Away from the upcoming bloody storm in the Ridela region, they passed through a barren area and arrived at the southernmost tip of the west coast. Unfortunately, the two people from Thoradin Highlands did not find a suitable job.
Our little Mira, who has always been thrifty, is naturally unhappy about this. Although they also received about twenty Ella silver coins as a reward in the previous Munro incident, plus they used to conduct mercenary activities on the other side. In fact, there is still some compensation and some savings, but even if you have savings, sitting on your back is never something that a hard-working Luoan girl would do.
After becoming blue-brand mercenaries, they can earn more money, but at the same time, the expenses will be greater.
Maintenance and upkeep of armor and weapons. Damaged armor needs to be repaired, and weapons usually need to be replaced directly. After passing through Dange Canyon and arriving at this side, the money spent on replacing equipment has already been exhausted. The girl went through three processes, from distress to numbness to becoming accustomed to it.
She also understands that you get what you pay for. At least the one-and-a-half-handed sword she is holding now is enough to make people fall in love with it just by looking at it. The smooth and flat blade is the common steel sword gray in the past. The smooth texture cannot be compared, not to mention the worse weapons made of wrought iron, plus the superior center of gravity - one thing that needs to be mentioned is that the one-handed and half-sword in Mira's hand has a center of gravity away from the gauntlet. The position is further back than Henry's sword.
The center of gravity is about seven to eight centimeters in front of the inverted V-shaped guard. Michael, an old blacksmith with many years of experience, specially tailored it according to the girl's body shape and physical strength. Although the net weight of this one-and-a-half-handed sword is about 1.3 kilograms , but the features of using a weighted ball to balance the center of gravity and using it with both hands make it an excellent weapon that even a twelve-year-old Luoan girl can easily master.
It is true that a relatively backward center of gravity will make chopping more powerless, but the sword skill of the long sword itself has a large number of piercing and upward moves. If it is only used as a chopping weapon, then she will It's better to just make a long knife.
Coming back to the original point, traveling costs a lot of money. It costs money to stay in a hotel, to replace clothes, to eat, to maintain equipment, and even to raise horses and replace horseshoes. money. Money, money, many countries in the barren Southern Basin region either do not have tasks that can earn rewards or the tasks are not suitable for them, but has this changed since coming to Thoradin Highlands - the answer is obviously no. .
reason. In the final analysis, it is the existence of the church.
In this small area going up the basin area, the influence of the church is the strongest, and where they have the ability to make decisions, the mercenary guild is limited everywhere.
Similar to the conflict between the prairie nomads and the church's ideals, the mercenaries who advocate instant gratification are naturally incompatible with the church which requires abstinence everywhere and wants you to repent every day. And this difference in philosophy coupled with the fact that the church has the support of the former Lamanite noble army to exercise its power, it is a matter of course that mercenaries cannot find jobs in countries and regions where the church has decision-making power.
So and so, the two of them naturally had no intention of staying in those places behind them for too long.
Not all of Thoradin's highlands are controlled by the church. Although they generally believe in the White Holy See, there are some places where they just exist as ordinary temples of faith and are not directly linked to the local lords.
Corey Conrad is such a kingdom.
While continuing to learn all kinds of knowledge, I moved forward to find a job listing for mercenaries, and it was about June. When the chirping of cicadas began to sound day and night, the two of them arrived at their destination.
If Sivalier, the most powerful country on the west coast, is called the "Knight Country", then Corey Conrad may be called the "Mercenary Country".
We haven't seen too many rumors about Corey Conrad along the way, and on the West Coast, not many people actually mention this country. This has a great relationship with its nature as a country and the composition of its large population.
If a falcon, common on the west coast, flies over and overlooks the country. It will discover that Corey Conrad's entire country is shaped like those small rodents it often captures—rats.
This small piece of land located southeast of Thoradin Highlands and surrounded by many neighboring countries is the body of the kingdom with only three city-states closely connected-this country is even smaller than Biavenella, so there are many People are questioning whether it should be called a kingdom. Rather than a city-state - as the body, the Cory Conrad City-State Union has a larger area than the Monro Capital City on the Krant side, and it is even larger when counting the surrounding villages. But its most eye-catching feature is probably the long, long road that stretches from the Thoradin Highlands to the coastline, with supply stations, hotels and various adventurer shops along the way.
