Forming a Village Militia

The next day, Mel woke up again.

The villagers had already gathered up the weapons and armor. Now he needed to find out exactly what time it was.

"What year is it now?"

"My lord, it is Imperial Calendar 216."

"Oh." Mel nodded.

The winter chill had yet to fade. In fact, even the snow had not completely melted.

Two more corpses were carried out of the village. They seemed to be people who had frozen to death the previous night. The village no longer had enough firewood for warmth.

There was simply nowhere nearby to obtain timber. The nearest forest had likely already been logged before.

Judging by the dates in the diaries, this body should have been twenty-two years old.

The problem was that after reading diary after diary, he had never found any mention of his own name. It was truly strange, as though it had been erased by something.

"Gather all the young and strong men in the village. I'm selecting some people for training. I don't have enough clothing to provide for everyone."

There were not many warm clothes or bolts of cloth in his storage inventory. The clothes stripped from the dead could not be distributed to every villager, so he could only arm a force capable of fighting first.

After careful selection, Mel picked only thirty people. That was still a far cry from two hundred. Even a slightly larger band of bandits probably had more than thirty men.

No matter what, he could at least arm these people first, then provide them with daily training and regular meals.

The food in his storage inventory could not support them for long. There were over a hundred people in this village, and under the current circumstances, the best option was to raid someone.

Of