Mercenaries and Adventurers

Listening to the noisy discussion, exclamation, and cheers of the audience next to his ears, Knight Crowe looked at the last two untested machetes. He doesn't like these two machetes very much. Although the work of No. 4 contestant is a bit stronger, it actually deviates from the traditional machete style in appearance, at least the Kendall County machete style. Its blade and back are very straight, and the tip of the knife does not have a rounded arc, but a direct and sharp corner.

And the work of contestant No. 5 is even worse, he just saw it on the stage. The edge of this machete has undergone a lot of chopping, resulting in many small nicks and a large number of curling edges. Based on experience alone, Knight Crowe can feel that it will break apart with just one strong collision.

Looking at the happy audience around him, Knight Crowe felt that it was better to let the audience maintain their emotions a little longer.

Stretching out his hand, the work of contestant No. 4 flew straight into his hand. He raised the machete to signal to the audience, and during the host's introduction, Knight Crowe pulled out the blade of the machete.

Taking a closer look, Knight Crowe found that the blade of the machete also had some minor damage, but it was not too serious. When he came to the iron pillar, Knight Crowe took a step forward, swinging his weapon with his right hand.

boom! hmm~~~

The simple shape of the blade was easy to chop into the iron pillar, but at the same time, because of this shape, it got stuck in the crack of the iron pillar. Knight Crowe wanted to take out the machete backwards, but the machete got stuck so hard that he had to pull it out.

The machete hacked into one-third of the iron pillar, which was considered a good result. Immediately afterwards, Knight Crowe went on to test the next item.

The shape of contestant No. 4's work is actually more conducive to dealing with things like shields and armor, but it is a bit small. If the machete in his hand can be enlarged by about half, that is, a two-handed sword of about 1.5 meters, it will be very convenient to deal with light armor and light shields.

Crow Knight estimated that the design of No. 4 player's machete should have borrowed from this aspect.

Swinging the machete, as expected, a lot of sparks and strong collision noise erupted from the place where the machete collided with the shield.

boom! Squeak——~~~clang!

After the blow, the audience stretched their heads to see the result.

The result was not what the audience expected. The scars caused by the machete did not cut off the armor on the surface of the shield, and did not even destroy the hard steel on the surface of the armor. Only a long scratch was left on the armor.

Seeing the result, many viewers felt rather regretful. Knight Crowe felt that it was good that he didn't directly choose No. 5's work to make them change from great joy to great sorrow. With the works of No. 4 contestant as a buffer, he has already made adjustments in consideration of everyone's feelings.

Without giving everyone more time, Crow Knight immediately took the machete work of contestant No. 5 into his hands, showed it to the audience, and then came to the iron pillar. The staff of the church hurriedly marked the knife marks on the No. 4 player on the shield and ran to the sidelines.

Pulling out the machete from the scabbard, Knight Crowe glanced at the pattern on the knife and didn't have any opinion. Viewers may think this pattern is beautiful, so they like it very much. But as a professional fighter, Crow Knight still doesn't like this work very much.

Because the pattern on its surface is actually very thin.

According to ordinary precision forging weapons, repeated folding and forging usually requires a blacksmith to work for several days. A forged weapon is considered a work with excellent performance.

Contestant No. 5 only folded and forged the machete embryo a few times during the tense time of the competition. This behavior can only be said to be a special behavior for the competition.

Therefore, Knight Crowe looked at the excited faces of the onlookers, and he slightly pulled the corner of his mouth,

Smiled a little, and then slashed out with a knife.

As expected, with a bang! Then, amidst the tinkling sound of scattered blade fragments, the work of No. 5 contestant directly shattered into many pieces.

The host was different from other surprised and unbelieving audiences. Instead, he shouted excitedly: "The work of contestant No. 5 shattered directly in front of the iron pillar! Similar to the previous contestants with broken works, contestant No. 5 seems to be I also had a premonition of the fate of my own work. I'm sorry, but please work harder next year!"

"Okay, please let the staff clean up the debris of the machete. Next, audience members, you can get close to watching the results of this year's best works. Please open the partitions so that the audience can watch carefully. "

Following the host's words, Knight Crowe jumped from the field to the wooden platform. Then discuss with the other two all the machete works that have completed all the tests.

