Within the circle of combat professionals in the world of Rigar, they are actually divided into two schools due to their different preferred battlefield environments.
The school, which is dominated by professional noble knight sergeants and professional-level war mercenary groups, specializes in large-scale team battles. Wars that start with at least hundreds of people are commonplace for them. For the convenience of understanding, we will collectively refer to the kind of battles they involve as "main battle battlefields". As for the remaining ones, except for the hunting mercenary groups that specialize in hunting biological health, most of them do not have small groups or individual mercenaries as large as them - such as our sage and Xiao Mira - What I prefer is actually the "street fighting battlefield" environment.
The battlefield environment between the two is very different, which also results in a huge gap in their equipment and fighting styles.
In the chaotic main battlefield, anyone who is not an ally is your enemy, and personal skills will be compressed to the extreme. No matter how talented and outstanding you are, the team with the overall advantage in the battle will always win.
The reason why most lower-level mercenaries and ordinary soldiers don't know how to use swordsmanship is that it has very little effect in a field environment.
In a crowded field battlefield, a good set of armor is more useful than any swordsmanship, because attacks come from all directions. Unless it is the legendary alien race with three heads and six arms, you basically have no way to use a long sword to block it. they. What you need is a physique that can bear the armor, and a more cumbersome weapon that can still exert power after being restricted by the armor-such as an axe, a spear, or a war hammer.
In the eyes of mercenaries and knights who truly live by fighting, and who must be on the main battlefield when performing tasks, the sword is just a secondary weapon, a sidearm.
In contrast, individual mercenary escort missions in a street fighting environment, which are generally relatively peaceful but not without threats, rely more on the mercenaries' own ability to judge the situation and assess threats.
An excellent soldier can play a much higher role in a street fighting environment than in a field fighting environment.
The equipment they carry is also as light and portable as possible. After all, in most cases the mission of individual mercenaries is to "protect" rather than "annihilate". Therefore, compared with large battle array weapons that are powerful but easily damaged, A durable, lightweight and flexible sidearm would be a better choice in this environment.
But the distinction between the two is not as strict as most people think. It sometimes happens that street fighting battlefields with low combat intensity are suddenly transformed into main battle environments. Capable mercenaries will try their best to control the situation and prevent it from happening like that, but unfortunately, our sages and others are currently carrying a bottle of oil, which is really not enough to achieve success, but more than failure.
The villagers picked up long wooden poles and bamboo sticks placed on the ground as clothes drying poles and building materials. Although these were not long guns, they were still enough to pose a great threat.
The vast majority of local villagers are descendants of highlanders. Due to the lushness of the southern part of the empire and the need for farm work, they all carry a curved, thick-backed small waist knife at their waist. At this moment, after falling into a conflict situation, many people drew their swords on the spot, and many of the others used their instincts honed in the process of fighting against the mainstream Laman society, and quickly used their swords to cut the bamboo. Cut it into a spear.
The family that Margaret originally wanted to help had now fled.
"" Mira looked a little nervous. She retreated behind him to protect Margaret and the others as she had communicated with the sage.
This is a typical double-layer buffer guard array. If anyone breaks through Henry's defense, she can still buy time - but then again, if someone can break through the sage's defense, how could it be? Can a mere Luoan girl stop it?
Her thoughts were running rapidly, and she turned back to glance at Margaret and the others.
Seeing the villagers quickly armed themselves, the noble lady's already weak legs could no longer straighten up. She was trembling, and although she understood that now was not a good time to act in a melodrama, she became as helpless as those characters that she actually hated and could only be saved.
Main battle battlefield; team battle battlefield; field battle battlefield, no matter which name is used, the difference between it and street fighting can actually be simply attributed to the word "number of people".
Strength in numbers has been a truth since ancient times. When 30 or 40 villagers point towards you with simple spears made of bamboo poles nearly two meters long, the spears are only more than one meter long. No matter how clever the sword can be, you are still unable to guard against it, and one of them will eventually pierce the part that lacks protection.
