"Assemble!!!"
"Haaah!!"
"Good, you organised yourselves in time. There are some things that need to be worked on but we have been letting the new defenders practice in defending the village, so the bandits should think that we are training more new recruits."
Good, I'm not tired with all of this but I feel stiff all over because of all of these defensive formation practices. Things really weigh heavily on you if you know that the safety of everyone is on the line.
The merchants have arrived and have been staying in the village for some time. They brought a few people to offset the number of people leaving. If they came without mercenary escorts, it would look suspicious, and if they leave with double the mercenary escorts they arrived with, then it would also look suspicious. That is why they brought a few people to leave here at the village.
No one wanted to stay in a village during these bandit ridden days, even if we are a strong village with a strong wall, so our resident merchant family left early to head to the town, along with a group of villagers disguised as their defenders. They are now disguised as mercenary escorts of the merchant visiting our village. They would switch with the village defenders that are joining the compression ring.
Villages are small, so everyone going in, especially merchants, are known to the bandits. We are the only village left standing, so the bandits pay extra attention to us. If a merchant enters our village, they will know if they left or not. However, towns and cities are frequently visited by merchants, so when our merchant family went to the town, bandits won't pay attention if they leave. They won't even wonder why they never returned to the village since we have been sending the young ones, though old enough to learn, to the town academy to learn.
"Let's stop here for now. The village defenders will leave now together with the merchants. Families and friends, go and encourage them. You can remove the armour but you would need to wear them again when they are departing. We must be on top of the walls and watching over them as they leave. Direct families can stay on civilian clothes, so the bandits can see them saying goodbyes once we open the gate. Go!"
"Sir, Yes, Sir!!"
"Hurry up and go. The people leaving need all the help they could get."
I already drank a lot at yesterday night's farewell party, so I don't need to talk to the village defenders leaving today. I'll just go and rest on the side until it's time for us to assemble again.
"Why are you sitting all the way out here, brill?"
"I'm just lamenting on the fact that we have to take turns pretending to do your job while all of you are gone."
"Hahaha, don't worry, once we are back, you can go back and hammer away all day. It would be easier for you to travel to other towns to do business. Bear with it for a while. Defending the village isn't that hard. Most of the time, you just walk around and watch the surroundings. The bandits have only been harassing the village with all the sieges. There hasn't been any heavy assault like that time when they tried to ambush us from the volcanic region."
"I'm not talking about defending the village. I'm talking about taking care of all of your animals!! You know they have a temper, right!! However, you are right. It would be so much easier once we repelled the bandits from our region. It should also discourage any bandits that want to establish a base in our region. Do your best and finish this sweep quickly."
"Hahaha, I got it, I got it. We will finish this quickly, so we can return early. I can't burden the village with taking care of my herd for a long time. They will also miss me if I am away for too long."
"Alright, go and say goodbye to your family. I'll rest here a bit until we need to assemble again."
"Alright, I understand, sir!"
"Hey, don't die out there, and make sure everyone else doesn't too."
"Hahaha, we have some good combat healers in the team, especially when those children graduated from the academy. Don't die too. Bye."
I'm not that worried. I'm almost certain that in this whole region, the defence force that has experienced the most combat is our village. We have been experiencing sieges on a regular basis. We haven't been putting our all in the sieges, since we still want to keep a few hidden cards to play against the bandits. If we are doing our best on the sieges, then they won't even get close to the walls.
As long as they aren't surrounded by bandits, they should be able to survive this operation.
"The merchants are now leaving. Everyone on duty, Assemble!!"
"Yes, Sir!!!"
*Rumble* *Rumble* *Rumble*
"Ready the siege weapons! Prepare the ranged weapons!"
"Ready!!"
We mainly used crossbows, so we didn't need to waste time pulling the bow. We just aim and pull the trigger. We have slow reload speed but ranged weapons like these only serve as a distraction in this continent, so it is fine if it's slow.
"Open the gates!!! Don't let your guard down until the merchants safely cross outside our range!"
"Sir!!"
Off they go, they would visit other towns on their way out to the edge of the region, to act like proper merchants. They will form the ring in roughly a few weeks and start the operation a few days after that.
The village can't do anything to help them anymore. We only need to hold on until they finish sweeping the region.
"Alright, They are outside of our reach now. Except for those on duty for patrols, you may go about your normal business. Remember to come back here fully armed and armoured when you hear the alerts. We will also keep on continuing morning exercises! Everyone needs to be alert and ready at any given moment! It may not sound good but keep in mind that we don't choose the time to fight!"
I'm not part of today's patrol.
I have time but I don't have much to do. I had a big burst of commissions when they released the plan for the compression ring but since they are leaving for battle, I don't have a lot of other customers other than those who stayed behind.
Everyone splurged on weapons and armour because of this big plan, so I more or less sold everything I could sell, and the people bought all they could buy.
In other words, business is stale right now. This is true for the town near our village and every other town too. They want to go on like things go on as usual but I don't have any active customers. At most, I receive maintenance on kitchen knives, and a few restoration projects.
If I sell some generic stock items, I could still sell them to the merchants but since they got most of the merchants to help, I can't do much business in that area either.
The only thing I could do is keep on making anything to keep honing my skills and hope that I can sell everything I made after this operation. The only problem is what to focus on. This is the reason I take commissions. It's easier to figure out a direction if I don't have control over it. It's easy to adapt to the challenges if you don't know what to expect, since it's easy to resolve problems you make yourself.
I haven't been to the central island since the graduation trip. When this bandit problem has died down, I should plan a trip there.
There are some materials that I can only get there. There are also some weapons that I could only see there too, unless I die and come back to life on another continent. That is an option but a trip down to the central island would be so much cheaper, less hassle too.
The sweep done by the army is done. They are now busy running around trying to hunt down the large bandit groups, so the bandits should start to migrate back on the dragon's road.
However, I might encounter the human royal group again. If the prince, or would-be-king, is as they say he is, then he should be staying in the central island most of his time. He would be informed as soon as I arrived there.
My skill progress is good but it's nowhere near enough to damage dragons. I'm not really keen on helping them but if I want to keep receiving funds, I need to show them a bit of hope.
A few sets of heat-resistant armour should be enough of a glimmer of hope for them, right?
