Spotting talent

Whatever the case, finding a guide was important. It would determine whether the group could make it through the mountains along the border.

The players were no help, so Isaac would have to make the trip himself.

Then, a day later, Chris met their guide. But the guide looked nothing like he had imagined, and came as a surprise to everyone else as well.

"This is the guide you found?"

Chris sighed, holding his forehead. For the first time, he seriously wondered whether he had been out of his mind to recruit players. Even the normally dependable Isaac seemed to have caught their unreliability.

"Yes."

Isaac looked rather awkward too. He glanced sideways at the guide standing beside him and sighed.

"It sounds a little crazy, but Mia really is the only person around Pinewood Town who can take us across the border and find a route through the Bagnia mountains."

Hearing Isaac's tone, Chris grew serious too. He looked down at their guide... a chestnut-haired little girl dressed in gray homespun, holding a wooden stick, with a large white pig following behind her.

"You can probably tell from her hair that Mia isn't Bohemian. She's from Bagnia."

"A refugee?"

Chris studied Mia. She wore a thick, oversized homespun dress that clearly wasn't meant for a child. Yet she was so short and frail that the garment looked as though it had been propped up on a bamboo pole.

A gust of wind would send both her and her clothes swaying.

"How old is she?"

Mia, who had been staring intently at Chris with her wide eyes, answered before Isaac could.

"Sixteen."

Chris eyed Mia doubtfully. He didn't quite believe her.

She looked painfully thin, and years of going hungry had probably stunted her growth. But no matter how he looked at her, she didn't seem sixteen. Her face was too small.

"What's your name?"

"Mia."

"Your surname?"

"I don't have one."

"All right, Mia. I'm hiring you as the caravan's guide. Now go get something to eat. Isaac and I still have things to discuss."

"Pretty man, I can help you. Really."

"Of course, of course. But helping me doesn't mean you shouldn't eat."

Chris smiled gently as he spoke, taking the girl's shoulders and trying to turn her toward the exit.

"Listen to your stomach. It's growling... Ow!"

Just as the girl turned, the large white pig suddenly charged forward and rammed Chris in the shin, knocking him to the ground.

Seeing that her pig had caused trouble, Mia turned and ran without a word, quick and nimble. The pig followed, its big rump swaying as it bounded happily after her.

Chris stood up, rubbing his backside. He watched Mia run off and tried to grin, but when he remembered her circumstances and background, he couldn't bring himself to smile.

"What's Mia's story?"

"Just as you guessed, Mia is a refugee from Bagnia. Her parents brought her here to Pinewood Town after fleeing their home. Then they died of hunger and illness, leaving Mia alone with that white pig.

With the pig protecting her and a little luck, Mia survived here. She barely manages to keep from starving."

Isaac sighed, boundless sympathy showing on his bearded face. He clearly felt for her and had thought of his own daughter.

"We should take her with us. Whatever else happens, we won't let her go hungry."

"I'm not against taking Mia along. My only question is whether she can do the work of a guide."

Chris stuck to his original question. Copying him, Isaac shrugged and spread his hands.

"As I said, she's the only person anywhere around Pinewood Town who made it through the Bagnia mountains without using the Boba Passage. The other guides can only take us as far as the border."

"So we have no choice?"

"No choice."

"All right, all right."

Isaac left, while Chris remained in his tent. He fell into thought, seriously considering one question.

What exactly was happening inside Bagnia?

Back in Inyama, Chris hadn't paid much attention to Bagnia's affairs. Everyone said civil war had broken out there, leaving the land strewn with the bodies of the starved.

But without seeing it himself, Chris couldn't really summon much sympathy. It hadn't felt real.

This world wasn't like the modern world, where the internet let people see the miserable lives others led thousands of miles away.

As a result, before the players dragged Chris into this mess, saving a country had never even crossed his mind.

Save what country?

It's not like I'm saving Huaxia. What the hell is Bagnia to me? I don't feel any sense of belonging there!

There were workers from Bagnia in Inyama too. They were generally poor, but they could still survive. As long as they worked hard, they could get enough to eat.

