Cthulhu Gonfalon

“Fall in!”

Gerald, who looked like a normal bald, headstrong man again, didn’t wear any armor or have any weapons today. However, he was still naturally in a stern manner, making others not dare to treat him carelessly.

As a master of his level, armor and weapons were just accessories for him. The great posture of a master was the best proof of their identity and was enough to maintain their prestige.

For example, at this moment, by his order, the quarters woke up in the dark with a lot of noise. Soldiers of the Regiment of Knights got up in chaos, put on their armor, took up their weapons, and rushed to the big square in the center of the campsite.

Beside the feet of Gerald, a slender stick of incense was burning quickly and steadily. The length-marks on it had shown that it was a tool for timing.

Although there were clocks and watches in this world, this commander of the Void Mask Knights still preferred to time with this old-styled incense when there was an emergency.

His standard was very simple. Those soldiers who could put on their armor, take up their weapons and get to the square before the incense burnt halfway would be marked as excellent; Before it burnt to three-quarters, those soldiers would be marked as good, and before it burnt out completely would just be marked as passing.

As for those that came after the incense burnt out… good luck to them.

After years of training, the Void Mask Knights had become quite an efficient troop. Even though it took some time for them to get dressed, most of them could manage to arrive at the square before the incense burnt to three-quarters of its length. In the end, there were only two that failed.

Looking at the regretful and worried faces of these two late soldiers, Gerald laughed grimly and said, “Clean the toilet or confinement, make your choice.”

These unlucky boys who had almost passed looked at each other for a while and chose the former with a sigh.

It was indeed dirty, smelly and embarrassing to clean the toilet, but it was much better than confinement.

In traditional military camps, it was common to use physical punishment. But things had been different in Void Mask Knights. There were various kinds of punishment, but none of them were physically harmful—except for the criminals who were escorted to court. Usually, there were two ways of punishment: cleaning the toilet or confinement.

The campsite of the Void Mask Knights had been finely built; the toilets were not very messy and dirty, but were there any toilets on earth that weren’t at least a little dirty and smelly? Not to mention how embarrassing this would be. They would be laughed at by their colleagues for a long time.

But the latter one was even worse. The confinement room was specially made to cut off sound from the outside world, and there was only one small lamp on the roof. Under the influence of the magic array, no matter how hard one tried, it was impossible to touch the walls and roof. It felt like a small ant stood between the vast sky and earth, lonely and helpless. No matter how brave one was, they would be super scared after a few days of staying inside it. They would never want to go back there again for their whole life.

The Void Mask Knights had a complicated source of soldiers, and quite a few of them were experienced adventurers. These heroes had fought with others and got injured, so they cared little about fighting or starvation. But even the proudest of them were so scared of going to the confinement room. They would rather clean the toilet than go back there again.

After announcing the punishment of these latecomers, Gerald’s eyes swept through the neat fourteen lines of soldiers. The eight lines in front were armored soldiers, wearing the specially-made, Void Whole-Body Armor. The process of forging them was a secret. Its major parts were fabricated with entire pieces of high-quality steel, and that had made it totally different from other normal armor.

The traditional armor of this world could be divided into three types: leather armor, Mosaic Armor, and chain armor.

leather armor was sewn with thick leather that had been processed by a fire-proof potion. It was light and durable and worked well in defense. The most important thing was that it was relatively cheap, so it had been the favorite choice for primary adventurers. Soldiers in the army also liked it very much.

Of course, there were also high-quality leather armors, such as those made of special demon beast’s leather. Those were rare to see. It was light and extremely durable, and it offered strong defensive power. Correspondingly, it was very expensive. Even high-ranking adventurers might not be able to afford it.

Mosaic Armor was normally used by experienced adventurers and makeshift troops. Its main component was still leather armor, but it was set with a lot of metal sheets outside to improve its defensive power.

This kind of armor had a rich variety of styles and categories. It also had a different range of price and defensive power. The best ones were set with metal sheets that were sewn into a complete piece one by one over the leather armor. It indeed offered a better defense, but it was heavier as well. Except for those who were very strong, few people could wear such heavy armor to fight.

chain armor was the rarest. It was a soft armor that had countless small iron rings sewn together. Some people just wore one piece of it in the fight; some would rather wear one more layer of leather armor over it to avoid attention from other. Some would wear one more layer of metal plates, making it double-layered armor.

