Mercenaries and Adventurers

The sky was getting darker, as if he had a premonition of something, and even the strong wind that often blew in the local area became lighter at this time.

Because of the strong wind and the harpies, not only the Thor village in front of them, but also other local villages and towns did not have any sentries on duty.

Because if you stand guard outside a building at night, in the morning, the place where there should be people is often empty.

Those bold and reckless harpies will naturally not let go of delicious humans who don't hide in the middle of the night.

They rarely pay attention to it during the day, let alone at night.

Most of the people on sentry duty in the village would only let out a brief cry when attacked by a harpy, and then be robbed into the sky and disappear.

Over time, locals stopped standing guard outside the building, day or night.

Instead, the village guards are placed at the semi-underground entrance of the already built wall, or inside the entrances of various low and bulky buildings in the village.

In short, while the foreign caravans realized that the Kendal people from the north had bad intentions, the villagers of Thor Village knew nothing about it.

The guards were just counting the number of caravans visiting this time and calculating how much the village could harvest tonight.

Little did he know that the punishment for rejection was about to come.

-

The two knights rode side by side at the end of the caravan entering the village.

But when they were about to go down the road to the semi-underground gate of the village, they stopped.

Looking at the man-made several-meter-high earthen wall surrounding the village in front of him, Knight Rumi said jokingly: "Humph, I don't know how these useless things can provide confidence to those people?"

Knight Crow shook his head: "They are just ignorant people. Although there are stories and poems about heroic knights everywhere, it is difficult for people to remain in awe of things that they have not witnessed with their own eyes. It is not that there are no knights and nobles in the local area, so they lose It’s just a matter of awe.”

"Come on, I will destroy a piece of the village wall later to allow the army to enter the village. By the way, I will destroy the gate that looks like a grass rat hole. The Baron will not go through such a dignified 'rat hole'."

After saying that, Knight Crow pointed to the door passage to Knight Rumi and motioned Rumi to deal with it. And he himself turned the horse's head and rode towards the earthen wall of the village facing the army on one side.

-

Under the distant gaze of the soldiers, Knight Crow went straight to the village wall.

To be honest, he really didn't know what those villagers were thinking. He really felt that this wall could only resist ordinary beasts. Who could it block?

I'm afraid that even ordinary robbers can't be stopped, right?

It was also because there were no bandits in the area that these villagers lost their awe and contrast.

The knight shook his head. If the traveling caravans had not relied on the villages along the trade routes to spend the night, some large caravans would have wiped out this village.

Without any other action, Knight Crow galloped forward. When he approached the village wall, he suddenly lifted the reins and knocked his legs against the horse's belly. The already familiar war horse immediately understood its master's intention. It jumped up in the middle of the gallop, carrying a ton of weight, including the man and the horse.

The war horse did not use its full strength, but it was enough to jump onto the three-meter-high earth wall.

There was a boom.

The entire fence trembled when the war horse landed, and the fixed flowers planted on the fence were shaken and scattered.

At the same time, all the caravans that had passed through the gate passage below had entered the village wall. Except for a few caravans that were distracted and crude, they were untying the horses on the carriages and washing them as usual, and the men entered the low underground buildings of the village. , other caravans came out to deal with the villagers in their own village to guide them, and they made mistakes and ignored him.

They were not fools. They heard that the local village refused to let the army enter the village to stay overnight to avoid the monsters at night, and saw the Kendal people outside the village who were well prepared.

Most of these businessmen could guess that something bad was going to happen.

So although they came in first according to the wishes of the Kendal people, they were not prepared to spend the night in a hurry, but were all waiting.

wait for what?

With a roar, one of the knights from Kendall jumped onto the village wall on horseback. The merchants all trembled when they heard the dull sound of landing, and then turned their heads to look over.

The villagers in the village who recommended the village's services also heard the noise and looked over with surprise on their faces.

Although I don't know what this person is going to do, it is obviously not a good thing.

The villagers clenched their fists and left the out-of-town businessmen around them. Some ran towards the Crow Knight on the wall, while others turned around and entered the low building nearby, took out long knives and short guns from the guard room at the door of the building, and huffed angrily. Cursing in his mouth, he ran towards the knight on the wall.

