Chapter Four Enlist in the army（two）

After playing for two hours and getting exhausted without achieving anything, Ryan returned to the riverbank. He saw that very few mercenaries were able to catch fish. Weak from hunger, Ryan lay down on the ground.

"Dinner is served! Dinner is served!" Joe shouted while banging on two pots.

"So, there's food after all. They're just messing with us!" Ryan thought. However, the strong feeling of hunger compelled him to drag his tired body towards the two big pots.

All the hungry people shuffled over to the pots.

When the lids were lifted, a pungent smell of herbal medicine rushed to the nose.

It was a mixture of green things that looked like roots and leaves, mixed with tuberous roots of various unknown plants in red and green. Two pots of thick, bubbling stuff were churning and bubbling.

"What's the matter, you little brats? Don't want to eat? Fine, go catch your own fish," Joe said, glancing at all the mercenaries with green faces.

Ryan forced himself to gulp down a bowl of the herbal concoction, not daring to experience that pungent smell again. He could only keep recalling Bena's cooking skills and the sweet memories brought by that delicious pine cake in his mind to stimulate gastric juice.

After a short rest after dinner, they heard Joe's voice from afar: "You little brats, you've eaten and drunk enough. Let the dogs out."

A chorus of barking dogs came from afar. Ryan quickly flipped over and got up.

Run for your life.

For the next few weeks, the training content was almost the same every day.

Chased by dogs in the morning.

Fishing at noon.

If you couldn't catch fish, eat grass.

Chased by dogs again in the afternoon.

After more than a month of running training, Ryan could now outrun ordinary dogs. Of course, his fishing skills had also greatly improved, and he rarely had to eat that indigestible root porridge anymore.

Seeing that everyone's running speed had greatly improved and their endurance was also quite good, any mercenary could easily run dozens of miles continuously.

Therefore, in the next two months, these mercenaries would be trained in appropriate combat skills.

What made all the mercenaries happiest was that after the running training was announced to be over, on the suggestion of a mercenary, that very night, all the mercenaries held a dinner party. At the dinner party, groups of mercenaries sat around a stove eating hot pot. As for what kind of hot pot it was, of course, they used local ingredients, with fish and dog meat readily available.

Although there were no delicacies, and although the mercenaries' cooking skills were far from excellent, Ryan still ate heartily.

At least at this moment, Ryan truly understood the philosophy of life practiced by mercenaries: adapt to circumstances and enjoy the moment.

The lively dinner party lasted all day until night fell completely. Only then did the mercenaries return to their tents with satisfied hearts. They needed plenty of rest because new training awaited them.

Early the next morning, the mercenaries got up early from their beds. They came to the lawn behind, leaning against the sunny slope of the hill, and sat in a semi-circle there. In front of them on the open ground were several bundles of long spears piled up.

Joe picked one out and started toying with it casually. The long spear in his hand whirled and danced, sometimes slashing left and right, sometimes thrusting forward and backward, sometimes chopping up and down.

Ryan had never thought that there were so many ways to use a long spear, because it had always been the most basic equipment for infantry, a weapon used by the lowest-ranking soldiers.

As long as a soldier had a bit of fighting potential, after completing three months of basic training, the officers would let them switch to using a saber and shield as slashers or become heavy infantry wearing heavy armor and using super long spears. If their abilities were outstanding, these people would be selected for swordsmanship or halberd training to become swordsmen or halberd warriors. Only those soldiers with absolutely no potential would be given just a long spear, usually used by border guards or miscellaneous soldiers in the army.

However, if a long spear could be used like Joe's, then an ordinary spearman would also be a powerful combat force.

While Ryan was lost in thought, he saw Joe whirl around, and the long spear in his hand traced a perfect arc in the air. When the spear reached the end of the arc, Joe flicked his wrist. The spear turned into a shooting star slicing through the sky and shot towards the mercenaries, scaring them into dodging in all directions.

With a "thud", the spear pierced through a large tree. The sharp spearhead emerged from the other side of the tree. The part of the spear shaft nailed to this side of the tree trembled non-stop.

The mercenaries, whose minds had just been calmed a bit, finally came back to their senses. Excited and envious expressions appeared on everyone's faces.

Seeing that his performance had clearly achieved its intended purpose, Joe thought that in the next few weeks, these guys should be willing to practice using the long spear obediently.

"Boys, do you know why the long spear is the most commonly used weapon by mercenaries?" Joe asked loudly.

If it had been the former Ryan, he would have answered that mercenaries were non-regular soldiers not part of the formal establishment, with limited combat capabilities, so it wasn't worthwhile to equip them with advanced weapons and equipment.

