Absolute Death Game

The campaign task was evidently different from regular quests; the biggest difference lay in the need to lead troops into battle, meaning the enemy might appear in the form of an army, not the previous rhythm of small groups coming to deliver themselves to death.

Based on Xiao Buli’s understanding of the game, from now on he must change his mindset: he couldn’t view this task from the usual perspective of an online game; he needed to approach it with the attitude of a strategy game. And the best at such games in Qingyang Studio was undoubtedly Han Wenhuan.

Leading the refugee team into Black Stone Village, they were settled on the east side of the village. It seemed there were plenty of vacant houses, and the hundred or so people found accommodation. Xiao Buli covertly observed the size of Black Stone Village.

There were probably four to five hundred people, whereas the refugees from Thousand Pines Town numbered only a hundred and sixty or seventy, merely a third of the former.

To attack Black Mountain Camp, the dozen or so leading troops at hand were clearly inadequate. Therefore, the first thing after settling down was to recruit and train more soldiers.

Fortunately, among the one hundred and sixty-seven refugees from Thousand Pines Town, the vast majority were young men and women of working age. After all, to escape from the encirclement of the Demon Clan and to have made it this far required robust health and strength.

Among them, there were as many as eighty or ninety who could become soldiers. Instead of directly ordering their reorganization, Xiao Buli first gathered the refugees of Thousand Pines Town in the village square and then began to make a speech.

"Everyone must understand our current situation by now. The north is threatened by the Demon Clan, and heading further south, we encounter the barbaric jungles everywhere, which are teeming with fierce wild animals and unsuitable for living. If we continue southward, it’s very likely we won’t get far before we all die in those dangerous jungles.

If we wish to stay here, we will also face the threat of Black Mountain Bandits. These vicious brigands have killed many of the locals and certainly won’t Show Mercy to us. Moreover, the local villagers are unwilling to accept us, for they too are struggling to survive. Now, our only choice is to help them defeat the Black Mountain Bandits, to win our right to live.

To achieve this goal, some of us must make sacrifices and fight for the future of our people. As the town mayor, I do not wish to force you to fight, but if you want a home for ourselves, you must join the battle. Now—those willing to fight for the future of Thousand Pines Town, please step forward! Let me see if our town still has brave men!"

With this call, the refugees from Thousand Pines Town looked at each other, but Zhang Zhixi was the first to stand up: "I am willing to join the fight!" After speaking, he turned back to look at the other refugees, "What are you waiting for? The Mayor has already done so much for us on our journey. Do you intend to hide behind others for the rest of your lives as cowards?"

His face was red with earnestness as he shouted these words, and the refugees, upon hearing this, finally stood up one after another. After all, no one wanted to lose face. Xiao Buli counted, and between the previous and current volunteers, there were more than eighty willing to join the Militia. He nodded in satisfaction—morale was, indeed, not bad.

Xiao Buli organized most of them into the Militia, finally bringing its numbers to eighty. The few he had singled out for their unique skills were professionals like carpenters and blacksmiths; it would be a waste to use such skilled talents as mere soldiers.

Previously, Zhang Zhixi had only been a deputy captain of the Militia. Although he had later been promoted to militia captain, his strength was not very high, nor did he know how to train the Militia. When he mentioned this issue to Xiao Buli, it was exactly what Xiao Buli had in mind—to insert Han Wenhuan, appointing him as deputy captain of the Militia and putting him in charge of training.

After assigning roles, Xiao Buli turned to Han Wenhuan with gravity and said, "Old Han, I’m entrusting you with this arduous task. Haven’t you always been clamoring about leading troops in battle? Now’s your chance. You had better not disappoint us. Remember, these men are all the forces we have."

Excited, Han Wenhuan said, "When have I ever let you down? Just watch—I’ve got this."

Han Wenhuan did indeed have many ideas. As an enthusiast of ancient military affairs, he had envisioned training soldiers countless times and even devised a complete plan, which could finally be put to use.

Playing strategy games, he had always felt unsatisfied because training soldiers in most games was very abstract—a click of the mouse and it was done. But in this game, due to the intelligence of NPCs that could respond to players’ words, training could almost be conducted as in real life. This opportunity was something Han Wenhuan had long yearned for.

Before starting the training, however, he first needed to understand the abilities of these townsfolk. Though they were all from the same town, their individual capabilities differed. Since these eighty militiamen would need to cooperate in combat, it was essential to sort them into different types of troops.

