"You have one hour to get to know you're troops, then you'll take position as the defending side. The fight is on the Juggernaut deck by the way. Just ask your men where to find it."

Captain Philippe said to Sergei Leian as he left to inspect the troops he'll be using for the mock battle.

"(Wow, to think that this ship has easily shown 3000 troops capable of fighting on such short notice, it's pretty scary. But that's to be expected, it's size being almost 600 meters long and almost 100 meters wide. That guy is a Captain?! I think he has almost 4000 men on this ship, not to mention constructs, magical beings, monsters plus whatever secret weapons he is currently hiding from me, I reckon he must have ways to fill the equivalent of over 10000 men in battle power, that's like the level of a general already. This world is not simple.)"

Sergei Leian thought to himself. As he went over to the civic guard leaders, he was soon somehow feeling regret over his decision once he started speaking to his adjutants.

"Mr. Survivor, we think that you have been a little rushed in challenging the captain 5 to 1 using only us civic guards. We know that you are from a different area and have no knowledge of our troop composition and battle power, let me tell you this first hand, we of civic guards have no chance against them at all. First off is the martyrs, these men know magic and can use their abilities to absorb wounds of their allies and each other, maximizing the battle power of their stronger troops at any time. Second, monster hunters wear armor and are physically stronger than us, not to mention uses better greatswords plus they also carry nets, and crossbows too. Third, the scoundrels, they are like the best fighters in guerilla and urban operations, able to throw nets, shoot crossbows, attack with their daggers plus they are also nimble runners and are hardy and resilient enough to resist real bolts, not to mention these fake padded ones. Fourth, the rogues are scary enemies, they can at least defeat one of us with their lethal strikes unnoticed, plus with their skill in double daggers alone, we will have a hard time taking them down in close combat. Finally are the scouts, normally, in a unit vs unit fight, we can easily beat them, but in this fight, we are outnumbered and their fast speed will be very instrumental in hounding our flanks. Finally, in terms of salaries, each of the groups you have been presented with have roughly the same amount of salary paid in total, and so, us civic guards are merely payed a pittance compared to the others, so don't be surprised if the lads are looking to just to fill in the numbers. You can't really blame them, because we can't risk offending the one paying our salaries."

"Noted!! If we were to defend the Juggernaut deck, how would the captain assault us then?"

"Well, first off, the captain would send the scoundrels to consume our bolts, then send the fast scouts to surround us while the armored monster hunters are closing in to engage us in close combat. The martyrs will most likely be used to absorb the combat damage of first the scoundrels and then the monster hunters and finally, the rogues will be moving independently, killing us off one by one with their daggers."

"Bring me to the team, I'll have to look at the situation myself. Bring me paper and pen, I have to right something to the captain."

"Sure, just don't get too disappointed when you see our brothers."

....

"Dear Captain Philippe, I greatly 'admire' your treatment of your men, but I do hope that you'll accept this little challenge of mine, if we do manage to defeat you somehow, how about giving a bonus to these poor men, in exchange, I am willing to gamble my qualis gem with you, for you to dispose of as you see fit in case we are defeated. Sincerely, Sergei."

"What a strange man, but in any case, he seems to know what he is doing, I guess this fight needs a little wager. I'll guess I'll have to accept it and see what he has prepared for me."

....

"Congratulations lads! The captain has agreed to give you a little bonus if we win this fight. Look lively men! Gold won't just stand there for us to take, let's do some hard work first..."

"Really? May the Allfather bless you survivor!! You heard that men, they're giving us a bonus."

"Hurray!" x 100+

"(Thankfully, Philippe accepted that wager, I guess that should be able to take care of their weird gazes, if I didn't made that gamble, I don't have to guess who are they gonna present to the enemy once the fight starts.)

"Okay, men let's talk about the situation. You guys lose in every parameter when compared to the opponent, but you won in one thing and that's in numbers."

"Survivor, aren't we outnumbered?"

"They can take the dog out of the fight, but they can't take the fight out of the dog! And you guys, aren't dogs, don't you feel any shame being beaten by dogs?"

"Well, if the dog you're talking about is the Bleak warg, then I don't see any problem in them beating us."

"(These people are hopeless. Desperate times call for desperate messures, need to use my stat points. First, put 2 attribute points on strength to make it 30 and 1 attribute point on agility to make it 27. Then, make toughness and grip strength and throwing power level 10, for the corresponding attribute is required to first be 3 times that of the skill level in order for the skill to be raised using skill points. Raise the agility skills martial arts and guard to level 9. Raise the intelligence skills, drill and engineering to level 9. With martial arts raised to level 9, weapon proficiencies can be raise to 420 using only 1 weapon proficiency point, so raise one handed weapon mastery to 420 with 10 proficiency points and spent 180 proficiency points to raise crossbows to 420.)"

"Gather round boys, I want you guys to temporarily accept my command for the duration of the mock battle. I want all my orders followed, no matter how unreasonable it is, alright?"

"If it's only for this one time, then we accept."

After confirming that everybody has joined his 'party', Sergei Leian told them to train for the rest of the time until the fight.

"I want you to follow this set of movements as best as you can, repeatedly until the time before the fight. Think of this as special training."

He said as he taught the troops a crash course on his version of how to use a blade and techniques to quickly load a crossbow.

He then searched for a vacant area before opening his inventory.

"Inventory."

He saw a dark space full of items in it. He took from there a winged mace, a lute, a crossbow, a bow and mixed and matched a combination of armors to create a set of plate armor, chain mail plus lots of leather clothes, 2 bag of bolts, a quiver of arrows, and a set of throwing knives, all of which he processed with his 9 engineering and a borrowed crafting area to make them all non-lethal and usable for the battle. He first wore thetrecently knitted leather aketon with sleeves, covered it with chain mail then topped it off with plate armor, fastened the mace on his right hip and strapped the lute on his back to serve as an emergency shield. He then wore his bow on his upper body and tied the quiver of non-lethal bolts and arrows to his left side. He put his set of blunted throwing knives on his makeshift belt and finally carried his crossbow with his hands. 15 minutes before the fight, he arrived with his men in the Juggernaut deck, which he then found out to be another weapon of war.

"That is the Juggernaut deck? Another warmachine? Beautiful."

"Yes, sir, rumor has it that this particular model is refitted from the parts of destroyed warmachines during the Battle of Beardune, the same battle where the Lion of Beardune rose to fame."

"Him again? Nevermind, call the boys, let's start the final meeting."

"Guys, I want to see the results of your training."

"Party!"

He then found out that the training was pretty effective and about 90 of the trainees are ready to be upgraded into level 1 champion civic guards. He tried upgrading one using 10 denars as an experiment and found out that it increases their combat power by not a small bit and makes them capable of leading their own group of civic guards. So he hurriedly upgraded the rest of the civic guards for another 890 denars and soon reorganized everybody into two-man teams, the champion civic guard with a non-champion civic guard for a total of 90 two man teams, with the exception of the 4 original officers, which he reorganized under himself.

He gave every team a zone to defend, utilized every defilade and made additional ones using the boxes discovered around and outside the area of the juggernaut deck and made sure that every position is covered by overlapping ranges from multiple positions. Each troop was then ordered not to leave their position unless the attack signal is raised, upon which everybody has to sally out from their positions to go to a predetermined route and fight to defeat the closest enemy they see along their paths.

After finishing their preparations, both sides are now ready to fight.