However, after seeing Joe's skills, it was obvious that a mercenary force with such abilities would be very helpful in achieving victory.

"Because the long spear is powerful," a mercenary said loudly. This was also Ryan's thought.

"Idiot. If the long spear were that powerful, the army would be full of spearmen, and the spearman wouldn't be the most useless branch in the army," Joe retorted.

Seeing that all the mercenaries looked extremely puzzled, he continued to explain, "Mercenary work is a dangerous profession, and victory in battle doesn't mean much to mercenaries. For mercenaries, the most important thing is to stay alive on the battlefield. Therefore, when mercenaries choose weapons, they don't consider how good the weapon's combat performance is, but whether it's safe to use this weapon."

Seeing that most of the mercenaries around him still didn't understand, Joe drew another long spear and thrust forward a few times, then continued, "You've all seen it. The main attack method of the long spear is thrusting. Among all the attack methods in close combat, thrusting is the one that creates the greatest distance between the enemy and oneself, so it's also the safest attack method. Moreover, the long spear can be used in this way."

Joe bent his arm and crouched down, then straightened up with a thrust of his arm. The long spear traced an arc and shot towards the same tree like a meteor. The spear also pierced through the tree trunk.

"Did you see that? Can you use a two-handed long sword like this?"

"Besides, the long spear has another advantage that other weapons can't compare with. Do you know what it is?"

Seeing that everyone was unresponsive, Joe shook his head, "It seems none of you guys is particularly smart."

He raised his voice and shouted, "Alright, if you can practice the long spear skills diligently, I'll tell you after the training."

Every mercenary stood up and walked over to the pile of long spears to draw one. Ryan also stepped forward and picked one.

The long spear in his hand was different from the four long spears he had bought when he entered the mountains.

This kind of long spear had a shaft made of tough Bauhinia wood, which was very elastic, unlike the previous four which had shafts made of hardwood.

The spearhead of this long spear was forged thin and long. The entire spearhead was one foot and eight inches long. No wonder it could pierce through the tree trunk so easily. The spearhead was made of high-hardness fine steel by cold forging, extremely hard and sharp. However, it wasn't as wear-resistant as the spearheads forged by the thousand-layer folding and forging method of the previous ones. It seemed that this was indeed a long spear specially used for combat.

In the next few weeks, Ryan practiced the skills of using the long spear with the other mercenaries under Joe's guidance.

Joe taught them several basic attack and defense movements, such as thrusting straight, thrusting up and down, and parrying left and right, and required everyone to practice them repeatedly.

Practice alone, practice with a partner, group sparring, break down each movement for practice, and combine all movements for practice.

If it weren't for that wonderful performance earlier and that very convincing speech, no one would have been able to endure such dull training.

However, without such training, Ryan would never have known that there were so many profound principles hidden in such simple movements.

For example, the simplest thrusting. Although thrusting looked quite simple, thrusting in different directions towards different parts required considerable skill and a clever grasp of strength.

Several times, Ryan thought he had mastered the technique of thrusting, but in actual combat, he found that there was further application for thrusting.

Poking and sweeping are effective defensive techniques for the long spear, and their skills are even more difficult to master. Every time they practiced, Joe always had the mercenaries attack him. Although Ryan and the others had practiced many times and studied their mutual cooperation thoroughly, every time, with Joe's simple light poke or casual sweep, the long spears in the hands of the mercenaries would fly out of their hands by themselves.

Although Joe had explained many times about the techniques of using strength in the use of the long spear. However, no matter how much Ryan understood this, and even in the end he could make the long spears in the hands of other mercenaries fly into the sky within a few moves, the result was still the same in the sparring with Joe.

Several weeks of training made Ryan a good hand at using the long spear.

Originally, he had learned swordsmanship from Oliver, and Oliver had also said that Ryan had considerable fighting talent and kindly mentioned introducing Ryan to his father so that Ryan could switch to learning martial arts. However, Ryan had fallen deeply in love with magic, so he declined Oliver's kindness.

Joe clearly also noticed Ryan's martial arts talent and often gave Ryan some further guidance. This also made Ryan's progress in learning spearsmanship much faster than others.

However, Ryan soon found that Joe's teaching method was completely different from Oliver's. Oliver was good at explaining. He always told Ryan in detail about the methods and principles of attack and defense, so that Ryan had a certain understanding before actually practicing. Moreover, during practice, Oliver would also pay attention to controlling the rhythm so that Ryan could practice the skills he learned as much as possible. He would never just let go and attack right away. Corresponding to the test in the palace, it seemed that the training method of knights was like this.

