Chapter 71 – Faint (1/2)
Early morning.
On the excessively spacious practise field of the soldiers, located in the outskirts of the capital, the knights, with exception of those on public order duty, gathered. The figures of Royal Knight Order Captain Sabnak, Knight Order Captain Lotomago and Knight Order Vice-Captain Midas are there as well.
All members number 60, including one part being newcomers. It’s no more than a third or less of the numbers from their golden age, but although the veterans feel lonely, the gathering of this many knights all at once is rare as well.
In front of them, not knowing when it was built, a simple hut, that was only the frame of an one-story house with walls and door installed, was standing.
Coming out from that hut is the Earl, whose name and face is now known by anyone from the knight orders, Hifumi.
“Good morning.” (Hifumi)
“”Good morning, sir!””
Once Hifumi nodded due to completing the greetings, staff members from the royal castle distributed the weapons they brought along.
Those are wooden short spears that have a length of reaching up to the chest of an adult man.
“Those were made out of wood in order to practise using short spears during the patrolling within the castle. They have no weight, however it will probably be fine if you only learn the style for starters. Each of you will take the one you’re holding home and bring it back for the next time we train.” (Hifumi)
Once everyone got a weapon, Hifumi pointed at the frame-only building.
“For now we haven’t been able to make more than one house, but the plan is to build two more of them.” (Hifumi)
“For what the heck will those be used?” (Sabnak)
Due to Sabnak’s question, Hifumi said “It will be faster if I show you” and had three people enter into a room of the frame-only house.
And then he enters holding a short spear himself as well.
“For the time being, the three inside, attack me at the same time. No worries, I will go easy on you.” (Hifumi)
Thanks to that line, the knights, who were pride of being the elite, although they were assembled at random, angrily set up their spears.
“Thank you. I judged that your experience of fighting indoors is small. It’s faster to show you the way to answer your question.” (Hifumi)
Lightly gripping the spear in his right hand, Hifumi is waiting for the three to come attacking.
As on of them stabs with his spear, he lightly avoids that by taking a distance in order to push it away with his foot and then says,
“There are three of you for a reason. Synchronize your breathing.” (Hifumi)
While saying this, he leisurely moves to the centre of the room.
“First off, at this point they fail. Do you know why?” (Hifumi)
“Me?” (Knight)
The singled-out knight, who was observing from the outside, let a nervous voice escape.
“Umm… is it about the situation of Earl Tohno moving to the centre of the room?” (Knight)
“Since it looks like you didn’t understand the entire reason, your answer is only half right.” (Hifumi)
While he is explaining, the three are surrounding Hifumi.
They come stabbing at the same time at the place they estimated they would be able to encircle him, but they can’t seize Hifumi.
As he passes through a gap between the knights, he lightly brushes one’s flanks with the edge of the wooden spear.
“Look, with this, one of you was done in.” (Hifumi)
“As expected, if it’s only three knights…”
“What are you saying! If there were 5 or 6 of them in the confined space, they would lose the ability to move about.” (Hifumi)
“Uh…”
After that Hifumi instructed them in stuff such as defence and clearing an encirclement by using all the furnishings like shelves, the building’s walls and the pillars.
At the beginning especially the knights formerly affiliated with the Second Knight Order were complaining about his sneaky and wait-and-see movements, however after repeatedly doing battles against him in groups of three their dissatisfaction naturally vanished as they saw its distinct effectiveness.
Their honesty about this seems to also be due to the Second Knight Order having actually experienced real combat to some degree.
“For a while you will use this hut for training in turns. The remaining groups will fix their training on how to use a spear.” (Hifumi)
There are several of the many techniques, shown by Hifumi, the knights already knew. In addition to the thrusting techniques of the knight’s spearmanship, they are furthermore training technical strikes by using the spear’s pummel to entangle an opponent and lastly there are even references how to use the spear for throwing it.
As all of that was crammed into them within just the morning, the most the knights could do was to learn the things without being able to say whether they would able to apply it or not.
Furthermore.
“These are the basics. You have to leverage your indoor combat by memorizing these movements within three days.” (Hifumi)
The knights sat down and started to discuss as Hifumi said this much and quickly left towards the castle. The enthusiastic Lotomago is lying on the ground with his head facing up as his body can’t follow up on the movement. He has an extremely relieved facial expression.
“… If we don’t do it, it will be bad, right?” (Lotomago)
Sabnak shakes his head due the words of his colleague.
“You can’t say it’s fine to not do it. At least, I believe it to be necessary for the sake of finishing the upcoming coronation ceremony without problems as person in charge. Also, if you want to take care of your subordinates’ lives, there’s likely no other way but go through with it.” (Sabnak)
“For that reason we have no other choice but to take the lead”, Sabnak said as he put strength into his knees and stood up.
☺☻☺
Starting from Horant’s capital Adolamelk, the country fell into a temporary, great chaos.
On top of having an enemy invade the royal castle and significant damage to the military forces occurring, troops from a foreign country have been stationed in the capital. Moreover, the situation is that they are essentially training the soldiers from Horant.
Furthermore, even the magic tool research institution, which was run by the state, has been damaged. The amount of money they had to pay to the Tohno territory, located within Orsongrande, as reparation isn’t a low amount by no means either.
Naturally this caused dissatisfaction among the nobles dedicated to their country. Movements of opposition against the quite weakened royalty started to emerge, but for some reason just at that timing … the reports of ferocious monsters increased. Together with the appearance of people, who didn’t seem to feel any pain, the nobles had their hands full just dealing with the territories in this confusing state.
And while the nobles had to accept their confinement to indoors, Horant’s national army, whose core units were stationed in Adolamelk, were trained and taught about technologies by the territorial soldiers of Fokalore, led by Alyssa, in order to improve their strength to a certain degree to compensate for the decreased number of soldiers.
Even if some noble somewhere revolted right now, they wouldn’t be able to rival the capital to make it surrender at all.
“… I guess it’s fine to say that we completely lost.” (Suprangel)
While looking at those reports, Suprangel sighed deeply.
Although he himself is the king, his way of inviting soldiers of an enemy nation will give birth to a considerably backlash. Although he had prepared himself for the case of protest coming from someone skilled, the authority of the king was strengthened, the power of the nobles was weakened and the capital was flourishing, if you looked at the results.
In order to increase the distribution channels for magic tools, the number of merchants coming and going from Orsongrande have increased and thus the tax yields grew as well. To some degree they are even able to recover the part, they had to pay as reparation.
“What about the guests from Fokalore?” (Suprangel)
“Haa! The soldiers from Orsongrande haven’t caused any particular problems. … Rather, since they are distributing the edible parts of monsters, they caught, every day on the market and as they are strangely fine to pay money, they seem to be accepted by the citizens around the castle.”
The young man, who reported this slightly unpleasantly, is a distant relative of the king and calls himself Nelgal (T/N: >> Nerugaru <<).
As consequence of uncovering many royals cooperating with the royal grandson Veldore, quite a few of them had been exiled or disposed of. Although I summoned this able young man close-by to install him as heir even if his blood is thin, he still has some time of training ahead, Suprangel is thinking.
“There aren’t only bad things about this situation either. If the population is delighted and prospers, it will become the country’s wealth. Rather, what we should be worried about is the soldiers from Fokalore leaving from here.” (Suprangel)
“What do you mean?” (Nelgal)