They are: the work of contestant No. 7, the work of contestant No. 12, the work of contestant No. 3, and the work of contestant No. 4.

There are only four in total.

In fact, compared with previous years, the ratio of 12 kinds to 4 has made Bordeaux shepherd quite happy. It doesn't matter to him who wins the championship. What really matters is the technical progress of each craftsman every year. How well the blacksmiths are participating in the competition.

The audience entered the center of the venue through the removed railings, and they all approached the iron pillars and the fixed cavalry shields. Someone knocked on the hardness of the iron pillar with his hands, and someone poked the cavalry shield with his own dagger to see if it was as hard as he saw.

Knight Crowe laughed heartily on the stage, not to mention poking the shield with a dagger, even if it was a machete work forged for the same player in the audience, the audience would not be able to cause the same destructive results as him.

After all, the cavalry shield is a special defensive weapon designed to withstand the powerful impact of two knights facing each other. It cannot be easily destroyed, and it is not easy for ordinary people to even leave scratches on its surface.

After the audience tested the strength of the cavalry shield with their own daggers, they naturally felt awe at the scars on the surface of the shield.

Zhao Ji also squeezed through the crowd and moved over. He was not curious about the iron pillars, he squeezed in front of the fixed cavalry shield, and carefully stroked the scars caused by each machete with his hands. Needless to say, among the several scars, only the machete of No. 3 player caused the most destructive power. Zhao Ji carefully observed the structure of the cavalry shield through the severed place.

It was found that the structure of this humble cavalry shield is really complicated. The armor plate on the surface has a structure of at least three layers, and the wooden material underneath as the main body does not know what kind of tree it is made of.

Coming to the back of the shield, Zhao Ji focused on the handle of the shield. Finding that the part of the shield that fixes the arm has a multi-layer cushioning structure, Zhao Ji touched it with his hand, but he didn't feel anything. If you don't take it apart and check it, it's hard for Zhao Ji to know what are the several unknown materials in the shield's cushioning structure.

Of course, he didn't have the guts to break Knight Crowe's things in front of so many people.

After roughly asking the audience to carefully check the results of the last few machetes, the host asked the audience loudly, which work this year is the winner that has truly been recognized by everyone.

All the audience agreed that No. 3 contestant and his machete work are well-deserved champions!

The excited spectators lifted contestant No. 3 and threw it up and down.

Contestant No. 3 was also crying and laughing. In the distance, the wife and children of No. 3 Contestant came out from their hiding place, calling their husband and father's name loudly.

Contestant No. 3 was a little surprised, but then responded loudly to them, asking them to come over and share this moment of glory together.

Zhao Ji watched the lively scene with a smile. Since he saw the winner win, he no longer paid attention to the following things. He squeezed through the crowded crowd towards the wooden platform and left here.

He was very satisfied with everything he participated in and watched today. This Harvest Festival is quite interesting. Compared with the various cookie-cutter festivals in the previous life, it seems that people in this world are really participating in and enjoying each of their festivals.

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In the next few days, Zhao Ji quietly watched the Luna Belief activity held at midnight in a remote garden in the upper city. It turned out that the believers in Kendall City had reached a certain number of believers who believed in the three moon gods. I didn’t know which god was among the three moon gods, so I chose one of the believers in Kendall City who seemed to be the most devout congregation , granted her the rank of Luna Shepherd, and in a burst of light from the moon, brought an oracle for her to form the Luna Church in Kendall City.

Zhao Ji was watching from the wall beside the garden in the distance. He noticed that several knights appeared at the garden scene. The knights stood at the outermost part of the crowd, all carrying light weapons.

Zhao Ji thought at the time that these knights were going to clean up the Luna Cultists, but after the event ended, these knights didn't express any opinions, they just surrounded and watched.

He didn't know what the local nobles thought of these churches, whether they liked them or didn't like them. From the point of view that each church can deeply influence and manage various aspects of Kendall County, the noble management class and the church should cooperate with each other tacitly. But Zhao Ji also keenly noticed that although the influence of the church in the city is in all aspects, it is absent in terms of force.

