decorated general so that she would be in the safest place that she could be in since he personally was in the middle of a military campaign against a horde of demonic beasts.

So this was mainly going to be one of the last times in quite a long time that this group of teenagers would be able to see and interact with all of themselves in the same place until things began to calm down again. Though the emergency orders were serious, this would be a normal thing to happen every fifty years or so and would last less than three or four years depending on how many demonic beasts could be cleared out. The only issue was that with so many available demonic beast cores and souls being able to enter into the open market in such bulk, the overall price of each would plummet downwards. But the Imperial Family would make sure that the military would purchase a large portion of any of them so that small and medium sized businesses who relied on those particular resources to sell would not lose everything.

Timothy, although extremely depressed that he would not be able to see his girlfriend for a good period of time, was still in a rather good mood all considered. The reason was because now that he was a rank three dual cultivator and even was a one star blacksmith, he would be directly receiving automated offers from across the empire. In order to keep their foundation from falling apart, many of the top powers would automate offer requests to those with Timothy's overall skill level in order to continue recruiting large batches of valuable future assets.

These offers were automated and usually not too competitive, but once he was part of the system that had done this, it meant that in person visitors would begin to inquire about his future plans. If things matched up for said visitors, they would immediately give Timothy a much more ideal offer specialized specifically for him whether it would be a certain amount of free materials for him concerning his blacksmithing path, or even an overall yearly bonus of pills or other items that could aid him in becoming a stronger warrior or mage or even both!

Usually the strongest forces within the empire would not really bother even automating offers to someone who was Timothy's rank and instead would automate offers to those rank five or above. That being said, it did not mean that there existed first rate forces who would not do this. Every generation was different and while some forces would see a sharp and steady rise in power, other forces would see a sharp decline. And so the recruitment business for independent or rather commoner background cultivators such as Timothy would see changes in the market and he was not ready to make any final decisions.