Mercenaries and Adventurers

Eldo has been drinking the big glass of ale in front of him, and then pretending to be staggering, he walked out of the tavern slowly.

Yes, after multiple investigations, it was the same group of people who attacked the Dead Leaf Village and the Ska Chamber of Commerce in Pine Needle Town.

And he even knows the chronological order.

From the words of some drinkers, it was known that before the middle of last night, a group of elite soldiers with no more than 20 or 30 people, led by a few horsemen, opened the gate of the town that would not be opened at night.

Then they went directly to the territory of the Scar Chamber of Commerce in the town.

A one-sided battle broke out between the two parties on the street, directly capturing the senior management of the Scar Chamber of Commerce in the town. And those people's crossbows made a deep impression on the people in the town.

Most of the staff of the Scar Chamber of Commerce were killed, which has been confirmed by him helping to carry the corpses in the backyard of the Church of the God of the Dead.

Less than half of them were escorted to the prison of the Town Public Security Station last night for temporary custody.

And I heard that the prison has temporarily increased the number of guards several times, and he has no chance to rescue people to show his kindness.

Of course, he didn't have this idea either.

Eldo mainly wanted to know where the army from last night came from.

He returned to the hostel he rented and lay on the bed thinking.

There are two clues, one is the middle-aged man surrounded by people I saw on the street before. The other party is the biggest beneficiary of this incident. Obviously, the other party must know what he wants to know.

Secondly, he heard it in the tavern. Someone said that there seemed to be related news from a caravan with a large number of people who set off early this morning.

It's a pity that those merchants have already left at this time, but some other foreign caravans who lived there last night have not yet arranged their departure at this time. If he asks, he may be able to get some news.

Turning his eyes, Eldo decided to find a foreign caravan who could simply ask the news.

He didn't bring any luggage, and all his things were left at the hostel where he lived in Dead Leaf Village, but there was nothing, it didn't matter anyway.

Walking out of the hostel, he walked straight out of the town.

At this time, the gate of the town no longer had the momentum of checking every person in the morning. Eldo shook his head. He knew that the gate guards in this small place were like this. They dared to collect money privately for work when someone was watching. The stool rested on its own, and didn't care about the tax collection at the gate.

Naturally, there are other specialized personnel responsible for the inspection and tax collection of foreign caravans.

Eldo knew that the guards guarding the gate must know first-hand what happened last night, but unless someone asked for him, it would be boring to ask in person.

But the foreign businessman outside the town is different. These people from all over the world are not loyal to Pine Needle Town. As long as he gives a little money, he can know a lot of news.

Sure enough, after chatting with a few caravan stewards who had been stationed in the open space outside the town for more than a few days, the other party mysteriously talked about what they saw in person last night.

Eldo knew the direction where those people appeared, chatted a few words, and immediately realized that the army was coming from the manor of the local lord knight Gulov.

Then he asked about the combined caravan that set off this morning and only stayed overnight.

"Is it the caravan from Ice Flood Pass in Kendal County?"

he muttered to himself.

"Of course, and I heard from them that the purpose of forming a combined caravan with fewer guards this time is to take advantage of the cheap wind that their county lords lead troops to set off. They only need to simply supplement the logistics needs of the army when they are marching, and then they can follow. The army went all the way south, saving a lot of money for hiring guards and mercenaries. Hey, I also want to have this kind of cheapness."

Speaking of this, the emaciated caravan steward shook his head, as if he felt sorry for the fact that the aristocratic lord in his hometown didn't have this ability.

"The nobles led troops to borrow. Did you hear that there was another fight?"

Erdo asked pretending to be interested.

The businessman curled his lips: "It seems quite far away. Regardless of our small-scale caravans, even if there is a chance, how can I dare to follow and make money? You know, when the soldiers in the army face the knights, He is as good as my dog, but he is very cruel when facing us businessmen. Except for the caravan brought from his hometown, who can do business with those guys with blood on their hands? I am afraid that the other party will You won't be stained with your own blood, will you?"

"You're right, I thought so too."

After bidding farewell to the caravan manager who was having a lot of fun, Eldo walked directly towards the Gurov Knight Manor where he had found out.

The place is neither far nor near. From a distance, you can see a 'manor' in the middle of the field surrounded by many buildings and big trees on the commercial road with people.

To say that the manor is simply too small, it is almost the size of a small town, much larger than the Dead Leaf Village where he lived temporarily.

There are many farmers attached to the manor working in the field, and he, an outsider, dare not get so close during the day. After all, the other party just invited the noble army in the north to do such a thing last night. Although he can't control it in a town with a lot of power, but near a manor with a single power, he dare not use himself to test whether the other party is vigilant.

However, he did not go to the knight's manor to investigate. He also found the information he needed in an open space between the manor and the commercial road.

A vacant lot that had just been camped out.

Only by relying on his experience of marching in the mercenary regiment, he can roughly calculate how many troops were stationed here last night.

