Sword God in a World of Magic

The orange light of the distant volcano illuminated the silhouette of the corpse hanging from the spear, giving the image a dark feeling.

The soldiers could deal with a strict officer, but they couldn't deal with one that killed people without a good reason.

The officer slowly lowered his spear, the corpse of the Scumbag flopping to the ground like a sack of meat.

Then, the officer turned to the watching soldiers.

"This is a mission coming from Duke Whirlwind himself," the officer explained. "Traitors are especially devastating in such a remote location, and we have our ways to weed them out."

"This traitor," the officer said as his spear pointed to the corpse, "has fallen into one of our traps and reported incorrect information. Remember that we are not the only soldiers here."

A communication crystal appeared in the officer's hands. "We corroborate the different reports, which gives us a very clear picture of the surroundings. There is no reason to lie to us if you are loyal. After all, you get nothing out of it."

The soldiers looked at the corpse with complex emotions.

A traitor?

Some of the Rookies almost couldn't believe it, while most of the Bootlickers only narrowed their eyes at the corpse.

The Scumbags weren't present right now, but if they were, they would only sneer.

"As long as you don't try to sabotage this mission, nothing will happen to you," the officer explained. "That is all."

The soldiers didn't feel at ease, but they weren't angry enough to stage a revolution.

Even more, most of them thought that the officer had done the right thing. Traitors needed to die!

But some of them still felt very uneasy.

Had the Scumbag truly been a traitor?

Sadly, there was nothing they could do. There was no way for them to check if the officer had told the truth.

In the military, the soldiers were expected to blindly trust their superiors, after all.

Their superiors were under far more scrutiny than themselves, which made it far less likely for them to be traitors.

And just like that, this incident passed over.

Half a day later, the wall had been assembled, but many of the stones still had to be fused together.

The Scumbags and Rookies that had been responsible for building the wall were transferred to their other teams, joining them in their mission of clearing the surroundings.

And that was how it continued for the next week.

Over the next week, the surroundings had been cleaned of all the beasts in a radius of five kilometers.

There had been several more Mid General Stage beasts, which the Numbers killed.

By now, the four groups had fully taken form.

the Bootlickers, the Rookies, and the

of the groups

with each other since they had

soldiers left,

Three Numbers.

Seven Scumbags.

Six Rookies.

Twelve Bootlickers.

people, the Rookies and Bootlickers

become the unofficial leaders of these two groups, and they talked to the

immediate and

also acknowledged the leader of the Bootlickers as the leader of these

and Rookies fused into one group, the

all of

the officer's

us into one unit, but as soon as we arrived, he systematically split us apart,

single group with a leader.

he plan for this to happen?' Shang

complicated and, frankly, too convoluted

academy have to learn a ton of stuff about people. Maybe this is actually

Shang couldn't be sure.

outpost got its

arrived at the outpost with

someone delivering a letter when the officer had a

Communication Crystals transmitted their signals with Mana, and if there were a sufficiently powerful

was delivered via letter, delivered by

through the

the officer called some of the soldiers over. By now, the soldiers didn't need to work the entire day.

get these things,"

what they had to get, and the soldiers left

into warehouses where they stored all the dead

beasts had been put in

at all the materials and

saw two weeks ago," the officer ordered four of the Idealists. "I prepared one more of each material, but the town won't mind. The more we

show it, but they realized why the officer had prepared

impress the

moving!"

gathered the things. Luckily, one of them had a

left to

couple of hours, nothing of note

came to the

person, and

of the four that had been sent

the soldier what had

The soldier seemed absentminded.

with a smirk to