Chapter 776: Biological Analysis

After round after round of comparative trials, Peace Haven reaches a broad conclusion.

Against the Northern Mountain Raider army, Peace Haven's troops enjoy a combat advantage of roughly thirty percent.

Vorry's army gets close to twenty percent.

Yes!

That's right. Vorry's army receives a measurable advantage too. That is the approximate figure produced by the controlled trials.

Noble armies below Vorry gain an advantage of around ten percent against the Northern Mountain Raider army.

Then who gets no advantage at all?

Not the foreign armies everyone first suspected. The answer is independent mercenaries and rangers with no power behind them.

The Calamity War has begun, and the appearance of mountain demons has put the defensive line under tremendous pressure.

Scouting cavalry beyond the defenses keep running into small groups of mountain demons, often with heavy losses.

In response, Arius puts up a fortune in gold and establishes a series of bounty missions.

Reconnaissance, prisoner capture, harassment, assassination... every mission comes with a clearly stated price.

As Henwell predicted, extraordinary properties have surged since the Calamity War began.

The result is a wave of unaffiliated professionals among the general population. Most would rather keep their freedom than risk their lives for a kingdom.

Arius uses the bounty system to put this civilian force to work.

Rewards range from wealth and noble titles to extraordinary equipment and extraordinary combat techniques.

Earn enough merit, and a professional can even trade it for an enhancement slot.

Peace Haven has already established an enhancement clinic in the newly built Logistics City.

Enhancement slots are scarce, but Arius still sets aside several each month as rewards for mercenaries and rangers.

With those professionals risking their lives, the regular forces along the defensive line avoid a great deal of trouble.

Several famous mercenary companies have even formed standing partnerships with legions on the front.

Mercenaries are eager to work with Peace Haven's combat groups. Everyone knows Peace Haven is rich and pays generously.

Peace Haven, however, prefers to handle its own problems. Its combat group soldiers carry out most dangerous missions themselves.

As the mercenaries and rangers fight, Peace Haven's resident researchers begin noticing something strange.

These mercenaries and rangers seem to have no combat advantage at all against the Northern Mountain Raider army.

Their findings point toward a tentative answer, one already close to the truth.

Only forces backed by major powers gain an additional combat advantage against the Northern Mountain Raider army!

The answer still has a flaw. Peace Haven is smaller than a kingdom, yet its troops deal more damage.

Set aside Peace Haven as the lone exception, though, and the theory explains every result.

Headquarters takes an immediate interest.

Victor personally authorizes the team to investigate the subject in depth.

Once the Technical Research Institute headquarters learns that Peace Haven deals unusual damage to these monsters, it runs a battery of controlled trials.

The results confirm that a fully armed Peace Haven Knight can kill a mountain demon with ease.

Strip away the armor and leave the Knight with only one weapon, and he still holds a clear advantage.

Then the researchers attempt something bolder.

They bring in Dalton, commander of the Lord Iron Guards, to keep the experiment under control. He is currently the strongest combatant at Peace Haven's headquarters.

Dalton entered the Iron Rank at the end of last year, becoming Peace Haven's fourth Iron Knight.

The first three were Simon, commander of the First Cavalry Legion at the Northern Mountain Front; Dominic, commander of the Central Army Group; and Elia, commander of the Expeditionary Zone.

Under Dalton's supervision, the researchers first send in an elite soldier scheduled to receive an enhancement potion injection.

He is a thirty-three-year-old centurion from the Death Herald Legion, with a wealth of combat experience.

Fully armed, he kills the mountain demon in a matter of minutes.

With only one weapon, he has to fight for his life. He suffers serious wounds, but wins in the end.

Dalton understands what the Technical Research Institute is trying to measure and asks them to test an ordinary soldier too.

They choose a squad leader who enlisted a little over two years ago.

Fully armed, the squad leader barely survives. He cannot kill the mountain demon, but he does leave it unable to move.

The squad leader is also too badly hurt to keep fighting or finish it off.

In other words, mutual destruction!

The Biological Analysis Department puts a lone mountain demon's combat strength at roughly the level of a squad leader.

Dalton next sends in a fully armed squad to surround and kill one mountain demon.

It is dead within two minutes.

Time to raise the stakes!

Two mountain demons are still easy!

Three take real time and effort!

At four, casualties begin to appear.

Against six, the squad struggles, and several soldiers are declared dead during the exercise.

At seven, the squad is nearly wiped out.

The researchers repeat the trial several more times.

At last, the Biological Analysis Department issues its report.

Seven mountain demons are the upper limit for a standard Peace Haven combat squad.

Five mountain demons mark the danger threshold during a mission.

Beyond five, the squad leader must decide whether the mission is worth continuing.

The report applies only to Peace Haven's army as it stands today.

The Northern Mountain Front's two combat groups are exceptions and do not need to follow the guideline.

For one thing, both groups have been fighting for nearly three years.

Their soldiers have far more experience and keep calmer heads in battle.

They have also enjoyed three years of priority access to enhancement slots.

Those two combat groups now have the highest proportion of Knights in Peace Haven's entire army.

Elsewhere in Peace Haven, large numbers of centurions are still waiting for enhancement potions.

In the two northern combat groups, those potions are already available down to squad leaders.

That means every legion in the two groups has more than two thousand professionals.

They make up more than ten percent of the troops.

When a Knight leads the squad, the other soldiers can pin down a mountain demon while he kills it quickly.

The trials show that an eleven-man squad can withstand a charge by nearly the same number of mountain demons.

That is very good news!

The calamity at the Northern Mountain Front has now erupted in full. Mountain demons caught the allied army off guard only during their first appearance.

Once the defenders were ready, an organized army of mountain demons attacked again.

The First Garrison Legion of the Central Army Group used the terrain to its advantage, working with a warband from the First Cavalry Legion.

Together, they annihilated more than eight thousand mountain demons.

A large Northern Mountain Raider force moved out to rescue those elite troops.

It marched straight into a trap laid for the relief force. The Second Garrison Legion and First Mixed Legion then destroyed a large portion of the enemy's effective strength.

Since that battle, mountain demons have never again appeared on the battlefield in organized formations.

Instead, the enemy uses them as assault troops or infiltration and sabotage units.

That makes the Biological Analysis Department's report genuinely useful.

Every legion on the Northern Mountain Front can benefit from it.

At the very least, it gives them a baseline for judging encounters with small groups of mountain demons.

More importantly, Peace Haven will soon send large numbers of support teams into Ogiro and Lumir.

These standards will help the teams operate safely and gather intelligence on the calamity creatures in both regions.