——In fact, we have to figure one thing out. That is: Corey Conrad did not come first and then this path came.
On the contrary, as we can see from the name, the word Corey Conrad comes from the lingua franca of the West Coast, and before that it was the highland dialect of ancient Avenella. At that time, people did not call the inland sea of Mobigas an inland sea. The name for the sea by ordinary people was actually the same as the lake. So the word "Cory" in Corey Conrad actually means lake - and the "Conrad" behind it, "Conra" means support, and "Conrad" is the supporter the meaning of.
To put it together, Corey Conrad means where the supporters of the people who go to work at the lake live - and who are the supporters of the mercenaries, of course, are their wives and children.
Long before mercenary guilds became popular with the Lamanites and maritime trade on the West Coast, Cory Conrad's men would often sail across the sea to fight in the East for their fortune—sometimes. As a bandit, but more often as a mercenary.
Since the Thoradin Highlands are already the end of the west coast, if you go deep into the west and climb a peak in the Tambur Mountains, the southern coastline of the Mobigas Inland Sea can even be seen directly. People here only need to start from the seaside. After traveling by boat for a while, then turning southeast, you can land directly in the interior of Rigar to find the dwarves and people who settled in the country on the other side.
The calm sea surface makes it easy to move around, and the distance is shorter than traveling directly from the east and west coasts. These reasons together have led the men here to rely on the sea for a long time. In addition to being fishermen, they also have a side job as mercenaries and will be hired by people from foreign lands to fight for them. And after organizations like the Mercenary Guild moved in, everything naturally began to flourish.
Today's Corey Conrad. There are many mercenary groups that are famous for the countries in the east and south. They do not have much contact with Avenella and Silvalier in the north, so our previous stories have never mentioned the existence of these mercenaries.
Returning to the original point, as a country with a large number of professional mercenaries, various needs naturally exist, although most of them are tasks related to foreign wars. Henry and Mira should also be able to find tasks suitable for them here.
There was a light sound of horse hooves, and the two people who came here on horseback were no longer so conspicuous. Because they were close to the grassland, the number of people riding horses here was much greater than that behind them.
The horses on the grassland are shorter than the horses ridden by Henry and Mira. This kind of horse is not very capable of sprinting, but it is full of endurance. Compared with Yawen, who is tall and strong, has better load-bearing capacity and acceleration ability. Nella horses are different in their own way.
Horses are spiritual animals, and naturally many people who ride them are horse lovers. In addition, with Avenella saddles, the two of them did not attract the attention of civilians like they did in the past. It actually attracted the attention of many fellow mercenaries.
The sage with a big sword on his back came here and was like a leaf hidden in the forest. Among the mercenaries on horseback walking on the street, there were not a few with huge swords on their backs. Most of them were already over 1.5 meters tall. Most of these giant swords, which are as long as one palm wide, are made of thick wrought iron and adopt an axe-style edge. To a certain extent, they should be regarded as a comprehensive combination of "sword" and "axe".
To elaborate on the origin of this type of giant sword would be a lengthy discussion, so we will only give a rough overview here.
In an era when metal smelting technology was not yet developed, weapons were usually made larger in order not to be easily damaged, but even so, such heavy and slow weapons were usually not used against human-sized targets. So this kind of giant sword usually has a minimum weight of more than eight kilograms and a maximum weight of more than ten kilograms, just to start with. In fact, it is a tool similar to weightlifting that is used to hone arm and wrist strength.
It became a practical weapon and began to enter the lives of mercenaries. It was inseparable from the expansion of the human living environment. When the population increased and people began to have to migrate to areas that were previously considered uninhabitable, they inevitably had to interact with the local areas. There was a dispute between some large carnivorous beasts that originally existed. Coupled with the fact that the land in some areas is barren and the climate is not suitable for planting, people who are in urgent need of food naturally focus on some large herbivores.
Spears and bows require a lot of energy and time to knock them down, and once these huge beasts are angered and they charge towards us, people can only turn around and run away.
