Chapter 6
#6. Practical Training
"Gasp! Hah…! Damn it, is this a training ground or a slaughterhouse!?"
"If you have enough energy to talk, move your legs! You need to build your stamina first if you want to withstand the weight of a steel sword!"
The temporary First Training Camp on the outskirts of Winterwald's grand ducal castle.
A training ground lashed by bitter winds.
From early morning, the sound of wailing had been echoing throughout the place.
More than two hundred people of the territory, who had spent their entire lives wielding axes and sickles, were on the verge of foaming at the mouth from physical training intense enough for the Imperial regular knights!
The only reason they could keep up with the training even while foaming at the mouth was that they had been born and raised in the harsh North.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
"Your movements are slow! A wolf's claws won't show mercy because you're sluggish! If you don't want to die, swing harder!"
The one-eyed knight who had risen to become the first guildmaster, Sir Walter, demonstrated by swinging a wooden sword with a razor-sharp gaze.
Walter's one remaining eye burned with passion.
After losing an eye, he had been reduced to a shut-in old man.
He had thought he would spend the rest of his life in helplessness, but the Grand Duke had dragged him back out into the sunlight.
And that wasn't all. He had even been entrusted with the immense task of raising the people of the North into warriors.
'Ah, even if it is only to repay my lord's boundless benevolence, I will turn these men into warriors capable of defeating a hundred enemies each!'
Because of his overflowing loyalty, the hapless people of the territory had to endure hellish Spartan training.
Carrying logs around the drill yard in groups. Rolling through frozen mud. Swinging wooden swords, too.
"This is driving me insane. I was a hundred times happier when I was a lumberjack…!"
Some of the soldiers swung their wooden swords with trembling arms and even began to cry.
It was a physiological reaction whose cause they did not even understand.
"When can we rest…"
"I'm going to die before I even get to see that meat!"
Several hotheaded trainees were seriously discussing whether they should escape from the training camp.
"Training halted! Everyone stand by!"
When someone entered the training ground, the guildmaster left the trainees and dashed over to greet the newcomers.
A group of people came into view for the exhausted locals sprawled across the ground. At its head walked a woman whose dazzling platinum hair fluttered in the wind.
She was the Fourth Imperial Princess and the North's new power broker: Eleanor, the finance minister.
Behind her, servants followed in a line, pulling carts loaded with enormous cauldrons.
"Your Highness!"
When Walter hurriedly dropped to one knee, the people of the territory hastily followed suit.
The princess gracefully nodded and spoke.
"Sir Walter. The trainees look like they're suffering terribly. Will they be all right?"
"Of course, Your Highness! But if they are to survive actual combat, they must endure at least this much!"
"I shouldn't have worried. Sir Walter is the expert when it comes to training, so we'll simply give you a gift and return."
When the servants lifted the lids from the cauldrons, the rich, savory scent of meat broth spread throughout the training ground in an instant.
"Gasp…!"
"I-it's the smell of meat!"
"Really!? I've never smelled meat before!"
The people of the North, who had survived their entire lives on hard bread, rose to their feet with drool streaming from their mouths.
They looked ready to plunge their bare hands into the cauldrons if only they were given permission.
A short while later, the trainees were served steaming, milky-white soup packed with pork and bread still sending up wisps of steam.
Sun magic, which the imperial family had shunned as ominous.
Yet it was entirely thanks to that innate magic of hers that hundreds of servings of soup could remain boiling hot even in subzero weather.
Even the bread, which should have been hard, stayed soft and moist as if by magic.
In fact, it was the result of several spells cast by the princess and her servants.
"Everyone, start eating!"
"Your Highness! Thank you!"
At Walter's permission, the trainees fell upon the food like beasts.
"Munch! Munch! Gulp…! Sob, sob!"
"Good heavens! It's half broth and half meat!"
"The bread melts in your mouth…!"
Sobs erupted from all over the training ground.
The combination of hot meat soup and carbohydrates after extreme physical labor left an unforgettable impression on the trainees' minds.
They would never be able to return to their former livelihoods.
Everyone lifted their bowls, afraid someone might take them away, and downed the meat broth in one gulp.
They seemed not to notice that they were scalding their tongues.
"Even if I work as a lumberjack for the rest of my life, I'll never get to eat a meal like this again…"
"The princess is our goddess…!"
It had only been a single bowl of meat soup. But that hot meal was enough to turn the people of the territory into fanatics devoted to the princess.
"Long live the Grand Duke! Long live the Imperial Princess!!!"
"We'll endure any kind of training!!!"
The cheers of the people who had sold their souls for a bowl of meat soup rang out as though they would pierce the heavens.
Watching them, Princess Eleanor smiled with satisfaction.
'As expected, Her Highness's wisdom is extraordinary.'
Even by Walter's own assessment, there had been something excessively enthusiastic about today's training.
They had spent an enormous sum just gathering people, and if those people gave up halfway through and spread bad rumors about the guild, the losses would be enormous.
She had prevented all that with a single meal.
"Heh heh."
The smiling princess was thinking only of receiving praise from the Grand Duke of the North.
***
Five weeks passed after official training began.
Thanks to two meals of meat soup a day and the systematic training provided by the Expert-level knight Walter, the trainees had changed beyond recognition.
