Damien had been gone for almost 4 months now.
About a decade or so had passed since the day 100 years passed in the main palace.
During that time, not a single person skimped on their training.
Their reasons varied, but there was a surprising number of people who worked hard for Damien's validation.
Disregarding Hestia who looked up to Damien, Dominic and Yiren who respected him, and Darius who practically treated him like a god, the soldiers themselves had Damien in their minds as they trained for multiple reasons.
For those who were chosen during the recruitment, it was a sense of reverence.
Those like Hershel originally believed they were worth nothing. They didn't think they had a chance to join the army when they came, but the chance was presented to them regardless.
Taken into the main palace, they were immediately put under an environment of harsh training without extraneous thought,
It was difficult, but nobody complained.
The harsh training meant they mattered. If they were just going to become nameless members of the palace, they wouldn't have been forced to undergo it in the first place.
Hershel didn't know much about the world of practitioners, but he knew Damien was one of the best.
Because the talent he didn't have was given to him.
And because of that, the talents he did have were finally able to show themselves.
Hershel wasn't alone in this. There were over a thousand out of those who were chosen who originally had the worst talent imaginable.
They were all gifted the things they lacked because Damien saw in them a will and spirit that could trump many experienced practitioners, and as a result, he gained their absolute loyalty.
He gave them purpose, so they would live for him.
Of course, not everyone was the same.
There were those who were talented from the start along the 10,000, and among them, there were plenty who'd trained before arriving at the main palace.
What impressed them was Damien's mysterious power.
He seemed to be able to do anything.
When they saw him "giving out talent," they didn't know how to feel. Talent was something intangible, so it shouldn't be able to be created, right?
That was what they thought before they met Damien.
That was when they learned that talent could also be mass-produced if someone really wanted it.
However, what impressed them was something else.
It was the act of creating over ten thousand personalized training manuals for the soldiers he picked.
This was not only a show of dedication, it was a show of power.
For Damien to see through each and every one of them to the core and develop manuals that, as they'd found over the past century, eclipsed anything they'd ever seen before in their lives, just how expansive was his sea of knowledge?
Still, those who didn't experience it themselves couldn't believe the words of those ten thousand, and Damien's siblings didn't speak on things they didn't need to.
Those who weren't a part of Damien's 10,000 men took longer to fall into the web known as his existence, but they still did eventually.
As the people heard more about the Young Lord of Void Palace, they became intrigued by his mysterious persona.
When some of those who'd been with the palace for a long time learned of his age and what he'd done to get to his current position, they became embarrassed with their lack of effort.
Those people couldn't stand to see the new blood in the palace progress so well and leave them behind. They wanted to be the core of the army, since they were the seniors, but for that to happen, they needed to properly double down and train until they could hold the right.
Aside from these two groups, the last of those in the army were the Swords and the Sanctuary army.
The Swords naturally had their own thoughts, but all of them had pretty much conceded when Nikolas chose to follow the Young Lord when requested.
As for the Sanctuarians, they were a great basis for the other parts of the army.
They'd been under Damien for a very long time, so not only were they used to the way he did things, but they were also the example of how this forming army was meant to be.
Elvira and the rest aided the new and old members of the palace, and following Damien's ideas, they formed a healthy rivalry between the various groups.
Positions of power could only be held by those who deserved them.
Anyone at any rank could challenge anyone at a higher rank for their position.
Of course, there were several rules to assure that nobody could cheat, but the army essentially had a free-for-all atmosphere of internal competition that boosted not only their synergy, but also their strength as they endlessly competed to be the strongest.
And those competitions weren't easy.
Because, in a miraculous century, the 10,500 people Damien picked up from the outside had become a force to be reckoned with.
10,500 people who had just entered Divinity, each with their own individual Divinity that couldn't be found anywhere else in the Heavenly World.
Under Damien's guidance, they didn't just become regular Demigods. They became real geniuses that could even compete with the young talents of some massive clans.
This was proven through the exact same competition mentioned above.
The geniuses of the four Grand Duke Clans were suddenly forced to work ten times as hard as anyone else, because before they knew it, they'd been outshined by everyone else.
Before, they'd only been under the Void siblings. They were content with their position, thinking they were doing okay for their talent level and didn't have to compete against people born superior.
But they were being challenged by people who couldn't even be argued as superior to them, and they were being defeated.
They were ashamed and motivated at the same time, a similar feeling to what some of their seniors felt as well.
The only ones left out of the storm were the Void siblings because of their status.
Still, they didn't skimp on training.
It started because nobody wanted to challenge them. They were too important for any common person to stand up and say they wanted to fight.
But at some point, the siblings came themselves and began challenging people.
As time passed and they kept winning their challenges, people also started getting over their fears.
Perhaps Damien's siblings didn't have some sort of newfound motivation like the rest of the army, but their old dreams were more than enough.
Damien was the only one.
He was the only one among them who thought about bringing the palace back to its prime and actually acted on it.
The rest of them could never get past the mental barrier, let alone the heaps of physical hurdles.
Damien gave them an opportunity. With it in front of them, none of them could continue to suppress their desires.
They also wanted to see Void Palace grow.
They also wanted to see it thrive!
When Damien returned to the palace, he found this atmosphere waiting for him, along with an army far more stable and powerful than he ever expected before.
'This is great.'
Damien's eyes sparkled.
'Since it's a lot better than expected, it might be about time to start.'
For their first large move, for the move that defined the beginning of the palace's rise, they were going to secure their original borders.
But before that…
'...I learned quite a lot during my time in the Southwestern Region.'
…they were going to score a win the Divine Order could never see coming.
