Horus Is Here

For the next three days, everything remained calm. Aside from using all six Level 1 Commands each day to gain experience, he spent his time leading everyone, young and old, in reinforcing the farmstead's outer walls.

When it came to construction, he inexplicably felt that he had been an excellent architect in his previous life—or even the one before that. However, this inexplicable feeling brought him no effective combat power whatsoever.

The midday sun was scorching. Not wanting his handsome face to get too tanned, Ergons announced a lunch break and sat down against the battlement.

He took the canteen William Adena, his cheap brother-in-law, handed him and drank a couple of mouthfuls. Then he checked his Attributes panel: Level 25, Experience: 27,634, Experience Required for Next Level: 29,200.

He would level up tomorrow. If he leveled up again, he planned to put some effort into the Trainer skill. To improve the recruits' combat power, the Trainer skill was crucial.

He still had three Level 2 Permit Commands left, so he had to use them sparingly. Daily training for the soldiers should be enough to get them leveled up.

So far, he had not invested in Iron Bones, Power Strike, Shield, Running, or any other skills, because he had always upheld the fine principle of letting his subordinates handle the major battles.

Only after his subordinates had secured victory and taken control of the situation would he ride out with a lance and enjoy the thrill of slaughter.

He had stopped charging recklessly in Mount & Blade long ago. After playing through strength and agility builds, everyone eventually turned toward intelligence and charisma.

"My lord! They're here!"

Adamson, who had been assigned to patrol outside the walls with five mounted light infantrymen, galloped back. "They're here! People from the County of Tervain are here!"

Ergons rose and looked into the distance. Sure enough, surrounded by five mounted light cavalrymen, three men with unmistakably foreign features were slowly driving a wagon through the sea of yellow sand.

The group was displayed on the map as: Pirates (3), heading toward Tervain Village.

"You're still far too inexperienced. They've already exposed everything about themselves, and you're still feeling smug? Tell me, besides finding those three men, did you spot their main force?"

Adamson was stunned and stammered, "I followed your orders and patrolled the mudflats fifteen miles out. When I ran into them, there were only the three of them. They looked like they were suffering from dehydration and only recovered after drinking our water. They said they were here to meet someone. I didn't see anyone else."

After a moment, he realized what had happened. "Those men lied to me! I'll go find them!"

"Enough, come back! Do you want to embarrass yourself even more?"

Seeing Adamson standing there dazed after being scolded, looking too timid to argue, Ergons continued, "Take them into the manor to rest. It's good that you made it back in time."

Sitting back down beside the battlement, he said to his cheap brother-in-law, "As expected, those six rookies performed terribly. They didn't even notice the twenty-seven pirates following behind that group."

"Should we teach those men a lesson?"

"Absolutely not. I sent them out to stretch the horses and make the enemy underestimate us. How are the three youngsters you've been training?"

Training veterans alongside newcomers was the oldest method there was. With his gaming abilities transferred into reality, training soldiers involved far more than having a group of people hold wooden sticks and fight half-naked. As a knight who had already changed class, William was the perfect person to carefully pass his experience on to the three young men who had bravely volunteered to serve.

"The results are excellent. They're basically capable of fighting on horseback now."

He opened the troop panel. Sure enough, the three men were close to leveling up. Once they did, they would truly become heavy cavalry, which would be a qualitative leap.

"Take them out for more practice. Don't just have them ride around. Set up some dummies on the ground and let them practice slashing and thrusting with their lances. They've never experienced real combat, and with their current strength, they might not be able to turn it into actual combat power."

William acknowledged him and left with the three young men.

On the map, Ergons saw that the three pirates who had entered the area had settled in a civilian house beside the barn where he and the Adamsons had schemed earlier. As for what was going on with the other group of pirates in the distance, he had no idea.

"What are those people doing in the desert? Eating sand? Besides, if they were coming, they should have been regular soldiers from the County of Tervain. Why did a bunch of pirates show up?"

"Captain, what're we doin' here? It's sand all around, and the lads are nearly dried out! Are we just gonna sit here?"

In a windswept pass amid the rolling yellow sands of the Gobi, a group of oddly dressed foreigners was resting behind a pile of stones that offered some shelter from the wind. A one-eyed man who was unmistakably a pirate angrily shoved a sand-covered flatbread—sand he could never quite shake off—into his mouth before grumbling at another man sitting cross-legged nearby, calmly meditating.

The man was in his early thirties, clearly younger than the other pirates. His clothes and features were also much more refined than those of the men weathered by years of wind and rain.

His hand tightened almost imperceptibly around the longsword lying across his knees before relaxing again. Only then did he open his eyes and reply, "Shut up. If you don't want to rest, get out there and stand watch. But if you make any unnecessary noise, I'll bury you in the sand!"

After sending the pest away, the captain once again entered meditation. In truth, his mood had already been ruined, making it difficult to meditate effectively again. The troubled thoughts in his mind could no longer be suppressed.

He had originally been the heir to a minor noble family in the peninsular nation of the United Kingdom of Hogrem. Raised from childhood to inherit the title, he had been sent to the head family at six to serve as a page, then became the heir's squire knight at fourteen. After turning twenty-two, he left home because of a personal grudge and set out to seek adventure.

But how had he ended up being found by the private trading fleet of Count Tervain, one of Hogrem's other member states? The Count had claimed to value his talents and paid a high price to hire him as captain of the private trading fleet. He had never expected that the fleet's so-called trade would actually be human trafficking.

The so-called private trading fleet was a legal private slave-hunting fleet. Besides capturing slaves along the coasts of inland nations to replenish the peninsula's population, it also did the work of pirates attacking other shipping operations.

He had been dragged into it at twenty-three, and now he was thirty. Although his hands had long been stained with the blood of innocents, and although he had personally caused countless families to be torn apart, he had always believed that he was different from these pirates. He did not want to associate with them, yet he spent their wages without the slightest guilt.

His ambitions lay elsewhere, but reality had forced him to mingle with this group of pirates.

He admitted that he had lowered his standards for himself somewhat, and he also admitted that he seemed to have fallen into depravity. But that was no reason for Count Tervain to send him to his death.

The Holy Light Church was clearly using their invasion to increase its importance within the duchy and gain greater influence. The Count had no reason not to see through something so obvious.

Without gaining sufficient strategic depth in North Province, this so-called invasion would be nothing but a pipe dream, a rootless duckweed.

And for a county to attack a duchy, knowing that it would inevitably face the duchy's full counterattack—if Count Tervain had no ulterior motive, that would be the truly strange thing.

So regardless of what benefits the Count hoped to gain from this mutually understood exploitation, the captain felt that he might well be sacrificed in the process.

That was what angered him most.

Thus, he had made a decision. Throughout the entire operation, he would never appear openly if he could avoid it. He had even prepared himself to slip away at any moment.

As for the wife he had married and the child he had fathered in the County of Tervain?

As long as he had money, what woman could he not find? As for children? Horus had spent so many years traveling from place to place, leaving offspring everywhere. Had anyone ever seen him take responsibility for any of them?

One more would hardly matter.

So, according to his plan, he would wait until nightfall. Once darkness came, he would split his men into two groups: one would go to the village, while the other would disappear with him into the mountains and forests near Tevalinburg.

He no longer wanted to risk his life.