Chapter 252 — The Molten-Cut Sword and the Patrol

Under normal circumstances, no patrols were stationed deep in the Dark Mountains. For one thing, manpower was short; for another, the wild, primeval forests were extremely difficult to patrol and hard to arrange sentry posts in. So apart from a few fixed lookout posts watching the direction of the Gondor wasteland to prevent mutants from attacking the domain again, Gao Yang had not stationed more patrols in the mountains.

But recently, several more patrol routes had appeared in the mountains.

This was because Holm ore had begun to be mined.

With the help of Rebecca's crystals, even winter did not hinder the progress of the new mine. The area where Holm ore had been discovered was now an open-pit mine; after several crystal-assisted mountain collapses, vast stretches of ore veins lay exposed, and a large batch of miners and soldiers had been dispatched to the newly opened pit. They had built a stronghold around the excavation site, and to prevent the mountain's beasts and monsters from threatening the mine, several new patrol routes had been added around it.

Patrolling the Dark Mountains in this freezing weather was hard work, but the soldiers still walked their routes with diligence. Clad in magic-energy armor that had only recently been standardized for mass production and equipped with general-purpose military magic-conduit terminals, they stayed fully alert on patrol, without the slightest slackening.

This was not only because the "soldier's code" promoted by Gao Heng had been deeply instilled in their minds, but also because the new recruits of the combat corps were all selected from commoners—and even after enlisting, they served as a construction corps, building up the domain without leaving production. Add to that the various housing and land-allotment bills promoted by Gao Cen, and Cecil's soldiers had regarded protecting the domain and protecting the common folk as a matter of course from the very start.

They had built the domain with their own hands; they had earned their own homes and land with their own labor and military merit; their relatives and friends were laborers in the fields, mines, and factories. Whether it was their own interests or the safety of their families, friends, and homeland, everything was bound up with whether they could fulfill their duties—and in this, they were utterly different from the private soldiers of other nobles.

The patrol leader walked at the head of the column, alertly watching for movement on both sides of the mountain path. The winter wind blew ceaselessly, but the cold did not affect his movements: the armor produced by the military factory carried complete protective magic, and the breeze shield and heat-insulation runes helped him withstand the mountain's chill, while the secondary mind-clearing spell fixed in his helmet kept his thoughts sharp and his focus steady through long hours of continuous patrol.

As a veteran who had survived from the old Cecil domain, he was more than fully satisfied and reassured by the equipment he now wore.

"Stay sharp, everyone—keep your force-field shields ready," the captain called back over his shoulder to the soldiers behind him. "Watch out for monster attacks!"

Patrolling the Dark Mountains required constant caution. After force-field shields were issued, the soldiers had made "keep the force-field shield on standby at all times" a basic rule. This was because there were always some monsters in the mountains that feared no one and even possessed a crude intelligence, and they would lunge out to attack. If one's reaction was not quick enough, danger followed. A few days earlier, some unlucky fellow had forgotten to raise his shield and been wounded by a venomous monster; if potions were not so cheap in Cecil and ordinary soldiers did not all carry several vials of alchemical brew on them, that unlucky fellow would long since have died.

The soldiers under his command were all good men, but as an old veteran the captain still could not help reminding them.

And just as the soldiers responded, a flicker of alarm suddenly passed through the patrol captain's mind.

There was danger... nearby.

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