At that moment, the cabin door opened and someone stepped out.
A towering figure standing over seven feet tall, his mail hauberk gleaming with a faint silver-gray sheen beneath the moonlight, immediately drew Karl’s attention.
Rhoen looked at Karl, his gaze sweeping over the tip of the cavalry lance before he spoke.
“Karl.
Good vigilance.”
Karl reacted before anything else.
The tip of his lance rose an inch.
Then the entire wedge formation began to slow.
The pounding rhythm of the horses’ hooves gradually spread out.
The lances shifted from level to a diagonal carry.
The warhorses dropped from a charge to a canter, then from a canter to a walk, finally coming to a halt twenty paces from the river bend.
Karl pushed up the visor of his helmet, revealing his face beneath.
His eyes swept over the ragged civilians, then the red-bearded dwarf holding up a wooden barrel, and finally settled on Rhoen.
“They’re with us,” Rhoen said.
Karl lowered his lance to his horse’s side.
Brom was still holding the barrel aloft.
The grin was still on his face, but the growl rumbling in his throat had stopped.
His gaze shifted from Karl to Rhoen.
“They’re with us,” he repeated.
He lowered the barrel from above his head and dropped it onto the gravel with a heavy thud.
“Then why the fuck didn’t you say so sooner?!”
Dusting the wood splinters from his hands, he looked up at Rhoen.
“So this is how people greet each other in your camp?”
Aina’s hands were still raised, though they were no longer trembling as badly.
She looked at Karl’s youthful face.
Rhoen walked down the gangplank, his leather boots crunching over the gravel.
“Karl,” he called.
Karl walked over from beside his horse, the plates of his armor clattering with every step.
“Move all the equipment from the cargo hold back to camp.
Every crate, without leaving a single one behind.
There’s food stored in the lower hold as well.
Take all of it.”
Karl clenched his fist against his chest.
“Yes, sir.”
Rhoen turned and looked toward the civilians gathered on the shore.
They huddled together, shivering.
The night wind of Velen carried a biting chill that seeped straight through their clothes.
His gaze passed over every face.
“The camp is behind the central courtyard,” he added.
“Women and children first.”
The woman in the gray robe turned and headed toward the camp with the child in her arms.
The child rested on her shoulder, staring at Rhoen the whole time.
Aina followed behind them, gently brushing the gravel and mud from the child’s bare feet.
…
The next day, beneath the midday sun, the camp had become far livelier with the arrival of its new residents.
When Rhoen sat down at the low table in the central courtyard, a line of text appeared in the upper-right corner of the system interface.
[Companion System Unlocked]
He set his clay cup on the table and tapped the notification.
A new tab unfolded.
Beside his name was the silhouette of a person holding an unfurled scroll, with several lines of small text below it.
[Development Path: Administrative Governor]
Rhoen studied the panel for a moment.
Recruiting companions had never worked like this in the game.
Back then, you simply walked into a tavern, spent a few hundred denars, and the companion would follow you.
As long as you paid enough, there was no such thing as an unsuccessful recruitment.
But this wasn’t a tavern.
And Erwin wasn’t someone he had hired with money.
They had met in the dungeon beneath the bandits’ camp.
They had spoken honestly beside the campfire, when Erwin had told him, “Don’t get used to it.”
The system hadn’t added Erwin to the companion list until today—not because Rhoen had only recruited him today, but because only now had the system judged his loyalty to be genuine.
“No matter how nice your words sound, they’re meaningless,” Rhoen muttered before finishing the remaining water in his cup.
This mechanic would prove invaluable in the future.
Whenever someone came seeking refuge, he wouldn’t have to guess who was sincere and who wasn’t.
Human hearts were the least reliable thing in the world.
But the system didn’t rely on people’s hearts.
It relied on its own judgment.
He closed the Companion tab, and the Party Information panel automatically opened.
The numbers had changed.
The total was no longer thirty-seven.
Beneath Miko and the others was an entirely new section.
Fourteen people.
Among the civilians rescued from the ship, some had voluntarily sought out Karl within two days of arriving at the camp and asked to join them.
Not everyone was capable of wielding a sword, however.
Karl had selected only a portion of them.
Fourteen names now appeared beneath the Imperial Recruit category, every one of them with an empty experience bar.
