Considering their mental state, Rowan took things slowly with his men for the first three raids of the day. He gave them a brief amount of time to rest after each hunt, even gave out food early because most of them refused to eat their breakfast because they were sad.
Nevertheless, his mercy only remained during the first three raids; beyond that, he forced them to go through the subsequent raids with no rest.
The fourth raid was quite tedious— it was noon and the sun had already taken its place on the sky, blasting forth on the calm forest with its radiant glow and heat, causing the men to sweat profusely, and some with poor eyesight even found it uncomfortable to fight in such a condition.
Not just the sun; the monsters in this horde were quite strong.
Stronger than the ones they faced earlier, and the reason was already clearly known to even the daftest soldier— the deeper they go in the forest, the stronger the monsters they face.
Nonetheless, the soldiers didn't give up.
None of them wanted to die like George, and all of them aimed to evolve like Bryce and Winston, so they fought relentlessly.
Winston and Bryce only fought for about five minutes before standing aside to give the other soldiers opportunity to hunt and grow stronger. They stood with Rowan throughout the rest of the 4th raid and the other raids of the day.
The fifth and sixth raid were pretty much the same — uncomfortable weather condition and more stronger monsters, but none of Winterseed men backed out.
The seventh and last raid of the day had a favourable weather as the evening wind blasted across their faces, providing a comfortable sensation even amidst the intense battle.
The last raid ended two hours after it began due to the number of F-rank monsters amongst the horde that the soldiers had to face alone.
The F-rank monsters tired them out so much that they fell on the ground exhausted after clearing the monsters off.
Winston and Bryce stepped up and did the usual tasks like harvesting monster core and gathering the monster corpse for burning. Given their newfound strength and , the task was pretty insignificant and took them little amount of time.
While they were busy with the tasks, Rowan analyzed the stats of his men as they rest.
A bright smile plastered on his face as he observed the character status of everyone.
"Tomorrow, at least three hundred soldiers would evolve!" Rowan muttered to himself joyfully.
"All the captains will have their evolution between the first and second raid while the others will have theirs during the last few raids of the day. The ones behind would hit ninety thousand evolution points mark tomorrow as well. Sadly, because of them, we would have to extend the hunting trip by one more day." Rowan analyzed vocally.
The soldiers with the lowest evolution points at the moment were around eighty five thousand mark. Even if they didn't participate much in the raids tomorrow, they would still be able to farm at least five thousand evolution points bringing them to the ninety thousand mark.
At that point, Rowan would have to make the raids more tedious with more monsters, forcing everyone to hunt more seriously on the 8th day.
Considering most of the soldiers would've evolved by then and wouldn't have to participate — It will leave more opportunity for the others to evolve as the population of the monsters would be more.
Winston and Bryce were done piling up the corpse and Blaze had already engulfed them in flames.
While this happened, Rowan gathered everyone and told them the good news.
"Tomorrow, a lot of you would finally grow pass the human limit of strength and speed." He dropped the bomb.
The men gasped briefly.
"Lord Rowan is it true? Are we going to possess the same cool strength and speed as Captain Bryce and Winston?"
"Lord Rowan, am I amongst the lucky few?"
The soldiers voiced out at the same time resulting in quite a noise.
"The people who would evolve tomorrow haven't been decided yet, it would have to do with how you seriously you fight tomorrow. Those with the best performance would be granted the chance to evolve, while those who underperform would remain subdued by the natural strength limit." Rowan twisted the truth and presented in a way that motivated the soldiers more.
"Tomorrow I would kill a lot of monsters, I promise!"
"I won't hold back anymore, I am going all out!"
"The first person to evolve tomorrow would definitely be me."
They reacted vocally once again.
"Yes, yes, you can be the first to evolve if you manage to outperform the others and prove how worthy you are." Rowan added in the midst of the chattering.
The chattering went up even more but it was all Rowan wanted.
"Lord Rowan..." Roland who was standing at the back, walked forward and called out for Rowan's attention.
"Yes captain Roland, do you have anything to add, perhaps a few words of encouragement for the others." Rowan responded to the call.
The soldiers turned to Roland.
Roland quickly shook his head with a brief smile before relaying what he called Rowan for, "We need new weapon supply, the old ones are worn out due to the intense battles for the past few days."
Following his words, the others nodded in agreement.
Rowan also nodded as he took a look at the soldiers standing in front, their swords had so many scratches and one of them even had a crack in his sword that threatens to shatter in two after a forceful hit.
"I will work on that tonight and distribute it in the morning, alright?"
"That is more than alright, thank you Lord Rowan." Roland said with a small bow.
"How about you guys set up your campfire for the night while I prepare the food supplies to distribute."
They all responded and dispersed immediately, setting up their campfires.
After they finished, Rowan distributed food.
He returned to his usual spots faraway from the men — This time, further than usual.
He used the big body of Blaze to block the sight of the soldiers as he brought out the weapon crafting blueprint from his inventory and activated it before disappearing.