“When faced with matters that were simply past their paygrade, few would understand the meaning. That’s why we pay some people more.” - Old mercenary saying.

“What is it now, Kev-boy?” asked Skuljd, one of his fellow trainees who happened to be nearby when Kev let out his emotion. She was a young dwarven maiden, still in her forties – practically still a teenager for dwarven standards – with her beard just barely growing out to fully cover her chin. Despite her young age, though, the way she carried an entire log by herself where most of the human trainees needed to work together in twos to do so highlighted the disparity between them. “Cat got your dinner again?”

“It’s this training, or rather, chores they keep making us do that frays my patience, Skuldj,” he replied to her with a shake of his head. To his credit, despite his outburst he neither stopped walking nor dropped the log of wood he shouldered together with another fellow trainee. “I’m just not seeing why they keep having us do this shit instead of some actual training!”

“Builds discipline,” replied the dwarven girl with a slightly amused tone of voice. She was older than many of the recent trainees – a lot of which were human, since the Free Lances also carried over quite a few recruits from Posuin, and even in Knallzog humans formed a large portion of the populace due to their natural proclivity to reproduce rapidly – and in some ways, wiser. “For what it’s worth, it’s not like you’re being singled out for this sort of training. Everybody got the same course, unless you prove that you got the skills it takes to skip a good bit of it, that is.”

“How do you even know that much, Skuljd?” asked Larissa from behind Kev. She happened to be carrying the log with him and naturally heard their entire conversation given her proximity. She was a mixed-breed child from a village not far from Knallgant, with mostly human blood but with some elvish and orcish heritage on her. Her father was the leader of the village’s militia and had approved of her signing up to be a mercenary without too much fuss.

She was easily a head taller than Kev and more solidly built as well, despite being almost a year younger and barely showing her non-human heritage otherwise.

“Let’s just say that I got to ask more questions before I actually signed up and joined, got some extra privileges there, I’ll be admitting,” said the dwarven maiden with a hoarse chuckle that almost sounded like rocks grating against each other. For all the “privileges” she received, though, Kev knew that Skuljd had been doing the same sort of training as the rest for months now. “You see, my late gran’s the second Captain of the Company.”

“You’re related to the Captain then? I thought the Captain is a therian?” asked Kev with some confusion in his voice.

“The Captain would be a step-uncle twice removed or so from my end, yeah. He’s adopted,” replied Skuljd with a shrug of her shoulder that made the log she was carrying wobble for a moment. “Not like it got me any real special treatment, though. Everyone’s going to train until they satisfy the company’s standards, no exception, he said.”

“I’m more curious about what you said earlier, actually. That bit about proving you got what it takes so we can skip out on some of this tedium?” asked Larissa from behind Kev, the three of them unconsciously matching their walking pace with each other to keep the conversation going smoothly as they went. “How do we go about that, if you happen to know?”

“Oh, it’s easy enough. You just walk up to your trainer and say it to their face that you believe you got what it takes and want a chance to prove it,” replied Skuljd with an amused chipper to her voice. “That said, I’d suggest that you do a few things first before you do that sort of thing, though. Oh, and don’t be telling them that I told you about it either.”

“Our lips are sealed. What few things should we do?” asked Kev with building interest.

“Well, you two likely ain’t the only ones who are feeling unsatisfied, no? There’s a few who already quit but those are mostly the ones who can’t take the rigors. I bet there’s some others who are feeling just as pent up as you two,” said Skuljd as she carried on nonchalantly. “You should gather them up so you all could make your case together, so there would be more weight behind it that way. More likely for you to be heard.”

“Good point,” admitted Larissa as she nodded her head sagaciously at the advice. “Anything else?”

“Make your challenge in the morning after restday,” replied Skujd matter of factly. “No bloody point trying for such a thing while you’re dog-tired and panting for breath, now ain’t it? You’d want to be in your best shape if you want to give yourself the best chance at this sort of crud.”

Both Kev and Larissa nodded at the dwarven maiden’s advice. Neither of them took any direct action for the rest of that day, but by evening, they started to spread the word amongst the other trainees and gathered those of a like mind, those who believed that they had what it took to tough it out along with the Company by then.

As chance would have it, the rest day they received every week when they were only given lighter duties so as to allow them to recuperate their conditions was on the secondday, so the two had three nights and two days to spread the word and gather others who had similar thoughts to themselves in order to make the challenge.

So it was that on the thirdday morning of the next week, around fifty of the trainees walked together to their trainer – which happened to be Dacia that day – and made their challenge.