The bodies of the people of the territory, once optimized only for rough manual labor, had developed dense, combat-ready muscles comparable to a knight's, and the wooden swords slicing through the air had begun to carry a distinctly fierce whistle.
"Everyone, inspect your weapons! As announced, starting today, we will conduct practical training beyond the ramparts!"
At the guildmaster's command, the tightly shut iron gate in the ramparts swung open.
More than two hundred prospective guild members, armed with dwarven steel swords and shields, stepped nervously onto the snowy northern plain.
At the rear of the formation, Grand Duke Kylan rode with them on a black horse.
"Sir Walter. What do you think? Wouldn't you be better off at the front?"
"No problem, Your Highness! We fed them plenty of expensive meat and thoroughly built up their stamina and fundamentals!!"
"Hmm… I'm counting on you."
That was what he said, but Kylan was as anxious as a parent who had left a child by the water.
If anything went wrong, he could become the worst tyrant in history for sending farmers into a death trap.
Kylan had even faced a giant yeti that breathed icy blasts, but today was the first time he had swallowed nervously on a battlefield.
Keeping himself ready to leap from his horse at any moment, Kylan advanced slowly.
It was less than an hour after they began marching.
Kssit. Kssish.
A group with blue skin emerged from the snow-covered forest, making unpleasant sounds.
Twenty or so Ice Goblins.
They were northern nuisances much larger and tougher-skinned than the goblins of the central continent.
These intelligent creatures could, if they banded together, slaughter a single Diamond Wolf in an instant.
"Kshiiik! Humans! Humans!"
"Are they strong!?"
"Human! Strong! No mana! Weak!!"
"Weak!! Weak!!"
"Human meat! Tasty!"
The goblins began approaching slowly, having decided that the trainees at the front looked like easy prey.
They carried crude spears made from animal bones.
"D-don't be scared! You all remember everything we learned, right!? Hans!? Tom!? Right!?"
The trainees' formation began to waver visibly.
Since this was their first real battle, they could not help but feel afraid.
Even if their opponents were monsters much smaller than humans.
As the monsters drew closer and the trainees gradually spread out…
"You're the one who shouldn't be scared, dumbass."
The massive Hans, leader of the shield squad, stepped forward with calm strides.
"Kshiik!"
An Ice Goblin let out a spine-chilling shriek and leaped at Hans.
Hans gripped his steel sword tightly with both hands.
Even Kylan could see that it was an excellent stance without a single unnecessary movement.
The thick muscles in Hans's forearms swelled as though they might burst.
Whoosh!
"……Huh?"
Hans himself was the most startled of all.
Hans's sword sliced through the air and passed diagonally from the goblin's shoulder to its waist.
It sliced through the monster's tough skin and bones as easily as butter.
Thump.
The goblin split in two from a single blow and collapsed onto the snow.
Silence descended over the snowy plain.
Walter shrugged, and only then could Kylan relax his shoulders a little.
"The brave shield squad of the Winterwald Guild will take the lead! Push forward!"
"They're just puny little weaklings!"
A man who had been an ordinary lumberjack until recently had sliced an Ice Goblin in half with a single stroke.
Even Kylan, who had suggested that the hardy men of the North should not be left to rot as mere lumberjacks, had not expected this much.
'A happy mistake.'
The men of the North really were different from the rest.
"What the hell! Is the sword His Grace gave us really that good, or are these bastards just soft? They go down a hundred times more easily than frozen wood!"
As the goblins were cut down, the trainees' gazes began to waver.
If they had been wavering with fear before, now they were wavering with greed.
"H-how much did they say one magic stone was worth? One gold?"
"Idiot. No way a goblin magic stone costs that much."
Fear comes from ignorance.
But the moment they realized that hunting goblins was easier than their usual backbreaking labor, the goblins that had looked like monsters began to look like coins lying on the ground.
"Out of the way! That one's mine!"
"Don't touch the money I need to buy my wife a coat!"
Though the trainees shouted excitedly, they calmly maintained their formation and swept away the goblins.
The trainees at the rear stamped their feet, wondering when their turn would finally come.
"Kiiieek?!"
"Kkigit!?"
The goblins, suddenly turned into prey, tried to flee with their tails between their legs, but they were up against a full two hundred systematically trained soldiers.
Even if the trainees wanted to let one slip away, they couldn't.
"Hey! Didn't you hear what His Grace said!? Don't stab them in the heart just because you're excited! Don't you know that's where the magic stone is!?"
"Then what am I supposed to do when the little bastard keeps darting all over the place!?"
Thwack! Stab! Crack!
As a result, it took less than five minutes to send the goblin horde to hell.
The trainees who had fought at the front laughed with their companions, holding the magic stones they had safely extracted.
They were busy talking about what they would buy to eat with the money.
Or where they would live once they became rich.
They were too busy indulging in happy fantasies.
Of course, Kylan joined in those happy fantasies as well.
The Grand Duke of the North's mouth twitched like a villain's.
'At this rate, we won't have to pay much in workplace injury compensation. Hahaha! The guild medical fund goes straight into the lord's coffers!'
Everything was thanks to the policy the princess had devised.
'When we get back, I have to give her a really tight hug.'
Needless to say, Eleanor was just as delighted as Kylan when she later heard the news.