The True Meaning of Construction Experience
“...What is that?”
“Administrative Officer. Shh.”
Jamie quickly grabbed Aiden, who had just dismounted, and pulled him into the bushes.
“It’s a monster. Judging by its size, it looks like a variant.”
“If it’s a variant, isn’t it dangerous?”
“We have knights with us, so it shouldn’t be too much of a struggle.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. But if we draw unnecessary attention, the hunt might drag on, so it’s best to watch quietly.”
Despite his appearance, Jamie hadn’t been hunting for very long. Still, true to the saying that natural talent is a cheat code, his words carried a fair amount of credibility.
‘A monster, huh.’
Even children in the North knew there were plenty of monsters. However, Aiden had very little experience seeing actual, living, breathing ones, aside from those that had already been put down. First, he spent his days suffocating under piles of paperwork at his desk, leaving him little reason to go outside. Second, the administration and the barracks were almost obsessively overprotective of him.
‘This is a good chance to properly observe the soldiers.’
Aiden held his breath, fixing his gaze on the soldiers who had set out to hunt the monster.
“Raise your shields! Archers, rapid fire!”
Zip-!
Zip-!
At the knight’s command, the soldiers’ arrows were released, embedding themselves into the creature’s body. However, it didn’t seem to deal a fatal blow; if anything, it only seemed to provoke the beast.
- Kreeeeeee!
The giant, bipedal, four-armed reptile went berserk. It boasted a physique far larger than the Northerners, who were already a head taller than people from other regions. As the green-skinned reptile lashed out in a frenzy,
Thud, thud!
Trees were flattened and boulders went flying under the monster’s solid fists.
“I told you to aim for the eyes! Its hide is too thick; hitting the body is a waste of time!”
“S-sorry, sir!”
“Next squad, fire!”
Despite the chaos, the knight leading the soldiers didn’t seem flustered at all, habitually continuing his commands. His sword remained in its scabbard. Seeing that the situation wasn’t as dire as he’d feared, Aiden let out a sigh of relief from his vantage point.
Swoooooosh-.
Swoooooosh-!
The sound of the second squad’s arrows was different from the first, which had been fired by the slightly clumsy recruits. It was a tearing sound, as if the air itself were being shredded. It was hard to believe they were using the same bows and arrows.
Kek-!
Several of those arrows struck the reptile’s eyes. Having lost its sight instantly, the beast collapsed bit by bit, green blood streaming from its sockets.
“As expected, the veteran soldiers are different,” Jamie said, nodding with satisfaction.
“Anyway, the training effect should be quite good from the very first day. I’m relieved. Isn’t this how they become a strong army, by going through real combat? Hehe.”
“Ah. Were the soldiers who fired first the recruits?”
“Probably.”
“How did you know?”
“They looked awkward just holding their bows.”
Jamie grinned and started explaining how to grip the bow and release the arrow, but Aiden had no intention of following suit.
“But isn’t it a bit too early to throw recruits into real combat?”
A variant monster, at that. It felt a bit too brutal for a training exercise.
“It’s something they’ll be dealing with all the time from now on, anyway. It’s better to face a strong one right from the start. That’s how you keep them on their toes.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
“What do you mean, ‘all the time’? Are you saying this kind of thing will keep happening?”
“Uh-. I suppose so? As we build the road, the noise is bound to attract the attention of nearby monsters, and if we push the road in a straight line, we’ll naturally have to pass through their habitats.”
“I don’t recall seeing that in the report.”
Aiden furrowed his brows. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be holding funerals while trying to build a road.
“Geez, if you’re building in the outskirts, you’re obviously going to run into monsters. Did we really need a separate report for that?” Jamie said, completely oblivious to his superior’s rising blood pressure.
“My Lord?”
“The Administrative Officer is here!”
“What are you doing? Hurry and greet him!”
In the midst of this, the soldiers who had finished off the giant bipedal reptile spotted Aiden and beamed.
“You’ve worked hard. Phew. Seeing it this close is even more nerve-wracking.”
“Haha, it’s nothing. It wasn’t as heavily armored as it looked, so we took it down quickly.”
“Make sure to dismantle the carcass properly and hand it over to the trading post. See that the proceeds are distributed evenly among everyone who participated in today’s hunt.”
“Thank you, my Lord!”
The young knight who had been leading the soldiers was deeply moved by Aiden’s generosity in handing over the carcass. It wasn’t just about the money; he seemed more touched by the fact that Aiden showed him respect in front of his men.
“I heard from my adjutant just now that this kind of thing will happen quite often throughout the construction. Is that true?”
The young knight nodded at Aiden’s question.
“It varies depending on the construction section, but the places where we’re laying new roads are, in other words, places where there were no roads before.”
“That is true.”
“In the North, anywhere that isn’t a human path is the land of beasts or monsters, so it’s unavoidable.”
The soldiers behind him didn’t seem particularly stirred, as if they were used to it. The local villagers who seemed to have come to provide support were the same.
