AN: Spoiler-free map of the Wilds [https://imgur.com/ptX1v4t]

***

“You okay?” I offered my hand to Roshan, who is on the ground at the moment with a few cuts and bruises.

“Yeah, friend Rummy. I’ll be fine.” Roshan cheerfully replied.

“I don’t know how you can still be cheerful after those Yellow Shirt assholes roughed you up.” I said with an irritated tone. “It’s been 3 fucking moons. What kind of moron gang recruits people by constantly harassing them? Forget saving the Empire- I wouldn’t trust these guys to save a drowning fish!”

3 months ago, the Yellow Shirts approached me as Roshan predicted. These pretentious pricks called themselves the “Imperial Restoration Society”. Sadly for them, I’m not the naive fool I was in my first life. So I asked how they plan on restoring the Empire- a simple question they should have a rehearsed answer for. Yet, they stammered for like a minute and told me it’s not for a peasant like me to know their grand plans.

Yikes.

I wasn’t planning to hitch myself to any faction anytime soon, and if I were, these yahoos would be at the bottom of my list. Even the HR department in my old company wouldn’t be dumb enough to flub their mission statement, belittle the candidate, and lash out like a child. They were even worse than my HR rep from my previous life. And believe you me, “better than my HR rep” was a bar so low you could only trip over it.

So I politely turned them down.

Apparently, the Yellow Shirts believed their noble cause gave them a blank check to do anything. First, they intimidated the other groups from recruiting me (thanks for that, btw). Then they harassed me and Roshan almost everyday “for insulting their honor”. They started with petty insults and “accidental shoulder bumps”. And now that Basic Training was almost done, they’ve escalated to sucker punches.

Sure, I could’ve cursed their viciousness and their ignorance, but what’s the point? These guys were just the peons following orders from people they trusted and respected. The fish rots from the head down, and to me, the lion’s share of my vitriol deserved to be the leaders of this shitty gang. As far as I was concerned, shitty leaders made for shitty organizations.

My social commentary aside, it was a massive pain in the ass to be hyper-vigilant about this clown fiesta. I stayed in the common area, rarely wandering off. And when I had to go off the beaten path, I carried my helmet (couldn’t carry weapons in the barracks) with me. That way, I could block any incoming sucker punch with something metallic.

Roshan had a different approach- he decided to block their fists with his head. Not what I would’ve preferred, but to each his own, I supposed.

“Don’t pay too much mind to them. Once Basic Training is over, everyone will be reassigned anyways. So there’s no need to stir up trouble.” Roshan reasoned. “Anyways, let’s go see which squads we’ll be shadowing for our mock patrol!”

All that’s left of Basic Training was the mock patrol- a group of 10 trainees shadowing a 10-man patrol squad headed by a Decanus (my old world’s equivalent of a sergeant) for 2 weeks in the Wild. If we make it back alive, we’d graduate and be granted the status of “Probationary Legionnaire”. After that, we’d get assigned to different Cohorts of the Legion depending on luck/connections.

Historically, most of the people who didn't make it back from patrol were the blithering idiots who ate the wrong berries or the careless fools who strayed too far from the squad. So as long as I stayed vigilant and played it safe, I should be able to graduate Basic Training and hopefully away from those Yellow Shirt asshats.

Meanwhile, Roshan found his assignment on the board. “Oh nice! I know Decanus Oberon! He’s friends with my dad!” Roshan seemed satisfied with his posting.

Good for him. I liked Roshan, but I had little faith in his combat skill. Roshan was smaller in stature and his sword swings produced paper cuts, not fatal wounds. With all due respect, the dude belonged in an office, not out there in the Wilds.

I looked at the group posting on the announcement board to see which Squad I’ll be shadowing. Oh wow, 2nd Cohort, 3rd Century, 1st Squad- Keith’s best squad. Well, looks like somebody using their status as the Centurion to protect their star rookie.

After my sonic boom incident, Keith had been actively ”advising” me to serve in the Ranger Cohorts. Well, I was gonna do that anyway, so I might as well squeeze a few concessions from him. That’s when I started asking him a few of my burning questions.

Apparently, I “overcharged” the <<Air Blast>> spell when I visualized a sonic boom, something Keith said only the truly talented can do. My theory was that my modern memories and physics education helped me visualize these things much easier than your typical uneducated medieval peasant. Sadly, there was a limit to overcharging- that sonic boom was the best I could get out of a Beginner-level mana crystal. In other words, I couldn’t cast an <<Air Blast>> with the power of a F5 tornado, not with my puny Beginner-level air crystal. I’d need to get an Adept-level or Expert-level one, assuming I have the innate mana for it.

On that topic, Keith told me about the advantage of higher tier mana crystals. I could cast both Beginner-level and Adept-level spells with an Adept-level mana crystal, and the Beginner-level spell would have a higher ceiling for power. However, people still carried the Beginner-level ones around because there were only so many uses for an Adept-level crystal before it wears down to a Beginner-level one. It made good sense to conserve the Adept-level crystal for the Adept-level spells, after all, that stuff didn’t grow on trees (instead, they grow in big scary “Champion-level” mana-beasts).