Seeing this, the businessmen had strange expressions on their faces. They asked their men to stay away from the wall and stretched their necks to watch the excitement.

Businessmen basically traveled all over the country and gained a lot of experience. They were extremely surprised when they saw that these villagers dared to quietly surround the knights on the wall with weapons in hand.

"Do you want to die?"

"Bah, bah, I don't even know what to say."

"As expected, he is an ignorant person. He has no knowledge even when the thunder is coming."

Knight Crow on the wall saw the local villagers gradually surrounding him below, and snorted disdainfully. He ignored the noise and questions of those people, and directly mobilized the life energy that had been transformed by the elements, and then extended it to the wall under the horse's hooves. , and then rushed.

Poof——

The earthen wall, which was obviously reinforced with a kind of flower seed with a particularly developed root system, suddenly seemed like the wooden beams had been hollowed out by wood-eating ants. A stream of dust was mixed with mosaic roots and the like, and more than ten people fell from the knight's horse. In the meter-long wall, it spewed out horizontally on both sides of the wall.

It was like an old rotten wood being hit with a heavy hammer. The village wall, which had obviously been built only a few years ago, now looked like an ancient wall that had not been repaired a hundred years ago, with creaking and rustling sounds coming from the inside. Bad sound.

Then, under the gaze of countless people, an entire section of the village's earthen wall gradually collapsed to both sides.

Knight Crow didn't even move, allowing the wall under his horse to collapse. The horse even used its mouth to fiddle with the flowers on the collapsing wall.

It's a pity that the horse has a bit in its mouth, so it can't eat normally, otherwise it would have to nibble on these flowers.

“Ahhhh——, the village wall!”

"How could this happen! How could it collapse! How could it happen!"

"This knight must have done it! He did it!"

Knight Crow turned his head to look at the shocked villagers inside the wall, and said directly: "Yes, I was the one who knocked this thing down." In his words, it was as if he had done a normal thing.

These words angered some young villagers, and they were furious. After all, the wall was an important protection for the village against wild beasts on the grassland, and it had been built and maintained by them since childhood.

The earthen wall that is several meters high and surrounds the entire village was built by the elders by flattening a small mound next to the village. The reinforced flower seeds on the wall were planted bit by bit by all the young people in the village. Cultivated by watering.

Now, the wall that has been built and maintained for many years has been destroyed by this knight using unknown means.

Their hearts were filled with anger, but neither men nor women dared to approach.

Because of the strange collapse of the wall in front of me, the tall armored horse under the knight's crotch, and the thick steel armor on the knight himself.

These things made the angry villagers hesitate and remain vigilant and rational.

So, after the wall collapsed, it sank underground in front of everyone's eyes. There was a faint vibration on the ground, and the collapsed walls were being squeezed into the ground during the vibration.

In this short moment, a notch more than ten meters long in the village wall appeared in front of everyone's eyes.

The people inside the wall saw through the notch the uniform army soldiers not far away outside the wall, and everyone shuddered.

The Kendall militiamen outside the wall proudly used the spears in their hands to stamp their feet, making a ton of sounds that ranged from chaotic to uniform.

Boom, boom.

Boom, boom.

Boom, boom.

Boom, boom.

The uniform sound frightened the villagers inside the wall. Most of the villagers did not know that there was an army outside the village, and they were at a loss at this moment.

Some timid villagers immediately fled among the caravan crowd.

Most of the young villagers were at a loss and had to stand awkwardly, carefully placing the thing in their hands on the ground to show that they were not threatening.

Fortunately, many elderly villagers quickly walked out of the low buildings in the village. They had ugly faces and did not hold long weapons in their hands. Most of them were empty-handed, supporting a few people in the village. The elder walked towards the collapsed wall.

-

At the same time, when Knight Crow used his own power to collapse the wall, Knight Rumi also acted as agreed.

He jumped off the horse, holding the hilt of the long sword in the scabbard at his waist, and strode along the downhill passage towards the semi-underground village gate.

Seeing the simple wooden railing gate of the village, he sneered disdainfully. There was no need to shout for someone to open the door. He directly reached out and grabbed the wooden railing on the surface of the gate under the gaze of the people inside the gate.

"What are you going to do!!"

"Who are you! Someone come quickly."