Swords are always secondary weapons on the main battlefield, and this is the reason why the war mercenaries have a much higher armor coverage rate than the two of them, even if we don't mention the knights and nobles.
In street fighting and small-scale battles, you can avoid the enemy by moving and controlling your body and pace, and use the weapons in your hands to defend yourself and counterattack. Therefore, due to issues of monetary cost and physical exertion, most people would choose to just wear a breastplate and arm guards.
In field battles and main battlefields, you must wrap yourself up tightly, including a helmet, throat protector, shoulder pads, thigh and calf armor, and even shoe armor. Only then can you successfully protect yourself in an environment where a lot of weapons are flying around.
At this moment, Mira desperately wished that she was wearing more than just a breastplate with skirt armor, and that she was holding more than just a large one-and-a-half-handed sword.
"Control your breathing!" She was a little nervous, and Henry noticed the girl's breathing disorder and reminded her hurriedly.
The difference between fighting with armor and without armor is huge. Even if you only wear a chest armor weighing several kilograms, the heavy steel plate pressing on the chest can already have a great impact on breathing. Once she loses her breath and fails to grasp the rhythm correctly, she will fall to the ground from exhaustion within a minute of fighting.
"Ha-hu-hu-ha-hu--" Mira tried hard to adjust. Although she was now nearly 1.8 meters tall, her weight was far behind due to her young age. This set of armor was quite a burden on her, and coupled with the nervousness of facing multiple threats, the girl's performance at the moment was far inferior to Henry's.
"You follow them and step back first." Henry said this while taking a step forward.
"Yeah." She didn't show off, Mira knew this was not a good time to save face.
"Filippo, carry her on your back." The girl said this in an almost commanding tone without any taboo about her noble status. The young man was stunned, and he blushed a little: "But, she -" "Is it the time to be shy now!" Mira didn't say the words "This situation is not because of you", but her anger Even the stupid young Filippo can feel it.
"I'm sorry, miss." The young man turned around and carried the noble lady on his back. Seeing that they were about to turn around and leave, the obvious threat of Henry, who was tall and holding a big sword, was overwhelmed by the anger in his heart. The villagers in the platoon roared and rushed forward.
"Dang! Cha -" The Padrosi-style breastplate has a raised ridge in the middle. This simple and beautiful design makes each of the simple spears that hit Henry's torso slide to the side along the arc, In the eyes of the people on the east coast, the sage, who was almost like a giant, rushed towards him with a big sword. Even though the descendants of the highlanders were famous for their bravery and good fighting skills, these villagers still subconsciously stepped back.
"Clang - swish!" "Crack!" Henry raised the sword with one hand and drew a semicircle, and ten spears made of wood and bamboo broke in response - the family did not have many long and long spears in their front yard. At this time, he destroyed most of the materials with just one strike of his sword.
But the sage immediately distanced himself.
"Killing! Outsiders are killing!" It was clear that no one was injured, but some among the villagers began to shout so loudly.
"" Even though he was as calm as a sage, he still couldn't help but frown slightly in this situation.
As the saying goes in Laman, "One same rice feeds all kinds of people." Under this situation, those who still think that the problem is not big enough and want to continue to make the problem bigger, in fact, in the final analysis, keep your eyes on the problem and don't let go. Or those high-priced gold coins on the ground with Padrosi royal daisies painted on them——
He noticed at least seven or eight people among the villagers who were like this. Although most of them looked angry after learning that Margaret was a noble, these people probably did not expect that they were about to be raped by some people. I'm going to take advantage of the guy who quickly picked up the money after they rushed out.
Henry had no intention of reasoning with them.
Human beings are the same creatures everywhere. During his long and almost equally long journey in his somewhat excessive life, he has seen too many such people.
