Chapter 3 – The Iron Horned Horse Herd
Chapter 3 Iron Horn Horse Herd
Hearing Morgan’s words, Richard’s heart stirred.
“After coming to this world for six years and always being under the protection of our elders, it seems that this time when father arranged for us to capture the Iron Horned Horses, he should want us to add a little more experience.”
Kent was Richard’s first cousin, ten years older than him, and unlike Morgan, the lucky one, Kent similarly did not awaken the Knight bloodline.
After ten years of hard training, he had just completed the Professional Advancement.
His talent, very average.
After his advancement, Kent didn’t join his father Soros’s mercenary corps, but entered the 6th Brigade of the Northern Legion. Under William’s command, he served as the deputy commander of the scout squadron.
Among the Morning Glory Continent, it was divided into four classes from top to bottom.
The top is the hereditary nobility, whether it is the king at the top of the pyramid, or the lowest hereditary baron all belong to this class.
The second class is the professional family, which is dominated by the middle and low level officers of the army and the low level civil servant families.
The Harland family has now reached the apex of this class. If you save up enough military service, you can become a hereditary noble, if you take a step back, you will probably fall into the ranks of ordinary freemen.
The third class is the freeman class, which is mainly composed of city dwellers, craftsmen, and small and medium-sized farmers. If a freeman wants to cross the class, unless there is a great chance, he can only fight with his life, and the number of successful people is very small.
In the last twenty years, there are no more than thirty families in Black River Castle that have advanced from freeman to professional, and when enlarged to the entire Northern Realm, there are only a few hundred families, as if they were carp leaping over the Dragon Gate.
With a population of several million people in the North, an ordinary person advancing to a professional can be said to be one in ten thousand, which is more difficult than Richard’s previous life exam top2.
At the bottom is the slave class, including serfs, labor slaves, noble private slaves, slaves have no freedom in life, and the opportunity to change their fate is even rarer.
In this world where transcendent power exists, class solidification is exceptionally serious, and anyone who can cross the class can be called a man of honor.
Black River Fort is located in the northernmost part of the Dragon Canyon, and is the station of the Northern Legion.
Grant Kingdom has been operating in Black River Fort for many years, and there are hundreds of villages scattered nearby, with a total population of 400,000 to 500,000 people in the vicinity of tens of thousands of square kilometers, making it the core territory of the royal family in the North.
The Knight Academy was located in the middle of the Dragon Canyon, one hundred kilometers away from Black River Fort.
Richard and Morgan joined Hayden and rode fast horses for two days before arriving at Black River Fort. The four professionals, Kent, Powell, Roland, and Soros had been waiting for them for quite some time.
Hayden was Richard’s third brother and his half-brother, two years older than him in age, similarly failed to awaken his knight bloodline, entered Grant Knight Academy for three years, and was a medium warrior cadet.
Powell was Richard’s own uncle, already a second-ranked warrior, after retiring from the Northern Legion, he opened a tavern in Fort Black River.
Roland was Soros’s wife’s brother, just thirty years old, but had already become a fourth-ranked professional, serving in the Wild Lion Legion. In terms of talent alone, he was a bit better than even Soros, enough to be on par with William.
After William’s advancement into the professional ranks, the Harland family had a drastic development. Relying on William’s backing, the two brothers entered the Northern Legion one after another, and successfully advanced to Professionals.
They jumped up to become a top family under the hereditary nobility.
“The reason why I brought you guys deep into the Eagle Mountain Range this time and entered the range of activity of the Orc Tribe, besides capturing the Iron Horned Horses, it is to let you guys increase your experience against the enemy.
We, the people of the Northern Realm, encounter orc invasions every few years, and if you don’t know the enemy well, it’s hard to stay alive in the war. Every Northlander needs the experience of facing the war head on.”
Uncle Soros patted Richard’s shoulder and gave a few words of advice.
Year 3252 of the Morning Sun Calendar, February 8th.
