Bog Standard Isekai

Apparently the Order had no plans to let Brin and the Lance stay in their comfortable bunk room while the rest of the Lances were spread out in tents, because right after dinner a page entered their rooms and announced, "Order Of the Long Sleep Fifty-First Lance, you are hereby directed to assume battle posture in preparation for the joint activities on the morrow. Report to Commander Delwin for your camp location." The boy left again before anyone could question it, no doubt to go tell another Lance the same thing.

"We're the Fifty-First Lance?" asked Brych.

Brin made a derisive snort, but he only know that from asking Cid a while ago. Most people just called them "Gurthcid's Lance."

Brin didn't have a great idea of what "battle posture" meant, either, except for what he'd read in the manuals that Galan had given him. Normally discipline in the Order was fairly casual, with everyone working things out inside the boundaries of their individual Lances. He gathered that in a battle posture, that would change and leadership would be a lot more top down and formalized.

Right now, all battle posture meant was confusion and chaos. Brin and Cid spent two hours wandering around trying to find someone who knew where Commander Delwin was. When they finally found out exactly which locked room Commander Delwin was operating from, the guards at the door made it clear he didn't want to talk to any lowly Primes without an appointment. They spent another hour before they finally found a random servant who could tell them where to set up camp, and it took another hour before they figured out what supplies they were supposed to use.

When Brin and Cid got to the campsite with the tents and other supplies, the men were all upset at having to wait around forever with nothing to do, and a very irritated-looking Lyssa was waiting for them as well. “Where have the two of you been? You’re an hour late and you missed the briefing, so now I get to do it all again. How wonderful for me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Cid.

Lyssa groaned in irritation and said, “Whatever. You’re to make camp here. Tomorrow morning when you hear the horn, you’ll pack everything up again and then ride out with the rest of the knights. There are going to be a lot of eyes on us, so try not to embarrass the Order too badly.”

“We’ll do you proud, ma’am,” said Cid.

“I don’t expect you will, but I hope you’ll manage to avoid utter humiliation. My advice? Forget about points for now and try to copy what everyone else is doing,” said Lyssa.

“Points,” said Brin, perking up. “What’s this about points?”

Lyssa rolled her eyes. “There are [Watchful Knights] who will be monitoring the exercises. They’ll give each Lance points, but like I said, forget about that for now and concentrate on–”

“How do I get more points?” Brin asked, suddenly filled with a hunger he didn’t know was there. The regular hunger was also present, but this was deeper. This was the hunger of a man who’d spent his formative years being graded on every little thing now suddenly thrust into a role where he didn’t know if he was doing a good job or not. He wanted those points.

“I’m already behind schedule. Just don’t embarrass us, hm?” Lyssa marched away.

“You have to tell me more about these points,” Brin said to Cid, and added a belated, “sir.”

Cid raised his voice. “Alright, gather around, all of you should hear this. Tomorrow during the exercises, each Lance will be graded based on their performance by a group of senior knights. They’ll be watching for speed, efficiency, noble bearing, and adherence to the codes. Tomorrow we’ll be expected to pack up camp, prepare our equipment which includes sharpening swords and polishing armor, equip our armor, fetch and saddle our horses, and then line up with the other Lances on the field. They won’t begin to measure our performance before they sound the horn to wake us in the morning, but part of the criteria will be the state of our camp, so we’ll need to set everything up correctly tonight.”

“What do we get if we win?” asked Meredydd.

“No prize,” said Cid. “This is an exercise to help us all see how we measure up to the codes and the other Lances.”

“Oh, good, then it doesn’t matter,” said Meredydd.

“Doesn’t matter? Are you insane? There are points on the line!” Brin found himself pacing. They more or less knew how to do all of those things, so the real goal would be to figure out how to streamline and expedite all those jobs.

“Can we all sleep in our armor?” he asked.

“No. Only two,” said Cid.

“Hedrek and Rhun,” said Brin. Those two had the highest Vitality outside of Brin and Cid so they’d sleep the easiest, but he had other reasons. He chose Rhun because the [Warrior] had a proud streak a mile long and always complained if someone else suffered more than him. As for Hedrek, his armor today had been put on by a servant; Brin didn’t want to see how sloppy Hedrek would look if he dressed himself. The rest of the guys would at least try to do a good job, and Brin could fix their armor himself if he needed.

