Swiss Arms 56 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 56

-VB-

Development.

It meant a lot of things to a lot of people.

Personally, I saw three levels of development: personal, communal, and societal. Personal development was what the Gamer was about, and I relished in the numbers going up on the screen and my own body doing things that it had no business doing.

(Jumping off a mountain top and surviving a thousand feet roll filled with rocks and ledges was impossible but I survived anyway).

Just look at my numbers. They gave me pumps of dopamine whenever I looked at them.

[Character Status]

Name: Hans von Fluelaberg

Age: 20

LvL: 40

HP: 900

MP: 400

ST: 450

STR: 90

END: 90

AGI: 69

DEX: 57

INT: 40

CHA: 24

I was nine times stronger, nine times healthier, nine times tougher, nearly seven times faster, nearly six times more nimble, four times smarter, and two and a half times more charismatic.

Just look at those beauties!

Now, I wasn’t sure how hard the human skull was on the Mohs hardness scale and whatever else exists in the future to come. What I did know, however, was the fact that I was capable of headbutting steel and winning. I wasn’t exactly sure how the END translated to toughness, but it did quite a bit if sharpened steel couldn’t cut my skin.

So I wasn’t too worried about the bandits.

Well, I was worried for my men.

The near-silent footsteps of my trained guerrilla soldiers began approaching me from my rear. I remained still in my own camo and waited. This ability to hear something so far away with such accuracy was one of my new skills that I have been developing: Owl Sense.

[Owl Sense] LvL. 3

Increases accuracy and precision of hearing

*ACTIVE: increases sensitivity of hearing by 1.5*LvL (-1 ST per minute)

*PASSIVE: pick up any mention about yourself spoken in open air within (LvL)*20 yards

Once the soldier was within six feet, I spoke up.

“Report.” The soldier faltered, and I knew that he had been surprised by my ability to detect him. I was surprised that he was still surprised. Hell, should I even take a gander at exactly who he was despite the camo gear (for a lack of a better word) covering him head to toe? Hmm… The weight of the footfall was a little lighter than the others. “Daniel, report.”

That really shook him out of his funk. “Y-Yes, sir. We have spotted the bandit camp.”

I grinned savagely. “Good. Lead me to them.”

Daniel was one of the local boys who’d grown up and begged to be a soldier underneath me. At only seventeen years old, he would have been a high school student back … yeha, back in my old life. In this new life, he was a well-trained soldier. I wouldn’t let him fight a knight, of course. No, that’s stupid.

I would, however, give him a hundred bolts, a repeating crossbow, and tell him to shoot down my enemies or hunt down some animals for families in need.

It helped that he was small, which made the sneaky-beaky business easier for him overall.

(But then again, everyone was small in this age.)

I followed Daniel through the heavily wooded forests of the Alps, and after an hour of walking, we arrived near the edge of a clearing near the edge of the valley.

The bandits hung out on the far end of the clearing, cooking a meal with food no doubt stolen from the people of Chur. What concerned me, though, was the knight that was with them. The bishop hadn’t mentioned any knight before. Could he be a hedge knight turned bandit?

“Any lookouts?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. They are all looking at a dirt road that leads into this place. There used to be a old house here, but the bandits used the last of the wooden structure for their fires.”

I hummed. “And where are the rest of your comrades located?”

“All through the forest around the clearing. If you give us the signal, then we’ll go start shooting.”

The optimal distance for the repeating crossbows I have made and distributed to my men was 40 yards. At a glance, the clearing was just about that. On top of that, the bandits had carts on either side of their camp, which negated half of the attack venu es. On top of that, this was no small band of malnourished men but a full warband of nearly a hundred armored and armed solders.

I looked around and grimaced. The women that were taken were over there by the far corner, and from the blood around and on them, they were very, very dead.

“Have them retreat for now. We know where they are now. There’s no need to unnecessarily risk ourselves when the duke wants to fight, too.”

“As you command, sir.”

Then he whistled like a bird. The bandits didn’t notice at all, because the sound was exactly like that of the local rock thrushes but with a rhythm to it and repeated.

-VB-

“A knight?” Henry frowned and I nodded.

“Saw it myself,” I replied. “They have nearly a hundred members.”

“What about the women?”

“Dead and left to the side.”

“Bastards.”

I hummed. “What I am worried about is the fact that these men are armed and armored in ways I don’t expect bandits to be.”

Henry stared at me for a moment before narrowing his eyes.

“You think someone is setting them up. That these men are not bandits but mercenaries.”

I nodded.

“I have been hearing from Bavarian merchants that they need to hire a lot of guards because there are way too many bandits between the Compact and Bavaria.”

“So someone who is a rival of the duchies there? Upper Bavaria shouldn’t have too many enemies who might risk the ire of the emperor…”

“I don’t know too much about the politics of the empire, so I can’t say.”

“Don’t worry about it. I will, however, look into this when I return home,” he “reassured” me. I supposed that I did feel something small at the thought of having foreign-entity backed entities in what was essentially my backyard, but I also didn’t like the way Henry was taking it up as his cause to act upon.

Whatever. Something to think about.

I stood up.