Keith even suggested that the most promising Rangers would get promoted and receive these Adept-level crystals as rewards. Man, was the ability to dangle imaginary carrots in front of your subordinates a required ability for leadership? We both knew the Legion would never promote a street rat over the “well-connected”. Hell, I had a better chance of getting an Adept-level mana crystal from solo-killing a Champion mana-beast than I do from a promotion.

Not-so-subtle manipulations aside, I supposed I should be grateful to Keith for looking out for me. Sure, he probably feared that I’d try to get into Auxiliary with help from Roshan, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless. After all, I’ve never had any special treatment before, in this life or the last. Well, with his best squad covering my ass, this mock patrol should be a glorified field trip. And no, this was not a flag-raising comment!

***

“<<Air Blast>>!”

The arrow I just loosed blasted right through the skull of the ugly goblin I targeted. Yes, shaping my <<Air Blast>> spell construct in a helical cylinder in order to put some rifling spin on the arrow was overkill against a child-sized gobbie, but I needed the practice.

“Pour it on, boys! We got the fuckers right where we want ’em!” Vinnick, the Decanus commanding the 1st Squad, shouted as he downed 2 of the bigger hobgoblins in an instant.

I could see why this guy is the Decanus of the 1st Squad- the dude was putting on a Katniss Everdeen impression right now. Vinnick certainly had the look of a veteran combat leader- tall, lanky man in his mid-twenties with dirty blonde hair in a standard crew cut and an encouraging smile that easily inspires confidence in the troops.

After a couple of minutes, the 1st Squad completed the ambush and annihilation of the goblin raiding party. Vinnick’s plan was solid- lay an ambush on the edge of the Logging Camp we’re defending with melee fighters boxing them in from the flanks and the archers showering them with arrows from the rooftops. These fuckers never stood a chance.

I had very little complaints about his command in the last 2 weeks I’ve been assigned to his Squad. Sure, 1st Squad has 3 deadweight members who were clearly there because of connections, but the rest of the Squad were excellent Imperial Rangers through and through. And only 1 trainee died so far in this mock patrol- poor fool dropped his guard while taking a dump in a flagrant violation of Zombieland Rule #3.

Vinnick was also a great teacher. He demonstrated to the trainees the best way to skin a mana-beast, to dig out their mana crystal (that’s located near the heart), and to take the best cuts of meat from the carcasses. We also got a crash course on the geography of the Wilds and other useful information. Sure, the Wild was a scary place, but with his experienced veterans next to us, I felt like I’m on an educational camping trip.

After we dug out 17 mana crystals of various elements (The element of the mana crystal you get per kill appears to be random.) and bid the settlers at the Logging Camp farewell, we resumed our patrol of the Northwestern Zone. The mock patrol was almost finished, and a well-deserved break was just over the horizon.

“Listen up 1st Squad! We’re almost home, so be extra careful out here. We got one more thing to do before finishing up, and that is to swing by the Bear Cave.”

Whoa! Whoa! Hold the fuck up. Did he just say “Bear Cave”? Has he lost his damn mind?!? Bears were the apex predator in these parts. Even the most novice isekai reader knew this was a flag waiting to be raised!

Sensing the trainee's apprehension, Vinnick calmly explains. “Relax fellas. Nobody here is crazy enough to pick a fight with a godsdamn bear. We’re just there to take notes. Mating season just started and brass wants to know how many male suitors came to visit our local mama bear. If that number is deemed too high, we’ll evacuate the nearby settlements and wait for them to duke it out.”

Oh I see. It made good sense to keep tabs on them and keep a rough estimate of how many are in each patrol zone. But still, I didn’t like this…

After a day’s march, we arrived at the Bear Cave and stumbled upon a gruesome scene. 3-5 bodies of bears (I wasn’t sure since the mauling was so viciously thorough) scatter about near the entrance of the cave. Good gravy, that’s a lot of blood! I guess the competition for who gets to get laid took a bloody turn. Oh well, more mana crystals for us~

That was when I realized that all of the suitor’s corpses were missing hearts. Did somebody beat us to it? No, that’s impossible. Humans wouldn’t leave massive bite and claw marks all over the chest cavity area. Which leaves one other alternative: a victorious suitor cannibalized its own kind and ate the mana crystals.

Dammit, so much for an uneventful “field trip”...

“Ser? Do you know what happens when a mana-beast consumes a mana crystal?” I asked, fearful of the answer.

Vinnick looked at me weirdly, took a glance at the corpses, and frowned. “When a mana-beast consumes enough mana crystals, it can transform into a Champion mana-beast. However, when a mana-beast engages in cannibalism of its own kind, it usually goes raving mad and starts a rampage.”

He then threw a big chunk of rock at the cave entrance. Nothing but silence greeted us back after a loud thud. “Fucking hell, all the bears are dead. We have a raving mad Champion beast on the loose.”

Yup, this field trip just took a beary bad turn…

#SorryNotSorry