The two village guards guarding the inside of the wooden gate saw the armor on Knight Rumi, and naturally they did not dare to yell at him loudly. Therefore, these two warnings and questions were not addressed to Knight Rumi, but changed upon seeing the situation. He shouted to his own people in the underground security room inside the gate.

Sure enough, following this shouting, other guards who were more vigilant and had just finished their work because a large number of outsiders came to the village to spend the night today, now took the homemade improvised weapons placed by the wall and fired from the underground on both sides. He ran out of the house.

But as soon as they came out, they saw Knight Rumi ignoring the reinforced wooden spikes on the wooden gate, grabbing the railing with both hands, and then pulling back with force.

Before he came, he heard from Keir that the gate was closed inward against the top of the passage.

So instead of pushing the door open, he pulled it back, with the purpose of destroying this thing.

Crunch, crunch——

As Knight Rumi grabbed the wooden gate and retreated, the entire gate made a worrying sound of breaking, and with the sound, the entire gate was greatly deformed and could shatter at any time.

Some of the wooden thorns fixed on the wooden gate to protect it from grassland beasts were also disintegrating as the gate deformed.

These spikes hardened by fire are flying around. Knight Rumi is wearing armor all over. When the wooden spikes are hit, they only leave a few charcoal black scratches, making a clanking sound.

However, the wooden thorns that collapsed into the inside of the gate caused several village guards to scream and hide inward.

They had just taken a few steps back when there was a loud bang, and the entire wooden gate could no longer withstand the strong pull of the knight, and the whole gate collapsed into three or four pieces.

As soon as the knight's hand was loosened, he snorted and threw the broken pieces of the wooden fence on the ground.

"what have you been doing?"

"You! This is something belonging to our village. If it is damaged, we need to pay compensation!"

"Compensation? Arrest him! Hang him!"

When several young people saw the destruction of important property in the village, they immediately got angry and rushed forward, shouting.

But the other two middle-aged men had lived in the empire when they were children, and they could guess that he was a knight just by the heavy steel armor he wore.

The two middle-aged men were holding simple hand axes with horizontal spikes and iron hoops, and they were stunned on the spot.

Emotionally, they should rush over with the young people to teach the enemy a lesson, but rationality tells them that this is useless and will also annoy the Lord Knight.

By the way, Lord Knight.

When the two of them thought of this, they immediately threw away the things in their hands and knelt down on the ground, even their whole bodies were lying on the ground. Regardless of the fact that the ground had just been trampled by the caravan's men and horses, it was now dirty and dirty. chaos.

However, a few young people were full of enthusiasm and brandished their weapons at the enemy who destroyed the gate of their village.

It was agreed before that the villagers here could not be killed, so at this moment Knight Rumi just opened his steel armor-wrapped palm and lightly slapped the face of a young man in front of him.

Snapped!

A particularly loud slap, even if Knight Rumi tried to use as little force as possible, it was almost like a gentle touch. But his thick palms and the heavy armor on his hands still caused great damage due to their weight.

A young man in front of him fell to the ground sideways after being slapped. His head was shaking and he could not speak. When he opened his mouth, a few molars on one side spat out saliva and blood.

Not only that, where the side of his face came into contact with the metal of his palm, the skin was torn.

It was just a 'light' touch, but his face felt as if someone had hit him with a metal shield.

The other two young men were immediately startled, but their hands did not stop.

There were two bangs, but not even sparks were fired, and Knight Rumi's body was hit twice without shaking.

The knight then stretched out his hands to grab the chest of one person on each side, grabbed the person and knocked him in the middle.

Boom.

The two young men hit their heads and fainted.

"Huh, boring." Knight Rumi complained, carrying the two young men and walking forward. When passing two villagers lying on the ground, he raised his feet and kicked each one and ordered: "Take the one on the ground with you, too. Come with me!"

"Yes Yes Yes Yes."

"As you are told, I will do as you are told, my lord knight."

The two middle-aged men rolled around and lifted up the young man who had half of his face smashed by the slap, and followed the knight with the unconscious young man in his arms.

Although they didn't know where they were going or what they were doing, the two men had lost their ability to think because of the gap between fear and force. They only knew that they could do whatever the other party asked them to do, as long as they didn't get beaten.