Only now, when Mia appeared before Chris, did he suddenly recognize the brutal reality. He realized that the situation inside Bagnia might, perhaps, very well be hell on earth.

Perhaps he ought to do something.

After all, starvation was humanity's most primal torture.

At the same time, Isaac looked back after leaving the tent, gazing intently toward Chris, who was hidden inside.

Sure enough, a prince is a prince. I've only been gone a few days, and he's already expanded the group, diluting my authority with more people.

Though he was somewhat unhappy, when he gave it serious thought, it was necessary.

Isaac's feelings were complicated. After several sighs, he finally turned and left.

Oh, let it be. I'll see how things develop. If Chris intends to sideline me, I'll return to Bohemia and go back to being an independent smuggler.

Now that they had found a guide, it was time to leave. Chris didn't want to delay any longer.

They got a night's sleep, and early the next morning...

"Smack, smack, smack..."

In the camp, Carlos sat on a large rock chewing a flatbread. With every bite he tore off, he lifted the large bowl beside him and drank some soup, making lip-smacking noises that would have deeply offended anyone with manners.

As luck would have it, everyone near Carlos was a rough fellow too. Each ate more noisily than the last, so nobody minded.

Today's breakfast wasn't as lavish as the meals they had eaten when they first joined a few days earlier. There were no big meat sausages, but it was still quite good.

A large bowl of rice cooked with cracked corn and broken rice, a boiled egg, an unleavened minced-meat flatbread, and a bowl of vegetable soup with beads of oil floating on top. There were plenty of carbohydrates, protein, and vitamins.

Carlos was immensely satisfied with the meal.

Before breakfast, Carlos had gone over to have a look at the others. He knew that the caravan's other members were eating much the same breakfast as his own, except that their flatbreads contained a little more minced meat.

That was perfectly acceptable. In the Bohemian army, it was only natural for veterans to eat better than new recruits.

Here in the caravan, he was a new recruit, while those fifty men were veterans.

In the two days since he had joined the caravan after the Spring Festival, Carlos had used his veteran's instincts to gain a rough understanding of its internal structure.

Carlos's first impression was... chaos. Utter chaos.

First, the caravan's nominal leader was named Isaac. The second-in-command below him, Connie, was his daughter.

Isaac handled personnel, while Connie managed supplies.

Yet over these two days, Carlos had discovered that another man named Chris had more say than either of them. Everyone in the caravan listened to him.

He could also intervene in the allocation of supplies and the use of funds.

Take this morning, for instance. Carlos was a veteran, and he knew that nothing mattered more than food. So he had got up shortly after five and waited in the camp's kitchen area with his bowl, watching for the cooks to prepare breakfast.

Carlos had seen for himself that the cooks originally intended to make a dozen or so buckets of thick porridge and give everyone an unleavened flatbread. That would have been it.

That was pretty good food too. Carlos saw nothing wrong with it.

In the Bohemian army, only elite grenadiers enjoyed breakfasts like that. Ordinary infantrymen got porridge at most, and only enough to half fill their stomachs.

If there was training or combat that day, they could get a decent lunch or dinner: a piece of black bread the size of two fists, a small bowl of rice, a little piece of salt pork, and vegetable soup with a bit of minced meat.

Enough to fill their bellies, with sufficient fat as well.

Otherwise, if there was no training or combat, what the rank and file got to eat depended entirely on the quartermaster's conscience and mood.

Overall, Isaac's Caravan served decent food. Carlos felt that risking his life for the caravan wasn't a bad deal.

Just then, Chris, with his distinguished bearing and elegant manner, appeared. He entered the kitchen, examined the large cooking buckets, asked the cooks a couple of questions, and said,

"This won't do. They shouldn't be eating so little."

"Sir, this is already very good. We..."

"No. It won't do. The new men are all skinny, with no meat on their bones. We're walking through the wilderness all day today. How can they manage without some fat in their bellies?"

Chris spoke in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Replace the porridge with rice. Add a boiled egg for everyone, and put a hundred grams of minced pork in each flatbread. Make a soup as well. Put a large packet of dehydrated vegetables in it, along with ten chicken carcasses. Make sure there's enough fat!"

