For the sake of gold, people do everything to figure it out, oh, the cursed desire for gold!

- Publius Virgilius Maro (Roman poet)

The competition on the first day is just the beginning, and the competition for the chief captain on the second day is the real highlight; Those captains who retained their position as captains in yesterday's competition are naturally ambitious and want to win the position of chief captain in one fell swoop, and the newly promoted captains are also full of confidence to compete for this position that is enough to make them climb to the sky.

Today's competition is much larger than yesterday's, yesterday it was only a hundred-man team fighting, and today it was all a brigade-level battle. In the case of the Desert Legion of the Commander of the Sinrida Legion, the entire legion is divided into twelve brigades; So today's competition is a competition between these twelve teams, and each captain needs to lead his own team to defeat the opponent in order to win.

Because this competition only selects the first brigade and the chief captain of the legion, and does not rank other brigades; Therefore, the way of competition is also much simpler. It is only necessary to divide the twelve brigades into six groups in pairs to fight, and the victorious six brigades will continue to the next round of battles, and the losing six brigades will directly miss the final victory.

Then there is another round of direct battle between the six brigades, and the three losing brigades are eliminated; The last three remaining brigades took the form of a melee for the sake of fairness. The officers and men of the three brigades were all gathered in one place, regardless of the enemy or the rules; The captains are completely free to play, and the last team that survives the melee is the first team, and its captain is the chief captain!

The Chengguan Corps and the Cavalry Corps, which had fourteen brigades, conducted a draw after the first round, and byed one brigade; In the end, it was also four brigades engaged in a melee. The rules are the same as those of the Desert Legion, a brigade that survives the melee means victory; For the rest, Spartak and the legionnaires were not involved at all.

Because Spartak himself was not a cavalryman, he did not attach so much importance to the competition of the cavalry corps; Moreover, it is impossible for the cavalry corps to produce a corps adjutant general, and the competition for this so-called chief captain is not very significant. Still, these words could not be said to the captains; Otherwise, the blow to the morale of the cavalry corps was simply too great.

Spartak had already decided that he would observe the two generals in the competitive battle today, and naturally it was impossible to waste time on the cavalry corps; Therefore, the supreme overseers on the side of the cavalry corps became Bashirek and Lilias. Spartak believed that the personalities of these two people were enough to ensure the fairness and impartiality of the entire competition, and there was no need to participate in the past himself.

By eight o'clock in the morning, all the brigades were already in formation on the grass outside the barracks, ready for battle; Spartak also rode his war horse to the front of the battle formation of the two brigades, and quietly looked at the two brigades with the same formation and high morale. As the battle horn sounded, the captains began to encourage their brethren to prepare for battle!

The two captains in front of Spartak were no exception, and the one on the left, when he heard the horn sound, immediately drew his short sword from his waist, turned back to the five centurions and the brothers under his command, and encouraged:

"Brothers! The moment of truth has come! For our common glory, for us to be the envy of others together, for us to be able to bring a better life to our families; Kill with me, brethren! ”

After saying that, the captain rushed forward in the first place, and the centurions and five hundred soldiers behind him also shouted with high morale, "Kill!" The slogan rushed forward. The opposite of this captain is the one on the right, who does not have the generous statement of this captain, nor the imposing of this captain; He just calmly drew his short sword and looked at the soldiers under his command:

"Brothers, live and die together!"

The calm captain completely ignited the morale of this brigade with just one sentence, and these 500 soldiers also shouted the slogan of life and death together, followed behind this captain and killed the "enemy" in front! Both armies were not very large, only five hundred men; But it was enough for a talented general to show himself.

The captain on the left is a brave general, who leads his five hundred brethren to fight against the opposite rival in an indomitable manner; The formation of the entire army is a standard Roman three-column square formation. The captain personally led the 100th and 200th teams to the front, the 3rd and 400th teams in the middle, and the 500th team at the rear.

The captain on the right was a quiet, intelligent general with a ravine, and the formation adopted by his brigade was exactly the one that Spartak had never seen; He took his five hundred brothers and rushed halfway through the formation using the same formation as the opposite team, and the entire formation began to change rapidly!

He himself led the hundredth team to continue to charge forward, but the formation was no longer the standard Roman three-column square formation; Instead, it became a new formation that was temporarily changed, and the soldiers of the 100th Hundred were lined up in a double long formation of 50 people. Although this one exceeded the three-column formation in length, it was indeed reduced by one-third in thickness; Is there any point in such an exchange?

