Imperial Crown.

Chapter 223 Magic Engraving
Although Raven basically handed over the daily training of the army to Eric, it does not mean that he is not paying attention to it.

More than half of the forge's production capacity is used by the Eagle Army.

After the establishment of the commercial alliance, large-scale purchases of various livestock and poultry were carried out in order to enable the army to maintain high-intensity training while having reliable combat capabilities.

Why are the private armies of many nobles not large in size?
And why, even after the war with the Order of the Hand of Death, the nobles paid more attention to the construction of the army, but the most purchased weapons and equipment were still inferior ones?

Because I can't afford it.

If you want the army to maintain its combat effectiveness, you need long-term, high-intensity training. To maintain high-intensity training, it is not enough to just provide some bread, oatmeal, and pickles, but also requires a lot of protein and fat supplements.

Otherwise, daily training alone would be enough to tire you out!

In fact, the cost of food for the Eagle Army alone is more than 500 gold coins per month, which is half of the annual income of many barons.

What's more, thousands of gold coins worth of high-quality equipment are provided to the team every month.

Considering the average military level of the Nord Province, Raven's Eagle Army is armed to the teeth.

"So, I would like to ask Your Excellency the Baron to personally inspect the results achieved during this period of time," said Eric.

To this, Raven readily agreed and came to the military camp.

The military camp for 5,000 people not only has a living area, but also a place for daily training. Its scale is not inferior to most towns today.

The soldiers gathered in the training ground.

The sky was clear and the sun shone on the earth, illuminating the armor and weapons of the soldiers. The white mist exhaled by the soldiers intertwined together.

No matter how rich Raven is, it is impossible for him to equip all his troops with heavy armor.

Therefore, the entire Eagle Army, except for the 500-man guard battalion directly led by Eric, and officers of all levels above the rank of centurion who wore full body plate armor, all wore leather armor coated with iron powder.

A legion consists of 5500 people, divided into eleven battalions of 500 people each, with a full range of arms.

The Royal Guard Battalion was composed entirely of cavalrymen, and they were also the most deterrent and destructive heavy cavalry on the battlefield of this era. Each person was equipped with a lance, a round shield, a long sword, and three javelins.

In addition, there were two battalions of light cavalry, two battalions of spearmen, three battalions of sword and shield soldiers, two battalions of crossbowmen, and one battalion of archers.

And since each battalion is composed of three detachments, when necessary, a legion can also be split into smaller-scale troops with complete arms configuration.

Accompanied by the sound of trumpets and flag signals, the army dispersed and began to practice changing formations.

The Adien Phalanx is a frontal attack formation with spearmen as the vanguard and sword and shield soldiers as the flanks.

The Spanda circle formation, which has sword and shield soldiers as the outer layer and spear soldiers as the inner layer, looks like a giant hedgehog and is used for defensive purposes.

There are also sword and shield soldiers outside and spearmen inside. All of them squat to make room for archers and crossbowmen, and light cavalry guarding the Richel phalanx on both sides.

The Sanxon wedge formation was formed with heavy cavalry as the blade, light cavalry as the flanks, and archers providing cover for their advance.

The formation changed quickly and without any delay. If they could demonstrate this level of skill in actual combat, they would be considered elite in the entire continent.

Raven looked at the changing formation and nodded slowly: "Eric, you have worked hard during this period."

"It's all my duty, sir." Eric said, "If it weren't for the queue training method you taught me before, I might not be able to train to this level even if I were given another year, let alone just over a year."

Eric wasn't just sucking up to Raven.

In this era, the more military experience a person has, the more he values ​​discipline.

The influence of the mercenary guild is spread all over the continent. The personal qualities and equipment of the mercenaries who risk their lives all day long are undoubtedly far superior to those of regular soldiers.

There are precedents of various countries and forces hiring mercenaries to fight for them during wars.

But throughout history, mercenary groups have never played a decisive role in any large-scale war.

Ultimately, it comes down to discipline.

The queue training brought by Raven is the best way to cultivate discipline.

Disciplined soldiers may not have the outstanding individual martial arts of mercenaries, but in large-scale legion combat, personal strength is the least important.

