The Cold Snap Doesn't Stop (2)
Is it because my damn cold snap just won’t end? (┬┬﹏┬┬)
On the right, Bruno was mercilessly drilling the soldiers through PT.
“PT Exercise Number Eight, thirty reps! How many?!”
“Thirty reps!”
“Your voices are too weak! Forty reps! How many!!!”
“Four! Ty! Reps!”
Whoosh! Thud!
“Aaaargh!”
“Eyes front! You there! Stop hiding behind your comrades!”
On the left, Sir Levenstil and Hans were busy whipping the recruits into shape with the training Altar Cannons.
And right in the center—
“Kyaaaaah!”
“Did you screw up or not?!”
“I screwed up please put me down I’m sorry Instructor-nim please spare me kyaaaaah!”
Helmut was doing bench presses with a soldier who had betrayed his squadmate and pocketed supplies.
…He’s really doing it.
Anyway, the morning training consisted of two main parts running in parallel: physical conditioning and Altar Cannon drills.
Huh? What kind of cold-weather training is this?
…I know it doesn’t feel like proper arctic training, but there are circumstances.
If I focused purely on cold resistance, when the hell would I fix these guys’ mindset?
I had no choice but to combine it with the guerrilla training course that had proven effective when I trained the existing unit members.
As for physical conditioning, the mages’ conditions varied wildly from person to person, but a surprisingly high percentage of them were in terrible shape.
Even though they weren’t the type to hole up in the Magic Tower doing research, quite a few of them had apparently babied their bodies more than expected.
Since they didn’t roll around on actual battlefields, it was only natural that those types fell far behind in physical training.
That’s why most of the soldiers Bruno was currently tormenting were the ones who needed it most.
The other part of training—the Altar Cannon drills—was closer to preventive training to get them used to battlefield conditions.
Firing wildly on purpose was meant to train them to make cool-headed decisions even in chaotic combat situations.
…The absolute best option would have been to ask the 1st Prince for a joint training exercise with his knight order.
After all, the biggest threat these mages would face once deployed as a unit would obviously be a knight’s charge.
But his side was already swamped preparing for the decisive battle in the east and simply had no time to spare.
In any case, the Altar Cannon training was something I had pulled out to give this mage unit at least some semblance of real combat atmosphere.
It had originally been created so that unit members who knew nothing about magic could quickly get used to it, but surprisingly, it turned out to be an excellent training method even for mages who were already familiar with magic.
‘Just as knowledge and wisdom are separate things, there is a huge difference between simply knowing something and feeling it with your body.’
When it came to recreating the atmosphere of a large-scale battlefield, nothing was more effective than this kind of frantic simulated bombardment.
As they dodged Energy Bolts flying in from all directions, they would naturally learn the concept of lines of fire with their bodies.
And the place where training was currently underway was a densely wooded mountainside.
The sloped terrain, obstructing branches, and slippery fallen leaves all created far more hindrance to movement than usual.
Learning how to distribute their stamina effectively in such an environment could only be done through direct experience.
Whoosh! Thud!
“Uhek! W-whoa!”
Rumble rumble rumble!
One recruit must have been hit in a bad spot by an Energy Bolt; he lost his balance and went tumbling down the slope.
He might have suffered quite a serious bruise, but it was fine.
“Elena! Take him to the medical tent and make him drink a potion!”
“Yes sir!”
Because we had potions, we could push the training a bit harder.
In my previous life, no matter how much it was “just training,” we would have been extremely cautious to minimize non-combat losses.
If someone died during training, the officer who designed it was clearly an idiot.
It meant they couldn’t even manage their soldiers properly, and more importantly, it did absolutely nothing to improve the soldiers’ combat power—which was the whole point of training.
‘But if they can recover quickly with potions anyway, doesn’t that mean we can just grind them as hard as we want?’
The one thing I could genuinely call an improvement over my previous life was the existence of potions, which were practically a panacea for external injuries.
Bruises? Scrapes? Scratches, cuts, contusions, and all the various wounds that appeared during training.
There were so many problems. This barbaric medieval fantasy world didn’t even have antibiotics—if a wound got infected and started to fester, it would be absolute hell.
But with one shot of this miracle potion? Most things just got fixed.
In the end, no matter how brutally we ran the training, it came with a virtual guarantee that everything would be okay.
‘As long as we don’t make them bungee jump off a cliff without a rope, it should be fine, right?’
Bzzzzz! Piiiiiik!
“Testing, testing. We will now begin a ten-minute rest period! During the break, each squad is to use magic to maintain body temperature so you don’t cool down!”