In addition to this 100-man team, the other four hundred-man teams under the captain also left the original formation in an instant, and scattered from the left and right wings at the same time; The captain on the other side didn't know what his good friend wanted to do, but this couldn't affect the captain's determination, he still wanted to completely annihilate his good friend's team!

The indomitable three-column formation and the thin two-column formation finally collided together; Because of the limited combat width of the three-column formation, the captain on the left could not give full play to his strength advantage at once, but was surrounded by the hundred-man team with a double-column formation in front of him.

However, the encirclement was based on absolute numerical superiority; Having lost the numerical superiority, they can only lift a stone and shoot themselves in the foot. The captain was not at all worried about the situation he was surrounded, but directly ordered his soldiers to intensify their attacks, break through this thin layer of defense in front, and break through the enemy's three-way army one by one!

It turned out that the brigade on the right was not as simple as it seemed on the surface, and his hundredth team was not only not crushed by the enemy's superior forces, but was entangled in the enemy's superior forces; At this time, the four hundred-man teams that had previously moved to the left and right flanks also bypassed from both flanks at the same time and directly attacked the enemy's rear army.

The rear army of the captain on the left is the 500th team with the worst combat effectiveness in the entire brigade, how can it be the opponent of the 400th team? Under the combined attack of the four hundreds, the five hundredth of this rear army was quickly annihilated; Before the four hundred-man teams could organize their formation, the two brigades of the enemy's Chinese army had already returned to the army and killed them.

Needless to say, the failure of these four centurians to put their formation in order was just a hoax; As soon as the enemy's two brigades rushed into their formation, they immediately changed formations. The originally chaotic team of four hundred-man team instantly turned into an orderly battle formation combination; And those enemy troops who rushed in directly became the prey in the encirclement of these four hundreds.

There is no suspense at this point in the battle; When these four centurians completely annihilated the enemy's three centuriens with a loss of less than one centurion, and re-surrounded the two centuriens led by the captain on the left from the rear, the captain on the left also knew that he had lost, because at this time he had not yet broken through the defense line of the captain on the right!

So, the captain on the right signaled to the soldiers under his command to temporarily truce, and then said directly to the captain on the left: "Asini, you don't have to fight anymore, surrender; There is no point in going on. Assini, on the left, replied with a good smile: "Hartman, you can defeat me; But to make me surrender is a dream! ”

After saying that, Asini led his two centurians to launch another fierce attack; Until the end, Asini's front army did not break through Hartman's defenses, but was surrounded and strangled by Hartman's five brigades. When Assini was also condemned dead, the fierce battle officially ended.

After the Overseer announced the victory of Hartman's team, Assini got up from the ground and gave Hartman a hard lap before returning to his team to get in formation; Looking at Hartmann, who had no joy of victory on his face at all, Spartakus, who had been watching from the sidelines, nodded involuntarily. This Hartmann really didn't disappoint himself, and he didn't cultivate him in vain.

If the generals of the House of Augustus had carefully observed Hartmann, they would have found that his military career was not easy; as a centurion recruited by the Maxentius family to the Augustus family that year; Hartmann later achieved very good grades in his studies at the Augustan Military Academy, and was personally received by Oscar and awarded with a sabre.

After volunteering to be transferred to North Africa, he became a captain of the Desert Legion in Spartac's arrangement; In fact, Hartmann was also the first to lead his own brigade to challenge the new barracks brigade when he had just started competitive training on the spot. That alone wasn't enough to impress Spartakus, but what happened next made Spartak decide to train him.

After establishing a system of competition for posts and a system of competition for lieutenant generals of the corps, Spartak had long expected that it would cause great repercussions in all armies of the entire Combined Legion; That's exactly what happened, and who wouldn't want to work hard for their future. But this Hartmann's brigade was an exception, and the competition among his centurions was fierce; And no centurion challenged him.

This alone, looking at the entire barracks, only two people can do it; The other is the captain of the Almini Brigade of the Chengguan Legion. What particularly shocked Spartak was that Hartman and Armini were both graduates of the Augustan Military Academy, and both graduated with honors in the top ten at that time; This inevitably made Spartak start to pay attention to these two young people. (To be continued.) )