Karl was already completely ready to pledge his life to the new mistress that he had chosen. But after suddenly being given this kind of benefit, he felt that even his life was not an adequate price for it.
Giving him this modified and improved technique was equivalent to giving him his path of the knight back. Karl had lost all his hope for any future progress but now it had came back to him again.
To show how grateful he was, Karl immediately went on his knees and bowed his head low to Weiss. Then he pledged in a very determined voice -
"I, Karl Dummer, pledge to become a sword for mistress Souran for eternity. I'm willing walk through fire and ice for your sake and give my life away if I'm told. Please accept my request and allow me to be your knight."
While saying this pledge, Karl's voice was extremely sincere. If he was actually lying here and was planning something heinous in his heart, then Weiss had to say that he was without a doubt a god level actor.
So even she could not help but be moved by this. So she decided to at least trust him a little while still keeping an eye on him just in case.
"I will accept this request. From now on your name will be Karl Alucard and your role will be my personal bodyguard. Understood ?"
"Yes, mistress."
When taking in a knight, giving them a name was a sign of rebirth and also a show of trust by the lord. So Weiss doing so was extremely significant to Karl.
As for the name name Alucard, it was the name of bloodthirsty knight from a legend who had managed to conquer his bloodlust and becoming a heroic saint. So by giving this name to Karl, Weiss was also cheering him on.
That was how, Weiss managed to get a new subordinate and it was not just any regular subordinate but a powerful knight with decently high potential.
...
After that, Weiss brought Karl to the castle and introduced him to Robin and the mother daughter pair as their new colleague. And currently Karl was the only member of the army belonging to the Souran family.
Weiss still hid his true status as a knight from them as she did not want any chance of this leaking to the outside.
Weiss wanted Karl to act as a double agent in the future. So keeping his identity hidden was extremely important.
After the introductions were over, Dora and Mary went back to their work. As for the remaining three, they went to the office to finalize their plans about going to a city for trading.
Karl would obviously be joining Weiss for this trip. Weiss had thought about letting him stay in the village in order to guard it in her absence. But Weiss also needed his experience very badly in the city.
So after thinking about this a little, she had decided that taking him with her would be better. Weiss had cleared away all the dangerous nearby monster beasts, so chance of a monster attack happening in a short period of time was low.
Not just that but even in her absence, the village was not completed unprotected. Weiss had managed to tame quite a few beasts during her research on the monster beasts and she had ordered those tamed beasts to also listen to Robin's order.
So as long no powerful mid level monster beasts attacked the village, it should be safe.
...
Weiss was really in a hurry to visit the city and start making preparations for implementing her plans properly. There were a lot of things that Weiss wanted to do but was unable to only because of a lack of funds.
For this reason, just two days after Karl becoming her subordinate, they left the village with the intention of visiting a city called Tigatha that was located quite close to village of Nin where Karl had been to before.
This city was ruled by count Bestrix who was something like a rival for Count Falgur. But his overall military might was lower than the Falgur family, so he had never tried to start a real war.
But he had spent quite some efforts to properly rule over and improve the Tigatha city. So among the cities of the Brightshine kingdom, it was considered to be one of the best.
For this reason, the trading industry was quite developed there. So Weiss should not only be able to sell everything here for a good price, she should also be able to find all the things that she needed for her various plans.
...
To reach Tigatha, Weiss and Karl needed to travel for 5 or 6 days non stop. And considering the time that they would stay in the city, Weiss would at least be away from her territory for at least two weeks.
As both Karl and Weiss were powerful knights, they did not need much rest. So if it was only them on the road, they might have been able to shorten the journey to only three or four days.
But because they were carrying a lot of things, they had a carriage and a horse with them. That was why both of the knights needed to match the slow speed of a horse.
While being on the road, Weiss started learning various general knowledge from Karl. This was a field that she was inexperienced about.
On the other hand, Karl was super surprised about how much knowledge Weiss had about some rare and little known things while being completely oblivious about various famous things.
The first day of the journey was calm and peaceful. They had only encountered one beast attack during the whole day and that was easily taken care of by Weiss with just a few dozens of arrows.
Then for the night, Weiss had decided to spend that beside a river. They had enough food and water with them but still staying near the river was a good thing.
Weiss had modified the storage carriage a little so that it was able to singnal her if someone was trying to secretly enter it.
And because of her high perception attribute, Weiss's detection ability was extremely strong and her sleep was very light. That was why she was able to calmly sleep inside a corner of the storage carriage even when a powerful person was close to her.
Obviously Weiss did not continued sleeping for the whole night. Even though Karl had told her that he could take care of the night watch all on his own, Weiss had rejected that.
Karl also needed to be stay in perfect shape in order to properly guide her in the city. So he also needed to have proper rest and sleep. So they were alternating for the night duty.
...
Overall, the first day of the journey was problem free but Weiss and Karl encountered a trouble on the second day. It was group of bandits who were blocking the way of the carriage.
So was this bandit group truly going to be any trouble or was it just a minor inconvenience for these two powerful knights ? The answer to that was very obvious.