It can be said to be whimsical, but it can also be regarded as heroic. When a warrior who only had brute strength but did not know how to use a longbow carried this heavy practice sword that could be used as a blunt weapon up and cracked the skull of a young Deinosuchus and successfully rescued several hunters, this weapon , inevitably began to receive people's attention gradually.
Returning to the original point, the existence of weapons such as giant swords is similar to the stabbing sword among anti-personnel weapons - or the swift sword, except that one of the two takes the extreme route of fighting against beasts, and the other is extreme against people. route.
"Green cards...blue cards...blue cards...many blue cards." Mira, who was riding a horse, looked around. After becoming a mercenary, she had never seen so many colleagues operating in one place at the same time. Among these people Many of them were walking in the opposite direction. The two of them were walking all the way from the northeast, and these people were obviously heading east to the port to carry out their mission.
"It seems that the horses are not allowed to pass in front." Henry, who was walking first, suddenly turned around and said this. Mira also looked over there. Corey Conrad's mercenary guild was more decorated than Sivalier's. Prosper, the capital, is even more gorgeous. It is said that it was the result of a dispute with the chapter there. The people of Corey Conrad felt that the chapter here was more suitable as the headquarters of the West Coast. However, in the end, Padrosi's side of people chose Sivalier, and why – we can see it right now.
Corey Conrad was originally established to support the mercenaries who went out.
In other words, these three cities and this kingdom all exist for these mercenaries - in other words, they are very exclusive.
There are job opportunities, and to some extent there are more than Prospell. However, the native people of Corey Conrad believe that these job opportunities all belong to their young people. Even if they are also mercenaries, they are not interested in foreigners. The conditions between mercenaries and local mercenaries are never equal.
The mercenary union is a transnational, neutral profit-making organization. The more people there are, the more money they can make. What Corey Conrad did is tantamount to encircling all the interests in a small circle. In the short term, It seems that all the tasks are completed by capable people who are familiar with the local environment. Without outside newcomers, there would not be a large number of failures. The high task completion rate will naturally bring high rewards.
"What's wrong! Let capable people do these tasks." - With this idea in mind, the people of Corey Conrad's branch proudly rejected those external mercenaries. However, capable mercenaries will grow old, and as time goes by, the number of tasks will increase, and people who are limited to this small country can no longer digest everything.
In the end, they compromised, but even today, this kind of "relational" thing that gives more preferential treatment to local mercenary families still exists.
Local residents can go in directly, but when foreign mercenaries come to the area close to the mercenary guild, they must dismount and register.
"Where will the horse be stored?" Henry took a step forward and asked the people in front of the platform over there. Their horses also carried many books. These are expensive things, so they cannot be stored in a supervised place. The place is quite dangerous.
"Ah?" The person in charge of registration was a small man, staying in a pergola made of wood. He raised his head and looked at Henry while picking his nose.
"Wow, it's so high, little brother from the north?" He didn't answer directly but started to talk. Henry nodded in reply, and then asked, but at this time——
"Wha-da-da-da-da" A series of chaotic footsteps sounded from behind, and the sage and the Luoan girl turned around together.
"Hey! Wait, that's my book!" A girl with long blond hair and a red-haired mercenary were chasing a certain character.
The girl was sweating profusely and seemed to have lost her strength. She held her knees up and began to pant. Her skin was fair and transparent and she looked like the eldest daughter of a noble family. The red-haired mercenary in front was moving at a very high speed. The thief who caught up and robbed their books without even losing his breath was startled when he ran so fast and rushed towards Henry and the others.
His eyes were very keen, and he directly noticed the book placed by the two sages on the horse. After sprinting over, he threw the book to them and shouted loudly: "Boss! I grabbed this book for you." !”
"Crack--" the red-haired mercenary stopped, and the thief ran all over the place. Henry turned around, and then noticed something, and his expression changed slightly.
"Orange card..." Mira murmured quietly.
"Are you his boss?" The red-haired mercenary turned his head, and Mira immediately noticed that his eyes seemed to be out of focus, as if he was a visually impaired person.
"Forget it, not much to say -" "Qiang -" He pulled out a half-sword from his waist and pounced towards Henry. (To be continued.).