I announced the short break and gathered the instructors to receive reports on how training was progressing.
I had been watching from the side, but the ones who felt it most clearly were obviously the people actually doing the training.
“Bruno, you first.”
“There’s not much to say. I’m just grinding them hard.”
This guy always slacked off if I didn’t ride him for a while.
“Bruno.”
When I lowered my voice, the loose screws in his head finally tightened and he gave a proper answer.
“Uh, improving their stamina within this training period seems too ambitious. For now, I think we should be satisfied with just building up their basic fitness.”
It seemed there were far more bookworms than I had anticipated.
Well, there were some who were so frail they simply couldn’t keep up, and even those who managed to follow along were so exhausted by the latter half that the moment we called for a break, they flopped face-first onto the ground.
“We’ll have to keep grinding them until spring comes to make up for it. Then what about Sir Levenstil and Hans?”
“It’s not bad, but something feels lacking.”
“I feel the same. Compared to when we were actually on the battlefield, it definitely feels insufficient.”
Both of them had similar impressions. Was it because the environment lacked real tension?
“Then how about mixing in some Fire Balls?”
“Commander, I’d rather you not…”
Why? You guys did it too.
These recruits had much higher overall specs than the unit members back then. There was no way they couldn’t handle it.
Just as I was thinking that, Bruno’s eyes were also sparkling as he watched.
Though rather than sparkling with inspiration, it looked more like the gleam of madness.
But the others didn’t seem to agree.
“That’s too much.”
“The public opinion toward you, Commander, isn’t exactly great after that incident at the beginning. The current training intensity is already high—if it gets any harder, we might have problems maintaining control of the unit.”
If the two people actually running the training said so, then so be it.
Hmm. I needed to increase training effectiveness without raising the intensity.
No helping it. Let’s leave getting them used to the battlefield to actual combat.
Instead, I’d have to introduce training in a different direction.
“Then let’s do this. We’ll use competitive spirit.”
“In what way, sir?”
It was Hans who asked. Heh heh, there are plenty of ways.
“First, we’ll stimulate competition between individuals. We’ll promise that the person with the best performance in this training will be made a squad leader, for example.”
“Squad leader… but wouldn’t some people try to avoid that kind of responsibility?”
“Then we just make squad leader a stepping stone to success. For instance, we could introduce them to the 1st Prince or the 3rd Prince, or connect them with influential nobles within the faction.”
The desires of these new recruits were obvious.
Most of the people who had joined the mage unit were, after all, mediocre street mages.
Being 3-Circle meant they could at least pull their own weight as mages, so drifting around as wanderers wouldn’t be too difficult.
‘But reaching beyond that is no easy feat.’
Moreover, the Luxid Kingdom rarely employed vassals other than knights, so for mages, the only real way to make a living was becoming mercenaries.
‘To people like that, I must look like the very symbol of success. If I open a path for them to reach high nobility despite having skills too weak to join the Magic Tower? Their enthusiasm for training will become incomparably hotter than before.’
“Once individual competition has intensified to that point, we’ll introduce squad evaluations and create disparities in the supply of training materials. We won’t make the gap too extreme—just enough for them to clearly feel it.”
“That should encourage a reasonably healthy level of competition.”
“Exactly. And we’ll present those squad evaluations as opportunities too. With clear motivations like convenience during training and the desire for advancement, the soldiers will move on their own.”
By giving them squad assignments that required cooperation between members, bonds between squadmates would naturally form.
“After that, in the final stage, we’ll need to expand that squad-level camaraderie into unit-wide unity.”
“How, sir?”
And so the training continued. Before we knew it, the cold-weather training was reaching its final stretch. We prepared the last exercise designed to unite the entire unit as one.
Bzzzzz! Crackle!
“Testing, testing. Everyone, attention!”
At the distinctive noise of the amplification artifact, the soldiers’ eyes all turned toward me.
Maybe it was because they had grown accustomed through all the training so far, but even in that simple gesture I could feel them steadily turning into proper soldiers.
You little shits, your situational awareness has improved, huh?
“Today’s training is simple! Once this exercise is over, the cold-weather training will officially conclude.”
The magic of the word “final” must have gotten to them; I could see excitement hidden in their expressions.
Heh heh heh. But did they really think it would be that easy?
“The final training will be a mock battle between the instructors—including myself—and all of you unit members!”
Let’s have a properly brutal mock battle, my friends.
‘They say if a game makes people go “This is fucking bullshit,” that’s the highest praise.’
I’ll play the enemy force properly for you. You’d better be nervous.