A Great Adventure

Hubble had ambitions. He had specifically sought advice from officers in the regular army and hired several retired veteran sergeants from the military at high salaries.

This experience allowed him to rapidly improve the unit's combat effectiveness.

At least during the initial stage of building up the army, it was enough.

After all, this was a Militia Group. Though nominally part of the military, it was subject to very few actual restrictions.

Otherwise, he would definitely have been dismissed for running things this way, even with Franz backing him.

Hubble had no intention of building up a private army to make himself powerful. He merely regarded the Militia Group as a stepping stone for climbing higher.

Thus, while most of the soldiers were sent into the mountains to search, he continued training with the core troops of one battalion.

He was already thirty, yet he still insisted on training alongside them.

Opportunity would not disappoint those who worked for it.

Bang!

A gunshot abruptly rang out in the dense forest. At first, the soldiers searching nearby thought someone's weapon had accidentally discharged.

But soon, they heard their comrades cry out, "Enemies! Black devils!"

Gunfire crackled without pause. One enemy after another emerged from the forest.

Before long, a platoon assigned to the search came fleeing back in disarray.

Caught unprepared in such complicated terrain, their miserable fate upon suddenly encountering the enemy was easy to imagine.

Yet the enemy commander was even more frustrated. He had no idea about Fernandez I's plan.

As a middle-ranking officer, the orders he had received were to infiltrate the area and then attack the important mines behind enemy lines.

But they had been discovered halfway there.

For an infiltrating force, the losses suffered while breaking through the defenses in the early stages were