The seven of them rested for half a day and left Black River Fort overnight to prevent leakage, entering the depths of the Eagle Mountain Range.
The time of this operation was already spring, and after a long winter, the forest was no longer particularly cold, but thick snow still remained in the back shade.
There are almost no villages in the mountains, and signs of human activity are also very rare. After entering the Eagle Mountains for half a month, Richard even failed to find a hunter’s hut. The people carefully searched the beast paths, suddenly Powell whispered, “Be careful, it’s the dung left behind by the geoduck beasts, this is not far from the geoduck nest.”
“How big is the range of the geoduck beast hunt?”
“All sixty kilometers around the lair is the territory of the Geodragon Beast.”
Second Uncle Powell was a retired old scout who used to be the squadron leader of the scouting squadron of the 4th brigade of the Northern Legion. Not only did he have superior scouting skills, his innate sense of smell was also extraordinary, able to smell odors that ordinary people couldn’t detect.
This talent had allowed him to turn many a bad day into a good one, dodging several fatal dangers.
Ground Dragon Beasts were high ranked magical beasts, adult Ground Dragon Beasts were seventh ranked magical beasts, and some powerful male Ground Dragon Beasts could even grow up to the ninth rank.
Even if there were two middle-ranked professionals in the team, there was still a risk of being wiped out when encountering an adult Dilophosaurus.
“Roland you go to the tallest tree in the west and take a look, the others leave here as soon as possible, everyone smear some of the geoduck droppings on their bodies to avoid the geoducks from smelling the unfamiliar odor.”
Many magical beasts had the habit of hibernating, so did the geoducks.
The ground dragon beasts in the spring were very dangerous and extremely aggressive, they would kill any prey that trespassed into their territory.
However, the spring geoducks are also very valuable. The glands in the mouth of the geoducks will secrete dragon marrow liquid in the spring, which can be used to refine transcendent potions containing dragon bloodline, assisting the sixth-order knights to break through the realm.
Today, if there is a knight of the seventh rank or above leading the team, there will be a chance to hunt the Earth Dragon Beast and get the Dragon Marrow Liquid.
Soros was only a fifth order warrior, not a bold brainiac, surrounded by either his son or nephew, he didn’t dare to mess with the Earth Dragon Beast, commanding the crowd to avoid the danger from afar.
The seven people’s luck was not bad, and they were not discovered by the beasts when they left.
Another ten days of wandering around in the depths of the forest, from February into March, finally found the footprints left by the Iron Horned Horses, followed the Beast Path tracking for three days, thirteen Iron Horned Horses have been hidden.
Iron Horned Horses are low rank magical beasts, adult males are usually second rank magical beasts, some physically strong horse kings occasionally grow to third rank.
The mares were usually first-order magical beasts, and a very small portion of them could advance to second-order and third-order.
This group of Iron Horned Horses was smaller in size and did not have a third-order Horse King.
According to Powell’s observation, there were four stallions that had reached the second rank, four foals that were not yet adults, and one of the remaining five mares was of the second rank, while the remaining four were all of the first rank.
The magical beasts had thick skin and flesh, and would also have bloodline spells, and in a head-on battle, their combat power was usually a bit more powerful than that of a warrior of the same rank.
Although this group of Iron Horned Horses didn’t have any intermediate level magical beasts, their number was twice as many as Richard’s seven.
If they were not careful, the seven of them would be attenuated.
The two families, William and Soros, had a dozen children combined, and the only ones worth cultivating were Richard and Morgan.
Morgan had awakened his knight bloodline, and Richard had shown extraordinary talent.
If the two were lost here, even if the Iron Horned Horse was captured, the two families would lose their future.
Moreover, Soros loved his son’s nephew, so of course he wouldn’t choose to be brutal.
“Uncle, I’m afraid we don’t have a chance of winning in a head-on fight?”
Soros gently nodded his head and said very confidently, “For this operation, the most difficult thing is to find the horse herd, as long as we find the herd, capturing the Iron Horned Horse will become very simple.”
(End of chapter)