Mount and Blade System: Start from Pioneer Lords

The dawn was breaking, the sky just beginning to show a hint of fish-belly white, and the crouching behemoth that was Highcliff Keep was slowly awakening.

Two hundred bare-chested strongmen were wielding their sweat on the training grounds, the sounds of bowstrings twanging in an unbroken stream.

The Feder warriors, assigned to the Burning Legion's Second Army Archery Corps, were practicing archery.

Li Wei observed their practice. As expected of Tier 4 Feder Longbowmen, even when faced with rabbits darting about, they could find their rhythm and accurately hit them from sixty paces away.

While they couldn't be said to hit the mark every time at a hundred paces, it was already extremely rare.

It should be known that they were all using Tier 4 template longbows that Li Wei had specifically bought from the system—yew longbows.

These bows were half a man's height, and within forty paces, equipped with heavy armor-piercing arrows, they could penetrate a layer of iron armor.

Only these warriors, handpicked by Li Wei from the Feder tribe, with their burly physiques and long arms, could draw them with the strength bestowed by the system.

During this period, these Highcliff Keep warriors hadn't been idle. After their morning exercises, they would actively hunt down those ignorant wilderness bandits to gain experience.

Therefore, all two hundred of these warriors were now Tier 4 units, only one tier behind the Orcs.

However, their equipment wasn't as luxurious as the Orcs'. Each was only equipped with a longbow and a hand-and-a-half sword, and to maintain mobility, they only wore a leather jacket over chainmail.

As for the Orcish brutes, Li Wei had An Cui, the old blacksmith, lead his apprentices to focus on forging the iron armor for the brutes to wear.

Although the refinement was far inferior to Deber's plate armor, the defense was no less than, and perhaps even surpassed it.

When he was in the Feder tribe, Li Wei had already bought two layers of armor for the Orcish Guard. Adding this time's iron armor, they wore a full three layers of inner chainmail, lamellar armor, and specially made large-size iron armor, it could be said that they were armed to the teeth.

The weight of all this added up to nearly two hundred pounds. Currently, apart from the Orcs, who were all Tier 5, no other warriors in Highcliff Keep could carry such weight and still move freely.

However, the cost was also enormous. The amount of gold Krones sunk into this fifty-man Orcish Guard, roughly estimated, couldn't be less than two thousand.

Of course, with such unreserved construction, Li Wei dared to pat his chest and say that this guard, placed in the entire Middle Ages continent, whether compared with any kingdom, was the elite of the elite, the best of the best.

After all, no kingdom was currently extravagant enough to equip its soldiers with three layers of heavy armor, especially when these soldiers could still move freely after wearing them.

After eating breakfast, Li Wei, with nothing to do, took advantage of Mireille gathering a mahjong game in Highcliff Keep.

"Our monarch of the Kingdom of Deber is called Harland. This person was purely lucky to become king. The throne came too easily, leading him to indulge in wine and women and neglect state affairs after ascending the throne."

Mireille was explaining some things about Deber to a group of country bumpkins from Highcliff Keep, and had just reached the current king's past.

"How lucky was he?"

Zart immediately picked up the thread, taking advantage of the crowd's attention being drawn to secretly steal a tile from the middle of the table.

Unfortunately, he was glared at by the Lord, who had eyes like a hawk, and could only reluctantly put it back.

"This matter would take a while to explain in detail, so I'll make it short."

"Please do."

"In fact, this king is the late king's illegitimate son who was left outside," Mireille took the lead in dropping a bombshell: "The late king had two princes and one princess. The crown prince was naturally the eldest prince."

"But no one expected that the eldest prince would unfortunately be pierced in the abdomen by a wild boar during a hunt and eventually die on the way, while the second prince was found dead in the Canary Garden three days after becoming the crown prince in order, thus obtaining the titles of 'Three-Day Crown Prince' and 'Womanizing Crown Prince'." Mireille showed a meaningful smile, not knowing whether it was disdain or ridicule.

With the idea of asking if she didn't understand, Bai Ruisi Tina raised her white and tender little hand: "Um, Sister Mireille, what is the Canary Garden?"

"A brothel," the Lord took the lead in answering.

Although he had been hanging around the Western and Southern Borders and knew very little about the affairs of Deber's royal city, as long as he was a man, no one would not know about the famous Deber brothel, Canary Garden.

After all, it was said to collect beauties from various races, even orthodox Elves, but the only drawback was that it was expensive.

It was rumored that one night would cost dozens of gold Krones, it was a real gold-selling cave, um, in every sense of the word.

Bai Ruisi Tina looked at the Lord with a searching gaze, revealing the meaning of—you are so familiar, have you been there?

"Don't look at me like that. Although I like to be glib, I have never actually been to such a place," Li Wei looked righteous.

Regarding this, the Lord did not lie. In this world with backward medical development, brothels were simply a gathering place for infectious diseases.

He didn't dare to guarantee that he was lucky, so for the sake of his life, he wouldn't go.

However, he heard that Canary Garden had virgins, and if there was a chance, Li Wei wouldn't mind trying.

"I didn't expect Lord Li to still be a virgin," Mireille's mouth curled into a smile.

Honestly, in this era of male supremacy, it was generally common to have tasted women at the age of thirteen or fourteen. Men like Li Wei, who had already reached adulthood and were still virgins, were as rare as mithril, or even non-existent.

"You're being a little presumptuous," the Lord felt deeply offended.

The previous owner was a down-and-out Baron who was almost selling his ass, so naturally he didn't have the money to go to brothels. After he transmigrated, he was afraid of contracting some disease and didn't dare to go, so he was strangely still a virgin.

"What happened later?"

"The old king no longer had the ability to reproduce, so when he was forced to prepare to pass the throne to his married-out daughter, he suddenly remembered that he still had an illegitimate son."

"When everyone found this 'lucky one', he was still working as a male servant in the Canary Garden."

"In this way, with the old king's support despite opposition, he smoothly became the king."

Mireille spread her hands, her face unclear whether it was envy or jealousy.

"A lucky one? That's not necessarily true. This new king may be the final mantis," the Lord had a different view. These things were too coincidental from an outsider's perspective, and the Lord just happened to firmly believe that coincidences in the world often had traces to follow.

After expressing his views, the Lord suddenly pushed the tiles in front of him: "Sorry, Pihu, I won again, pay up!"

"Pihu also counts as winning?"

Mireille, who had only learned mahjong a few days ago, was stunned and reluctantly took out two gold Krones from her pocket.

"Don't underestimate Pihu," the Lord smiled and put the gold Krones into his gradually bulging wallet.