Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 252 - 251: Drills and Close-Combat Weapon Improvement Plans

With the continuous development of the territory, the population gathered on this land has exceeded ten thousand, and the Cecil Combat Corps has undergone a new round of expansion during this process. The system similar to the construction army and the significant assistance of magic in production and construction have allowed the Cecil territory to maintain a relatively high ratio of military to civilians without overly affecting the development and operation of the territory.

Gawain always believed one thing: chaos is coming. Whether it’s the monsters in the Gondor wasteland or wars between human nations, they will sooner or later find their way to him. To deal with the impending danger, forming a powerful armed force is necessary and inevitable.

And as the Cecil Combat Corps expands in size and the administrative framework within the territory gradually improves, Gawain’s training for this army becomes increasingly formal and rigorous. Compared to the initial construction phase of the territory when many rules were akin to the rudimentary "Three Rules of Conduct," Gawain has formulated more explicit and stringent military regulations, which are also easier to use for statistical rewards and punishments. He prescribed the stipends for each rank of the corps, defined basic soldier behavior, and implemented methods for supervising the army, tabulating military achievements, and punishing negligence. To ensure that these systems and regulations are executed, he also instructed Sir Philip and Sir Byron to select a batch of literate, honest, and reliable young soldiers to serve as grassroots commanders — thanks to the efforts of night school teachers, more and more people in the territory are literate, making the selection of such grassroots commanders not difficult.

Gawain himself is not a person versed in military affairs, but fortunately, Gawain Cecil is an expert in this field. Coupled with the bit of theory accumulated from his past life as a keyboard warrior, he finally built this framework.

Once the framework is in place and the system is established, what remains is the nearly brainwashing-like training of new recruits and the endless drills to ingrain all the rules and action guidelines as conditioned reflexes, etching them into the bones of every Cecil soldier.

In the military district on the eastern side of the territory, the new recruits are conducting daily physical training. These people, who were ordinary farmers and laborers not long ago, are now wearing standard Cecil Armor, carrying training backpacks that weigh the same as combat backpacks, and have steel arm armor strapped to their arms, which is similar in size and weight to a Magic Transmission Terminal. They conduct formation training in the open space, watched attentively by Gawain, alongside Sir Byron and Sir Philip.

Occasionally, the curses of veteran soldiers acting as instructors echo across the field, but today the complaints and heckling of the new recruits can no longer be heard.

"To be honest, the formation drills you advocated back then really are useful," Byron looked at the new recruits who managed to stand in neat formations within a few days and couldn’t help but marvel, "After some training, at least their obedience has improved."

Sir Philip was marveling at something else: "Simplifying the Knight’s Code as soldier behavior, and requiring everyone to adhere to it, I really didn’t expect this to be achievable."

"As long as the training is sufficient, and they remember their daily learning akin to conditioned reflexes etched into their bones, even if they don’t understand knightly spirit, they’ll emulate it," Gawain replied casually, "The Cecil Combat Corps is a very special army; they must protect this land, protect the people on it, and the people must wholeheartedly support them. Only then can we stand firm on this dangerous borderland."

Sir Byron sighed, "The average aristocratic private army is mostly composed of ruffians and hooligans. Even if they are of commoner origin, once they don the aristocratic crest and have swords in their hands, they extort commoners without hesitation because all the aristocrats need is for these private soldiers to protect their castles... Occasionally, some wealthy aristocrats with knightly spirit pay attention to army discipline and strictly demand it of their soldiers, but this is limited to strict demands only. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone like you who has formulated rules and regulations to restrain soldiers."

"An individual’s morality will eventually perish with the individual, only a perfected system and regulations ensure that discipline remains effective even after personnel rotates," Gawain smiled, "Of course, even with a perfect system and regulations, there is no eternal nation or order in the world, but at least a group restrained by a system will survive longer than those that collapse the moment the leader dies."

"An individual’s morality will eventually perish with the individual...," Sir Philip showed admiration, but hearing the latter part of Gawain’s words, couldn’t help but frown, "Are you saying that even with the perfected system and restraints you’ve devised, the Cecil territory will eventually follow the same path as those who perished?"

"If descendants don’t know how to cherish it," Gawain spread his hands, "no matter how solid the foundation is, that day will always come."

Sir Philip’s expression became solemn, "You don’t have to be so pessimistic, you..."

Gawain waved his hand before Sir Philip could finish, "Don’t start with that kind of ’Your great achievements shall be eternal’ nonsense, that’s just for deceiving fools and the dead. I wouldn’t count on it — back when I was buried, someone even carved ’Great achievements for all eternity’ on my tombstone, yet when I opened my eyes again, the tomb had been dug up. Since that day, I don’t believe in such compliments anymore."

