Chapter 12 Class Training

In the morning the whole squad helped each other to get their equipment on. They weren’t used to it enough to do it on their own. Luckily they had a few members who had a day more with the equipment. When they were finally ready, they jogged together to the training field.

As always, their trainer was already waiting.

“Finally here, are you. At least you now look like proper recruits. Let’s see if you’ve actually learned something about marching, shall we.”

When no one moved, he shouted: “That means you start marching! Go, go, go!”.

Immediately the group started marching. At the beginning they had to scramble to gain the correct rhythm, but soon they were moving as one.

After only ten rounds around the square, they once again stood in front of their trainer.

“Look at you,” he yelled, “all sweaty and out of breath. And that from a little walk, now go again!”

Some of the members of the squad looked at him in disbelieve. Sam though, had once been in the army bootcamp on Earth. Due to that she had endured worse. Thus, as soon as the trainer yelled, she started marching again. Some of the others were close behind her, with only some of the most stubborn ones being left behind. Those had to scramble to catch up with the rest, while the trainer kept yelling at them.

Luckily, this time they were stopped after only five rounds.

“Okay, that’s enough. Remember, discipline is one of the strong points of a legionary. In battle you will fight for each other using teamwork. To practice, you will have to do everything with each other.”

There were some snickers due to the trainer’s choice of words. That was soon over when they saw the face of the trainer.

“You think that funny? I guess you guys want to march a few more rounds, don’t you? You, you and you, five more!”

The ones that were pointed out were the ones who had laughed, but they weren’t the only ones moving. Sam knew this trick, and was sure not to fall for it.

Soon she and the others were back in front of the trainer.

“You! Why did you move? I didn’t point at you, did I?”

“No sir! But you just told us to do everything together, so I did.”

“Right, then tell me,” now he looked at the ones who didn’t move, “why didn’t you guys do as she did?”

“Uhm, because you didn’t point at us.”

“Right, but who said that I pointed at an individual? You are a squad, so act like one! If you want to do it yourself, you can do so behind a curtain. When you are in your squad, you are the squad.”

This time nobody laughed, having learned their lesson.

Now that he had taught them the importance of working together, the trainer went to the next exercise.

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“Now it is time to learn to fight in a shield wall. All of you have a shield, even the casters and the archers. This is because all of you need to be able to jump in to hold the shield wall if needed. This also makes it a good exercise to help you attain your class.”

They were told to stand in a line, with their rectangular shields overlapping a bit.

“As you can see, your shields have a groove at the right side. This helps you lock your shields together. Your neighbors will thus help you absorb enemy attacks.”

“But why do we need to do that? Wouldn’t it be better to dodge? Especially the mages?”

“That’s true, but what will you do if there is a big battle, and you have your mages, archers and healers behind your line? Will you dodge and let them get hurt?”

“Uhh..”

“That’s right, you can’t. It is the task of the front lines to absorb attacks so that the ones behind you can use their attacks without worrying about being attacked themselves. As for having the mages practice, that’s because we want everyone to be able to help out if needed. The front line is the most dangerous place to be in a battle. If you lose too many of them, then the others have to be able to fill in the gaps. Now get to work!”

Most of the day they kept working on their shield walls and moving in formation.

More than once did the group end up in a big pile because one of them missed an instruction. The interlocking shields were quite a hazard when mistakes were made.

When they were finally told they were done with the shield wall exercises, more than one of them sighed with relief.

“Okay, time for some more information overload. As you might have noticed, I’m not one who likes to hold big speeches with lots of information. I prefer that you guys learn as you go. Think back on your first experience with the dungeon. You guys struggled with the third floor. Tell me what you did wrong, and what you could do better next time.”

Immediately Jasper answered.

“We were too weak to hold back those ants. Some of us were just too weak to fight effectively.”

“That’s not true, Jasper. We only started to really struggle when you guys ran out of arrows.” George wasn’t having any of the arrogance from the other guy.

“Great, you all were not strong enough and you didn’t use your resources correctly. What else can you think of?”

The rest of them were trying to think of things, but they didn’t have time to analyze their performance while they were fighting. Now it was several days later, and thus it was a bit harder to do so now.

“What about our teamwork?”

“Go on, Sam. That’s not enough of a reason on its own.”

“Well, first of all we didn’t all have the right equipment to defend each other. We also weren’t used to fighting together. When me and George fought together, I got hurt because I timed it wrong. That meant that after that I had to rely more on him.”

“Okay, so that’s three things we can work on. No need to think of every mistake you guys made, and trust me, you made more than three. Today and tomorrow we will start working on your teamwork, this time with the proper equipment. As for being too weak, as you just said, that will be resolved with time. As we get you to level ten again and again, you will gain more statpoints. The last point, your resource management, we will address in a few days. I can tell you that not only your archers have problems with that. It is true that they need arrows to fight, but mages need mana. As for the fighters, you guys will be killed really fast if your stamina runs out. As a group you will also have to think of things like food and water, as well as potions. Oh and don’t forget that you need to harvest the valuable parts from the dungeon.”

“Can you tell us more about the higher levels? Because I was always taught that higher leveled people were way stronger than lower leveled. Thus it would be better to level higher, instead of getting a few more statpoints.”

“You are only partly correct. It is true that a higher leveled person, also called at a higher tier, is stronger. Not only do higher levels give more statpoints, they are also more efficient. Thus giving more power per point. They also have better skills and other advantages. The downside is, that it is way harder to level at higher tiers. We at the legion, train our soldiers to have a really good foundation to build on. We make sure that you have a lot of points before you go to the higher levels. Otherwise you will have quite a handicap when you need more mana to cast those expensive spells for example.”

“But why don’t people reset their class when they are higher leveled? That would give them a really good foundation as you called it, right?”

“That also has its pro and cons. You will get a lot of statpoints, but all in all you would have taken a lot longer to gain them. This due to the longer time that it takes to level when you get to a higher tier. You will also lose the skills that you would have used for a long time, with the possibility that you would need to go through some trouble to get those again. Luckily that’s not the case with your classes, as a class will always be available once you have unlocked it.”

The trainer looked pretty intensely at them.

“Now then, did anyone get their class yet?”