Then Chris took out pen and paper, wrote down the order, signed it, and handed it to the cooks.

"Go. Get the supplies from Connie."

"Ah, yes..."

That incident told Carlos that nobody in the group could afford to upset Chris. Otherwise, a word from him would leave everyone without rice or chunks of meat, drinking porridge and gnawing on vegetables instead.

Carlos also knew that the person paying him wasn't Isaac or Connie, but a strange young man nicknamed Little Ghost. He was Carlos's immediate superior, and Carlos's fellow recruits were the other nine men from his hometown hired in the tavern.

As for the other hundred and ten hired recruits from nearby villages, they were all theoretically his colleagues.

In practice, however, Carlos discovered that they weren't paid by the same person as him, but by nine others. These hundred and twenty mercenaries had ten leaders.

Yet when it came to operations, those ten leaders had all hundred and twenty men move and train together.

This strange, complicated structure left Carlos utterly confused. He couldn't make sense of how the group worked at all.

If he couldn't work it out, then so be it. As long as his pay arrived on time and he had enough to eat and drink every day, it wasn't much of a problem.

With that thought, Carlos hurriedly stuffed the rest of his food into his mouth, then called to the nine men nearby to finish their "battle" quickly.

Just then, someone called out.

"Come on! Get over here! Line up for your gear! Hurry!"

Gear!?

Carlos was keenly alert to that word. The moment he heard it, he ran over with his nine men.

By the time Carlos arrived, the person calling out was surrounded by a crowd. He couldn't see a thing.

At the sight, Carlos shouted.

"Move aside! Move aside and get in line!"

Some heard him, glanced back, and hurriedly made room. Others ignored him disdainfully and kept crowding around.

Seeing that, Carlos rolled up his sleeves and shouted over his shoulder.

"With me!"

Carlos charged into the crowd, punching and kicking the fools who wouldn't take a hint. He let force do the talking and made them get in line.

In the army, violence was the eternal rule. Nobody listened when you spoke politely, but when Carlos came swinging his two fists the size of cooking pots, anyone who couldn't beat him naturally lined up obediently.

With his men, Carlos took only three minutes to quell the disorder and get everyone neatly organized.

Chris had been watching from nearby, at a loss and nursing a headache because most of the ten players hadn't logged in yet and X's subordinates weren't there either. At the sight, his eyes lit up, and he beckoned to Carlos.

"Come here, come here... Whose man are you, and what's your name?"

"Carlos. I'm with Home Alone."

Carlos answered honestly. Chris patted his shoulder in appreciation, then turned and called to the others.

"Bring over clothes and shoes! Issue them to these ten men first!"

Soon, four or five people hurried over pushing handcarts. They held measuring tools against Carlos's feet and body, checked his size, and handed him folded clothes and shoes.

Carlos was still a little dazed as he took them.

"Ah, these are for me?"

"That's right. Mr. Chris is issuing these to everyone. You bathed yesterday, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Then put them on now. We're leaving in an hour. Hurry."

Carlos promptly stripped in front of everyone, then picked up the new clothes and pulled them on.

His new boss was wonderfully considerate. Carlos received two new sets of clothes made from black homespun, complete with underwear and socks. The shoes were made of green canvas, with tough black soles underneath, though he didn't know what those soles were made of.

Still, once the experienced soldier had pulled on his new socks and shoes, all it took was a couple of steps for Carlos to tell that he could walk a long way in them. Even stepping on small stones wouldn't hurt his feet.

Besides the clothes, there was an iron canteen. That was a fine thing too, useful for marching and fighting!

Once Carlos had finished dressing, Chris continued.

"Someone issue weapons and equipment to Carlos and his men. Carlos, I need you to handle discipline in the camp. Can you do that?"

"Do you want me to serve as military police, sir?"

"That's right. As military police, you'll get better food and better equipment."

"I can do the job."

"Excellent. Now collect your equipment and get to work. I'm counting on you!"