If you want to ask what words mercenaries are not taboo about, or at least hope to keep them away from their lives, then "noble" and "merchant" and the terrifying combination of the two, aristocratic businessman, must be among the top.
But the number one position is forever unshakable.
All mercenaries who have been around for three to five years hate this word very much. If a newbie mentions it in the marching team, he will often get glares from his seniors. They are obviously taboo about it. It cannot be regarded as superstition, but it is almost a part of mercenary culture.
Many people often think that mercenaries only care about money and have no faith, but in fact, when you do this business for a long enough time, you will eventually find your own faith.
Experienced mercenaries must hold some form of prayer before traveling, and the more pious ones will often choose time to pray even during the journey.
Just for that.
"Don't have any."
"surprise."
This is the unshakable number one taboo word in the mercenary dictionary.
surprise.
It means out of control, it means beyond everyone's expectation, it means.
Chaos, and injuries.
Even the group is destroyed.
...
Things shouldn't have come to this.
Their entire team was elite, and there were no mistakes in any aspect. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.
So when did everything start to go wrong?
On the fifth day as they headed east, the vines and dead trees combined with the uncultivated terrain caused their progress to be severely slowed down. Four hundred men and seven hundred horses can be considered a large force. In order to facilitate the advancement, they were only divided into several parts and spread out to avoid interference from the dense formation.
But in the evening of the same day, the lightly-armed scouts in front brought back news that forced them to adjust their plan again.
"There are traces of digging holes by ghouls, and there are still some black bodily fluids left on the dead trees."
——They caught up with the defeated undead troops, and no one had counted the few remaining ghouls. But at least that part of the siege had been killed by heavy attacks, and perhaps some of the injured remnants of the defeated soldiers had retreated in the same direction as the witch.
There are not many in number, and the traces are relatively sparse. Unless a scout has sharp eyes and walks in the wilderness all year round, he will not notice it.
But even so, we should not take it lightly, so the team that spread into a fan shape was reorganized. Except for the thirty crossbowmen who were proficient in riding and shooting as scouts, the remaining 370 people were divided into the main formation and the left and right wings. Each section was led by Adolphus, Henry and Stephen.
One hundred cavalry on each side of the left and right wings were all elites. They stretched the front line into an arc-shaped column, making it easier to move while also increasing the cover area on the sides. The packhorses carrying the baggage were placed in the main formation with the largest number of people. In this formation, with reconnaissance in front and cover on the left and right, it was a textbook correct way to deal with the ghouls who moved vigorously and appeared out of nowhere.
Although their expertise is different, Captain Adolphus and Captain Stephen are both elites in their respective industries. Coupled with the existence of our Mr. Sage, it stands to reason that this team should be extremely efficient with excellent leaders and excellent members, and this is indeed the case.
Until a problem arises that even Henry is helpless about.
The middle-aged businessman Mario didn’t know who he bought the map from. Its level of detail could not even be compared to those drawn by many great nobles, but after all, there were limits.
Whoever the artist was, it was clear that he had never penetrated such a distance to the east. After all, the empire's main civilizations are all located on the western coastline and the central plains. To the east, there is only the vast but uninhabited Palohia Plateau, and the dense and vast forests at the foot of the mountains that are filled with all kinds of dangers.
There are many maps that have reference value, come to an end. Henry had put it away since the day before yesterday. The general topography of the area can no longer be understood based on the map, which means that the reference for them to judge the direction is limited to the range visible to the naked eye.
How big is the difference between the two?
After a cartographer with professional geographical knowledge measures the land on a certain side with his feet, he will draw a bird's-eye view of a certain terrain based on the general terrain, and then even mark the height and other information.
This gives people viewing the map a global view. You can know the terrain and obstacles within kilometers around you and efficiently plan a route forward.
And if we can only rely on visual inspection, the gap will become much larger.
The terrain in the uncultivated virgin forest is undulating, and even if you have eyes like an eagle, you still can't see too far. Our Mr. Sage is 1.95 meters tall and rides on a war horse with a shoulder height of 1.7 meters on the east coast. From a human perspective, he looks tall and burly, but compared with this lush virgin forest, he looks very small.
On the one hand, forests, vegetation and trees block the visual field of view. On the other hand, the undulating terrain itself also becomes a great obstacle.
"Go slowly and carefully, the front is downhill!" This is almost what the mercenaries have shouted the most in the past two days. The terrain deep in the eastern part of the Ba'ao Forest is almost one hill after another with no end in sight. With the baggage and the old mountain vines on the ground, if you don't control the horse carefully when going downhill, you may trip your hoof and the horse and you may fall down heavily. And when we arrived at the bottom of the valley in a cold sweat, what awaited us was another steep and difficult uphill climb.
The physical and mental exertion is one of them. The interference of the rolling hills to the sight and morale is the most important.
No matter how good Henry's eyesight is, he can't see through the soil and vegetation. To see the route ahead and plan to continue, he can only climb this hill.
Hill after hill, the repetitive terrain caused physical fatigue and seriously depressed morale. Coupled with the formation disruption caused by the irregular terrain, people who walked fast and those who walked slowly naturally separated, and some people even started to fall behind.