Sir Philip was left speechless, stunned for a moment, unable to speak, while beside him, Sir Byron enthusiastically slapped Sir Philip’s shoulder, laughing so hard his ribs were nearly fractured: "You’ve been chatting irresponsibly with someone who has experiences."

Gawain glanced at Byron, who showed not the slightest knightly demeanor: "Don’t laugh either—have you come up with any ideas for a new melee weapon that aligns with the Cecil Combat Corps’ combat style and magical technology?"

Due to the discovery of the "Defiance" fortress, large-scale cleaning and restoration is underway at the mountain ruins. Gawain aims to restore operations in the mid-layer area of the ruins, turning it into Cecil’s "Ancient Technology Research Center" and a secondary industrial base. Considering that Sir Byron has been organizing explorations in the ruins since before winter, and now seeing such a significant achievement, Gawain gave him a few days off to bask in the sunlight on the surface and spend time with Pea—though based on the principle of making the best use of people, Gawain also gave Byron a relatively light task: to think about what his soldiers might still need, in order to design an improvement plan for the Cecil Combat Corps’ melee weapons.

Initially, it was just a casual question, and he didn’t expect the usually carefree knight mercenary to have results this quickly. Unexpectedly, Byron immediately showed a proud smile: "You’ve just asked the right question; I do have some ideas!"

"Oh?" Gawain was slightly surprised, "Tell me more."

"Hang on, I’ve got a blueprint!" Byron said happily, "It’s at home—not far from here, I’ll be back in a bit!"

Byron is extremely quick to act; after getting Gawain’s permission, he dashed off in a cloud of dust, leaving Gawain and Sir Philip looking at each other in bewilderment. It took Sir Philip a moment to finally say: "He can draw magic blueprints now?"

Byron’s residence on Knight Street is very close to the barracks, coupled with the swift footedness of a professional knight, Gawain didn’t have to wait long before the knight returned in a whirlwind of haste, indeed holding in hand what seemed to be a sizeable scroll of paper—surely the blueprint he had mentioned.

"Here it is," Byron unfolded the blueprint in front of Gawain with great excitement, "I brainstormed this with a few rune craftsmen from the Mechanical Manufacturing Facility—you know, I’m not very skilled at drawing blueprints..."

Gawain nodded understandingly, while his attention was already captured by the contents of the blueprint—it was indeed the design of some kind of melee weapon, resembling a sword, though plainly just a conceptual framework—both the hilt and the base of the blade clearly had reserved spots for magic symbols and ancient magical devices, yet with no specific structures there, alongside the blueprint were numerous functional requirements or ideas, evidently not yet fully discussed.

Byron also noticed the imperfections on the blueprint. He chuckled: "Still haven’t reached a conclusion, many aspects are still under debate."

From the sword design blueprint, Gawain had already seen some elements he anticipated, and immediately said: "Disputes are not to be feared; go ahead and share your views."

"Here’s how I see it—you should know, I used to be a mercenary—the difference between mercenaries and professional knights or soldiers is, we don’t have many fixed frameworks and rules, whether in weaponry or combat tactics, everything is based on practicality; outsiders might view our equipment as chaotic, but we know every piece of weaponry and equipment exists because it fulfills a ’need,’ it corresponds to specific usage environments and scenarios," Byron rarely mentioned his mercenary past, and now began discussing his thought process, "So I’m contemplating—under what circumstances would our soldiers need melee weapons, and what battlefield environments would these weapons face?"

He paused for a moment, then continued: "The Cecil Combat Corps already have heat-ray guns—and reportedly higher-level arcane bullet launchers and electric lances are under design. These weapons are increasingly powerful, and when soldiers use them in groups, they can even directly eliminate middle-ranked Transcendent beings. These long-range attacks suffice to destroy most enemies, so there are only two reasons they would resort to melee weapons: first, their long-range weapons become unusable for some reason, like damage, second, the enemy possesses strong magical resistance or outright has properties like ’arrow deflection.’

"Obviously, the second scenario is what we should truly focus on countering.

"What the soldiers lack isn’t magical attacks, but stronger physical lethality—I worked with the rune craftsmen to eliminate traditional methods like elemental enchantments on the sword blade to increase magic damage, and instead sought to boost the sheer destructive power of the sword. Common methods include physical enchantments for effects like sharpening, weighting, armor piercing, but these enhance only limitedly, or for now can’t be converted into Arrays, so we didn’t consider them...

"Finally, we arrived at two solutions: one is the ’Mechanical Sword,’ the other is the ’Melting Sword’..."