Only the old shepherd of the Church of the God of the Dead who had met twice was considered to have participated in the security management of the city. But the degree of participation is not high, and more likely it is just the cooperation of the church's corresponding government affairs office.

On the second day of the Harvest Festival, after drinking delicious beef bone soup in the morning, Zhao Ji also watched the complete "Legend of the Prince's Exorcism" in the Chengmen Square. After watching it, Zhao Ji even came to a conclusion that this drama should be a story about his kingdom mocking and sarcasm its neighbors. Many of the sarcasm are not too straightforward, but rather cryptic. But it can be felt through the lines. Zhao Ji guessed that the international influence may not be good, so he did not directly vent, or the prototype of the "prince" in the story may still be alive at this time.

After playing happily during the Harvest Festival for several days, Zhao Ji completely forgot to buy a set of wooden two-handed swords for practice and conduct martial arts training with the captain at the gate of the city.

As a result, on that day, the two had no choice but to continue their sword and shield training. Since the captain of the guard had been using the big sword all year round, he had completely forgotten about his sword and shield skills. The two had no choice but to conduct confrontation training directly, and they practiced like this for a whole morning.

There's nothing wrong with this, at least it allows Zhao Ji to pick up the martial arts that have been left behind these days.

The two agreed that Zhao Ji must prepare a wooden sword for the next round of training, and then the training ends, or the guard is really embarrassed to take Zhao Ji's share of the training fee.

The intense sword-shield confrontation training that day reminded Zhao Ji that he still had something formal to do. He was ready that afternoon, and went out of the city to hunt slime monsters with a lot of breadsticks left by the chamber of commerce.

After that week, Zhao Ji finally went through the daily crusade against slime monsters and killed every slime monster that could be found in the swamp south of the city at night. During the crusade and hunting, the shepherd Weltz of the Saturnalia Church also provided a lot of help. Greeting the slack farmers to carry the wheelbarrow, and partnering with Zhao Ji to set up temporary rain shelter camps in three directions of the swamp, etc. Although he didn't provide any help in terms of force, Zhao Ji didn't think that this Wiltz shepherd was incapable of fighting.

It can only be said that people do not want to intervene. Judging from Wiltz's shepherd's style, it is estimated that there are also reasons for dislike of slime monsters and the smell of swamps.

After a week of harvest festival celebrations, the feeling of autumn is slowly passing, and the footsteps of early winter are entering all parts of Kendal County. According to Todd, this year's autumn rain is much more than in previous years. During Zhao Ji's week of hunting slime monsters, he encountered two continuous autumn rains.

The swamp in the rain was completely different from the usual time. The tree trails built by Zhao Ji were submerged in the rising swamp water, so he had to check every step he took to see if he stepped on the ground. Fortunately, Zhao Ji had a spear in his hand, and he tried to move in the swamp with the bottom of the gun. During those two autumn rainy nights, Zhao Ji had to lure the slime monsters to the edge of the swamp in order to kill them reliably.

However, the hunt was completed without any risk.

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After completing the promised slime monster hunt, Zhao Ji packed his bags and told Jamla and the old Foxtail President that he was going to go to the big village in the east of the county to hunt down goblins.

In this regard, Jamura gave Zhao Ji two bottles of herbal medicine jars for him to use to clean the wound if he was injured. It can stop bleeding and relieve pain and accelerate wound healing. Zhao Ji has been coveting Jamla's herbal ointment for a long time, and he had pestered him to learn this before, but Jamla's herbal medicine technology in this area is just learning.

Jamura learned the technique from a pharmacist outside the city. After many years, he himself has not yet become a teacher, and he does not dare to accept apprentices as masters. As for how Jamura learned from a pharmacist, it was the recommendation of Jamura's friend, Knight Crow, to obtain the qualifications for learning.

After hearing what happened to Zhao Ji in the next period of time, the old Foxtail President smiled and asked Zhao Ji to bring him back a goblin head. It would be better if there were more. Make specimens, display them in the chamber of commerce, and hang them on the walls of his office and the hall on the second floor of the chamber of commerce.

Zhao Ji didn't want to comment on the aesthetics of the old Foxtail President, so he had to pat his chest and promise to do it.