Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

The other soldiers each received a piece of bread and ladled some soup into their cups, eating with alternate sips of soup and bites of bread.

Dan handed the last cloth bag to Winters, "Commander, this is yours." Continue your adventure at empire

"Oh, thank you," Winters took the bag and, like the soldiers next to him, casually found a rock to sit on.

As soon as he sat down, the soldiers from Taylor's squad stopped eating.

In the Vineta army, not only do officers eat differently from soldiers, but they actually never dine with the soldiers. There is no sense of unity between officers and soldiers, only distinction.

So when they saw Warrant Officer Montaigne taking a seat next to them, the soldiers from Taylor's squad were all taken aback, exchanging glances, uncertain of what to do next.

"What's wrong? Why aren't you eating?" Winters found it very strange to see that everyone had stopped eating.

The soldiers all looked towards Centurion Taylor, who awkwardly said to Winters, "Well, shouldn't you be dining at the officers' club?"

"Officers's club?" Winters couldn't help but express his amusement, "With cannons to the side and the city wall in front, where could there possibly be an officers' club?"

"Still, you shouldn't be dining with the soldiers," Taylor didn't know what else to say, "It's just... it's just... not right."

"What's not right?"

"Well... it's just not."

The nonsensical reply gave Winters a headache. He asked bluntly, "Okay, just tell me, where did the officer in charge of the night watch dine before?"

"Centurion Charles always went back to the camp to dine," Taylor honestly replied.

"What? Back to the camp? That's almost two kilometers away..." Winters frowned and asked, "If the duty officer goes back to dine, what happens here?"

"Lieutenant Charles goes back to the main camp to dine," Taylor answered matter-of-factly, "We'll handle things here."

Winters understood what was going on and muttered a few complaints to himself. Charles might dare to abandon his post, but Winters had no intention of following suit.

He reached out for his own food and said in a relaxed tone, "Lieutenant Charles is diligent; I'm lazy. It's too far to go back; I can't be bothered to return, so I'll eat here. You carry on as normal, and if you feel uncomfortable, just pretend I'm not here."

Since the duty officer had said this, Centurion Taylor didn't say anything more.

He saluted, returned to his spot, and began breaking the hard bread into pieces and shoving it into his mouth.

Seeing the Centurion start to eat, the other soldiers continued to chew vigorously; they had been famished.

Inside Winters's bag were two paper-wrapped packages. He unwrapped one, and inside was beef—many cattle had "tired" to death moving the cannons.

If not for the fact that they would need animals to move the cannons away again, the officers could "tire" the remaining cattle to death at a rate of two per day.

In the other paper package was bread, not the coarse bread eaten by the soldiers, but white bread.

Removing the outer bran of the wheat, then subjecting it to an extra round of milling and at least three sifts, yielded fine white flour.

Wheat itself was the best and most expensive grain. The refining process resulted in a significant loss of mass, so white bread had not only a better taste but also bore an intense symbolic significance.

Buba, who had been devouring his food, suddenly stopped, his hands and mouth motionless, as he stared intently at the beef and white bread in Warrant Officer Montaigne's hands, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.

The other soldiers also saw the beef and white bread in Warrant Officer Montaigne's hands. They just took a deep look and quickly averted their eyes, quietly bowing their heads to chew more vigorously on their coarse bread.

"What are you looking at? Eat your own!" Centurion Taylor scolded with a stern face.

Hearing this, Buba quickly hung his head and swallowed again before breaking off a large chunk of his coarse bread and stuffing it into his mouth.

Seeing this, Winters gained a bit of understanding as to why Lieutenant Charles would go back to the main camp to eat.

Thirty-one years ago, the Army of the Provinces had fought and killed "The Butcher" Earl Arlian, and the provinces had become republics.

Twenty-six years before, the armies of the republics had repelled "Madman" Richard, and the Senas Alliance was formed.

The forefathers proudly proclaimed "We were compelled to become independent because of an obvious truth: in rights that belong to us as 'humans,' no one sector should dominate over another. If someone thinks oneself above a segment of people, then they are effectively agreeing to being below another segment."

At least, that's what Winters learned in history class, and he wanted to believe that the ancestors had ended the emperor's rule for this noble cause.

But now, Buba, who had just been grinning foolishly, buried his head deep into his shoulders. The pleasant mealtime had turned silent and stiff.

As he watched all this, Winters suddenly found the food in his hands difficult to swallow.

While eating, Buba kept sneaking glances at Warrant Officer Montaigne's fine bread and meat. He looked at the fine bread, then took a bite of coarse bread, as if trying to convince himself that the coarse bread in his hands was the fine bread.

Winters reached out and took Bard's coarse bread, startling Buba so much that he froze in place.

"Is it that delicious? Watching you eat so heartily makes me want to try it too," Winters said as he broke off half of Buba's coarse bread and gave back most of his own alongside it, "Don't say I stole your bread, eh! I'm trading, not stealing."