The sound of hooves drew closer. Cain had successfully hunted down the last bandit and returned with his head.
Then he swung down from his horse and joined Volodya on the hillock.
When he had first met Ye Wei'an, Cain had been nothing more than the lowest-ranking Purple Dragon Knight, only Lv.3.
But after half a month of campaigning, he had officially reached Lv.5, meeting the standard of a grand knight. His Purple Dragon armor looked all the more imposing against his increasingly battle-hardened frame.
Volodya was no less impressive. The infantry commander had reached Lv.4 amid the intense campaign of clearing out the enemy.
"My lord, we've cleaned out every last rat." Cain first gave a textbook military salute, his excitement impossible to conceal. "Fifty-six heads taken. No prisoners."
"We seized over four hundred gold coins, more than seventy weapons of various kinds, and over thirty suits of shoddy leather armor. They're not worth much to us, but we can take them back to Firefall Territory and melt them down." Volodya reported next, a rare smile on his face. "Most importantly, we suffered no deaths. Two infantrymen twisted their ankles charging too hard, and three unlucky fellows got scratched up by bandits fighting to the death. They're all only lightly wounded, so Sister Lina... I mean, Lady Lina, doesn't need to treat them."
Ye Wei'an nodded slightly.
His gaze swept past the two commanders and fell on the soldiers below the slope, who had just finished fighting.
The cavalry and infantry leaned on their weapons and looked up at Ye Wei'an on the hillock. Their eyes held not merely awe, but a fervor bordering on religious devotion.
This half-month of "bloody drills" had forged him a core force that any border lord would envy.
A cavalry squad thirty strong,