Pioneer Lord: I Have Conquering System

’Selling my ass is out of the question.’ The Lord felt the Giants in the blacksmith shop had been slacking lately. He ordered the Feder Blacksmiths to make them work overtime, to at least get them working from sunrise to sunset.

First, he had to completely open up the market for the weapons trade.

’Work overtime at night? Did they think candles and oil lamps were free?’

So, the Beastmen, who had only been back resting for two days, were dragged out into the Wilderness again by their impatient Lord to stir up some trouble.

They thrashed the surrounding Wilderness Tribes so badly that their cries echoed through the plains. Some tribes that got wind of their approach packed up and fled in the middle of the night.

They could only curse him in their hearts. In the past, they had all kept to themselves, but lately, it was as if he’d gone stark raving mad, attacking anyone he could get his hands on.

But for all their cursing, they were also the quickest to run.

Lately, High Cliff Castle’s reputation was second to none in the Wilderness. They had crushed the massive Wilderness Alliance Army, seized an iron mine, and then dealt with that hyperactive Dragon’s Followers Legion. Rumor had it that its Giant Dragon had been slain as well.

No one dared to poke such a hornet’s nest. The moment they saw the banner embroidered with a high mountain, flames, and a sun, even Bandit Corps that had just gathered for a raid would immediately scatter, running for their lives deeper into the Wilderness.

In a tribe conquered by the Beastmen, the Lord sat imposingly on a large bluestone. He wore exquisite Leather Armor and fine Deer Hide Hunting Boots, with a beautiful longsword forged from Mithril at his waist. He cut quite the impressive figure.

Right now, he was checking his system panel.

Excluding its nearly five thousand subjects and one thousand slaves of mixed races, High Cliff Castle had about three hundred and ninety professional soldiers, not counting the Personal Guard.

The Feder Tribe started with two hundred people, but a dozen or so unfortunately had their necks slit by the Leopard-headed People who charged the slope. Not even the Surgery and Treatment Skills could save them.

The Beastmen, who served as the front line and absorbed the most pressure, suffered even heavier casualties. A full twenty or so died, and another thirty to forty were wounded.

The Jackal Wolf Scouts also lost two of their pups, who were shot off their Warg Mounts by Leopard-headed archers and then swallowed by the enemy horde.

Still, this casualty rate was far better than Levi had expected. After all, they had faced an army of four thousand, a disparity of nearly ten to one. Casualties were inevitable.

Surprisingly, the Beastman Elite Soldiers, who went to chew on the tough bone that was the Minotaurs, suffered no casualties. Only a handful sprained their wrists from the recoil of clashing head-on with the Minotaurs, but they would be fine after a few days of rest.

These veterans had been with him from the very beginning. Not only was their equipment the best, but their strength was also top-notch, so it was actually quite difficult for them to sustain any real damage.

Aside from these expected casualties, the attack by the Giant Dragon Corps had also earned High Cliff Castle a massive amount of experience.

The Feder Archers were originally Tier Four Feder Longbowmen. In the battle with the Giant Dragon Corps, they killed the most enemies and thus received the largest share of the experience.

This allowed several dozen of them to advance to Tier Five Feder Forest Rangers. According to the system’s classifications, this level was high enough to be considered elite.

Among the grand armies of the Seven Kingdoms, they would be the elite of the elite, the cream of the crop.

Next up were the Beastman Warriors who had recently joined High Cliff Castle and been assigned to the Burning Corps’s Infantry Corps. Nearly a hundred of them had been Tier Two, with only a few dozen being Tier Three Beastman Warriors.

But after this one battle, all of them had advanced to become Tier Three Beastman Warriors.

The moment they met the requirements to level up, Levi—who had been keeping one eye on his panel throughout the battle—immediately confirmed their upgrades without a moment’s hesitation.

After all, practically everyone in High Cliff Castle knew about the "Gift of the War God" by now. To make his cover story more convincing, the Lord naturally had to be diligent about it.

The veterans of High Cliff Castle, who had long since experienced the Gift of the War God, accepted the power granted by the system as a matter of course. For the newly joined Beastman Warriors, however, it was the first time they had ever felt what it was like to advance in rank.

They were all seasoned warriors who knew that strength was accumulated drop by drop over long years. This method of rapidly increasing their power by a huge margin just by fighting left them spellbound and utterly addicted.

They began actively volunteering to take over the Jackal Wolfmen’s patrols around High Cliff Castle.

Levi had no objections; it was a good thing for soldiers to be eager for battle. He just had Muto take them out to hunt Bandit Corps all over the Wilderness.

However, no one in his all-Tier-Five Personal Guard had yet met the requirements to level up. But Levi predicted they would only need a few more battles to get there.

This next level required the most experience yet. The Barbarians had been stagnating at their current level for far too long. Levi suspected that the Tier Six Berserker, which was ostensibly a top-tier unit, would be a world apart from Tier Five.

Once they crossed that threshold, it would mean the Beastman Barbarians would be considered among the most elite warriors on the entire Middle Ages Continent.

That was why the required experience was so immense that even several consecutive battles hadn’t been enough for them to accumulate what they needed.

"Boss, everything’s loaded onto the carts."

Zat, wearing his Horned Helmet, emerged from the conquered tribe. Behind him were several carts laden with goods, as well as a herd of cattle and sheep that had been rounded up.

Calmly closing the system panel, Levi patted the dust from his pants and swung himself onto a tall horse. "That’s enough raiding for now. Time to head back to High Cliff Castle."

He hadn’t been raiding the surrounding tribes, large and small, because he had lost his mind. He had two goals: first, to gather food, livestock, and other spoils of war, and second, to completely eliminate all destabilizing factors around High Cliff Castle.