Not many people working in the fields came here, only a few half-grown children picked up some garbage left by the army last night and played here.

As soon as he came over, those children laughed and hid without being afraid of others, and ran to the nearby wheat field to observe him.

Eldo didn't care about these children. He knew that this kind of half-grown guy didn't have any truth in his mouth, and he was the age who liked to lie the most. As long as the number of people is not small and they are not abducted by outsiders, the farmers and women working in the fields will not take these children's words seriously.

Eldo followed the commercial road to the carriage ruts in the open space and roughly calculated how many vehicles there were in this army.

The result surprised him. Judging from the size of the open space, the number of this army was not very large, but half of the open space was filled with various horse-drawn carts and donkey carts.

Secondly, he determined how many tents there were in total through the dents on the ground of the wooden nails that fixed the tents, and then calculated how many people lived in a tent by the size of the tents.

"Well, there are six hundred and fifty people missing, and there are about eight hundred people more." This number is not very large. After all, each village has three to five hundred people, half of whom are men. If you remove the too young and the too old, at least Can organize an army of two hundred men.

From the perspective of an army of this size, the aristocratic lord did not have a large-scale war plan, but gathered the idle young and strong in his territory.

"It seems that the number of troops is not large, and their strength is not strong. Not strong! A team of 30 people dares to attack a village with more than 100 people, and it has not been investigated in advance. Either too confident, or Very sharp."

He considered that the opponent's logistics vehicles would take up half of the open space, and the combined caravan accompanying the team would undertake the logistics together. Obviously, this army is very powerful.

"I never heard that the lord of Kendall County was very famous in the military before."

He was a little puzzled.

Finally, he broke a small tree and found a buried place at the edge of the clearing.

What he was going to do wasn't nice or easy to do, but it was something he had learned from his career as a thief. Tried and tested.

How can you judge the strength of the opponent's army when you can't see the opponent visually?

By checking the excrement of the opponent after camping, you can roughly judge the level of soldiers in an army.

It sounds ridiculous, but in fact Eldo said it is very easy to use.

It just doesn't smell very good.

Generally, the army with weak military discipline and morale will randomly set up a place where they camped, and let the soldiers stationed temporarily defecate in the open space at will. But after all, the people in the St. Holes Kingdom are different. The people here migrated from a highly civilized empire, and the strict military style there is different from that in remote kingdoms.

Even when camping temporarily, someone will dig a pit as a place for soldiers to defecate.

He dug up the shallow soil layer with a small tree, and he found that the feces of these soldiers were different from most of the soldiers he had seen before.

The food is different, and the final feces are naturally different.

At the same time, the proportion of dry and thin food will naturally lead to different final results.

Not to mention that the feces were different if the soldiers had meat at mealtime.

If someone else reads it, they probably won’t see anything famous, but Eldor is different. He joined the Brotherhood of Thieves in the southern kingdom by the sea. It is an ancient organization, which is different from the Thieves Guilds everywhere. There are many strange knowledge and skills recorded in the Brotherhood.

Coincidentally, before he betrayed there, he happened to learn some seemingly varied but actually very practical skills.

This is also one of them.

After observation and judgment, he found that the soldiers in this army were well fed, which was actually the biggest reliance on whether an army was elite.

Only with the elite army in the hands of the nobles, those noble gentlemen would be "generous" willing to spend money on these people.

Eating is the most obvious place.

If you eat well, you will have enough physical strength and energy, a strong body and a sharp mind for complex training, and you will develop a superior combat power.

Otherwise, it cannot be said that there are no hungry troops, but there are very few who can fight.

Eldo knows that generally speaking, the amount of money invested in soldiers is generally positively related to their combat effectiveness.

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but smile bitterly. Although the mercenary group he belonged to was still reliable and powerful, the head of the mercenary group above and some other captains didn't know how much money they had deducted from the people below.

There is no telling when this crisis will erupt.

"But when it collapses, I guess I have to find another place to stay? Whatever it is, let's do it first."

He threw away the little tree, clapped his hands, and walked towards Pine Needle Town.

He already understood most of the matter, and for the rest, he could go to the Thieves Guild that must exist in Pine Needle Town to ask. For a silver coin, he would only ask a less important question.

And that question can also give him the last key piece of the puzzle.

After that, he had to return to the mercenary group as soon as possible to see if he could let the mercenary group, which had been out of business for a long time, follow these people to find some wet work in the south.

War, the thing that merchants are afraid to avoid, is precisely what their mercenaries like best.

-

Keel slept in his carriage for a long time.

But this time he did not sleep peacefully.

It was fine at first, but when he closed his eyes, the usual darkness covered his eyes and brought him the wonderful enjoyment of sleeping.

But soon, his mind, which seemed to be exhausted but was actually still active, clearly projected the scenes that happened last night before his eyes.

Everyone's expression when they were killed, every drop of blood from a weapon, every scream when they were injured or dying.

