"No." The Count crossed his arms. "But I have heard stories of knights getting dragged down by peasants with pitchforks."

"Those are spoiled noble children who train in safe courtyards." Vekar spat. "They have zero battle sense. When real blood sprays, they panic and die."

Vekar looked back at the tree line where Adrian’s unit disappeared and chuckled.

"An experienced F rank knight is worth ten veteran soldiers." Vekar explained. "Their reaction speed is inhuman. They hit hard enough to shatter a regular man’s wrist in a single sword clash. If you put sixty experienced knights in a tight shield wall formation... two hundred soldiers are not going to surround them. Those two hundred soldiers are going to get butchered."

Deep inside the eastern forest, Adrian sat on a fallen log.

It was pitch black outside. His unit had sprinted for hours and successfully reached the enemy’s planned route. They were currently sitting directly in the path of the Avarice detachment.

There were no campfires since Adrian did not want smoke giving away their position. He had used the dungeon to generate a pile of red hot, smokeless coals.

He was stirring a small iron pot of pre cooked meat stew, just heating it up over the coals. The sixty knights sat in complete silence, eating cold rations. They did not look tired.

Claire walked out of a bush nearby and walked to Adrian, looking worried. She had gone out to scout the place and it seemed like there was bad news.

"They are moving up the valley." Claire reported quietly. "They will be here in twenty minutes. But the scouts were wrong."

Adrian paused his stirring. "How wrong?"

"There are not two hundred men." Claire said grimly. "There are at least five hundred. It is a massive vanguard."

Adrian frowned. Five hundred was a different story. "Can we win this?"

Claire looked at the sixty men sitting in the dark. She had trained every single one of them herself. She knew exactly how brutal their physical conditioning was. She knew they had fought hundreds of life or death battles inside the dungeon instances.

Claire looked back at Adrian. Her eyes were completely confident.

"If we ambush them now," Claire said. "We will suffer zero casualties. We might take some cuts and bruises, but we will crush them completely."

"Good." Adrian nodded.

He turned his head. The five kids sat near the edge of the clearing. They wore their dark leather armor. Their weapons in their hands.

"You five." Adrian called out.

Octavia, Vance, Tessa, Hugo, and Milo stood up immediately.

"You have been training for two months." Adrian said. "I gave you the best manuals in the world and fed you the best potions. It is time to show me how much you’ve grown."

He pointed toward the valley. "You five are going in first. Show me what you can do."

The kids nodded and drew their weapons. They knew that this was a test of their physical skills.

They walked slowly through the forest, using the thick bushes for cover. Adrian and Claire followed silently behind them while the sixty knights spread out in a wide ambush perimeter.

Down in the valley, the Avarice army marched with torches. Five hundred men walking in a long, sloppy column. They were joking and laughing. They clearly did not expect any resistance this deep in the woods.

Adrian watched from a high ridge and turned to look at the kids.

Hugo moved first.

The kid with the healer blessing did not hesitate, not even for a mere second. He jumped down from the branches, and landed right behind a scout. Both of his swords swung out in a brutal scissor chop.

The swords cut through flesh and bone, and the scout’s head popped right off his shoulders. It bounced against a thick tree root and hit the dirt.

Blood fountained out of the stump while Adrian watched the other kids from his spot.

Octavia flinched hard, her eyes wide as she took in the sight. The headless corpse swayed for a second before collapsing right next to its own head.

Vance just clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the massive Guandao. He leaped straight out of the brush, landed right in front of two enemy soldiers and sung his weapon. The heavy polearm swept out in a massive horizontal arc. The sharp blade cut right through the cheap leather armor. Deep slashes opened up across their stomachs, deep enough for their guts to instantly spill onto the ground.

Tessa charged next with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. She didn’t even swing the blade. She just slammed her shield dead center into a guy’s face and a sickening crunch echoed as his nose got crushed. Milo followed right beside her, stabbing the soldier through the gut.

The Avarice army panicked and shouts echoed through the forest. "Ambush! Ambush!"

Dozens of soldiers turned their swords toward the kids.

Octavia was still standing in the bushes and looked down to stare at her shaking hands.

’Do not be worthless.’ Octavia thought desperately. ’Lord Adrian saved you. He pulled you out of that slave cage. He gave you the chance to become a honorable knight even though you are a slave. Do not disappoint him.’

As she said that, something deep within her mind growled back.

"Never disappoint him."

An enemy soldier slipped past the frontline. He spotted Octavia standing frozen in the bushes. He didn’t even think twice as he lunged straight at her with his sword raised.

Vance spotted him right on time, and spun his polearm around. The heavy blade hacked the soldier’s arm clean off at the bicep and the severed limb tumbled through the air.

Hot blood sprayed right across Octavia’s pale face.

She reached up and wiped the warm red liquid off her cheek. She just stared down at her own hand and then, looked at the soldier. The man was rolling in the dirt and screaming his lungs out.