The bronze blade lay on his palm like a promise. Up close, it was crude—hammer marks and uneven edges—but its weight was honest, and that honesty made the metal feel like truth. The burners in the camp cast a dull light over the weapon, turning it from mere metal into a thing that changed futures.
They catalogued what they had taken: four short swords, a dozen arrowheads, a handful of small bronze daggers. Enough for silent drills, enough to teach the boy a proper hold on steel, enough to turn desperation into a plan. Nothing ostentatious. Nothing that would scream theft if a wary hand ran across the chest. Small advantages accumulated into leverage.
Li Wei—he kept thinking of the name like a talisman—had spent the evening arranging the slips into a map in his head. The supply lines, the patrol cycles, the small gaps in attention; the Logistics Manager menu in his mind hummed, giving him soft nudges and calculated windows. Knowledge shifted the camp's balance just enough to let them act.
"Tomorrow," Zhang said quietly, fingering the blunt edge of a short sword, "we start formal drills. No more just moving sticks. We close ranks, march in step, and learn to fight as a unit."
Hu grunted in approval. Chen's scarred face relaxed into something like a smile. Even Ming watched with avid eyes, the boy growing more serious with each passing day.
They chose the training place carefully: an abandoned outcrop beyond the latrine with a low ridge that blocked most sight lines. There they practiced when the sergeant's back was turned—foot rhythms, silence, how to slide a short blade between ribs and not signal alarm. Li Wei taught them to breathe in time with movement, to trust a neighbor's shoulder as if it were the hinge of a gate. Zhang taught spearwork and how to fall without snapping a bone. Chen taught the pragmatics of digging and shoring—how to make a space into a sanctuary, how to collapse a sapling into a quick barricade.
Days blurred into a rhythm of theft, training, ledger work, and quiet recruitment. He used his inventory access to nudge certain men into places where they could learn skills: a man with a steady hand was moved to repair tools; another with a sharp ear to tend the watch dog; a woman with patient fingers to tend rations. Each placement came with a whispered suggestion to the sergeant—useful tasks couched in praise. The sergeant liked order; he rewarded it. And with reward came a sliver of independence.
It was during one such reshuffling that a problem arrived like a storm on the horizon. A convoy of laborers from a neighboring county came through the camp—shell-shocked, underfed, their clothes ragged—escorted by soldiers who smelled of marches and recent skirmish. Rumors spread like a fever: the frontier was restless; skirmishes with nomads had increased; garrisons ate men faster than the earth could spare them. The arrival of extra labor meant more eyes, more questions, more risk.
He read the courier's barely-legible log before the sergeant tossed it onto the pile. The slip bore a terse note: Reinforcements requested. Increased patrols. Inspectors moving south in three days. The notation tightened the camp like an iron hand. Inspectors meant combing through stores, meant checking ledgers, meant the risk of discovery for any irregularity.
He returned to the outcrop that night with a new plan. If inspections tightened, their carefully hidden advantages could be spotted. But he could also use the inspections—if he adjusted the ledger, moved small amounts of goods into less-visible places, and played the sergeant's favored worker to the hilt. The Logistics Manager supplied probabilities and suggested a redistribution schedule that minimized detection risk while maintaining a trickle of supplies for the cell.
They began to redistribute: one arrowhead here, an empty sack there. Small movements hidden under the noise of labor. He calculated rotation timings and patrol diversions until the pattern in his head became an almost musical rhythm—deliveries hummed, patrols sang, and the camp moved as if guided by an invisible conductor.
On the second night after the convoy arrived, a real threat came to test them. Bandits—rough men smelling of smoke and wild grasses—moved skittishly across the outer ridge. They were poorly armed but numerous enough to worry a camp heavy with exhausted men. Word spread that the bandits sought food caravans and unguarded granaries. Panic would easily have spread if not for the cell's quiet readiness.
Hu noticed movement first while on a contrived "repair" detail near the western post. He signaled. Zhang and Chen took up positions as if by accident along a known choke point. Li Wei, holding the slips of paper that had mapped everything for him, felt the system's cold calculation in his skull.
[Alert: Low-level raiding group detected east of camp]
[Suggested Action: Contain and delay until patrol arrives]
Contain and delay. Not fight outright. Not yet. He could not risk exposure. He needed to make the bandits look like a minor annoyance the sergeant could boast about handling. If he could delay them until the sergeant took credit for the containment, he would earn favor; if he played it wrong, the bandits would roast the camp and the cell would be buried.
They moved like a single shadow. Using the quiet formations they'd practiced for weeks, the cell set up a string of false tracks, led the bandits into a narrower valley, and used a crude trap—fallen logs and a hidden pit—to slow their approach. The bandits cursed and stumbled. With a few well-aimed blows from stolen bronze, the cell neutralized two raiders without alerting the whole camp. The noise drew a small patrol. The sergeant arrived breathless, barking orders and then puffing with pride as he took control of the scene.
"You see?" he said loudly to surrounding overseers. "Discipline and a quick response! Good work! We hold our line."
Li Wei kept his face down, feigning the exhaustion that had become professional. The sergeant's praise felt like a shield: that night he allotted extra rations to the men who had assisted in the "containment"—a reward that masked their true role. The camp slept differently after that—less fear, a brittle pride in surviving the raid.
But the system's whisper in his head was colder than pride.
[Mission Update: Demonstrate strategic utility to local commander.]
[Reward: Recruit +10 when mission completed. Unlock: Small Weapon Cache.]
The whisper promised growth—if he could prove their value without exposing them. The bandit raid had been a test he'd passed by the narrowest of margins. It bought them time, trust, and a shadow of supply. But it also fed the sergeant's appetite for more useful hands. He would have to keep balancing the blade's edge: visibility without threat, usefulness without suspicion.
Under the Great Wall's patient shadow, the bronze blades gleamed like teeth. Each man in the cell slept a little easier, a little hungrier for the next step.
Teaser: They turned bandits into applause—and with a patrol's praise came new rations, new danger, and a system task that promised recruits.
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