The simplest example is that faced with the magic of a magician, the sound effects, the light effects, and the reality of the mass death of comrades, a mercenary group may collapse at the touch of a button, while trained soldiers can still hold on to the battlefield.

This is why, although Raven adopted the empire's current military system, the basic construction still uses the three-three system.

A formation that is too dense will become a sitting duck for the enemy magician on the battlefield!

Not only Raven was paying attention to the battlefield, but also the orphans in a small area separated nearby.

There are about 100 people in total, all of whom are good candidates carefully selected from orphans. In addition to daily study in the orphanage, they also have to come to the military camp for intensive training every weekend.

Compared with the real swords and guns of the regular troops of the Eagle Army, their training content seems a bit miserable. They use wooden equipment, and the daily content, apart from formations, is basic sword-wielding, gun-wielding, and blocking training, which can be described as boring.

If there is any fun, it is the competitive spear throwing training. Whenever this happens, the orphans will jump forward excitedly and compete with each other to see who can throw more accurately and farther.

However, the projects that usually follow are not so fun and make them quite uncomfortable.

Their instructor, Knight Simon, would have people bring in a lot of wooden horses - although they were made of wood, they were different from ordinary wooden horses in that they had thick iron springs underneath. When people sat on them, they would shake violently, often causing them to vomit their lunch.

The training requirement is to persist for as long as possible without your feet touching the ground.

Sometimes, after they finally managed to regain their balance, the instructor would come over and kick them, letting them experience what it felt like to be dizzy!

This kind of training is boring and difficult, and it always ends in disgrace, which makes them lose hope for the future.

But today, the Eagle Army’s assembly drill opened their eyes!

They lay on the fence at the edge of the field, their eyes shining.

More than 5,000 people, when they moved, they seemed to be a whole, everyone's face was full of determination and seriousness, it looked so...

Handsome!

Raven also noticed them and asked, "What is the quality of these children?"

"All the children who survived the war are pretty good," Eric said. "Except for a few who really couldn't train, most of them could last more than half an hour on your special wooden horse."

The reason for doing this is that Raven wants to train these orphans into the first batch of gryphon cavalry.

Although the female hippogryph that he strengthened is docile, it is still a bird after all, and its flight is still bumpy, especially since it often needs to fly high, land low, and turn.

If they can't adapt, they will be spitting horned eagles all over the sky, which will be a lot of fun. After the battle formation exercise, Raven gave a routine speech. The content was also very simple. It was nothing more than an extra meal tonight, and then encouraged them to continue to strengthen their training.

At the same time, a carrot that cannot be eaten for the time being is also thrown out: those who perform well will be eligible to take the God-given potion.

As he left the barracks amid the cheers of the soldiers, Eric wanted to say something several times but he didn't have the courage to speak.

Although Raven understood what he meant, he did not point it out.

As time went by, the extraordinary skills under his command improved.

Simon, Link and Volaf, the first group of people to become extraordinary, have already reached the first-order nine-star and ten-star level and are on the verge of a breakthrough.

Eric himself has reached the second level and ten stars, and he only needs one third level mineral to start trying to advance.

Instead of letting Eric send him back to Eagle Castle, Raven sent Volaf away first and enjoyed the rare time alone.

A breeze blew, bringing up the uncompacted snow on the dead trees by the roadside. Fine snow foam flew up, seeping into the collar and cuffs, and then melting away in Raven's breath.

If you broaden your vision, you can see a silver field, mottled with dots of dull golden light, which are the remnants of fallen leaves in autumn.

Further away are the snow-capped mountains. Under the vast snow, the pines and cypresses reveal their deep green color.

Just looking at this scene, Raven felt much more relaxed.

Looking over the hill, he thought of Lux again. He wondered where she was now or how she was doing.

The branches beside the road suddenly swayed, and the snow hit Raven's shoulders. He looked up and saw a squirrel jumping between the branches. Just as he caught sight of it, it disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Raven smiled, spurred his horse again, and hurried back to Eagle Castle at a leisurely pace.

After changing his clothes, Raven came into the secret room with a cup of coffee, opened the Deep Blue Platform, and started shopping according to the planned content.

The first is the simplified version of the Intellectual Magic Web that costs 57 gold coins - if you buy it, you won't be able to get the recipe for the magic upgrade potion.

