Marching Mountains, "Jenisar" Nest.
At this hour, aside from the combat personnel out on missions, everyone else was at their busiest.
Even children as young as Maria often had to help the adults with whatever work they could manage.
For instance, searching for bark and mineral salts for tanning solutions, gathering scrap from the metalworking shop for reuse, prying open river mussels hauled from the Karin River to collect their pearls. Compared with such grueling work, going deep into the mountains to gather mulberry leaves for feeding silkworms was comparatively easy.
Most slaves who could fetch a premium had some sort of craft to fall back on. It was precisely through the selfless contributions of this liberated labor force over the years that Jenisar had barely managed to endure until now.
It was like those fledgling companies on Blue Star: before outside investment arrived, first and foremost, you had to survive.
But today was particularly different.
When they saw off the three hundred knights at dawn, clad in Jenisar's blood-red battle skirts as they rode toward the boundless Karin Desert, many people were not optimistic about this operation.
After all, most ordinary people could not gauge the approximate range of a professional's Combat Strength from subtle details. That was a skill only seasoned Warriors, adventurers, and professionals could master.
In the simple understanding of most commoners, victory or defeat in battle was often decided by numbers. Even Jenisar itself won its operations through overwhelming local numerical superiority.
The Ponte Exchange convoy was escorting several thousand people. No matter how one looked at it, there was no way a mere three hundred could bring them back.
Thus, some people could not help but entertain darker thoughts:
If they never returned, would the splendid knightly plate armor they had left here, along