They were all packed up and ready to head out. The hellhound team was now at the meeting location at the east gate where Mira said the caravan would be at. They did indeed find a caravan there, but it was far smaller than the previous one they guarded. This one was only 12 caravans strong and had only around 50 guards armed with round shields and spears. Each caravan had iron plating to protect it as well as the insignia of two spears crossed over a round shield.
"What's the insignia for?" Adimir asked curiously.
"That my young friend is the emblem for our company. We're Tom's arms dealership and this is one of many weapon caravans. You are the hellhounds I've heard so much about are you not?" A cheerful voice answered before Mira could. Looking over to see who had answered his question he found that it was, in fact, a human dressed in blue gambeson armor with grey trimmings as well as a grey robe that was quite obviously made of expensive material. He had graying hair and looked to be in his late thirties.
"The one and only. You've heard of us?" Adimir said.
"Why yes, I have! That's part of why I accepted Mira's request to be hired onto the caravan. We typically don't require an adventurer escort when he have our guards after all, but there have been some rumors amongst the merchants in town that there was an adventurer group named the hellhounds that had a mage capable of using a real detection spell. I would have usually brushed off such rumors as nonsense under normal circumstances, but one of my sources has been able to validate these claims. So, I couldn't help but get interested in a mage who could cast such magic. So young man would that mage, be you? You seem to be the only mage out of the three of you." The man responded.
"Good. We'll be depending upon your spell for the duration of this trip. That is if the spell is really as great as the rumors make it out to be. You can hop in the 4th caravan. Alert the guards if anything pops up on your spell." The man told them then left abruptly.
"Well, that was… delightful?" Tauna said in an unsure tone.
"Let's just go get in the wagon. If we're not needed for fighting as he says then it's just easy pay, right?" Mira decided and started walking over to the wagon that the man said to go to.
"But I wanted to kill stuff…" Tauna grumbled dejectedly following after her.
"Didn't even introduce himself. People these days." Adimir commented as he walked after them. When they hopped in the caravan started moving, and Adimir went to work on casting the detection spell every five minutes.
There wasn't much to speak of during the first couple of hours of travel. Every time he cast a detection spell, he cast didn't get any alarming feedback. To pass the time the trio decided to chat idly about random topics.
"Alright so we're called the hellhounds, but what if. Hear me out on this. What if we were hellhounds of certain things! Like I'd be the hellhound of battle! And Mira the hellhound of snow or something!" Tauna suggested with an excited grin plastered on her face.
"First of all, why am I the hellhound of snow? I'm pretty sure that snow has nothing to do with hellhounds anyways." Mira asked with a confused look.
"Because of how your all business about everything! Not an ice queen but definitely enough to at least be a snow queen." The wolfkin girl explained.
"While I admit Mira is indeed more straight to the point, she's not really snow queen material. Much too kind for that. But I do think that your idea is cool. If we were a bunch of ten-year-old’s." Adimir interjected. This caused the two of them to look at them with their eyebrows raised.
"You are basically a ten-year-old. You do realize, that right?" Tauna asked him. Adimir had forgotten all about the fact that his body was that of a ten-year-old because he rarely thought of it and tried to keep it out of mind. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he let out a frustrated sigh.
"You know what I mean Tauna." He said to her.
"Alright. But seriously we should definitely do this for when we become famous platinum ranks!" Tauna continued speaking of her idea.
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"Platinum ranks?" Mira asked doubtfully.
"Platinum ranks!" Their tank confirmed. "You know only the most powerful and legendary of adventurers ever reach that point, right? Like only 1 out of 10000 Gold ranks ever reach that point. And we're not even silver ranks. Heck, I'm still only an iron rank!" Adimir exclaimed. "Well, then all we have to do is get stronger!" She replied insistently. "Ok let's leave this topic for discussion at least for when we're a silver rank team. We should discuss something more important than that like team formations we could do." Mira interrupted steering the conversation in a different direction.
"Well, I think we already have a basic idea of what formation we're going to be doing though?" Tauna countered. Suddenly a response from Adimir's detection spell came back. "I'm afraid we'll have to leave this discussion for later Mira. I've picked up on a group of potential hostiles that'll arrive in a few minutes." Adimir said suddenly. She nodded in return while Tauna grinned with a spark lighting up in her eyes.
Adimir hopped out of the wagon as his teammates followed him.
"Hey, guards! We have around 16 life signatures heading towards us from the north. They'll arrive in a few minutes." He notified the closest guard. The guard nodded in return and went to notify the leader of the caravan. Within the next few minutes, the caravan stopped, and the 50 caravan guards got into five rows of ten facing the north. The man the three-spoke to when they met with the caravan walked over to them.