And the lifeless eyes and distorted faces of those people after death clearly appeared in his mind like a movie.

turn out to be.

It's not that I don't care about them, my mind clearly records everything I do.

Even in his sleep, he couldn't help swallowing dryly.

Why do I think of these.

Are they damned?

Innocent, deceived village farmers.

No, they were just blinded by the benefits promised by the Scar Chamber of Commerce. And they didn't know that they themselves would meet an enemy like me.

Those farmers who were killed by Kiel had dark and indistinct faces and clothes, just like what he saw in the fields outside the village last night because of poor lighting.

I did not do it on purpose.

Anyway, if you are killed, you will not die at my hands, but at the hands of other militiamen. If he annoyed Knight Crowe, he might be able to completely destroy the entire village.

No, I was thinking something.

Keir pushed away the shadowy figure of the farmer that surrounded him in his mind, and then what appeared in front of his eyes was the kidnapped young girl who also died innocently in the town.

Keir still yelled this time that he didn't order the killing, and then knocked away the figures of these girls.

In the end, there was a strange scene around Keel, and it turned into the scene that appeared in the small open space in the middle of Dead Leaf Village last night.

There were dead bodies all over the place, howling or cursing, and every dead or not dead guy was staring at Kiel, who appeared alone next to him.

"How could you break your promise!"

"We don't want to die!"

"Surrender!"

"Do not kill me!"

Kiel hurriedly threw the crossbow that appeared in his hand at some point on the ground.

He shouted in panic: "This is not my thing, not my weapon!"

"Everyone knows that I use long spears, long swords, and two-handed axes! But the only crossbow was captured last night. I killed someone with someone else's crossbow, but it wasn't you, you have no right to question me!"

But for some reason, the weapons in Kiel's hands became spears and long swords again.

Kiel was shocked and wanted to throw away the two weapons, but they suddenly cried to him in a childish voice: "Please don't throw us away, we have credit! We helped you kill so many Enemy! And there is hard work without merit, and fatigue without hard work! Please don't abandon us."

Although Kiel was surprised, he also hesitated for a while, and was reluctant to throw away the two weapons. Throwing them away, while seeming to get rid of the responsibility of killing, also seemed to throw away the trusting intimacy established between oneself and the weapon.

Those members of the Ska Chamber of Commerce who were killed in the end seemed to see something. They questioned Kiel loudly, pointing to the new wounds that had been killed by weapons that had appeared on their bodies at some point, and questioned Kiel in a huff. What should I say.

"We were deceived by you!"

"Even if we are not good people, you will definitely not be able to enter the Kingdom of God!"

"Go to hell! If ever!"

"When you die, we will eat your soul, don't think about having a better life after death!"

"We'll be waiting for you!"

"waiting for you!"

"Wait!"

"wait!"

Keir was speechless, he knew exactly what kind of test Crow Knight asked him to make up for the missing number of killings last night.

What kind of **** test is this!

Ahhh!

He lay down on the spot, holding the two weapons tightly, hugging them in his arms, and curled up.

The members of the Ska Chamber of Commerce who died next to them arched their bodies with their hands and feet, dragged their tattered bodies shot by the crossbow, and moved to Kiel's side, opening their mouths full of blood, wanting to gnaw Keel fell to the ground.

-

Outside the carriage, Knight Crowe rode his own steed, frowning with folded arms.

He heard the random murmurs of the other party in Kiel's carriage, as well as other supplies in the car that were twisted and collided when the other party fell asleep ~www.readwn.com~ Next to him, the Rumi knight shook his head: "You can do it this way." No? Don't make a fool of this young man."

Knight Crowe gave Knight Rumi a white look: "Okay, it's not the first time he killed someone in battle, and you saw him eating, isn't it normal? I believe in the phantoms of these dead people, no What will happen to him."

After a pause, he continued: "He is a very strong young man. When he was sixteen years old, he dared to find a way to kill slime monsters outside Kendall and sell them for money. And although he had some simple justice in his heart, But not very strong either."

"A real knight needs to be able to control his own mind. No matter what the situation is, his mind must be controlled by himself. You know, how many monsters or monsters can erode a person's mind and spirit. Not to mention the weirder ones. something."

"Have you heard?"

"What?" Knight Rumi asked.

"The war against the undead in the southern part of the empire. Many people went crazy on the battlefield. Most of those people were cultivated by some knight family."

In the pronunciation of the word East and West, Knight Crowe used an accent.

Knight Rumi opened his eyes wide: "I didn't expect you to look at those people like this, but little Jenny will cry!"

"Jenny is different. I can tell that she has changed since she returned from killing the Wolf King in the Great Northern Forest this year."

"Well, it's different. So, what about Kiel? Just let him be bothered by these things?"

Knight Crowe folded his arms confidently: "I will train him, he will definitely pass the test of these things."

"Didn't it pass?"

"How is it possible, I have never seen the wrong person."