"Roar"

An angry roar shattered the silence of the winter forest, and a powerful sound wave shook the ice slag from the surrounding treetops.

"Bear crossbow team, withdraw!"

"Iron Spearman, prepare!"

With a brief command, several stout men in leather armor quickly dragged away a large crossbow of nearly two meters. Then several big men in strong suits came up with two-meter guns.

A giant bear more than four meters long chased out of the hole, and the giant bear had a large and thick crossbow bolt stuck in its back, and the blood flowed down the wound, dyeing half of the giant bear's body red.

"Don't poke from the front, go around to the side!"

The bloodied bear burst out of its burrow, angry and wanting nothing more than to tear the humans in front of it to pieces.

Unfortunately, the group were all skilled veterans, and the Iron Gunners went around the sides and behind the Giant Bear, trying to avoid a head-on confrontation with the Giant Bear, and some of them found an opportunity to add a few more wounds to the Giant Bear's body during the dodge.

"Don't fight, go around with it!"

The commander knows very well that the giant bear seems to be extremely fierce now, but it has been hit by a special bear-hunting crossbow, and the crossbow arrows have opened blood grooves, and now as long as it is used indiscriminately, the bear will lose too much blood and lose the ability to resist in a while, and it is not a wise choice to fight with him now.

"Little Peel! Dangerous. ”

It's a pity that in this forest, the hunters and hunters are always changing.

A young iron gunner stabbed his spear in and didn't have time to retreat. The giant bear slapped his palm at the barrel of the gun, and the tough hemlock wooden barrel could not withstand the huge force and instantly broke into two.

The young Irongunner also fell to the ground under this force.

The giant bear turned its head and threw itself at the young man who had fallen to the ground amid the exclamations of the crowd.

Several of the surrounding spearmen rushed up to the rescue, but the bear didn't care about a few more punctures and decided to kill the young soldier.

A young soldier named Peel climbed two steps backwards in the snow to avoid it, but the bear had already pounced in front of him.

Seeing that there was no way to escape, Peel was also ruthless, picked up the half of the spear head that was broken on the ground and faced the giant bear, preparing to die with dignity.

The giant bear raised its huge palm in front of him, and Peel raised the half-barrel of his gun in vain to block.

Before the fear of death, Peel unconsciously closed his eyes.

However, as the seconds passed, death did not come, but a cheer rang out all around.

"Long live Young Master Richard!"

Peel opened his eyes slightly in cheers, and a figure in white cloth armor appeared beside him.

A sharp knight's sword had stabbed straight into the bear's eye socket.

"Thank you, thank you, Master Richard."

Richard glanced at the soldier in front of him and nodded. Turning his head and kicking the body of the giant bear, he pulled out his sword violently.

"Bang"

The bear corpse smashed to the ground, and the thousand-pound giant bear smashed a mark on the snow.

Richard casually wiped the blood from his sword and withdrew the sword back to his waist.

"Carry the bear up, have a good harvest today, go back early."

After saying that, he turned and walked towards the horses not far away.

"Okay," the soldiers responded, and together they lifted the bear carcass to the wooden frame that had been prepared and began to keep up with Richard's pace.

This forest bear has thick skin and is extremely powerful, and even the elite soldiers in heavy armor have to be flattened by a single palm, and ordinary arrows cannot penetrate its thick fur. When hunters meet it, they can only walk around, and if they are unlucky, they will lose their lives.

Only the bear hunting team led by Richard has a chance to inflict greater damage on them with a special bear hunting crossbow.

…………

"Peel, forfeit this month's salary, and receive ten lashes after returning to the camp."

"Yes." Peel escaped death and had just come to his senses. Under the rule of Young Master Richard, the rules are strict, the rewards and punishments are clear, just now he made a serious mistake and almost lost his life, but he still relied on Young Master Richard to save his life, so naturally he didn't dare to complain.

……

The winter in the ironwood forest was completely filled with snow, and a small team was marching in an orderly manner through the forest, and Richard rode in the middle of the procession, and there was no danger in the group of more than twenty mountain beasts along the way.

However, the whole team still strictly followed the marching column, maintaining a high degree of vigilance, and the whole team did not make any sound except for the sound of footsteps and the friction of armor and clothing.

When it was getting late, a small city appeared in front of them, which was their home and the fiefdom of the Richard family - Ironwood City.

Richard led the team swaggering into the city gate, several soldiers guarding the gate saluted respectfully, and the people who were entering and exiting consciously moved out of the way, allowing the dragged bear crossbow and the soldiers carrying the huge bear carcass to enter.

"Young Master Richard actually brought someone back to hunt such a big bear again, it's amazing"

"That's because you don't come to Ironwood City often, the last time I met Young Master Richard, the bear hunting team carried a bear bigger than this one."

"Bigger than that? The forest giant bear that would-be knights don't want to provoke easily, Young Master Richard can fight back every three or five times, and Young Master Richard is probably also a knight. ”

"I don't know if it's a knight, but it's definitely more than a quasi-knight."

"Tsk, in addition to Lord Hunter, we have one more knight in Ironwood City."

There was a sense of pride in the speaker's tone, as if he were the knight on the horse.

Richard sat on his horse, and his excellent hearing enabled him to fully hear the earnest whispers of two villagers more than ten meters away.

Of course, he is not yet a knight, but he is indeed stronger than most would-be knights, and the knight of this world is not just a profession or a title, but a real power, and the cornerstone of the kingdom's rule.

There is a strict distinction between ordinary soldiers, quasi-knights, and knights in this world, and the quality of ordinary soldiers is uneven, there are elite off-duty soldiers, and they can also be conscripted peasant soldiers.

Quasi-knights have undergone rigorous training, and in the training with different breathing techniques to continuously strengthen the body, when the physical fitness can reach three times that of ordinary adult men, they can be recognized by the lord as a quasi-knight, and become a small leader in the lord's army.

The knight, on the other hand, rose to another level, and this breakthrough was a promotion from many aspects such as life level and social class.

Quasi-knights can try to break through to knights by polishing their bodies to the peak, and introduce them into their own bodies by sensing the qi between heaven and earth, and use their own tough flesh to withstand the energy of qi, and finally turn it into their own use, forming a knight's unique fighting spirit.

Qi will nourish itself after being tamed, gradually dissolving the dark wounds left by the knight when polishing the body, and delaying aging, in this era of the average age of 40 years old, the knight can usually live beyond 100 years and maintain combat effectiveness for a long time.

Even a knight who had just advanced could crush a squadron of fifty or so men head-on, and these fifty men were not the kind of peasant soldiers who had just laid down their hoes and picked up arms, but well-equipped and well-trained professional soldiers.

The laws of the kingdom also stipulate that all knights are automatically granted the title of brigadier, and meritorious service in battle can be awarded the title of nobleman.

If the lord of a certain place dies and there is no knight-level powerhouse among his children, then a knight will be selected from near to far among his relatives according to the inheritance law, and if no knight can be found among his relatives, the kingdom will legally reclaim the fief.

It can be said that becoming a knight left the commoner class with half a foot and stepped into the door of the nobility.

…………

Richard has good talent, and as the eldest son of Viscount Hunt, he has received good knight training since he was a child, and his body has already reached the peak of quasi-knights, and his physical fitness has reached 5 times that of ordinary people, and he is only one foot away from knights.

Maybe he will soon be promoted to a full-fledged knight, become a young talent in the kingdom, and then be favored by the only daughter of a great nobleman, and then reach the pinnacle of life.

Shaking his head, Richard stopped his divergent thoughts, and rode his horse and his men to the tall castle in the city.

……