-

Knight Rumi looked at the rooms on the left and right sides of the underground passage, and found that the small room only had an earthen bed for people to sleep on. In addition, there was a lit brazier, and there was no Other things and people.

So he didn't care about this place, and led the people through the short underground passage to the inside of the village wall.

Walking up the inner slope, he saw that it was a little far away from the underground passage behind him, so he threw the two unconscious young men in his hands to the ground, and then waved for the three people following him to come over.

"Stand here and wait."

After saying that, he stopped caring about other things and turned around to look carefully at Knight Crow on the wall.

Sure enough, Knight Crow then used the magical power he had seen before to collapse the entire wall made of earth, and then even more magically squeezed the entire collapsed ruins into the ground.

Knight Rumi was quite jealous. His eyes under the helmet and visor were watching the movements of Knight Crow without blinking. At the same time, he was also experiencing the changes there with his knight-level perception.

"It's too far off. Alas."

He sighed softly, knowing that his level was still not good enough. Although the two were about the same age, their life experiences were very different.

This leads to a wider gap in strength.

He only joined the Royal Army two years later than Knight Crow, but when he was practicing martial arts as an ordinary soldier in the military camp as a soldier, the opponent had already become an elite cavalryman under the knight because he had killed bandits many times.

Soon after, when he went into battle to kill the enemy for the first time, Crowe had already received knight training and disappeared from the ordinary army.

Later I found out that he had joined the Knights of the Kingdom Guards.

Although he made great achievements in the following years and successfully became a knight, the Kingdom's Knights Guards were already full at that time and there was no need to find elites from the army to fill them.

In this way, the life trajectories of the two people deviated.

Although Crowe is always reluctant to talk more about his experience in the Knights, he always reveals a little bit in daily chats.

While he was engaged in small-scale battles with neighboring countries on the border, Crowe fought with other noble knights in the kingdom who were also knights, and often participated in various wars against powerful monsters.

Just like what happened just now, the gap in combat ability between knights and ordinary people is too big. Although it is foolproof, the improvement may be too rare. Even if he usually trains diligently, when he reaches the level of a knight, ordinary training methods are only to ensure that his martial arts skills do not decline.

Everyone's life energy has an upper limit. After he became a knight, he had reached his limit within a few years.

Knight Rumi opened his palm, looked at the little blood stains on his hand when he slapped someone, and shook it.

Sighed.

When he failed to make progress, Crowe was fighting on the front line against powerful monsters. I heard that Crowe had participated in the monster disaster in the central province many years ago.

Even though many of the knights and troops involved suffered heavy losses, none of the surviving knights are the famous and powerful men they are today.

While he was in the army, Crowe joined the Empire's Border Knights. This further widened the gap between the two. Although the vast majority of the people in the kingdom are immigrants from the empire, most of the people and noble knights who came to the kingdom are guys with limited skills and low strength.

The Imperial Frontier Knights are the elite in the Empire.

Thinking of this, Knight Rumi sighed again.

Seeing Knight Crow destroy a large section of the village wall, it not only shocked this rude and arrogant small village, but also created a decent entrance for the army.

He reached out and waved towards Knight Crow.

Knight Crow looked over and pointed to the original entrance of the village.

The next step is to destroy this entrance as well.

This was previously discussed with the three Barons.

-

When the villagers of Thor Village walked out of the low houses built underground, they saw the knight who had destroyed the wall in the discussion coming from the top of the wall to the top of the gate passage of his village.

Obviously, the other party wanted to destroy all the underground passages that the village had spent so much effort to build.

Don't let people do this!

Thinking of this, the young villagers in the village rushed forward to stop it.

But another knight wearing thick steel armor stood in front of everyone.

The other party didn't say anything, pointed to his feet, and then stepped hard, making a depression in the solid ground.

The meaning is self-evident.

But the young villagers couldn't care less, and they all wanted to rush over. The older villagers were a little timid and did not dare to step forward. Most of these people grew up in the empire when they were young. The empire has strict rules and the majesty and strength of the knights have always been imprinted in their hearts.

Even though many years have passed and they have come to this place where life is difficult but not managed by knights and nobles, this brand from their youth is still deeply engraved in their bodies.