11 Baron Vandyke

Although the battle had been won by the Leon kingdom's army, the war was still ongoing. Since it was just turning into summer on this side of the world, the yearly wars which would generally last until the next winter had just begun.

Due to the harsh climates of winter, most nations in the world had come under an unspoken treaty to temporarily halt all wars during the winter periods. Naturally, there have been plenty of hot-blooded fools who continued their existing wars, leading to masses of their armies being whipped out by nature, eve with the blessings of gods, and finally resulting in a great reduction in their military might. This had caused most of them to be forced to become a vassal nation of another nation, or be completely taken over by the other nations as soon as the winter ended.

This meant that this particular war would not end with a few battles at the beginning of war season. At least a few hundred battles would take place all across the entire border, and finally result in one of the two nations winning, and taking a small portion of the land from the losing side.

Entering the tent, Alice looked around. There were a total of ten soldiers present, with 3 being young females, and the others being young males, both around the age of 18, about the same age as her.

One of the soldiers noticed her and saluted.

"Captain!"

Although the soldier did not know which squad captain the lady in front of her was, he could be sure she was one since she had the captain's uniform, which was essentially the same as the other soldier's uniforms, besides the badge on their chest, which was excessively pushed out by Alice's body, and the number of bronze lines attached to her shoulders, which amounted to a single line on each shoulder, showing the lowest rank in the hierarchy, but still higher than the common soldier.

The rest of the squad members quickly stood up at attention when they heard the shout of the first member.

Alice looked around for a bit longer, before saying,

"At ease"

The soldiers calmed down a little, however, faint signs of sadness lingered on their expressions, most likely from the loss of friends, or loved ones in this battle.

However, war was not a place where one looked out for emotions. Alice knew this the best, since both her father and brother were killed in a battlefield due to a mistake of judgement by her father on the strength of the enemies based on the number and strength of scouts, they had sent ahead of them.

This had led to an ambush followed by a massacre of the entire platoon, which is considered a smaller version of a battalion.

Alice did not waste time and said in a cold voice with an indifferent expression on her face.

"I am your knew squad captain. Orders are to prepare to march. We will be going into enemy territory in 1 week. Till then, I wish to conduct training in order to understand the fighting power of the platoon."

Although one of the male players gave a slightly displeased look, Alice simply ignored it and accepted the silence as an affirmative.

"Aright. Take the day off today, and report back for duty at 4 in the morning tomorrow at the training grounds. Make sure you are in your training gear and not in full combat armour, nor in casual clothes."

With that, she turned around and left the tent, where she met up with Jon of the 27th squad and William of the 23rd squad, who were waiting for her to complete her briefing with her squad.

"Shall we take the day off?" questioned Jon in an obviously probing manner.

"Sure" shrugged Alice as the group walked to the squad captain's tent to prepare some items before leaving the temporary base on their day off.

Nearly half of the army received the day off, with strict instructions to remain within 1 km of the temporary base.

This made only one location possible to visit, and that was the Asser Fort, which was owned by Baron Vandyke, who coincidentally was one of the supporters of the peace-loving faction. Now that the war had reached into his own territory, he had changed his views and supported the warmongers, including the current ruler; King Phillip, in order to get them to help him repel the Rolandian army.