Cthulhu Gonfalon

The troublesome things on the Baron Keane Hill, which had happened because of the harvest, had finally ended.

About a month later, another messenger of the Grand Duke of Thunder came to Keane City from the capital. The strength of this high-level knight was powerful, so naturally, Crick and his men couldn’t strike a heavy blow at him secretly. He also had a high-level mage with him. However, no matter how strong they were, Crick always replied with the same words. “As a reward for receiving protection, I sold the crops to the Church of Void Mask.”

The messenger did not believe this reply at first, but they couldn’t find the large number of crops that should be piled up after searching for it again and again. And the results of lie-detecting spells also proved that the crops were no longer at Keane Hill. So they had to give up and sneak away.

As for the option of “grabbing crops from the Church of Void Mask,” those who would do such a thing were basically unlikely to die before becoming a high-level strongman. It was like the question on earth that asked, “Why aren’t American middle-class people killed when fighting against the police?” The reason was very simple. These kinds of people were either in the bottom layer of society or among the rich second generation. In short, it was unlikely for them to enter the middle class…

Before he left, the knight from the capital solemnly warned Crick. He mainly told him about the knight’s virtues, such as being patriotic and loyal to the throne, being dedicated and diligent, and being selfless and contributing. Crick seemed to listen carefully to his speech, nodding again and again, but refused to promise anything.

Seeing that he was pretending to not understand his implication, the knight who had a high status was somewhat annoyed.

“Baron Keane, you are also a knight of the Grand Duke, so don’t forget the rules of the knights!” he shouted in a strict voice.

“A knight?” Crick asked, smiling. “When I was fighting a bloody battle in the battlefield of Sun’s Death Day with the Groundbreaking Knight (the God of Knights), I didn’t remember seeing you. Could you tell me where you were fighting? What was your achievement?”

The knight’s face suddenly became dark, and he couldn’t say a word.

He suddenly realized that the former baron, who was sick in front of him, was a fierce person who had survived the bloody battle in which legendary strongman had only been soldiers. Moreover, he was also a hero who had fought alongside the God of Knights. In the aspect of “Knight’s Virtues” and “Knight’s Rules,” the baron could be called a model.

One was just asking to be insulted if they talked about that with Keane!

After wrinkling his eyebrows for a long time, the knight said again, “Even if you don’t think about the problem from the perspective of a knight, you should consider the problem from the perspective of a lord.”

This was an implied threat, but it still couldn’t make Crick change his mind.

“How do you see my territory?” Crick asked with a smile.

After being silent for a while, the knight said, “Good. Although the place is not big, it operates very well. The life of the people is stable, and the army is also trained well. According to the condition of the territory, it’s hard to imagine that just two years before, the territory sent troops to participate in the war. In the past two years, I have seen several territories which sent troops to participate in the war at that time. They were unable to recover from the heavy losses. Some of them focused on the people’s livelihood, so the army was full of rookies and cellars, complete rubbish; some paid attention to the army, so they levied so many taxes that the life of the people was unbearably hard. But those two problems don’t appear at Keane Hill. The big battle seems to have had no influence on here at all. It is incredible!”

“Actually, we also suffered heavy losses at the beginning.” Crick sighed. “Even I, the lord, was seriously injured. My best friend, Spencer, died on the battlefield. You can imagine the situation.”

The knight nodded with respect.

“But, I still led my people to quickly climb out of the trough and re-develop,” Crick said, smiling. “I think I am kind of a good lord, right?”

The knight nodded.

“So, do you think that I’m a person who has no sense of importance and who courts death?”

The knight was silent and then smiled.

“You are right; I was worried overly.”

Crick said, sighing, “But there is something I’ve been wondering, our grand duke… What is he thinking about?”

The knight stunned. Crick said again, “I have asked myself this, and I think I’m loyal to his majesty. He wanted to support the Kingdom of Eagle, so I brought all the properties of my territory to the battlefield, and I almost died there. As a result, I came back with injuries and wounds, and all of my subordinates almost died. He did not give me a single word of condolence, nor did he give me a little bit of comfort. Now he turns around to ask me to support others?!”

The knight sighed deeply, looking very sad. “Sir, don’t you think this is a bit inappropriate? Maybe some bad character is around his majesty encouraging him to make mistakes?”

The knight was silent for a long time and finally sighed deeply again.

He patted Crick’s shoulder, shook his head without a word, and left with on his horse with the mage who had been waiting.

Unlike the silent and indifferent mage, the high-level knight’s figure was a little desolated when he left.

Looking at them as they went away, Crick frowned with a bad idea in his mind.

It seemed that… there was really a problem in the top class of the Duchy of Thunder, especially around the Grand Duke of Thunder!

But these things were really too far away from a baron. He just wrote them down, asking Rafael to pay a little attention to them when he had the time, and that was all.

Most of the things involving a duchy and a duke were earth-shattering events. Crick didn’t expect to be profitable in such big events. He only wanted to find them out before the danger came so that he could escape in time.

This requirement couldn’t be any lower. He thought that Rafael and others still could do it.

This was the end of the matter, and there were no more people sent by the capital. As for how the Grand Duke thought about it, and if anyone would say something bad about him behind his back, Crick had no time to deal with that.

It was not far from winter, so he had to hurry and organize the farmlands to plant some fruit, trees, and herbs. Then he could start what he had already prepared for a long time.

…

Militiamen training.

The Baron Keane’s territory currently had crops and money—a lot of money. The crops were sold at such a good price that Crick thought that the money was miscalculated when Archbishop Miramon sent it to him.

With this money, Crick’s had confidence. With the addition of enough stored food in his territory, he decided to gather the youths to give them some basic military training when they had nothing to do during the winter.

Of course, the training time should not be too long, and the intensity should not be too high. On one hand, ordinary civilians didn’t need to be a high level as long as they could be assistants for the army. On the other hand, after all, there was still work to do in the winter, so they couldn’t spend too much time training.

The content of the training was divided into several parts. The first part was line training. The content of the training roughly included standing, lining up, code words and simple military regulations.

It was totally crazy to ask a group of farmers to follow orders. However, it should be possible for them to only learn some basic military common sense and cultivate the basic military attainment.

Even if they couldn’t do it this year, they could get trained next winter. There was no hurry anyway.

The second part of the training was the use of spears.

Spears were the simplest and most practical of all the cold weapons. Although other weapons had various uses, spears were the easiest to train to new recruits who had no foundations.

Unlike the regular army who had mastered all kinds of advanced skills and generally had a soldier level of three to four, the militiamen only needed to learn how to use spears in two moves.

The first move was thrusting. The second move was hacking down.

The first move was for killing, and the second move was for fighting. In the battles of civilians, they were enough.

Of course, thrusting was also divided up, middle and lower jabs, and several people united to besiege. Hacking down had several technical classifications as well, which were not simple. But after all, there were just two moves, and there was enough time for them to practice.

This winter, the training of the militiamen was carried out three times, once a month, and five days each time. Although the combat strength of the farmers didn’t improve much, after the three sessions of military training, they were at least a little well behaved in lining up. When they held the wooden spears to practice thrusting and hacking down together, the power of them shouting in unison could scare people to some degree.

Although it was actually a simple form, Crick was still satisfied that they could do that in just one winter.

As they had plenty of time, the rest would continue to be practiced next year.