Chapter 74 new Tailning
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While waiting for Lhorne to return from Regoia, we rallied 100 of our best troops from our own Region. The purpose of our rally is to measure how combat-capable our troops really are. Lily will be fighting a party first. Then, if the said party could not defeat her, she would move on to a squad, then to a platoon. If even an entire platoon could not put a scratch on her, then it would be troubling to present this kind of troop before elven standard soldiers.
By noon, the soldiers were rallied by Lily. She inspected their wooden armor, shield, and helmet. While they looked poor and seemed like it was made out of for kids. The wooden armor was made by braiding solid vines of treesse together, and it really didn't look pretty, but it was light and worked quite well against slashes from swords.
"Alright. Line! Form up your party. Let us have a mock battle!" Lily shouted up to her first party. The party then surrounded her as per Mattheus's teaching, and they tried to stab her with their wooden spears. The soldier's morale was high as they were excited to see Lily firsthand. They cheered on as the first party was matching against Lily. It was like a festival. Not only Soldiers but a lot of bystanders were also watching from afar as we elected an open ground for training recruits.
"Too slow, and there are a lot of gaps, too," Lily shouted as she dodged their spears with paper-thin margins, and with her sheathed sword, she hit them all on the head. It only took one glance to beat them all.
"Aww… She is too strong!" One spearwoman cried when Lily hit her.
"She is at least 10 times stronger than Mattheus."
"This isn't fair. Lhorne said our opponent would be bigger than horses! It is hard to aim at her small body with spears."
"Hmm? Only part of the undead forces is bigger than horses. Most of them are infantrymen just like them, right? What has Lhorne taught them?" Lily muttered. She is right. Only Vargmuth has a body bigger than a horse or more like a gorilla. I wonder if Lhorne only teaches them how to defend against Vargmuth.
"Well then, how about if you guys fight against each other?" Lily then asked the new recruits. She heard their complaints and adjusted the mock battle. The purpose of this battle is not to flaunt her strength nor for the soldiers to beat her. It was to test the effectiveness of their troops against undead soldiers.
Two parties were called then they had a match. The first one charged, and just like in training, they tried to gang up on one of the enemies, but the enemies also did the same resulting in a one-on-one match. Their move while had a modicum of resemblance to standard soldiers. They simply lack the finesse of the soldiers we saw in Fort Soleil.
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"I wonder if we can use them," I muttered.
"Ghander said he would let it slide if these 100 could defeat twenty of them. Do you think they could do it, Shiro?"
"Not a chance. Elven standard foot soldiers will not let a gap like that one where you can fight them one on one. Either they formed a circle when surrounded or spread out like a net to surround their enemies. They will not separate like these guys. If we wanted to win, we could only do so in a prolonged battle." I said while comparing these guys to standard elven warriors. Even the mercenaries that were hired in forts soleil moved better than these soldiers.
"I see. It is only several months, right? We still had about a year…." Lily replied
"We could plan a strategy surrounding these guys. After all, elves are quite proud. The weakness of elven soldiers is their number. If we rotate them, we could exhaust enemy soldiers." I gave a suggestion while trying to remember strategy games that I played in my previous life. Soldiers have what is called exhaustion when battling. We could utilize that if we outnumbered them.
"I see."
"But maneuvering like that is bad for them. After all, our true purpose is to pit them against the undead, not elves. Undead, do not get tired." I replied.
"We need to train them more like a team. I wish Ghander would let us borrow real elven troops and learn from them how they behave." Lily whined at the soldier's performance.
"Lord Lily, was our performance not good enough?" One of the soldiers asked when they saw Lily giving grim expressions.
"We never expected you guys to be at the standard of real elven soldiers. You lacked the necessary equipment and strength training. However. I could not overlook your lack of coordination."
"Is our coordination that poor? We tried to do as Mattheus, Lhorne, and Nora taught us. Trying to surround enemies defending together, and not obstructing other teammates."
"But we have that moment where you didn't follow my lead! It was a good chance if you attacked him from the side at that time!"
"I am the leader. Thus you should let me defend while you give out the blow!"
The soldiers started bickering among themselves. Lily then quieted everyone and resumed several matches for all hundred soldiers. After that, she told all 100 soldiers to charge at her together, and she beat them all in less than one hour without using magic.
"Train hard, everyone! I have scheduled your training with elven soldiers in a month!" Lily announced, "I know that I demanded something quite unreasonable from you. Training up to be on par with soldiers despite the lack of education and equipment. But we need to liberate Northlangard from the undead!"
"Why do we need to free that city? It belongs to the elves, right?" the soldiers asked while they were affable to the elves and understood why they wanted their home back. They didn't have enough motivation to risk their own life for it.
"Their city is not important. It is undead. The undead would kill us all if we did not kill them first. You will know when we meet the undead at Fort Soleil. But if we lose, the undead will ravage our lands and kill everyone!" Lily shouted while remembering the dead tailfolk in the human fort. Killed in the cold blood of the undead.
"Train hard for this month, and we will march on to Hoeth!"