He had to be content with what he had, or things might get so bad that he would have to destroy every blood hook and be on the run for his life. So he stopped infecting people after 12 hours and returned to studying for the foreign battlefield.
He first went to a safe house to change. He destroyed the clothes he got from one of his subordinates. Then he went home to relax and study.
He was able to enter the tower of destiny without working himself to the bone and falling asleep like he did last time. Then he picked up the military codex and resumed studying.
There were a lot of rules, provisions, and descriptions in the military codex. But the one and most important offense was the crime of treachery.
There were a lot of rules that breaking will lead to being accused of the crime of treachery. It ranged from leaking military secrets, colluding with the enemies, scheming, and harming another soldier on the battlefield.
It was stated clearly that it doesn't matter if someone is your sworn enemy; you couldn't scheme against them, harm them, or attack them on the battlefield. You would need to be cleared of your military duties before you can harm another soldier.
If anyone violates this rule, they would be tortured until their existence unravels. It was stated that the Yggdrasil civilization is a big believer that people should live to regret their sins.
There were a lot of rules for him to read. While some of them were interesting, like abstaining from having sex with indigenes during an invasion, most of them were boring.
What he was most interested in was the hierarchy and division of the army. This gave him a clear idea of his position and duty in the army.
There were three main divisions in any expedition. There were the slaves. They had no freedom and were fighting against their will.
They were mostly used as cannon fodder and expendable troops. They had the lowest value to the army.
The second division is trained troops from the various versions of Earth. These were the proper troops with hierarchy and ranks.
They were the backbone of the army and were the true soldiers. They had order and discipline. So they were the most valuable troops in the army.
In between the slaves and the trained troops are players and unofficial soldiers. This division is composed of free people who signed up for war on their own but are not trained.
He is part of this division. The others in this division are recruited from various worlds, not only from the various versions of Earth.
Some of them are from Earths that don't have a pantheon yet and cannot have a planetary army. This group is the players that signed up through the Tower of Destiny.
The second portion of them are from Earths with pantheons but don't want to bind themselves to the army of the pantheon.
This second group is the smallest. They could have become trained troops, but they valued their freedom more. So they became mercenaries.
The third group, which is also the largest group, are soldiers that used to be slaves but gained their freedom or are soldiers from worlds that have an alliance with the Yggdrasil civilization.
Rarely does a slave regain their freedom, as there is nothing a slave can do to get their freedom. They can only get their freedom when a god of the Yggdrasil civilization pities them and lets them go.
Also, rarely does a world end up as an ally of the Yggdrasil civilization. Most of the worlds that the Yggdrasil civilization encounters are invaded and subjugated. Then they are used to produce troops for the slave army.
But despite how rare these two situations are, they have happened many times over the course of the nearly one million years of the Yggdrasil civilization's lifespan. So the third group is the largest of the third division in the army.
What all three of these groups have in common is that they have relative freedom in their responsibilities in the army, and they fight for merits.
Merits and feats are the most important things to those in the third division. The amount of merit he earns will determine how many game points he will acquire and how many levels he will skip.
Feats, on the other hand, will determine his hierarchy in the army. It will also affect his game points and the evaluation of his performance.
Feats and Merits will substitute for game difficulty and achievements in determining his game points. Kill count won't affect game points directly. It will instead affect his merits, as different types of enemies will reward different amounts of merits when killed.
This part about Feats and Merits is the most important part for him, so he made sure to read it carefully. He wanted to be aware of the various ways to earn them and maximize his time on the foreign battlefield.
It was while reading that he found out that merit is useless to the slave army. It is because they can't earn it, and they can't spend it. They are slaves, so they can't own anything. Not even their lives are theirs.
As for the trained troops, they too earn merits, but they have little freedom in how they can go about earning it. It is because they have to obey orders.
They can't move however they want or do whatever they want in the army. Their merit will be based on what task they were assigned to and how well they achieved it.
While this is a disadvantage for the trained troops, they also have the advantage of being the most valued troops. They are given the best tools and equipment.
He and the others in the third division will only be given average equipment and tools. If they want better things, they will have to work for them.