"My lord, let me lead the brothers in a charge!" A young man beside him also noticed the battle ahead and couldn't help but speak.

With the current casualties, these people will inevitably collapse sooner or later.

But if the knights strike, they can easily slaughter those barbarian tribes here.

"No." Bruce calmly rejected his deputy's suggestion, and he seemed slightly displeased, "Have these years of safety made them forget how to fight?" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Bruce spoke kindly, but the problem is that you knights train every day while they work in the fields, and originally, these serfs were gathered for camp construction.

They have never been on the battlefield, nor have they undergone any training. Now each is given a shoddy spear and told to "kill those barbarian tribes," doesn't that seem a bit...?

However, this is standard procedure for the era; after these serf soldiers experience a few battles, those who survive facing the enemy automatically become veterans. Survive a few more tough battles, and they turn into elite veterans.

They don't get any compensation; it's less costly to use battle and death to weed out the brave and capable than extensive training.

Moreover, the main force is the knights, and serf soldiers are more of a means to attract and deplete the enemy.

What Lance does—promoting literacy, ideological building, training, and equipment updates—is virtually impossible. They may become veterans right out of the training camp and elite upon seeing blood, but such costs are too great, tantamount to building soldiers with gold coins.

To these nobles, ordinary people are not considered people.

Isn't this something that grows from the ground and is available in abundance? Why waste it on them?

If they're gone, just conscript another batch. There will always be survivors to sift out enough veterans.

This is also Bruce's mindset.

Fortunately, those barbarians didn't attack with full force. They retreated after a probing attack, leaving behind a few unlucky corpses.

They lack heavy weapons, and as vanguards, they are too few, meant to test Bastia's strength. Upon roughly determining these soldiers' capabilities, that's sufficient.

For the barbarian tribes, the price to breach a camp is too high; the gains from breaching one do not proportionately match the costs. It's simpler and easier to bully ordinary people.

These serf soldiers, facing battle for the first time and on the verge of collapse, evidently lack the capability to pursue. The deputy could only watch as the barbarians left the battlefield without any hindrance.

Although worried, Bruce remained unmoved, and the deputy had no choice but to inquire.

"My lord, are we just going to watch them leave?" said the deputy, growing more agitated. "Just give me thirty knights, and I can annihilate these attacking barbarians!"

No one knows when the hatred between Bastia and the barbarian tribes began, but for the deputy, it was when his parents were slaughtered by them, and he was taken in.

Suffering and hatred molded the first half of his life, yet they also made him an excellent knight, chosen by Bruce as a retainer and eventually becoming the deputy of the Order of Knights.

Unlike Alvin's Order of Knights, the members of this order are personally selected and nurtured by Bruce from a young age. Their loyalty is beyond question, and their strength is formidable, essentially his private army.

"It's not dawn yet; the risk of pursuing them is too high. Let's first address the current situation."

Bruce did not agree, as he had many plans he couldn't share with his deputy, concerning himself and his father's strategies.

However, the fact that the barbarian tribes have come down to raid already indicates that Bastia's years of peace have been shattered.

Whether to fend off the barbarian invasion, annex Hamlet, or contend with other nobles, or even internal strife within the Empire...

The subsequent wars will require a significant number of soldiers, and using the barbarian tribes for training was one of the reasons he came here.

On the other side, those retreating barbarians had little connection with each other and couldn't even be considered an allied army of the barbarian tribes, merely a makeshift force of large tribes probing.

After leaving the battlefield, they each returned to their tribes with the intelligence they gathered.

The Empire is indeed experiencing internal strife.

Bastia knights, frequently seen on the frontier, have vanished.

The Bastia defense sector has fully contracted, giving up significant territory.

Bastia's soldiers are weak, only daring to cower within the camps.

Other things can be disguised, but not the battle line. Count Bastia's obsession with territorial expansion is like a fierce tiger in the mountain forest's obsession with territory — any daring intruding beast must be struck down.

The barbarians deeply understand this, for Bastia City was built by encroaching on their living space.

Now, the contraction of the battle line can only mean that Bastia no longer has sufficient strength to maintain such a large area.

Yet, these circumstances can't convince them to raid wildly; as the Fang Tribe's priest said, they wouldn't act rashly until they are ready.

What truly moved them was the spoils of the Fang Tribe's raids; this prompted some small tribes to imitate, and they achieved about the same harvest, further stimulating the large tribes.

However, there seems to be no news about the Warwolf Tribe.

...

Hamlet, the sanatorium.