However, Joe's training method is completely different. Once practice begins, he will make you immediately experience the atmosphere of death approaching. Although he rarely stabbed one or two spears into the mercenaries (of course, sometimes he would do so. Ryan had such a spear wound on his buttocks), but a heavy blow on the ribs or a heavy blow on the head was a common treatment for the mercenaries.

Every practice was no less than an actual fierce battle for the mercenaries. Of course, this is only for the mercenaries.

For Joe, he was just playing. His greatest pleasure was to beat the mercenaries rolling on the ground or drive the mercenaries to chase and beat them all the way.

During practice, Ryan felt several times that Joe was really like Chris in the Illusion Forest.

That morning, after everyone had breakfast and rested for a while, they each picked up their long spears and went to the open space behind the mountain to practice. When they arrived there, Joe was already waiting for them.

There were a dozen longbows and several bundles of arrows piled up at Joe's feet. A dozen haystack targets were standing in the distance.

Joe ordered the mercenaries to stick their long spears in the ground, and then come over empty-handed.

For several weeks, Ryan had never let go of his long spear, and now he really wasn't used to it.

Gathering around, the mercenaries sat in a circle around Joe.

Joe picked up a bow from the ground. The bow was very curved, almost crescent-shaped. Then he drew three arrows from the bundle of arrows, placed one on the string, and the other two casually stabbed into the ground.

Joe turned around, faced the target, gently stretched his arms, nocked an arrow and drew the bow, aimed carefully, and then released his wrist, and the arrow flew into the bullseye.

He bent down to pick up the other two arrows, drew the bow again, nocked two arrows on the bowstring at the same time, and released his hand. The arrows flew out. Although they didn't hit the bullseye like the first one, they still hit the target.

After shooting three arrows, Joe turned back and said, "On the battlefield, if you want to stay away from the battlefield and effectively kill the enemy, besides using magic, you can only rely on the bow and arrow. Of course, except for one of you who can use magic, the rest of you don't have this ability."

Hearing what Joe said, everyone looked at Ryan because everyone knew that Ryan was the only magician here.

Ryan felt amused in his heart. In fact, he couldn't use magic either, but who would believe it if he said it?

Joe continued, "I'm going to teach you archery now. Archery actually doesn't need to be taught. It all depends on your own practice. At first, I will correct the mistakes in your movements and point out some key points for you. Then it depends on you."

Although Joe said there was nothing much to teach, there were actually so many things to learn about archery.

Ryan listened to Joe's explanations for several days before he roughly grasped the subtleties of archery.

Just in terms of the types of bows, there were hunting bows, longbows, and combat bows. Based on the manufacturing methods, bows could be divided into lightweight bows and rigid bows.

Different types of bows not only had their own usage methods, but also completely different maintenance methods and precautions.

Obviously, Joe had been immersed in archery for a long time and knew the performance of bows like the back of his hand. Through him, Ryan learned a lot about bows and even learned the manufacturing process.

Regarding bow making, Joe didn't force all the mercenaries to learn it. He only shared his knowledge with those who were interested without holding back.

Unfortunately, in the Kingdom of Sophie, where the atmosphere of knights and magic was strong, archers had always been overlooked. Most of the army and mercenaries in the Kingdom of Sophie did not carry bows, so there were very few people interested in them.

During the breaks, Ryan followed Joe's instructions and used the leftover long spear shafts from before to carve out his own bow. Since it was made of Bauhinia wood that had been treated with wax infiltration and hardening, its elasticity was far inferior to that of Bauhinia wood normally used for making bows.

However, since it was originally a long spear shaft, it had an advantage in length. Ryan thus made a rigid longbow. But since the arrows used for longbows were of a different length from those issued by Joe, he also had to make dozens of arrows for himself.

With his own bow, Ryan didn't have to practice archery with the other mercenaries. He had his own practice area and target.

The subsequent practice was just to improve shooting speed and accuracy.

The other mercenaries were divided into ten teams, each team using one bow and three hundred arrows. Each round, ten people would shoot all the arrows in their hands. After Joe recorded the hit rate, the next person would run up to pick up the arrows and then shoot.

Sometimes Ryan would practice with the bows and arrows used by the other mercenaries during their breaks. Indeed, different bows had different usage methods.

The shooting stability of a longbow was much better than that of a combat bow. However, the shooting speed of a longbow was very slow, and it was more difficult to aim with a longbow than with a combat bow. Combat bows had a great advantage in aiming accuracy and ease of use. But in terms of range and power, longbows were much stronger than combat bows.

However, most of the mercenaries found Ryan's fondness for archery quite strange. There were, of course, reasons for this.

