Another two months passed since Adelaine struck it rich for their village.
In the meantime, Blanc ordered everyone to keep polishing their skills.
He announced that there will be wages once the new settlers arrive and everyone will be paid according to their skill mastery.
Hearing that they could start to earn silver coins for their hard work , everyone was excited. So for the past two months, they've been sharpening their skills.
Of course, this included the warriors. They've been protecting the village for quite a long time now and in addition, they also took the role of gatherers from time to time.
The warriors recently intensified their training regimen. Currently, they are training their physical strength, swordsmanship and archery techniques, formations, and combat experience for at least 12 hours per day compared to the usual 8 hours of training time per day.
The reason for this is because last month, Blanc found out that there were actually tiers for combatants as well.
Specifically, there are two different tier systems. a tier system for physical prowess, and another tier system for combat technique.
For the physical prowess, the current known tiers are:
Tier 1-5 Standard combatant physique
Tier 1-5 Elite combatant physique
Tier 1-5 Master combatant physique
Tier 1-5 Internal Qi stage
While the same tiers exists for the combat techniques:
Tier 1-5 Novice Swordsmanship / Novice Archery stage
Tier 1-5 Advanced Swordsmanship / Advanced Archery stage
Tier 1-5 Swordmaster / Ranger
Tier 1-5 Rune Knight / Rune Walker
This is currently what Blanc knows. He suspected that there could be higher tiers but that's for the future.
For now, everyone is focused on raising their tiers.
The reason why there are two tiers is because a combatants total strength is a mixture of both their physical prowess and combat technique mastery.
For example, a combatant can have a tier 5 elite combatant physique but if he only has tier 1 novice swordsmanship, he is likely to lose to someone with a tier 5 standard combatant physique but has tier 1 advanced swordsmanship.
This is the importance of improving your overall skills and you can't only improve your physical prowess alone or vice versa.
Helena currently has a tier 4 elite combatant physique however, her sword mastery was quite terrifying as it is currently at tier 1 swordmaster stage.
The proof that she is already a swordmaster is the faint sharp white light that she could accidentally release sometimes.
It is evident that she hasn't mastered it yet but it shouldn't take a long time for her to do so. She just needs an opportunity.
Helena learned from Blanc that it was called sword intent.
She was currently in the process of mastering it in order to advance.
A tier 5 swordmaster can extend or retract their sword intent with perfect control.
On the other hand, the squad leaders are currently at tier 5 standard combatant physique and tier 2 advanced swordsmanship.
As an archer, Eden is currently at tier 4 standard combatant physique and tier 3 advanced archery.
They've actually already surpassed the strength and skills of the knight captain of Count Laurelei.
The knights of Count Laurelei usually train for around 4 to 5 hours a day while the village warriors have been training for more than 8 hours everyday for 1 year and three months straight so it is only natural that they've surpassed Count Laurelei's knights.
Lastly, the normal warriors were currently at around tier 2 and tier 3 standard combatant physique while also being around tier 3-5 in novice swordsmanship.
Their tier levels vary since not everyone is equally talented.
Overall, their village military could be said to be quite strong. The problem however is that there are too few of them.
Still, everyone was hungry to improve.
Not to mention, they will be paid according to their tiers once Adelaine's and the settlers caravan return.
Not only the warriors. The craftsmen, the alchemists, the carpenters, the chefs, and the farmers were all eager to improve.
Even Blanc himself is eagerly reading books in his spare time.
They want to improve as much as possible before the caravans return so they could get a higher pay for themselves.
In around two more months, all of their settler caravans will be back including Adelaine's merchant caravan.
Blanc's announcement started a frenzy of skill improvement among the villagers because once the caravans return, they will start their transition to a town.