Chapter 12 Cassim the Aspiring Knight(2)

After the competition was over and the top three winners of each category were now all decided. King Rashid had come after this and met the completion winners, as he said in the top three awarding ceremonies in all the categories.

"First of all, I thank all the citizens of Balbadd who had participated in this competition for a chance to become part of the new decree. You citizens had heard of recently; this competition mani reason was to find some talented people from the slums or normal civilians to have a chance to become part of the country's higher-ups."

"This decree was initially suggested by, as you all know, my son Alibaba the third prince of Balbadd as he saw the citizens of Balbadd's declining lifestyle in recent years which I apologize of as the king of this nation and wasn't able to see you the citizens problems this last few years."

"But since this is still a new decree, we couldn't administer it for everyone yet as although our country is prosperous we might have not enough positions for everyone yet so that It might take a few years before our country will be able to give every citizen at least have a sustainable work. However, I promise, as the current king of Balbadd, we will try as fast as possible to implement this decree faster."

After Rashid finished his speech and gave the top three winners, respectively 15 Dinars for the first placer, 13 Dinars for the second, and 10 Dinar for the third, every citizen from the slum was surprised how much they were awarded.

Everyone from the slums was surprised since most of them don't even encounter a whole Dinar for most of their lives as they only mostly use at most 5 Dinar their whole lives, and it was just a combination of Dirham and Full.

Then after this, Casino quickly went home after accepting the Dinars and learning when he will visit the Balbadd palace to start his work while carrying back Cassim and Mariam on his back as they arrived in their house. After they arrived home, Casino was pleased, and a rare event happened that Casino had bought a lot of food when he brought his son and daughter to a local restaurant. For the first time, Cassim and Mariam had experienced this luxury of eating this type of food after their mother left.

And lastly, after 3 months and the current month which Prince Hakuyuu had arrived. Casino rose through the ranks of Balbadd due to his Saber skills and was now the personal guard of Alibaba. Alibaba met Cassim one day when he came to Balbadd castle to hand Casino his Saber, which he had forgotten to bring that day, and coincidentally at that time, Alibaba was with Casino.

So after this, with a few talks with each other, Cassim was able to befriend Alibaba since they had very contrasting personalities, which made them actually be better friends since they balanced each other too well. Even Cassim knew that Alibaba was actually the third prince after a while. He didn't change his personality towards Alibaba as he no actually liked the Balbadd Royal Family as they were the ones that gave the decree, which was the cause of Casino's personality change.

Alibaba himself had gotten close to Cassim because he found his personality interesting, and Alibaba also saw. Cassim had talent in combat by just his look and aura and found that due to his matureness, he thought Cassim could be smart.

So after this, Alibaba had asked his father if he can study along with Cassim, which the king allowed, although it can only happen sometimes as Cassim still had to take care of his sister in the new house that was near the Balbadd palace where most guards and nobles live in. They stayed in because of Casino's salary and because he was now the personal guard of Alibaba.

Now then after thinking of things about Casino when he took a look at him, Alibaba started to show Hakuyuu notable locations of Balbadd castle, which one of them was Marcus's room. When they arrived, Marcus had just finished talking to someone Hakuyuu when he saw the orb Marcus was talking to identify it as a magic communicator.

But Hakuyuu didn't comment on it as most magicians he had seen had commonly. I had this type of magic device to talk with other magicians in other locations. After introducing each other, Marcus and Hakuyuu had talked with each other for a bit about swordsmanship and the Kou Empire before Alibaba continued the tour around Balbadd palace with Hakuyuu.

Then a few minutes after Hakuyuu and Alibaba left. Marcus thought, "I didn't expect to see the Imperial prince of the Kou Empire come here himself as from the news I heard it was supposed to be just an ordinary envoy from Kou to arrive here."

"I didn't think that the prince would come here. I guess I can't conduct my plan now." Marcus, although a normal magician, was a part of Matal Mogamett's close members of his belief that Goi is useless and is nothing but animals. However, due to him being an expert in deception, even Alibaba, who had a third eye, couldn't figure out Marcus's true personality unless he actively used the third eye towards Marcus, which Alibaba had never done yet.

Marcus plan was to initially manipulate the envoy of the Kou Empire to embarrass or be extremely rude towards the royal family of Saluja to make their plan to be allied to fail and for a chance for his master Matal Mogamett to be able to usurp the Musta'sim Kingdom which will happen a few years from now according to what Mogamettt had told them earlier. And he did this as he thought that Alibaba was worthy of being part of this operation due to his insane magic amount.

As he thought of this, he then started to call back Mogammet as before Alibaba and Hakuyuu had entered the just reported to Mogamett about the insane talent that Alibaba had and about the mysterious ninth type of rukh, which also caused Mogamett to be deeply interested as he ordered Marcus to observe Alibaba for a bit longer.