"I hope that your spell works and that it isn't a fluke young adventurer." He warned him.
"It's not," Adimir replied in a level voice.
"Good." was all he said in return. Soon enough they saw a group of 15 orcs and one ogre came into view.
"Hmph. Nothing but raider scum and an ogre. Nothing of concern." The man said in a contemptuous tone. Adimir and the other hellhounds tightened their grips on their combat equipment as they got in edge as they were reminded of the fight, they had with the ogre in the goblin nest.
"I can provide spell support if you need it." Adimir offered.
"Thank you, but we won't need it for such a small fry." The man rejected. Adimir shook his head slightly wondering how much faith he had in his guards if he had the confidence to call something like an ogre small fry. The ogre in the goblin nest they fought had nothing but a loincloth on and yet it was able to one-sidedly push them back. This one, however, was just as big as the other one with the same startling red skin tone, but it had armor on. It had a leather arm guard for its right arm, gambeson pants, as well as a belt with an iron plate over its stomach protecting one of its largest weak points.
In both its hands it held two large brutal looking axes with ax heads as large as a man's head. The orcs, on the other hand, were wearing a mixture of leather, hide, and fur armor, and wielded axes, spears, and swords. The caravan guards all got into a defensive formation as the first-row locked shields together and the next row locked their shields above them as they formed a shield wall. Through every hole in the wall, there was a spear protruding from it.
The entire formation took less than ten seconds for the guards to form showing just how well trained they were. Adimir was shocked at how fluid their formations were when they assembled, and when he glanced over at the surprised looks of his comrades it seemed he wasn't the only one who was surprised. The ogre, however, wasn't nearly impressed as its confident stride didn't falter, and instead started to speed up as it charged the wall of shields as if taking the formation as a challenge. As it rammed shoulder first into the formation instead of the spear poles snapping and the formation collapsing as he expected the spears gouged numerous injuries on the ogre's thick skin and the ogre slammed into the wall and staggered backward dazed as if he ran into a wall of steel.
This led to even more shock on his part as well as the orcs part. The orc raiders hesitated upon seeing the ogre which boasted immense strength and toughness was stopped in its track despite its charge. The ogre, on the other hand, looked back at the shield wall and the spears dripping with blood in confusion. Then its face twisted into one filled with rage and it raised both hands intending to slash the shield wall with its mighty axes.
Before it could, however, the guards all withdrew their spears from the shield wall before thrusting them forward and piercing its chest, cutting its legs, and piercing its arms. The ogre roared out in a mixture of rage as it reeled back from the wall in surprise. Before it could recover from its shock however the shield wall disengaged, and four guards surrounded the ogre and started stabbing into its back and legs causing more severe injuries. The ogre attempted to swat them away with its ax blades, but they proved to be difficult to catch as they effortlessly dodged the slashes.
One of the guards taking the chance when the ogre was distracted attacking one of his comrades that had stabbed its foot leaped forward and stabbed his spear straight through its upper back going through the ogre's titanic body and piercing its heart. The ogre looked dumbly at the spear protruding from its chest in confusion before staggering forward and falling face-first without putting up any more of a struggle. While those four were busy with that 10 other guards had long since dispatched the group of orc raiders without suffering a single wound from the orcs despite the number advantage.
"Hey, mister just who exactly are these guys?" Adimir asked immediately as soon as he broke from his frozen stupor. The caravan leader grinned proudly as he answered.
"Those are specially trained guards. Each and every single one of them is equal to a silver rank adventurer." The man proudly declared. This shocked Adimir further. Five iron ranks were equal to one steel rank. And steel ranks were about as strong as the average soldier in the army. Ten steel ranks were then equal to one silver rank, and 20 silver ranks were equal to one gold rank while 40 gold ranks were equal to one platinum rank.
That meant that these 5 guards were equal to 500 soldiers. Adimir glanced back at the guards who were now busy burning the bodies and cleaning their weapons. No wonder he was confident in calling an ogre a small fry with a force equal to a small army. An ogre was equal to 50 steel ranks but when up against the combined strength of so many silver ranks it would be all but helpless. Especially when they used a well-trained formation like the shield wall to gather all their strength together into one unmovable wall.
"That's what I mean by talking about formations. We should also be training our teamwork so that we'd be a stronger team." Mira said taking advantage of the wonderful display of strength to explain to Tauna what she meant. Tauna only dumbly nodded still reeling in shock at what she witnessed.
Come on guys. Let's go back to the wagon. They really don't need our help." Adimir finally said as the caravan started to move again. The other two agreed and they all went to rest in the wagon. Adimir eternally swore that he'd one day create a group of creatures that could rival these guards in power. If a caravan had the means to train and employ such powerful warriors, then this world certainly would have countless powerful individuals.