Maria limped back to the servant dormitories in the palace, wiping blood off her face. She never expected the king to attack her so suddenly.
'I have to get stronger. As cruel as it was, the king is right. I can't hold him back.'
Before she went to sleep, she looked at herself in the mirror. She put her hair up in a bun and slapped herself in the face.
'I really hope Jacob's okay. He really scared me when he collapsed back there'
Her face started turning bright red thinking about when she was holding him.
'What? Why am I thinking about that right now? I just wanted to make sure he wasn't bleeding out or anything.'
Her heart skipped a beat. She whispered to herself and walked towards her bed.
"There's no time to be thinking about things like that right now. Just go to sleep."
When Maria woke up, she put on a clean pair of servant's clothes and went to do her chores. She started with sweeping the palace floors. Each time she swept, she was aiming to not accidently break the broom or throw it across the hall. Five brooms later, another servant came up to her and pleaded to take her place.
"Please miss, we are almost out of brooms. Just let me handle the rest of it."
Maria pouted and handed it over.
Her next task was to wash a bunch of clothes in a giant wooden barrel. As she attempted to scrub some of the royal attire, she managed to rip three shirts, two pants, five undergarments and one hat completely in half. When she got upset and threw her brush into the bucket, it exploded into thousands of wooden shards and rained water on all the other servants.
Soaked, angry and defeated, Maria walked to her final task.
She was assigned to clean all the desks in the palace classroom. Surprisingly, she managed to only break two desks by the end of the task. Her control over her strength was increasing at a steady pace. What she had been trying to do was spread her enhancement throughout her entire body, instead of just a single part.
The strength increase would not be as large if it was not concentrated, but giving her overall self a power boost was a valuable boon.
As Maria left the classroom, she bumped into somebody and fell on the ground. Weirdly, for as strong as she was, the person she ran into didn't even flinch. Looking up, Maria saw the face of a beautiful tan woman with dark brown hair and a bright smile.
"I'm terribly sorry ma'am. Please forgive my clumsiness."
Maria bowed her head.
"Don't worry about it! Say, you look familiar. Where do I know you?"
The woman studied Maria up and down as if gauging her strength.
"Uh... I don't believe we've met before ma'am. I just work around the palace so it's possible you may have seen me working a few times."
The woman's face brightened up, like something clicked in her brain.
"Aha! I know who you are! You're the prince's girlfriend! Geez, I thought I'd never see you two apart."
Maria's face turned a bright shade of scarlet.
"W-w-what? The prince and me? No no, I think you have it wrong! I-I'm just his servant is all."
"HAHAHA! I'm just playing around, but I have heard of you before."
Maria scratched the back of her head, slightly confused.
"You're the woman with rumors going around about how strong you are. They say you took someone down three times your size. Is that true?"
"Not necessarily. The king was the one who brought him down."
"Hmm... do you know who I am by any chance?"
"Truthfully, I can tell you are of noble blood just by your presence, but I am unsure which family you belong to."
"Well allow me to introduce myself."
The woman held out her hand.
"I'm Lidia Rose. I'm the head of the Rose Clan here in Iron Kingdom."
Maria's face heart dropped and she quickly bowed.
"M-my lady, I'm extremely sorry for my rudeness. Please forgive me!"
"Don't sweat it. Say, can you do me a favor?"
"Anything you need, my lady."
Lidia held out her palm in front of her, taking a stance to support herself.
"I want you to punch me as hard as you can."
Maria's scared expression turned into a baffled one.
"You... want me to punch you, my lady?"
"That's right! I think I just want to confirm or deny the rumors myself. You may not have taken him down, but you definitely fought him so you can't be all that weak."
Maria still looked at her with disbelief. Then, she took a step back to prepare herself.
"Are you ready?"
"I'm ready."
With that, Maria twisted her hips, threw her right arm, and sent her knuckles right into the hand of the large woman.
The sound when they connected was deafening. The entire hall they stood in shook with force so great, dust flew off of the ceiling.
To Maria's great shock, the woman still stood completely still holding her ground... but her hand wasn't so lucky. It was completely bent out of shape. Most of the fingers were facing the wrong way and her wrist looked like it had snapped back towards her forearm.
As Lidia looked down at her hand she smiled brightly, seemingly unaffected by the pain.
"What's your name?"
"My name?"
She paused for a moment.
"My name is Maria."
"Maria... How would you like to work under me for a bit?"
"Under you? But why?"
"I think your kind of help is just what I need out in our fields. Just follow me."
"What about your hand?"
"Hm? What about it?"
Before Maria could say anything, she looked back at the woman's hand which was now mysteriously back to its previous condition.
"How...how did you-"
"Just follow me."
Maria followed her obediently towards the outskirts of the kingdom. The fields of the kingdom were to the south, so they had to wrap around the kingdoms walls to reach them. Despite the long arduous walk, Maria felt excited. She got to work under one of the heads of the noble clan. There was no doubt she was going to be pushing her limits.
Maria walked towards a field with a multitude of workers harvesting an assortment of vegetables from the ground. They had large carriages next to them to put their crops in, but each time it was full, they needed to cart it all the way back to the kingdom.
"Welcome to the crop fields, Maria! Make yourself at home!"
"Certainly, my lady. But what would you like me to do?"
"Well, you see. Some of the carts to wagon all the goods back to the kingdom are broken. Because of that, the food storage was getting a little low. So, I need you to act as a 'wheel' per say. Or maybe a wagon itself."
"So, you need me to cart a bunch of full carts back to the kingdom? Do you need me to unload them as well when I'm there?"
"Wow! That's so nice of you! I wasn't planning on making you but that would be really helpful! If you need anything, I'll be helping everyone else harvest our crops."
As Maria walked over to one of the full wagons, she noticed its front right wheel missing and there were long wooden sticks on each side that allowed for a dozen of people to pick up and pull the cart. She got towards the front of it, grabbed each of the wooden sticks and tried pulling the cart forward.
However, when she tried pulling, that cart hardly budged. She tried again, this time attempting to spread her strength between both her legs. Slowly, the cart started moving forward towards the entrance.
'Damn it. Why is this cart so heavy?!'
Maria struggled to keep her strength between both her legs. Every now and then, she would put too much power to one side and either trip or send one side of the cart moving forward without the other. Each mistake costed her more time.
When she finally made it to the palace entrance, she got inside the cart and started unloading thousands of bags of potatoes. Her energy was already diminishing with every movement she made, but she wasn't nearly ready to call it quits.
After she finished unloading her last bag, she got underneath the wooden bars of the cart and started hauling it all the way back to the fields. By the time she got back, she was met with three more full carts she had to bring to the kingdom.
'I think I'm going to die out here.'
Maria's legs were shaking with every step she took, her arms were numb and her hands were blistered from holding on to the wooden poles to drag the carts. Multiple times she had tripped and faceplanted into the dirt. However, through all of this, Maria never once doubted she couldn't do it.
Every trip she made was hell, yet her motivation never wavered. By the end of the day, Maria got more than twelve carts to the kingdom and unloaded them all by herself. It was no exaggeration to say she was doing the work of at least ten people.
As Maria tried walking back to the palace, she could feel her consciousness slowly start to fade.
'Shit. I'm about to pass-'
Right as Maria was about to fall, a strong bronze arm stopped her decent. Lidia scooped Maria into her arms, threw her over her shoulder and started walking back to the palace.
"I can't believe the king had a woman like this doing laundry. I need to ask him to transfer her to my control as soon as I can!"