For a while, everyone only looked at the masked Shang.
After his display, his figure appeared even more imposing in everyone's eyes.
This guy had killed a Mid General Stage beast with a single attack!
Which warrior would be able to survive such an attack?!
The officer looked at Shang with furrowed brows while the expressions of One and Two were hidden behind their mask.
And then, One laughed loudly. "Seems like I made a bargain!" he said.
Two looked at One, but no one could see his expression.
Shang only remained in his current position. "As long as the payment is right, I don't care," he said in his deep voice.
"Our deal stands," One said with a voice that suggested a smirk. "Let's get back to the hill."
One started walking towards the hill, and Shang followed him wordlessly.
Two hesitated for a couple more seconds but decided to follow them.
As the three of them walked back to the hill, several angry and hate-filled eyes watched them.
These three obviously had had the power to save their comrade, but they had simply watched him die!
"Stop slacking off!" the officer shouted from the hill towards the Rookies. "You misjudged your opponent's power, and you paid the price! Don't expect others to get you out of a mess you got yourself into!"
"Now, get back to work!"
The Rookies quickly saluted in respect, but they definitely didn't feel respectful inside.
They had gone to the Warrior's Academy with their dead comrade!
They had known him for years!
But instead of giving them some time to deal with the problem, the officer immediately forced them to continue working again.
Even more, now that their group only consisted of three people, the fights would become more dangerous.
Sadly, the Rookies didn't dare to get angry at the officer, which was why all their hatred focused on the Numbers.
They were responsible for letting their comrade die!
The Numbers waited on top of the hill while everyone else was working hard.
The Bootlickers were building houses and mining stone.
Some of the Scumbags had left the camp to scout the surroundings while the others built the wall.
The Rookies were either mining stone or dealing with the beasts in the surroundings.
And the Numbers were only waiting.
Just by looking at this image, one could see a hierarchy.
The officer was at the top, and the three Numbers were just below him.
Then came the Scumbags, which were responsible for scouting the surroundings.
At the bottom of the hierarchy were the wall builders and miners, with everyone else above them but below the scouts.
After several hours, the wall had already reached nearly a meter in height. One would think that this was ridiculously fast for such a huge wall, but one shouldn't forget that these warriors could carry tons of stone at a time. They also didn't need to cut all the stones into small pieces.
One of the Scumbags with a Fire Affinity was fusing the already-placed stones together, creating a uniform wall.
By now, the density of beasts had severely dropped in the surroundings, only leaving a couple of them.
Shang knew more details about this mission than everyone else here except for the officer, and he noted that this followed the directive.
The influence of the Volcano Wyrm Zone had to be driven from Duke Whirlwind's new territory.
Just a couple of months ago, this huge area had been filled with beasts from the Volcano Wyrm Zone.
Due to the long years of fighting with the Ice Beasts, the beasts from the Volcano Wyrm Zone had become very aggressive, which would have made the creation of such an outpost an impossibility.
But nearly nine months had passed since this Zone had been annexed, which had given the Duke's personal army enough time to deal with the most powerful beasts.
In the beginning, over a hundred True Mages had traveled through these lands, killing every beast from the Volcano Wyrm Zone they could find.
Just the mental image of seeing an army of Mages walking through the lands, their surroundings exploding with the power of the Elements, was terrifying.
The beasts had never had a chance, especially since there hadn't been any True Path beasts in the battlefield.
And now, with all these powerful beasts dead, it was time for the warriors to do the cleanup and to establish an actually useful territory.
Several Scumbags had returned in the last couple of hours, reporting their findings to the officer, who quickly sent them out again.
In the next couple of hours, one more Mid General Stage beast wandered into the surroundings, but the Numbers dealt with it. One and Two focused on getting the beast's attention, and Shang would kill it in one strike.
This entire time, Shang followed One's orders.
Usually, Shang was someone that liked to do whatever he wanted. He wasn't someone that just blindly followed orders.
However, he had to appear like someone that was only interested in money, nothing else.
Another twelve hours later, the wall had already reached a height of five meters, which meant that the Scumbags were around halfway done. Sadly, that one Scumbag with the Fire Affinity would need to work longer since the fusion of the stones took way more time than arranging them. But in exchange for working longer, he didn't have to do manual labor for hours at a time.
A couple of the buildings had already been finished. There were far more Bootlickers on this job, and they didn't have to make the buildings very complex or stable, which made it far easier on them. They would probably be done before the wall builders.
The three Rookies had cleared out every beast from their surroundings and were now waiting for new beasts to arrive. Their job was to keep this area clean, and that was everything the officer wanted. As long as the area was clean, they were allowed to relax.
Surprisingly, the officer also praised the three Rookies after they had cleaned the area, telling them that they were finally showing some promise.
Two hours later, three Scumbags returned from their scouting mission.
However, they hadn't returned of their own free will.
"You wanted to see us, sir?" one of the three asked nervously. They had heard from one of their colleagues that the officer wanted to see them.
"Yes, everyone else already gave me at least one report, but I've heard no reports from the three of you," the officer said with a strict voice.
After that, the officer asked what the three of them had seen, and the three of them answered individually.
As expected, their report was worthless. If there had been something to report, they would have reported it already. Since they hadn't given a report before, it meant that there was nothing to report.
"And since you judged your surroundings to be of no intelligent significance, you simply deigned to remain there, doing fuck all?" the officer asked.
The other soldiers that were currently working didn't show it, but they listened intently to this exchange with a grin in their hearts.
They had to work their asses off while these scouts could just sit around in the distance.
Now they finally got what's coming to them!
The three scouts quickly gave several reasons for their decisions, but after the officer beat them to a bloody pulp, they didn't dare to raise their voices again.
At least they got a half-hour break to heal their injuries now.
Eventually, the three of them left again, much faster than before.
Another couple of hours passed, and the buildings were finally complete.
The Bootlickers looked at their finished work with pride.
But then, the officer gave them the next job.
They were responsible for "cleaning" the further surroundings.
The Rookies were responsible for cleaning the immediate surroundings, which had a radius of about two kilometers, and the Bootlickers were now responsible for dealing with all the beasts in a five-kilometer radius.
The Bootlickers were frustrated that they didn't get a break, but they were also happy that they could finally fight something.
Two hours later, something of note happened in the outpost.
Silence.
The entire outpost was silent as everyone looked in shock at one place.
There stood the officer, spear in hand, and on the tip of his spear hung the corpse of one of the Scumbags.
The officer had been very strict this entire time, but this time, he had actually killed someone!