The soft armor was called chain armor, and the double-layered one was called plated armor. In the past, plated armor had been the toughest among the various armors. Those made of large pieces of heavy metal plates were tough enough to defend against various attacks. It had no shortcomings except being heavy and expensive.

However, Void Whole-Body Armor was completely different from those. It had three layers of armor: inside was a suit of chain armor, in the middle was a specially made soft leather armor, and outside was plated armor. Thus, the inner and outer layer were not sewn together. With three layers of protection, its defensive power was greatly improved. Its outside layer was forged in one piece, so it was not only tough but also flexible.

The soldiers had once tried wearing Void Whole-Body Armor to run and jump; they could move their hands and legs freely and even do somersaults. Of course, they could only somersault into the air or to one side. They definitely couldn’t do a back or forward somersault with the Void Whole-Body Armor.

Its inner soft leather armor was also specially designed with several pothooks. When it was worn, as long as the pothooks were hooked to the outside armor, the weight of the armor would be evenly distributed throughout the body, greatly reducing the burden on the body.

Those armored warriors in the Void Mask Knights could even go for long distance runs.

Except in the area of enchantment, this kind of armor was no doubt the peak of so-called finely made armor. There would be no equal to it.

And the designer of this new kind of armor was, of course, Sui Xiong.

Before his space-travel, Sui Xiong had learned and copied a lot of European armor styles when he was learning game design. As a professional painter who graduated from a formal school, he was different from those painters who had only taken a short course. He was always serious with his drawings. Each character wearing armor that was drawn by Sui Xiong had their own original historical prototype. Thanks to that job, Sui Xiong had a deep understanding of the famous Knight Whole-Body Armor in history and could even draw the brief structure of these armors.

After the Void Mask Land had settled down, Sui Xiong saw the soldiers of the Void Mask Knights moving slowly with their heavy plated armors in training. He drew sketches of the Knight Whole-Body Armor in his mind one by one, committing them to memory. Then he forged them by magic directly.

However, these armors were not working as well as he had imagined. They were still very heavy. He studied them for a long time but figured out nothing. Finally, he went to Morani for help.

That was why people always said that every field had its master. Morani deserved to be the God of Forging of the Half-Orcs. It took him only a few days to figure out what was wrong with the Knight Whole-Body Armor designed by Sui Xiong. Then he improved the current version of the Void Whole-Body Armor.

In fact, Sui Xiong himself was also blamed for his poor academic skills. His understanding of the Knight Whole-Body Armor was only in the shape of the armor plate and the general decomposition and structure of the armor. This data was definitely correct. Even the improved armor of Morani was based on them, but Sui Xiong did not really know the internal structure of the Knight Whole-Body Armor. He did not know what kind of inner lining was sewn within the armor under its bright appearance.

Of course, as a painter, Sui Xiong didn’t need to know about that, and he would never collect that information. He only needed to know the external structure of the armor.

Finally, the design of the Void Whole-Body Armor was highly praised by Morani. This forging expert said that the emergence of such armor was an important page in the history of armor throughout the world and that it definitely would be recorded.

“From now on, advanced, finely-made armor is going to enter the era of whole-body armor!” Morani asserted so.

Sui Xiong was not very interested in being recorded in history. As an immortal super jellyfish, he was the history himself. But he was glad that the armor designed by him had been successful. He wanted to make it universal for the troops.

But at this time, he had a big problem.

It was extremely difficult to forge the plate of the whole-body armor. It took a senior blacksmith a month to make only a few pieces of substandard pieces. The only way to make this kind of plate was to use magic power from mid-level or even higher level mages to shape the plates directly.

In this way, the production efficiency would be a problem.

Sui Xiong tried hard to recall what he had seen on the Internet. He remembered that such armor was made by punching the steel plate at one time. So he wanted to try to make a punching machine and some steel plates. The latter was easy to make, and it was finished soon, but the former… Even though he was very patient, after failing several dozens of times, Sui Xiong finally gave up.

It was said that Edison had failed more than 10,000 times in choosing the right filament when he improved the lamp. Someone comforted him at that time, but he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” The authenticity of this story was another thing, but there was no doubt that Sui Xiong didn’t have such reserves.

Ultimately, the Void Whole-Body Armor could only be produced by a mage and had become a high-quality product.