But this intelligence magic network is a production tool that can bring more profits. In a short period of time, Raven's magic power cannot reach the third level and ten stars, so there is no rush to make magic potions.

Then there are the various combat techniques used by the knights.

It’s a shame to say that the fighting skills inherited from the Griffith family are all dedicated to bloodthirsty fighting spirit, but none of Raven’s men have mastered bloodthirsty fighting spirit.

For a long time before that, Raven was too poor to buy fighting skills. By the time he could afford it, the war was over.

Now that the extraordinary people around me are about to break through, I could take this opportunity to buy some fighting skills. Otherwise, if word gets out that the knights of the Griffith family are all paupers who don't know any fighting skills, that won't sound good.

Four breakthrough materials, totaling 3771 gold coins, the bulk of which still goes to Eric.

In addition, there are seven series of first and second level combat skills: earth, water, fire, wind, ice, darkness, and shadow.

Earth, water, fire and wind are the most common and have the widest application range. Gole, who died on the bloody highlands, possessed the earth fighting spirit; Volaf possessed the ice fighting spirit, and the dark fighting spirit belonged to another personal soldier Otto. As for the shadow fighting skills, they were prepared for Mantheni.

Moreover, Raven has not forgotten his ambition to establish the Twelve Constellation Legion.

Even though combat skills are much cheaper than magic of the same level, it still cost Raven 14 gold coins to buy 9773 combat skills.

Finally, Raven replenished 600 second-level magic cores of various attributes, spending 35771 gold coins.

After doing all this, the amount of gold coins on the books dropped to just over 200,000.

Raven was even a little accustomed to this and could only silently convince himself that there would be opportunities to make money in the future.

After placing the order, all you have to do is wait.

During this time, Raven was not idle either. While meditating and accumulating magic power with his magic core, he began to try to choose the magic he wanted to engrave in the magic pool.

For most magicians, this step is actually very simple. After all, there are only a limited number of elements that they are compatible with, and the magic that can be mastered at the third level is also quite limited. Four or five kinds are already very impressive.

But for Raven, it was not the case at all.

Among the magic he mastered, there were 5 first-level magics, 8 second-level magics, and including the 11 he purchased last time, there were as many as third-level magics!
Other mages have more low-level magic and less high-level magic, but Raven is completely the opposite.

This is the advantage brought by all-attribute affinity, which enables you to use the most appropriate magic according to different battle situations.

But advantages can also be disadvantages at times. Choosing one type of magic from a total of 24 types is really a waste of brain cells.

Necromancer magic was the first thing to be ruled out. Not only was the Church of Light unable to accept this kind of thing, but its reputation among the five major human forces was also very poor. Unless Raven wanted to establish a kingdom of the dead, it could not be taken into consideration.

In this case, there are still as many as 16 types of magic to choose from.

He has affinity for all attributes and has thought about picking one type of magic from each series and engraving it on the pool of magic power. However, after studying classics such as "The Path of the Mage", he put this idea behind him.

The above describes many adverse consequences of engraving two or three kinds of magic. The lightest consequence is a significant slowdown in the speed of advancement. The most serious consequence is that one may even be reversely contaminated by magic power and turn into an indescribable monster.

So for several days in a row, apart from meditating and working, Raven arranged these 16 kinds of magic in front of him and considered them carefully.

When it comes to the future, we must be careful.

This day is still the same.

Sometimes Raven would wonder why he didn't have a teacher.

The strong men he knew were not magicians. Anno was a witch, Crouch was a divine magician, and Tyrone and Montreal were both knights. No one could give him advice or help at this step.

After taking a sip of coffee, suddenly, with a meow, Sikoret came out from somewhere, glanced at the magic in front of Raven, raised his paw slightly, and threw one of them into Raven's hand.

Raven took it and looked at it, and was stunned for a moment.

It is the most common first-level magic on the continent, and any magician with an affinity for fire can master it.

Fireball.

"You want me to choose it?" Raven asked.

"If you want to build a castle, you have to start from the foundation." Sikoret said nonchalantly: "Of course, this is just my suggestion."

Raven frowned and remained silent.

……

(End of this chapter)