“That sounds reasonable,” said Cid.

Brin said, “The rest of us should figure out now what tasks we’ll take on in the morning. We can divide into pairs, with each group focusing on a single task–”

“Or we could all just take care of our own business, the way we always have before now,” said Meredydd.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” said Brych.

“Let’s go with that one,” said Govannon.

“Completely out of the question,” said Brin.

“I don’t know, I think this may be grounds for discussion,” Cid said. “What are everyone’s thoughts?”

Don’t these people care about points? Brin opened his mouth to argue, but then shut it again. He had told Cid to be Mr Nice Guy in situations like this, and much as he hated to admit it, he needed everyone’s buy-in here. If he told everyone exactly what to do it might work, but if he really wanted high performance then everyone needed to be convinced they were on the right track.

Before any of the men could start voicing their ideas, Hedrek hefted one of the canvas sacks containing a tent and said, “Well, might as well get started then. Nothing says we have to hang around here all night. The sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can head off.”

Hedrek was about to do a sloppy job and then disappear, and Brin absolutely did not want that. Thinking fast, Brin said, “Actually, Hedrek, I wonder if you’d do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“You have some friends in the other Lances, right? I wonder if you could chat up some of the men who’ve been through this a time or two and see if they have any tips or tricks? We’ll set up camp in case you aren’t back in time.”

Hedrek grinned broadly. “Yeah. Ok, I can do that.”

With Hedrek gone, Cid was able to lead a fairly productive conversation, although it was productive in all the wrong ways. Brin wasn’t able to get anyone else on board with the idea of splitting into groups, especially when Meredydd made it clear he wasn’t going to volunteer to take care of everyone’s weapons and armor, insisting it was something everyone needed to know how to do for themselves. They’d work together to pack up the tents, but no one wanted to go into the particulars of exactly what that would look like, and then after that it was every man for himself.

As frustrating as it was to not get them on board with the most efficient process, he reluctantly admitted there was some logic to this as well. This way, he’d be able to see who was best at what tasks, and where the biggest problem areas were.

Cid ended up putting his foot down on a single topic. “Neither Hedrek nor I will assist with the horses in any way. We will mount them only after they are prepared and led to us. The reason for this is simple: preparing the horses for [Knights] is one of the most tried and true methods for unlocking the [Squire] Class.”

Of course no one argued with that in the slightest.

While they spoke, Brin used Invisible Eyes to watch the other Lances and see if there was a trick to how they set up camp. With two hundred Lances from a dozen different Orders on the field, there were camps of all shapes and sizes, but he noticed that about two dozen of them were set up in exactly the same formation. Two tents side by side, the chest for supplies perpendicular to the tents and to the left, and then a cooking fire exactly ten feet away. That sort of matched what he’d read in the manuals, so he figured that was what they were looking for.

The others were more than willing to help set up camp, which was an encouraging sign, but it really wasn’t more than a two person job and Cowl the [Porter] ended up doing most of the work since he knew where all the supplies were.

The end result made Brin proud; no matter how much they screwed up tomorrow, he was fairly confident that they’d at least done this right.

Hedrek returned to camp way too late, but to Brin’s surprise, he actually had a few words of useful advice. He told everyone to sleep dressed and keep their shoes on; apparently being quick to leave their tents after the horns blew would be an easy source of points. He also said that they should take the time to brush the horses before saddling them. Even though that was something typically done in the evenings, the judges liked to see the knights spoiling their horses, and this wasn’t something that should be rushed.

Brin hardly slept that night. He was fully aware how ridiculous it was that he was so worried about getting a lot of points; he knew it didn’t really matter in the long run. But he wanted them, and he couldn’t logic himself out of wanting what he wanted.

Despite staying up too late, he felt refreshed and alert when the trumpets blared in the morning. After getting [Dreamguard], he’d never had abad night’s sleep. He was up and out of the tent in seconds, armor in hand.

He made his way to the storage chest, undid the lock, and searched inside to find the armor polishing equipment. For daily maintenance, they used a little oil and a stiff brush to buff out any spots of rust that might hypothetically pop up on regular armor and would never ever pop up on Meaty’s enchanted armor. After that, they used a cloth to polish it again, making it shine.

