Charlotte returned to the military carriage, touched the Cat's Mask tucked inside his clothes, and muttered to himself, "So this thing is standard equipment for the Orc Assassin Alliance."
The mask Frederica used was clearly a similar Supernatural Artifact.
Even while on the march, Charlotte did not slack off on his training. As usual, he first practiced the Spirit Spider Technique for an hour and a half, then trained in the other four Bloody Runes in turn. Once he was finished, he took another short nap.
When Charlotte woke the next morning, he found that more than a dozen people had fled.
The training and elite standards of Old Continent armies were nothing like those of modern armies on Earth. Even during the most basic long-distance march, countless people would desert, and entire armies could even collapse. Much less his West Wind Knight Regiment, a hodgepodge force with only a tiny number of proper City Patrol soldiers; the rest were adventurers, prisoners, and gang members. The fact that only a dozen or so had run away was already a tremendous success for yesterday's empty promises.
Charlotte first spent some time gathering the Knight Order together again. After giving this rabble another rousing pep talk, he announced breakfast. Once they had eaten, they resumed their journey.
On the second day of marching, another thirty-odd members of the West Wind Knight Regiment deserted. Left with no choice, Charlotte slightly adjusted their direction of travel.
By the fifth day, nearly three hundred people had fled in succession. After absorbing the Black Scorpion Gang, the West Wind Knight Regiment had once numbered well over three thousand, but it had now fallen below three thousand again. Still, Charlotte had finally brought this Free Knight Regiment to Machu Picchu.
The West Wind Knight Regiment entered the