At the same time, I was happy about this “bandit” warband. It gave me something new to do, and after months of repetitive grinding, I was getting sick and tired of it.

“Okay then. We will attack soon. Have the soldiers ready; they’ll be the distraction that allows my men to strike from behind.”

-VB-

Henry watched Hans as he disappeared into the forest again. His bluttumhang (leaf-cloaks[?]) didn’t come out of the forest with him, but they surely had to be out there.

It still freaked him out hours after he learned about them and their capabilities.

(Could he ask Hans to train some of his own men like that or send one of his bluttumhang to train his men?)

After a moment of contemplation, he stood up. Hans had given him instructions on how to approach the bandit camp, so he would do so.

“Men!” he turned around and called to his soldiers. “It seems like the good baron found the bandits!” There were murmurs as they started picking up their weapons. “We will go face them head on! The good baron has given us the privilege to show him and his people how real warriors and knights fight!”

That got a few cheers out of the knights among them.

“Besides, these are just bandits-”

---

“Why do these bandits have four knights?!” Henry hissed as the four bandit knights faced off against his. Though numerically outnumbered, he and his men were holding.

As Hans had told him to do so, he had taken his men and just walked up the path leading up to the bandit’s clearing. This would attract the attention of the bandits and, seeing that he had less people, would surely come to attack him with their own heavily armored and armed “knights.”

And as Hans said, they really were knights.

These knights had hung back and only charged into the fight after the bandits had surrounded them and attacked.

But the bandits hadn’t accounted for Hans, who’d struck them in the back with his rapidly firing crossbows.

The skirmish turned into a chaos, and Henry found himself fending off two particularly well-armed “bandits.”

Bandits did not have a worn but well-cared for gambesons, maces, and shields. They did not have boots better than some of his own men.

No, these were mercenaries hired to act like bandits in the rural backwater that would have little to no way of reporting what they did or looked like.

“Cut them down!” he roared as he charged forth with his shield and bashed the face of the surprised mercenary to his left. He lashed out with his sword at the right, and got parried for his trouble. Instead of giving up, he whirled around, attempting another shield bash on the surviving mercenary but missed, but his sword came around and then caught the man’s shoulder.

“AAHHH!!” the mercenary screamed as he lost his grip on the buckler.

Seeing his opportunity, Henry tackled him. The mercenary fell back with a scream, and Henry used this chance to bring his sword down and silence him forever.

Gasping with exertion after having killed his fifth men, Henry looked up and around. His knights were still fighting around him, but every men was essentially fighting their own battles with little to no organization…

Except for the baron’s men.

Having struck the bandits in the back, Hans had stepped up to fight in the front while his bluttumhangs cotninued to fire their crossbows in a precise manner.

And, very briefly, Henry saw why Hans had managed to become the baron and leader of the Compact.

It wasn’t every day that he got to see a fully armed mercenary with neckguard gambeson get beheaded and another more lightly armored mercenary-bandit get launched into the air, only to break his neck when he landed on his head.

Henry grimaced as another mercenary came at him.

Worse for him and his men was the nature of the battleground; the thick forest gave little to no room for wide maneuvers favored by commanders like himself. He couldn’t see what was going on beyond a good dozen yards, if that.

The mercenary, a greybeard, tried to get a hit in with his weighty axe, but Henry just stepped back and then thrust his sword forward.

The mercenary too stepped back, tried to push his sword away with his kite shield.

Henry, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to move around to find an opening, struck at the shield, trying to make the man let go. Instead, all he did was make the old mercenary grin as his shield took hit and after hit.

He stepped back and the mercenary waited for him.

Henry looked around. Fighting was dying down. He could wait for his men to surround the old mercenary…

But he wasn’t into that.

He lightly tossed his sword up and then caught the blade with his armored and mailed hand.*

The mercenary immediately recognized what he was going for.

And then he struck.

This time, the shield began chunking away as the weighty end of the improvised mace broke pieces off with each strike.

The old man knew he was in trouble in both time and prospect.

… So he dropped his axe and shield and ran for it.

Too tired to give chase, Henry stopped and huffed, glaring at the back of-.

Thunk.

Of the old and dead mercenary whose head was decorated very recently by a crossbow bolt.

He turned back to his knights and saw that one of them was dead while they had killed all of the bandit knights.

And that was it.

A hundred bandit-mercenaries wiped out in the course of less than an hour.

He trudged his way over to where Hans was, checking up on a few of the more injured soldiers on his way, and came to stop close to the baron.

“Find anything?” he asked.

Hans nodded and reached down to one of the mercenaries he’d killed.

Henry briefly glanced around.

One of at least a dozen.

When Hans came back up, he held a ripped insignia.

Henry looked at it for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t know which house that belongs to. Either it’s the shit’s personal thing or something he stole from the Franks.”\

Hans grunted. “Well, I can ask the bishop if he knows,” he said and then smiled. “Well, it seems like we’ve done a good job, eh?”

Henry grinned with him.

“Oh, yes. We definitely did the empire a great service today.”

And then it was time to split the loot.

-VB-

A/N: This technique is called mordhau for those unfamiliar with it.