They were incited by the words of those with ulterior motives. The reason was either nationality, class or religion. Just like "The Story of the Leader" in Lamanite satirical literature - the crowd believed in the guy who made the noise, but they didn't know that it was just a despicable sheep thief pretending to be leading the sheep to After they fell to death in the valley, the sheep thieves made a lot of money from their flesh and wool.
The wise sheep who tried to advise them and teach them not to trust the voice of the "leader" ended up being trampled to death by the torrent of the flock's intentions and became the first victim.
"When they just want to hear this sound, they can't hear anything else; when they just want to believe this fact, they can't see everything." Henry lowered the tip of his sword, he said nothing, Draw a semicircle on the ground with the tip of the sword.
The anger and misery of these villagers needed an outlet, and unfortunately, some of our naive aristocratic clients - albeit with the best of intentions - stumbled into it.
But what Margaret needed was a lesson, the lesson she had learned, not death.
"I know what you are thinking." Henry spoke slowly.
"You are thinking that this mercenary will not kill people. There are thousands of people in our village, and he will not want to make everyone angry."
"Well, you might be right."
"If there were thousands of people standing there and being chopped off by me one by one, it would take me a month to chop down a hundred people a day."
"But, this is a Claymore."
"It can split your entire body in half from shoulders to waist. You have already seen its power."
"Cross that line and you'll be within its range."
"I may not be able to cut down everyone who rushes through here, but it's still okay to cut down a few."
"Then the question becomes, who wants to be first?"
"Whoever wants to, give it a try."
"Are you lucky enough?" He spread his legs, crossed the tip of the sword and swung it downwards in a shockingly powerful tail pose, and then looked down at the villagers in front of him with his calm gray-blue eyes.
————
"There! Chase after him!"
"Ha-ha-" Running around wearing armor is quite tiring, especially when the chest armor also compresses breathing. Mira turned around, and the sage stopped most of them. villagers, but there were several other people who went around to the outside and ran out behind them.
In their hands they held sticks and short waist knives of only thirty to forty centimeters, and they were wearing armor and holding long swords. Mira would have the confidence to knock down these people if they turned around.
But she can't.
Because she was holding a sharp steel sword with extremely lethal power, and she did not have the confidence to defeat these people without killing them.
There is no choice but to run away.
Currently, the only ones targeting them are about forty farmers who happened to be nearby and were infected by the atmosphere. Although these people are a bit hysterical due to despair and hatred, the current situation can still be regarded as a "misunderstanding". And once they hurt someone and some villagers were bleeding, injured or even dead, they would arouse the disgust and revenge of the entire village because they had come to the village at an inopportune time.
In a village with mixed residents and living in such a bad environment, Mira could guess that they were excluded from the mainstream Laman society without any explanation.
And she didn't need to think about how many of the Laman nobles were stumbling upon this. After all, nobles all over the world were almost the same, and the lives of ordinary civilians were their property, let alone such things as theirs. After many years of fighting, ethnic minorities are regarded as "barbarians" and "foreign races" by mainstream society.
Presumably, these people must have listened to the persuasion of some people and chose to naturalize, but in the end, their lives were not as good as they thought. Because of the various quarrels in the political circles within the Padrosi Empire, perhaps one noble wanted to improve relations with the highland minorities, while another was trying to make things difficult for him - the peasants were Without understanding this, they simply believed that the noble at the beginning had deceived them, and then began to be hostile to all nobles.
"Ha-ha-" After more than half a month of ignoring her, her short hair has grown a lot longer, and the hair on her forehead is a little tight against her forehead due to sweat. Mira thought like this, even though she didn't read. She has never experienced anything related to this village, but as a Luoan, she can put herself in their shoes and understand what these people would think.
"We are second-class citizens in their eyes. They are all discriminating against us, making things difficult for us, and laughing at us. We must unite."
