The Naming of the Night
Outpost Base No. 9 had shed its usual bustle and grown quiet
and peaceful.
No one was swimming on the airport runway anymore.
No one was playing around between the airships, either.
The young nobles no longer dared bring the enslaved women they had smuggled along
openly off their airships.
Before this, the nobles had even traded enslaved women at the Outpost Base,
nearly turning it into a slave
resale market.
Now all of that had stopped. No one dared get on Marquis Borton's bad side.
At that moment, the nobles from Black Water City finally arrived.
The lesser nobles from Black Water City had long heard how chaotic the place was
and had come prepared to be ignored.
They had even brought expensive watches to give away.
Some visiting for the first time had been warned repeatedly
by their elders: At Outpost Base No. 9,
if you didn't give gifts, you wouldn't get ammunition. You might not even get enough to eat.
But once they arrived, they found that it was nothing like
what they had heard.
They couldn't give their gifts away. You'd flick your wrist
and slip a watch onto an Outpost Base soldier's wrist,
only for him to flick it right back, protesting,
"No, no, I couldn't possibly."
And refusing gifts wasn't all.
Their elders had also told them that the food at Outpost Base No. 9 was awful, without a trace of fat.
Under Kingdom of Roosevelt regulations, the daily
wartime food allowance was 900 for a noble,
220 for a citizen, 90 for a freeman,
and 45 for a slave.
But the old Outpost Base No. 9 had never followed
those standards. You wouldn't see a scrap of meat,
so you had to bring your own supplies.
Now that