Firstly, as a magician, Ryan had no advantage in long-distance combat with a bow and arrow. The attack range of a bow and arrow was between one hundred and two hundred meters, while magic could easily attack targets four or five hundred meters away. Moreover, there were quite a few area attack spells in magic, which were nightmares for archers with weak defenses.

For slashers and heavy infantry with extremely strong defensive capabilities, the power of a bow and arrow was not enough to penetrate their long shields and armor. At a greater distance, arrows couldn't even penetrate the armor of ordinary knights, and once the knights approached the archers, their powerful impact force was something the archers couldn't withstand.

Therefore, although the Kingdom of Sophie had a certain number of archers, in reality, they only played a relatively minor auxiliary attack role. They were a limited force used to fill the gap in power caused by the different attack speeds of knights and infantry.

Even several times, the army considered completely abolishing the archer unit. If it weren't for the fact that one of the legendary heroes of the Victory Day battle was an archer, the profession of archer would have disappeared from the army long ago.

However, Ryan had always been unaware of the name of that hero. After all, that hero was one of the three founding heroes of the Kingdom of Caoqi, so the Kingdom of Sophie, as an enemy country, would never promote it.

Ryan was quite clear about the two heroes from his own country who participated in that battle. Their glorious deeds were celebrated every year at the festival. They were the Temple Knight Bosos and the Great Magister Meikaton. Therefore, the Kingdom of Sophie was always known among the countries for its strong knights and magical power.

After all the training was completed, there were still half a month left before departure.

Joe decided to teach everyone some skills that only mercenaries would use.

Among them, Ryan achieved excellent results in cross-country and tree-climbing training, which greatly surprised all the mercenaries, including Joe.

In their impression, magicians were people with weak physical strength and clumsy movements. And in terms of stealth and trap-making skills, because Ryan could use magic arrays, he even surpassed Joe in these two aspects.

However, the trap-making course really gave Ryan a hard time. Originally, when Joe was assessing the trap-making skills of the mercenaries, he asked each mercenary to make a trap on their own. If Joe detected the trap, that mercenary would be considered a failure.

Most of the mercenaries' traps were rather rough and could be easily spotted. Joe mercilessly exposed these traps one by one.

Some traps were made meticulously and set very cleverly, with some even featuring multiple layers, interlocking mechanisms, or decoy setups. Although Joe saw through them, he pretended not to notice and gently avoided them.

Only Ryan's trap was not only cleverly designed but also incorporated a magic array. Even the experienced Joe failed to detect it and stepped right into it, falling for the trick completely.

Of course, in the following days, Ryan received special attention from Joe.

After nearly half a month of study (this half-month was the easiest half-month), most of the mercenaries finally learned some knowledge about how to survive on the battlefield.

When Joe announced the end of the training, almost all the mercenaries crowded around him, asking about what he had mentioned before - that there was a significant difference between a long spear and other weapons. What exactly was it?

Joe tilted his head and glanced at everyone, saying, "Haven't you ever thought about it? Among all weapons, the long spear is the cheapest. Got it? It saves money."

After hearing this answer, a large number of mercenaries collapsed to the ground.

There were only three days left before departure. During these three days, Joe conducted some specialized training for the mercenaries, especially Ryan. Surprisingly, the training items were court etiquette.

And the most astonishing thing was Joe's identity. When Joe introduced himself as a nobleman and a member of one of the oldest noble families in the Kingdom of Sophie, except for Ryan, none of the mercenaries believed it.

Thanks to his experience with Teacher Chris, Ryan didn't find it hard to believe that Joe was a nobleman. After all, Joe looked much more presentable than Chris. Moreover, not long after, Ryan discovered that Joe and Chris were actually related by blood.

Chris's mother, the late Empress Dowager, was Joe's aunt. This put Ryan in a tough spot. With such an elder, Ryan had suffered a lot. To prevent him from making a fool of himself during the diplomatic mission, Joe, entrusted by the king, provided Ryan with extremely strict etiquette training.

During the training, Ryan often thought that the ancestors of that Empress Dowager must have had some serious issues, which could be clearly seen from the behaviors of these two descendants.

Moreover, during the training, the other mercenaries also joined in the fun. They confidently claimed that it was to maintain the glorious image of the Kingdom of Sophie, so they had to be extremely strict with Ryan, who was one of the "Six Great Disgraces" of the Magic Association.

Due to his past record, Ryan couldn't really stand up for himself and could only endure the ridicule.

Through the arduous etiquette training, Ryan finally understood why Chris and Joe, despite their noble status, gave up such prestigious titles - one became a crazy magician, and the other turned into a down-and-out mercenary.

Apart from genetic factors, the complicated court etiquette could sometimes be a real torture.