The road to Eldoria Kingdom felt longer than it should have, not because of distance but because the silence kept bending in strange ways, stretching moments thin while Lyra filled every gap with unnecessary commentary about how kingdoms always smelled like stone, pressure, and poor life decisions, while Rylan walked beside her carrying nothing but a small pack, calm eyes forward, mind half on the condition of the soil he left behind and half on the strange weight of a decision that still felt less dramatic than harvesting before rain.
The moment the outer gates of Eldoria came into view, the atmosphere shifted, banners snapping in disciplined rhythm, armored guards standing too straight to be comfortable, and the air buzzing with ambition so thick it felt chewable, which made Lyra lean closer and whisper that everyone here looked like they were competing in a staring contest against destiny and losing badly.
Inside the recruitment hall, polished floors reflected authority, massive maps covered the walls like scars from old wars, and rows of candidates stood proudly in decorated cloaks and pressed uniforms, all of them radiating confidence sharpened by training, bloodline, or expensive education, until that confidence began quietly cracking at the sight of dirt-stained boots stepping across marble without hesitation.
The registration officer paused mid-sentence, quill hovering in the air as if unsure whether to continue existing, eyes traveling from the worn sleeves to the calm posture to the expression that belonged more to someone judging cloud cover than battlefield formations, while Lyra leaned on the counter and asked far too cheerfully whether dirt disqualified intelligence or merely offended carpets.
Paperwork refused to behave, maps subtly sliding into alignment when touched, ink drying instantly as if impatient, assistants whispering about omens while pretending not to, and somewhere in the background a veteran commander developing a headache powerful enough to reconsider retirement.
The written evaluation began with problems designed to break confidence, layered scenarios involving fractured supply lines, divided fronts, morale collapse, terrain exploitation, and attrition over time, challenges that made trained tacticians sweat and nobles grind their teeth, while Rylan stared at the parchment with mild curiosity and quietly rewrote the entire problem as exhausted soil, overharvested land, misread seasons, and farmers arguing instead of rotating crops.
Explanations followed in calm, connected reasoning that compared starving armies to neglected fields, explained that desperate charges resembled overwatering roots until rot set in, and concluded that wars, like harvests, were lost long before anyone noticed because impatience always arrived earlier than consequences, causing scribes to stop writing halfway through sentences just to stare.
The first challenge collapsed into stunned silence, the second dissolved when a proud tactician angrily objected only to be dismantled by an analogy involving tomatoes, frost, and generals who refused to wait three days, and the third ended when a senior officer slowly realized that every answer not only worked but removed three future disasters at once.
Lyra watched from the side with open amusement, counting the number of powerful people silently questioning their life choices, occasionally whispering encouragement that somehow made the room louder by doing absolutely nothing.
By the time the final scenario concluded, the hall no longer felt like a place of judgment but like a field after rain, quiet, heavy, and full of things growing whether permission had been granted or not, while whispers spread about a new doctrine forming without a name, a way of thinking that treated chaos as natural rather than terrifying.
Behind closed doors, officials argued in careful voices about risk, control, and precedent, while every map touched earlier remained subtly changed, lines cleaner, outcomes clearer, and panic strangely absent, forcing an uncomfortable truth into the discussion that brilliance could be trained but this could not.
When the doors opened again, the announcement carried formal weight wrapped around visible confusion, stating acceptance into the Royal Tactical Leadership Division under temporary observation status, a phrase that sounded polite but meant the system had no category for what just happened.
Lyra grinned like someone watching a bridge collapse exactly as predicted, while Rylan nodded once, calm as ever, already wondering whether the kingdom understood that fields demanded patience and wars demanded the same.
Far above, beyond clouds and stars, the God of Everything leaned forward with genuine interest for the first time in ages, boredom fully evaporated, because the farmer had stepped onto a board meant for generals and kings, and the game had finally become interesting.