Brin finished his armor quickly, but he found the first flaw in their “everybody do it yourself” plan. There was only one armor polishing kit in their supplies, so they could only work one at a time.

When he was done, he passed the brush, oil, and cloth to Cowl, who seemed a little worried to see his tools in the hands of an amateur. If the [Porter] was this anxious about a brush, how was he going to act when they started using the rest of his stuff?

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After polishing his armor, Brin went to sharpen his Bog Standard glass spear, which fundamentally did not need sharpening. He ran the sharpening stone over it softly anyways, because he figured the judges wanted to see him go through the motions.

After that, he ran his iron man program, using glass magic to snap his armor into place. He’d refined it over and over in the last few weeks, using the servants as a guide, and now he could get his armor in perfect order in a matter of seconds.

The others had to wait their turns for the polishing equipment, which didn’t turn into as much of a bottleneck as Brin had feared. It wasn’t a job that needed finesse, so they could rush it. The sharpening was another story. Cowl had two sharpening stones, but only let Meredydd use his “nice” one, so the rest of them all had to wait their turns for the other.

The men still waiting their turns decided to start pulling down the tent, but again, Cowl leapt in to slow things down. He had a particular system for how he wanted everything folded and stored, and kept running back and forth between the guys packing the tents and the guys sharpening their swords, scolding them all and stopping everything done.

For all the things Brin had expected to go wrong, it wasn’t this. Calm, dependable Cowl was the one person he hadn’t worried about.

Brin helped the men don their armor, and luckily no one tried to tell him they didn’t need help. He fixed straps, re-tied and tied knots that hadn’t been done correctly, and tried to make everyone look as good as if servants had helped them.

By the time they all had their armor, several of the Lances were already on their horses and lined up in position.

As for their horses, Brych and Aeron arrived as the corral first, and insisted on being the ones to prepare Cid and Hedrek’s horses before anyone else could. They also refused to let Brin help with their horses, for fear that he might steal their chance at getting the [Squire] Class. That meant that even though they’d been the first to start, they arrived in line a full five minutes after the rest of them.

Brin scanned the area with Invisible Eyes and found that out of the two hundred Lances, only twelve had been slower than his group.

When he told Cid this, Cid sighed in relief. “Thank the gods we aren’t last.”

After that, there was a lot of waiting. Two thousand knights-at-arms stood lined up in a single row, facing a long and empty field, their armor gleaming in the sunlight. They stood there, waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

An hour passed. Some of the horses started acting anxious, some stepped out of place. No one seemed to notice or care.

He’d been warned about this. He hadn’t been in the armed forces in his old life, but he’d heard stories from the people who had. Different armed forces had different idiosyncrasies and different tics, but one thing seemed to unite them, one motto that crossed branches and even nations and cultures: Hurry up and wait.

Brin used that time to watch through his Invisible Eyes, of course, but there wasn’t much to look at. No one was doing much of anything. He found Lyssa, marching across the field headed somewhere. He found the different commanders from other Orders, all watching the line from a distance. He eventually found Galan and… score!

Galan stood side by side with a man in beautiful white armor, trimmed with golden vines and leaves. This could only be him. This was Lothar, the sole member of the Order of the Golden Ivory.

Brin moved his Invisible Eye in for a close look, and the Lothar immediately turned his head to stare directly at it. His helmet obscured much of his face, but Brin saw piercing green eyes staring confidently and knowingly directly at his Invisible Eye.

He dismissed it out of reflex. That… that had to have been a coincidence, right? Lothar was probably looking at something else. Still, Brin didn’t dare to summon another Invisible Eye to check again.

Another half hour passed.

Finally, a horn sounded in the distance. The knights who’d drifted out of place quickly got into line again.

A voice came across the field. Amplified by some kind of Skill, it wasn’t painfully loud but sounded crystal clear in Brin’s ears.

“On my order, you will charge!”

Already? He didn’t know how to charge! He figured they’d walk them through it the first time, or at least tell them what to do or what to expect. Was he supposed to get his spear out? He’d sort of practiced galloping a couple times, but Derec the [Horse Master] had never had them charge before.

The voice called out again. “[Charge!]”

