The barrels were filled with hot wheat porridge. To Van’er’s surprise, he found that the porridge even contained jerky! While it was only a small piece of jerky, even then it was still meat! After he got his share of the porridge, he also got his wish — his egg.
Van’er almost wolfed down his food. It looked like he hadn’t eaten for days, as he licked the bottom of his bowl again and again after finishing his food. He didn’t even have the time to bite the egg, as he swallowed it whole, directly sending it into his stomach. Since he ate too fast and wasn’t careful, his tongue developed blisters.
After putting the empty bowl down, Van’er patted his belly and happily belched. He hadn’t enjoyed such a delicious meal in a long time. And even more incredible was that he actually felt a sense of satiety. Eating wheat porridge with black bread, even if compared to Heaven, it couldn’t be better. If he could eat like this every day, even fighting in the front lines against the demonic beasts would be worth it, right?
After dinner, they all got a long period of time to rest. During this time everyone was brought back within the city walls, walking all the way to the camp of the town’s patrol. A burly man with the rank of a Ranger came out and began to teach them how to set up tents.
Van’er knew him — there was no one in town who did not know Iron Axe. His superb skill in archery left even the town’s most experienced hunter thinking that it was at the acme of perfection. Wait a minute, since when did Iron Axe work for the 4th prince? It seemed that he had seen him staying at the side of the knights before. Van’er frowned. In the end, what was His Royal Highness planning? He was a former citizen of the Sand Nation.
“Do you really intend to appoint a man of the Sand Nation as captain?” Carter was holding this same question, “He does not belong to Graycastle. He is not even a person from our continent.”
“Witches also do not belong to Graycastle,” Roland disagreed, “but they all belong to Border Town. Besides, don’t you see what’s happening?”
“But, Your Highness…”
“Do not worry,” Roland patted the knight’s shoulder, “In Border Town, we do not care about the origin of any person. As long as there is no violation of the law of the Kingdom, they will all be my beloved subjects. You really don’t have to worry. You can also pick two captains. Anyway, in the future, we will expand the number of teams, so it would not be bad to cultivate some promising talents now. Oh, that’s right! I have already written down the training regulations. Compared to the people of the Sand Nation, I think you should be more concerned about this.”
Carter took the parchment from Roland’s hands. Sweeping through its contents from the beginning to the end, he suddenly felt dizzy. The training content was simply unheard of — for example, in the afternoon everyone had to run laps around Border Town after eating lunch until the sun set. The regulations even emphasized that everyone had to do this and that they were allowed to help each other on the way. If they persevered without giving up until the end, they would all get an additional egg for dinner. Another example was when at night the wolf whistles were blown, everyone had to report immediately. With these kinds of training exercises, he was afraid that most of them would toss from one side to the other side during the night.
If the first few exercises were already hard to understand, then the last one, left Carter feeling thoroughly confused.
“Every day after dinner, they all have to go to Mr. Karl’s college to receive cultural training.”
“Your Highness… What is the meaning of cultural training? Do they have to learn how to read and write?”
“I would hope so, but the time is too short. Karl can only teach them a few simple words and numbers. This part, I will personally explain to Karl. You just need to send them over.”
“But, why do you want to do this? Learning how to read and write will not be helpful for fighting the demonic beasts!”
“Who said that?” Roland had to yawn, “A good unit must also be well educated. This is a lesson learned from history.”
Chapter 27 A friendly banter
Every day the weather was getting colder and colder, and every day Roland woke up later and later.
As a member of the ruling class, he certainly had the right to lie longer in bed, until late morning. In particular,every time he slept on his three-velvet cushion blanket bed, he felt like he was falling into soft clouds Dawdling in this kind of a feeling could help him to boost his mood.
After Roland washed his face and rinsed his mouth he stepped into his office, where Nightingale had already been waiting for him for a long time.
“Well, here is your breakfast. I already ate half of it while it was still hot. But now, it’s cold.” said Nightingale as she pouted and pointed toward the table on which less than half of the bread was left. Looking at this scene, it seemed as if she was the owner of this place and not Roland.
“Did no one teach you to be humble in the presence of a prince?” Roland reached over to take the plates as he sat down at his desk, “I still remember that in the beginning you took etiquette quite seriously.”
He sighed within his heart. He really had not thought that Nightingale would always be around him instead of accompanying Anna. It seemed as if she wasn’t on a mission but taking a stroll in the sun instead. Before, she had always hid her figure. But now, as long as there were no outsiders around she would openly show herself in the office without even wearing her hood.
“Like this?” She jumped off the table and gave a perfect noble bow, “Recently you’ve started to get up late. So, I thought eating your breakfast would help you solve this little problem, Your Highness.” she leaned herself towards Roland,”Anyway, you don’t care, right? I can see that you do not like these tedious rituals. “
Her remark was spot on. Roland silently cursed her. Was there anything she didn’t see?
He sighed, “Take the breakfast with you. After you begin to eat something, you have to finish it. I’ll get another one if I want to eat.”
“As you say, Your Highness!” She gently smiled and went to put the plate at her side.
Roland rolled out a blank parchment, and began to finish the complement design he had drawn partway.
If he wanted to hold Border Town, it wouldn’t be that easy after having a tragic victory in their first fight, so he had to do something. On top of that, his new troops had never seen blood. So Roland was worried that once large losses occurred, his newly trained troops wouldn’t be able to bring up the courage to stand on the walls.
He needed the weapons of his era to gain an absolute advantage over the demonic beasts.
Without a doubt, guns would help.
In fact, this era had all the conditions for guns to appear. Alchemists often created a powder, which was called ‘snow powder’, and was used for court celebrations. But this snow powder had the wrong recipe to be used as gunpowder, it was slow-burning and its explosion was more exaggerated than the damage it did.
In the next one hundred years, the prototype of guns — usable for war, will probably appear. Such firearms, because of their complicated operation, would require the collaboration of two people to shoot. Under normal circumstances they were only used as a single-shot weapon. But in terms of rate of fire and power, they were still not comparable with those of a well-trained archer.
Roland was certainly not interested in a repeat of history.
With the help of the steam engine and the ability of the witches, he could create guns which had real value.
“I saw the purchasing order on the table when you were asleep”, Nightingale swallowed the last piece of bread, and then casually asked, “What do you plan to do with so much ice? It’s winter. If you want to drink frozen ale you only need to put it outside the house, so why would you buy extra ice? “