He began to inquire about their former occupations and surely enough, many different answers came back.

Because Thousand Pines Town bordered a forest, many townsfolk depended on the forest resources, and there were not as many farmers as in other villages. Thus, among the eighty conscripted villagers, twenty were formerly hunters skilled in archery.

Though they only used hunting bows with limited power, they still represented a significant ranged combat force, especially potent against the low-Armor bandits.

Twenty of them were lumberjacks with astonishing arm strength, most of whom possessed specialized skills in wielding axe weapons, and some even knew simple combat skills like Cleaving Strike. Considering that the bandits were mostly unarmored or wore leather armor, with low defense value, Han Wenhuan thought it made little sense to use two-handed axes with armor penetration effect.

He considered equipping each of them with a shield to serve as axemen.

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The remaining forty peasants were relatively ordinary, all of them farmers skilled in using pole weapons, and some even possessed the Wild Dance skill, perfect for serving as spear infantry.

Once the plan was set, the next step was finding weapons. Originally, this group of refugees had brought some weapons with them, but there was no standardization in terms of quality or quantity, and there certainly weren’t enough for eighty people. Therefore, Han Wenhuan planned to refit them all with new equipment.

In addition to that, he would also need to tailor some Coated Leather Armor, among other things. Fortunately, Black Stone Village, having opposed the Black Mountain Bandits for years, had an abundance of weapons and equipment, and the blacksmiths produced a high yield. The only issue was the need to spend money to purchase these supplies.

When Han Wenhuan discussed this matter with Xiao Buli, Xiao Buli had no choice but to take out thirty Gold Coins for him.

Besides that, Xiao Buli also distributed some of the weapons brought from the real world among them. Although all were white-grade weapons with high attack power, they were not much inferior to the regular blue-grade weapons.

Despite having money, Han Wenhuan had no intention of purchasing all the equipment. Since there were many lumberjacks and a few craftsmen among the refugee group, they could craft some equipment themselves.

The mountains might lack other resources, but not trees and wild beasts. Han Wenhuan’s first command was to send the lumberjacks to chop down trees. If this were known in the real world, he’d probably be accused of deforestation, but given that they were in a game world, they didn’t need to worry about that. The wood would be used to make longbows and spears.

The hunters, grouped in teams of five, were sent out nearby to shoot down some wild beasts to supplement their food supply and gather fur for making leather armor. @@novelbin@@

As Xiao Buli hadn’t yet used his Time-Space Order Keeper today, he downloaded blueprints for crafting English longbows from the internet.

While the English longbow wasn’t a finished bow and arrow and did have many disadvantages compared to the composite bow, its biggest advantage was that it was convenient to make and took less time, thus allowing for mass production.

He gave these blueprints to the carpenters, who surprisingly could learn from them. This excited Xiao Buli for a while, as it appeared that in the future, it was totally feasible to sell real-world blueprints in the game, provided that they weren’t too complicated.

Soon, forty long spears, each three meters in length, were crafted. These spear shafts were a bit rough, but they should still be adequate to deal with the bandits. Subsequently, twenty longbows were also made, certainly stronger than regular hunting bows,

They also created twenty round wooden shields. However, battle axes, spearheads, arrowheads, and leather armor had to be purchased from Black Stone Village. This would save a lot of money.

In the real world, crafting these items would not be as quick, but game rules prevailed here, making production easy as long as materials and skill proficiency were sufficient.

Then Han Wenhuan began to train these villagers.

The twenty hunters were naturally trained in their volley-fire capability. Their archery was acceptable, but their weapons were quite pitiful in terms of power.

They could handle ordinary bandits, but if there were formidable boss-like figures among the bandits, a concentrated fire would be necessary to inflict sufficient damage, so they had to train in switching between volley fire and independent firing modes.

Training the twenty Battle Axe Assault Infantry proved to be tricky because these men lacked combat will. Although they were physically strong, they were not very forthcoming, managing against beasts but struggling with living humans. However, Han Wenhuan had his ways,

On the other hand, the forty spear infantry were relatively easier to train since spear infantry inherently relied on formation, meaning training focused mainly on drills.

Han Wenhuan played the military training game in the game world. Luckily, although the NPCs weren’t very smart, they followed commands extremely well, making them naturally qualified soldiers. They adapted quickly to moving in order, much to Han Wenhuan’s contentment. (