The party had grown from thirty-five members to fifty-one.
Then Rhoen noticed that a small upward-pointing arrow had appeared beside his own character level.
[Level Up: Lv.31 → Lv.32]
[Attribute Points Gained: 1]
His gaze lingered on the attribute panel for a moment.
[Strength: 10.
Agility: 8.
Endurance: 7.]
With weapon proficiencies exceeding three hundred in one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, polearms, bows, and riding, he was already more than capable in this world.
Those had never been the problem.
The real problem was not knowing whether there was an ambush waiting beyond the tree line.
Not knowing whether the place he intended to attack had been trapped.
Not knowing which words spoken by a smiling man in plate armor were true.
Perception mattered.
He tapped the screen.
[Perception: 5 → 6.]
The panel flashed once before the number settled into place.
He closed the interface, picked up the clay cup that had been resting on top of the supply inventory, and walked toward the central courtyard.
In the courtyard, Karl was overseeing the soldiers as they changed into their new equipment.
The fourteen men who had returned from the beach stood in a single line.
Everyone was present except the injured Pet.
Karl, assisted by two veterans, handed out the equipment piece by piece from the wooden crates.
The crates had been hauled up from the ship’s lower hold the previous night.
When their lids were lifted, the mail armor shimmered beneath the afternoon sun.
As he pulled the long mail hauberk over himself, the iron rings clinked together.
He fastened the mail coif around his neck, strapped on the finely forged breastplate, settled the wide-brimmed iron helmet onto his head, and finally draped the surcoat over the armor.
The surcoats had been sewn overnight by several women in the camp using coarse linen.
They had been dyed a pale purple with pigment boiled from the roots of allheal gathered near the camp.
The color wasn’t entirely even, but purple was the Empire’s color.
Miko hung the sword Rhoen had given him at his waist, the leather scabbard polished smooth by the sunlight.
Karl walked past him.
His eyes paused on the fastening strap of the mail coif.
Reaching out, he gave it a firm tug.
It held fast.
He patted Miko on the shoulder, making the armor plates clink, then moved on to the next soldier.
When all fourteen had finished changing, the courtyard fell silent for a brief moment.
Fourteen soldiers in purple surcoats stood beneath the afternoon sun.
The breastplates beneath the cloth gleamed with cold steel, while the shadows cast by their wide-brimmed helmets concealed half their faces.
The formation still wasn’t perfectly straight, but Karl no longer had to shout at them to line up.
Standing off to one side, Rhoen watched quietly.
On the party interface, every equipment slot beside the Imperial Infantryman icon was now illuminated.
It represented a complete set of standardized equipment—a fully equipped, properly organized military unit.
Erwin came down the steps of the manor house, his monocle sitting crooked on the bridge of his nose.
A rolled parchment was clenched in his hand, and his pace was noticeably quicker than usual.
He stopped in front of Rhoen and unfurled it.
“Three things,” he said, pressing a finger against the parchment.
“First, I’ve inspected the wasteland east of the manor.
The soil is good.
Once it’s tilled, we can plant oats and barley there.
The land by the river to the north can be turned into vegetable plots for turnips and cabbage.”
“Our population is approaching eighty now.
We can’t rely entirely on loot and purchases forever.
That land has lain fallow for at least two growing seasons, so the soil is still fertile.
Reclaiming it won’t be difficult, and we have enough hands to do the work.”
He paused before moving his finger to another section of the parchment.
“Second, we need an official name to present to the outside world.”
Rhoen looked at him.
“A mercenary company.
At this stage, organizing ourselves as one gives us the greatest flexibility.
It won’t attract too much suspicion, and it’ll also allow us to deal openly with the port authorities in Novigrad.
As for the name…
I’ve already thought of one, if you don’t object.”
He turned the parchment over.
On the back was a rough sketch of a banner drawn in charcoal.
A purple field.
At its center stood a golden lion rampant, its mane spreading proudly in every direction.
“The Calradic Mercenary Company.
We’ll use the coat of arms from your homeland as our banner.”
Rhoen lowered his eyes to the sketch.
The purple banner.
The golden lion.
He studied it for a while before folding the parchment and handing it back to Erwin.
“That works.”