By the time they finally made it through this hilly and complex terrain, the entire team was already feeling relaxed. The forward part caught up with the scouts who had also slowed down due to fatigue due to the terrain, while the rear stretched out a long and sparse front line. The left and right wings were mixed with the main formation, losing their original neat appearance.
And in this situation, they received their first surprise.
Essentially, this should be something they are happy to see, and should also be expected.
The defeated undead retreated with the witch. Although Henry and the others regrouped and postponed their departure for another day, and the undead were tireless and traveled day and night without rest, they were still slow-moving zombies. Therefore, it was not an accident to be overtaken by people riding fine war horses, and they had actually discovered the traces of the undead and ghouls a few days ago, and deliberately started to chase them in the direction where they were.
Encountering them was expected, but the timing of this encounter was extremely bad.
Due to the physical exhaustion caused by the complex terrain and the chaotic formation, they should have regrouped here. Even the sages were planning to camp here early to rest and recuperate. But when the loose human army climbed up from the last hill and finally saw the flat land they dreamed of, they found that it was densely packed with undead slowly moving toward the east.
When the living beings emitting heat entered the empty field of vision of these dead corpses, their instinctive disgust and hatred for life caused several of them to instantly turn their heads and start to roar hoarsely.
And this alarmed every cold walking corpse in this remnant army.
"Enter the enemy ahead, prepare to fight!" Several people in the vanguard could only shout this sentence to remind the people behind them, and they immediately raised their spears or drew their swords.
The first casualty appeared when they cut down the first wave of undead. The tired horses that had just climbed the continuous hills and the loose columns prevented them from taking advantage of the strongest impact of the cavalry.
Although these vanguard mercenaries are all elite warriors, they can easily split the vital heads of the undead with their weapons while riding high on horseback. But these fast runners are often long-range shooters with light armor, and long-range weapons have little effect against undead who have no weaknesses except their heads.
It would be fine if he could keep the distance and take good aim, but running headlong into him like this was really the worst possible start.
Reacting quickly and adapting to changes, they abandoned long-range weapons or used the wooden crossbow stock of the heavy crossbow as a blunt weapon to hit them hard, and successfully eliminated the first batch of scattered undead that came towards them. But when the undead teams were denser and larger in number, they rushed forward. Wearing only light armor, they finally suffered casualties under the attack of rusty and tattered weapons.
If Adolphus, who was also in the forward position, led the paladins on the left to cut in from the north and disperse these undead, the scouting force would have been completely lost.
When Henry and Stephen at the rear reacted, shrunk their formation and accelerated up the last slope, the undead whose numbers were not much different from them ushered in their own doom.
The cry of killing, the hollow roar of the undead, the sound of brittle bones breaking, the neighing of war horses, and the clash of swords.
The noisy noise lasted for more than an hour before they finally dealt with this group of dead corpses that they encountered unexpectedly.
The result of the battle, in which 7 people and 2 horses died and 19 people were slightly injured, was not pretty. Fortunately, the magician accompanying the army dispelled the witch's magic in time to prevent the living from being directly transformed into more terrifying corpses. But even so, Mira and Horno noticed that Henry's brows were frowning.
"It's not a good thing to make such a big noise so far behind enemy lines. There's no time to clean up the battlefield. Leave as soon as possible." The sage said, and the elf nodded. She glanced at the horn next to Mira. Beast, the Luoan girl also cast her sights on the young and white divine horse - it seemed more restless, but it was a little different from when she first entered the forest.
"No time!" After hearing their exchange, Stephen also realized something. He shouted to the mercenary who was about to dismount his horse to help the body of his comrade who died in battle: "Collecting the body and burying it can wait until the return trip."
"If we can come back -" the leader added in a low voice, and then Horno frowned.
"There's something approaching-"
"Witch!" Adolphus tightened his grip on the spear, Mira began to approach the team, and everyone became nervous.
"Take it." Filippo took a good crossbow and handed it to the girl Luo An, and the two of them retreated to a place relatively inside the team.
"No, it's not a witch, it's not a dead person, it's -" Horno turned his head in panic, his blond hair flying around with the movement.
Henry raised his sword, and as if to respond to his move, an earth-shattering dragon roar sounded in the forest to the south, accompanied by heavy footsteps.
"Neighing, neighing, hooting -" The group of war horses became commotion in an instant, and several pack horses turned around and tried to escape towards the forest to the west.
"Dragon!" A mercenary shouted heartbreakingly - but it was not over yet. His shout was quickly covered by another roar, but this time it did not come from the south, but from the south. It's the East.
"Roar--" Then the loudest roar so far sounded from directly in front.
"Three heads..."
"Judging from the volume, it is an eight-ton earth dragon at least." Although Captain Stephen's tone was still calm, the color of this rough and strong man's lips had disappeared.
"So-" Henry sighed longly.
"I hate surprises."
"Everyone!"
"spread!!"
The sage raised Claymer high and pulled the reins at the same time, causing the horse to neigh loudly.
——
Notes: ①Hunting: The division of labor positions among the advanced hunting mercenary professions, mostly light cavalry who are good at using long-range. In large-scale hunting, they are responsible for disturbing the prey and distracting it, so as to reduce the pressure on the main personnel responsible for trap placement and the backbone personnel responsible for controlling the situation and carrying heavy weapons.