‘Come to think of it, the situation for villages far away must be different from those near the Lord’s Castle.’
Aiden’s expression stiffened as if he were finally facing the naked truth of the North.
“Won’t it be dangerous?”
“That’s why we knights were dispatched along with the soldiers, so you don’t need to worry too much, my Lord.”
The soldiers still called him Administrative Officer, but perhaps due to Vian’s influence, the knights had all unified their address to ‘my Lord.’ It felt a bit cringeworthy, but Aiden brushed it off, thinking that the title wasn’t what mattered, and rubbed his chin.
‘Monsters at a construction site.’
He had been thinking about adjusting the construction schedule because he thought the difficulty would be too high if they had to hunt enemies while digging trenches, but then—
‘...Wait, no?’
If he handled this correctly, it wasn’t an unreasonable plan to hunt enemies while building trenches; it was a two-for-one deal where they could finish urban development while storming the enemy’s base and wiping them all out.
Aiden’s expression began to turn peculiar. The young knight had a question mark floating over his head, and Jamie shivered, feeling a premonition that he might end up doing the work of three people all by himself.
***
“...So, you’re saying I should redraw the training plans for the soldiers and the local village militias here?”
“Exactly. As expected, Sir Vian and I communicate well.”
“......”
Vian, who had been urgently called in from another construction site, looked at Jamie, hoping for help as he wondered what on earth this was about. However, Jamie, who was already facing the prospect of redrawing the entire outer road construction schedule, had no room to play tutor for Vian.
A subordinate working under an insane boss who burst into laughter when there was too much work had enough problems of his own.
“So, the construction isn’t the main focus, but the training of the soldiers is the main, and the construction is the secondary—?”
“There’s no need to strictly divide it into primary and secondary. I just thought it might be good to diversify our barracks’ training on this occasion.”
At Aiden’s words, Vian’s dead eyes finally began to come alive.
“I don’t know much about soldiers’ training or tactics. But as with all things in the world, isn’t it ultimately important to accumulate as much real combat experience as possible?”
“My Lord’s words are correct.”
“I know well that our territorial army goes out for monster suppression twice a year. I also know that the results have been quite good.”
“You are too kind.”
“However, the goal of monster suppression is not the training of recruits, but the safety of the territory’s people, is it not?”
“That is correct. That is why we prioritize concentrating firepower to ensure a certain outcome, even if it is a bit slow and inefficient.”
Slow and inefficient. To put it another way, it meant they didn’t seek out unnecessary danger. Even in a situation where ten soldiers and one knight would suffice, they would send twenty soldiers and two knights just in case a monster escaped and threatened the nearby residents. That was the basic stance of their monster suppression operations.
This was possible because most of the territorial army moved at once during the twice-yearly monster suppression. Since they had plenty of available manpower, there was no need to handle things tightly, was there?
“But because of that, it’s been difficult to build up the ‘real combat’ adaptability of the new recruits, hasn’t it?”
“That is inevitably the case. It is natural that an army with a lot of real combat experience becomes a strong army, but the North wasn’t exactly in a position to be caught up in wars or conflicts.”
It was said that territories sharing borders with many others experienced sporadic, non-stop, small-scale local skirmishes, even if full-scale territorial wars didn’t break out. Even if the scale of the battle was small, soldiers who had accumulated the experience of fierce local skirmishes where their lives were truly on the line were difficult for even new knights to handle lightly.
‘Soldiers who have crossed the line of death have a different look in their eyes.’
That real-combat sense gained through experience was what transcended even natural physical conditions. Aiden wanted the soldiers of the North to possess that.
“My North will no longer just deal with monsters like it used to.”
The North was already changing. To protect the changed land, strength was needed. Aiden knew well that what was needed to protect his land wasn’t something shallow like the recognition or favor of those around him. In fact, those who had once stood against the Korean Peninsula knew better than anyone what could protect their land.
‘The only thing that protects what is mine is the strength I possess.’
And.
The venomous determination that if someone touched him, he would leave them half-crippled, even if he couldn’t win.
“Do you desire a strong army capable of taking what belongs to others?”
Vian, who had read the seriousness in Aiden’s eyes, asked back. He immediately felt that this wasn’t an evaluation. The question this loyal knight was asking was a pure one: what did he want the soldiers to become?
“An army capable of protecting what is mine. That is what I need.”
“...You are giving me a difficult mission.”
Vian let out a low sigh. Wasn’t it a well-known fact that protecting was harder than taking?
“Not just protecting. I don’t want to see a single blade of grass or a single pebble crushed under the opponent’s hooves.”
However, Aiden continued to make even more unreasonable demands, indifferent to Vian’s expression. The tone of their speech had already changed, but neither of them noticed the shift.
“Can you do it?”
Thud-.
Vian knelt on one knee and replied.
“By the day the construction ends, there will be no more recruits in the North.”
It was the moment when training called ‘Hell Week’ first appeared before the Northern Territorial Army, which already had no rivals nearby due to their innate hardware.