Brin charged. All thought was gone, all doubt was gone. He knew exactly what to do, how to move, and so did his horse. He was leaning forward, his spear already out and facing forward. His legs were tensed, and somehow he knew his body was positioned just right to help his horse get every ounce of power into the charge. It wasn’t that the Skill was controlling him exactly, more like it was helping him understand what to do that was best. He could turn away if he wanted, but there was no part of him that wanted to.

He felt a connection with Nobility that he’d never felt with anything before, not even with Marksi. He felt the Vitality in his body moving with and mixing with the Vitality of his horse, pulling together and putting all of it into the Skill.

The Skill in turn pushed them forward, and Brin felt power like he’d never felt before. The only thing he could compare it to was when he’d first gotten [Scarred One]. The quick influx of power was intoxicating; he didn’t ever want it to end.

All too soon, however, the power dried up. Brin stopped. Nobility slowed to a stop, his coat covered in sweat and his mouth hanging open and panting.

Brin immediately felt a wave of dizziness and swayed in his saddle, only staying mounted with supreme effort. The wave of lethargy soon faded, but a certain amount of weariness stayed in place; that was the after-effect of [Knight’s Charge]. Incredible power, but it came at the cost of stamina. Could Brin fight right now if he had to? Probably, but he wouldn’t enjoy it.

He waited for orders, to see what else they’d be doing today, but they never came. The knights dismounted their tired horses and eventually started leading them slowly back to the corrals, which was the first point that Brin realized how far they’d come. That charge had lasted seconds, but they’d ridden an entire mile.

They wearily made the journey back. They brushed, groomed, fed, and overall babied their horses. Then they walked back to their campsite and collapsed down onto the ground, no one ready to set up their tents again.

Brin thought he’d be able to take a nap right there, and honestly, nothing was stopping him. Except for notifications that took that moment to make themselves known.

Through training, you have earned the following attribute:

Vitality +1

Alert! You have advanced an Achievement.

Knightly (Common)

You have utilized the [Knight] Skill [Knight’s Charge]. You have an improved affinity towards martial Classes. You have an improved affinity for the [Knight] Class. You will be offered a combat Skill at your next Skill selection.

Brin tried to force himself to be excited, but he was still too tired. He could understand, analytically, that this was amazing, even if his heart wasn’t in it. If this was what it was still doing at Common rarity, how much could he look forward to when it was Rare?

Eventually, the men recovered well enough to be hungry. They’d rested all the way through lunch, so Cowl prepared them a doubly large dinner. After that, a [Watchful Knight] came by to deliver a slip of paper.

Order Of the Long Sleep Fifty-First Lance

Herein is a reporting as to your conduct and performance in the first day of joint exercises.

In your setup and position of camp you are awarded: 6/20

Camp orientation was south-southwest. Eastern orientation is desired.

In your readiness you are awarded: 20/20

You were adequate in your ability to exit your tents in a timely manner in appropriate attire.

In your polishing of armor you are awarded: 7/20

You were slow, disorganized, and uncoordinated in your polishing of armor.

Hedrek, Aeron, and Brych had points confiscated for insufficient work.

…

Much of the awards were exactly what Brin had expected. They hadn’t done particularly well at taking down camp or sharpening their weapons.

At the end of the list it gave them a total score, 136, and also told them that they were in 152nd place, which meant that even though they were slow they’d placed above a full 48 other Lances. Brin had to admit that most of that was due to Hedrek. His tips about sleeping fully dressed and going the extra mile with grooming the horses had really paid off.

Brin was frustrated when he read that he was the only person who got dinged for not sharpening his weapon well enough. It didn’t need sharpened! Well, that was easily solved. He could just replace his Bog Standard spear for a random steel spear for the remainder of the exercises. In fact, he could already see a dozen things they could do better.

When he showed the score to the other men, they were all very pleased to find they hadn’t done terribly, and when Brin started giving his ideas on how to improve, he got a lot less pushback. The score and the feeling of [Charging] with the army of knights had given them a confidence boost and now they were starting to feel some enthusiasm for getting points.

Brin realized why he’d been so obsessed with points all day. This was what they needed. They needed a win. The entire time they’d been together, they’d been the screw-up Lance, the Lance that no one expected anything from. That was why it was so hard to unify them; no one wanted to be the loser team. Victory is what united men, and now they had a chance to win at something.

Tomorrow, they wouldn’t be aiming to avoid embarrassment. Tomorrow, they’d be aiming for the top.

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