Over those ten years, Charlemagne had not simply buried himself in improving his strength. He had also drawn up a rough plan for his future direction.
First, he would become a Farstrider like Alleria and gain the opportunity to lead a team out to gain experience. Then he would find a chance to travel to the Broken Isles and seek out the last member of the Unseen Path, Emmarel Shadewarden, who was still living in seclusion in Highmountain.
With that highly respected veteran bringing everyone together, he would rebuild the Unseen Path and recruit the finest hunters from every race, preparing for the various crises that would befall Azeroth in the future.
Hunters and rangers-in his previous life, Charlemagne had thought they were two completely different classes. Only after undergoing Lireesa's ranger training did he discover that, strictly speaking, they belonged to the same category.
Rangers were essentially hunters who specialized in their own skills, something like a hybrid of marksmanship hunters and survival hunters.
Through Lireesa's explanations, he had also gained a basic understanding of the ranged forces of the various races in the Eastern Kingdoms.
"We rangers generally don't use animal companions, but the dwarves living in Dun Morogh are different. They call their ranged troops mountaineers. Unlike us, they fight with guns rather than bows, and animal companions are an indispensable part of their forces."
"Then why don't we use animal companions? We high elves already have weaker constitutions than dwarves. Wouldn't having animal companions holding the front line suit us perfectly?"
Compared with the orcs and tauren who would come later, the gap was even greater...
Charlemagne naturally knew the high elves' shortcomings. Because of the Sunwell's existence, most of his people blindly believed that arcane magic could solve everything. This also left the elves severely lacking in frontline classes. Once they became bogged down in battle, they struggled to withstand the enemy's assaults.
Lireesa shook her head with a wry smile. "It's hardly that easy. Every elf has only so much energy to spare, after all. Since rangers specialize in ranged combat, they naturally don't have much time left to tame and raise animal companions."
"Besides, compared with dwarves, who have raised black bears and boars for years, we high elves aren't particularly popular with other animals apart from the hawkstriders and dragonhawks we use as mounts. Abandoning mature practices passed down for years to tame animal companions would cost us more than we gained."
Charlemagne curled his lip at that. Among the high elves, who did not yet have the Blood Knights, only a handful of oddballs were willing to become warriors. Everyone else, whether ranger or mage, belonged squarely in the back line. Once a war broke out, a situation like that...
Of course, the royal guard's spellbreakers counted as a melee class, but their small numbers and extremely high training costs meant they could not be deployed as regular troops.
A single set of spellbreaker equipment alone... who knew how many years an ordinary elf could live on that money?
Keeping their borders closed for years and doing nothing but trading attacks with the trolls in the forest in a tacitly understood pattern had left the high elves' assessment of the outside world seriously out of touch. They thought they could readily defeat their enemies with the rangers' guerrilla tactics and the arcanists' spell bombardments.
But after witnessing the Scourge's overwhelming waves of corpses in his nightmares for so long, Charlemagne knew that unless the elves developed a frontline force of their own, the scenes in his memories would sooner or later unfold right on schedule.
The high elves' current isolationist policy was also an enormous hidden danger. Apart from a few traveling merchant caravans, they maintained no open relations with any nation in the outside world.
This had also made the high elves blindly confident in themselves. From the reigning Sun King, Anasterian Sunstrider, to the senior members of the Silvermoon Council, they all acted as though they were the greatest in the world, their noses practically pointing at the sky.
Although Prince Kael'thas, who was studying abroad in Dalaran, had some concerns about this situation, he still lacked a sufficient understanding of the current state of affairs during this long stretch without war.
"As for the other races, humans also have a class called hunters, but no dedicated, organized units. The same goes for gnomes. Though there are..."
Lireesa frowned at that point, then shook her head and corrected herself. "No, it's nothing."
Charlemagne had some idea of what Lireesa had wanted to say.
She probably meant those night elf cousins of ours.
Because of their long-standing isolationist policy, the high elves had gradually forgotten the many races of Kalimdor they had encountered back when they were night elves.
But as a transmigrator, Charlemagne naturally knew that Kalimdor's tauren, night elves, furbolgs, and even quilboar all had their own traditions of ranged troops.
Though the furbolgs and quilboar were now showing signs of gradually falling into depravity because the demigods they worshipped had fallen in the great war ten thousand years ago...
After finishing the day's training, Charlemagne pondered with his brows tightly furrowed on the road back to Windrunner Village.
This is tricky. How am I supposed to make up for the high elves' fatal lack of a front line? Those unaffiliated warriors without any organized units simply won't do...
Sigh... why does everyone else get a golden finger when they transmigrate, while I'm stuck struggling on my own?
Although Charlemagne lamented a little, he actually knew that the extraordinary learning speed he had gained after his two souls merged was already the greatest golden finger he could have.
He had discovered it when he first approached Lireesa to learn from her. He could learn every technical movement she demonstrated after seeing it just once, and he rapidly mastered energy-based techniques such as Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot after a single explanation.
Whenever he failed to execute a movement properly during practice, he instinctively sensed that something felt wrong and adjusted himself accordingly. This was the biggest reason he had been able to catch up in just a few short years with Alleria, who had trained for over a century.
"Charlemagne, what are you thinking about?"
While Charlemagne was absorbed in thoughts about the high elves' future, Alleria, who was walking home beside him, squeezed his hand.
"I'm thinking about how to establish frontline units for the high elves. Don't you think our current military structure, relying solely on ranged attacks to suppress the enemy, is very unreasonable?"
Returning to his senses, Charlemagne looked at Alleria's radiant smile beside him and answered with a smile.
The Alleria of the present had not yet been tempered by the many great wars she had experienced in history. A trace of a young elf's inexperience still lingered in her features.
But her exquisitely beautiful face, golden hair as dazzling as the Sunwell's radiance, and perfectly proportioned figure all gave her a youthful, alluring appeal.
"Is it? Haven't we managed this way for thousands of years? The trolls can't break through our barrier anyway."
Alleria's words also represented the prevailing view among the elves, and that was precisely what worried Charlemagne. Without facing their own weaknesses, they would find it difficult to make up for them.
Besides, the high elves' barrier depended far too heavily on its runestones. If a traitor ever revealed their secrets...
I'm just a nobody. I can't change anything about the warriors, but... when I go traveling later, I should seek some advice from the dwarves. If we could have animal companions holding the front line, that should improve things quite a bit, shouldn't it?
Worried about the future, Charlemagne held Alleria's hand tightly and gazed toward Thas'alah, the high elves' sacred tree, in the distance.
Alleria gently squeezed Charlemagne's hand in return.
"I don't know what you're worrying about, but I'll do everything I can to help you along the road ahead. Don't shoulder everything alone."
Charlemagne turned to look at the female elf, as lovely as a flower. Amid the intimate atmosphere, their faces gradually drew closer, and an enchanting blush slowly spread over Alleria's pretty face.
"Um... have you two forgotten about me?"
(End of chapter)