She had seen similar slogans promoted by some Luoan people when she was young, but compared to those Luoan teenagers who believed him with enthusiasm but ended up participating in robbing dead bodies, the girl had always just done her duty. her own affairs, even if she did suffer discrimination.
This is also an important reason why she was able to survive until she met Henry.
As she learns more and more things, she becomes better at discovering the things hidden behind the surface. In the past, she only knew instinctively to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. Now she can peel things away from the simple black and white. After the inertial thinking, the ideas have expanded a lot, and I am no longer so impulsive - but in short, I have to show these to the villagers, but they will not buy it.
——You are a mercenary, a mercenary guarding those nobles. All you can say is nonsense, all hypocritical lies.
In the hearts of the simple-thinking working people, whether this is true or not, the girl is considered to be in the same group as the aristocrats. No matter how reasonable or calm and objective her words are, these people will not buy it.
"Stop! You all stop!" The villagers at the back shouted loudly. Filippo's years of training were still of great use. Coupled with the psychological excitement, he was carrying a suit weighing dozens of kilograms wearing armor on his back. Margaret He walked like flying.
There is only one place to escape. The whole thing can still turn around now. As long as it is made clear that this is just a misunderstanding, it will not be a big deal.
While running, Mira was thinking in her mind about what rhetoric she should come up with, such as Margaret being the daughter of a big businessman from the Chamber of Commerce, etc., to reverse the situation and match the rhetoric of businessmen that Uncle Mario and the others were relatively familiar with. , try to forcefully control the impact of the entire situation.
"What's wrong?" Apparently hearing the sound, the middle-aged mercenary Moro grabbed the door frame of the courtyard gate with one hand and leaned out to ask.
"Let's talk more about it after we get in. Close the door quickly." A sprint made Mira a little out of breath. After saying this, she ran into the yard and started panting with her head on her knees. Morrow glanced and found no sign of Henry. He hesitated and asked, "Where is your companion? He is the tall northerner."
"He's fine. Close the door quickly or something will happen to us!" Mira said. Seeing the girl's urgency, the middle-aged mercenary quickly stepped forward to close the wooden door and bolt it.
"Inside! In the village chief's courtyard!"
"Come out! Come out quickly." The moment the door was closed, there was a shouting and cursing voice outside.
"What are you doing again!" Tazito, the strong man's grandson of the village chief, rushed out again. Seeing the tired looks of Mira and others, he was stunned for a moment when he heard the shouting and cursing outside, and then turned around and went back to the village. The chief himself was called out.
"What's wrong?" Mario, his group, and the remaining mercenaries also ran over, and Mira took the time to lower her voice and start explaining to them what happened.
"Click!" A hand suddenly grabbed the side of the wall, and then everyone stared with wide eyes as they watched Henry easily climb over the wall that seemed to them to be very high.
"" The sage clapped his hands. He was a little disgraced, but he didn't look injured or even tired.
"Don't worry, I didn't hurt anyone." The large sword at his waist had been sheathed. He said this to Mario, who was obviously aware of the situation and looked at him with worry. This made the businessman uncle He let out a long breath.
"Sheng, what happened!" The trembling old village chief finally ran out, and more villagers seemed to have gradually gathered outside. They were having noisy discussions, and some people who were speculating in troubled waters began to spread rumors, " Words and words such as "Kill ten people", "It's the nobles!" "It's the nobles who are in charge of this place" appear alternately. It is obvious that something big will happen if they are left alone.
"Ready the horses, move the things, and prepare for emergency evacuation." Henry said to Mario and the other businessmen. Although the situation seemed to be controllable, they also had to make another plan.
"Evacuate, uh, where are you going? There's only one door here." Mario said blankly. Henry didn't explain much in the emergency situation. He just said: "Just go and prepare."
"Oh - oh - that's right." The old village chief nodded after hearing Mira's explanation.
"Then let me explain the situation and clear up this misunderstanding."
As he said this, many young people from the village chief's family came out with sticks, pitchforks and the like, guarding him.
