CH 11

Along the way back to bootcamp, I bought the ingredients that I’d need to bake cookies with.

I plan on grabbing any of the leftover fruits, candies and other sweet things that the others discard, and begin making my own cookies around the next three days.

Since the skill ‘Fire Mastery’ can be applied to more than just survival techniques, I went ahead and picked that up too.

This time it wasn’t a waste to acquire it, since it’s nigh impossible to learn through training.

From what I’ve heard, Fire Mastery can be applied to cooking, blacksmithing and other processing related fields that require the use of fire, so no harm no foul.

As I experimented with heating a kettle, I found that I was able to heat it faster than I’d previously assumed.

Which is great and all, but… I feel as if I’ve been wantonly throwing skill points left and right.

“What you are making?”

It was during our free time.

An officer approached as I was baking the snacks.

The dough had been made from a mixture of flour, water, a mixture of fruits and herbs that produced oil, like margarine.

A desire for tasty food acts as a good impetus for improvement, and I found that I could create scone-like shapes without the need of something like a rolling pin.

“Would you care for one? I tried recreating some cookies I had from a cafe back in town.”

“Buu.”

I even had Brute taste-test a few of them.

All he ever does is push-ups or other fitness related stuff whenever we’re off work, so I have to go out of my way to invite him whenever something comes up.

“S-Sure.”

The Officer took a bite out of the pseudo-scone, which wasn’t really a cookie.

“Oh? This is pretty good.”

That’s good to hear.

While I made them, a few more of my seniors came by in turns to taste test the batches.

Wait, this is more than a few, right?

“Umm…”

“It’s fine. You’re a trainee, right? You should treat your superiors with kindness! Connections are a soldier’s lifeblood.”

“Right…”

Hierarchical relationships exist even here.

As I mulled over my thoughts, the officer in charge of cooking stopped by and gave a favorable response.

“Yep, not bad at all. It’s pretty good!”

“Pardon?”

The cook then glanced around our surroundings as if he didn’t want to be overheard, before leaning in to whisper.

“The food here, it’s pretty bad, right?”

“Uhh…”

Should you really be the one saying that?

You’re the one making it, after all.

“No need to brown-nose. It’s garbage, right?”

“Y-Yes.”

This isn’t going to go along the lines of ‘Aha, so you thought it was bad after all, you insolent swine!‘ is it?

“Why do you think that is?”

Thankfully, that’s not how the conversation went.

Hmm… From what I can gather, this boot camp is designed in a way to foster the independence of the trainees in it.

You’re supposed to follow orders, but I think he’s looking for a deeper answer than that.

“Could it be that the food is that bad on purpose so that the recruits are incentivized to cook for themselves?”

As an aspiring adventurer, you’re going to need to prepare food while traveling, no?

Cooking skills are essential for that.

If I can figure that much out, so can everyone else.

The same principle should apply to both soldiers and adventurers.

“Correct. But, the recruits have a custom here around eating the terrible food provided, throwing excuses about saying it’s tradition and whatnot. It’s a shame. Even those who go on to become adventurers will only prepare field rations or kill monsters and cook the meat.

Ah… I get it.

That’s quite a strict rule.

“While I can understand the logic of getting used to eating bad food since you’ll never know what you’ll get, you shouldn’t do so in lieu of eating something decent. That said, I’d give you a passing grade. I’m sure you’ll learn the cooking skill soon enough.”

“Th-Thank you very much.”

“Well, a word of advice… You’d prepare yourself for what’s coming.”

Okay?

With that, the senior in charge of cooking left.

And his premonition… definitely hit the mark.

Many of my superiors would drop off ingredients, such as flour and various fruits.

Some of it had been bought out of their own pockets, others produced locally, a few were leftover scraps and the rest came from the boot camp’s warehouse.

Moreover, a few medicinal herbs were secretly pocketed and brought to me.

By that point I had no way out, so I took the iron pot out to the camp’s outskirts to practice making cookies.

The cook from earlier also stopped by and helped out.

From there, it didn’t take long for word of mouth to take over.

Either buy food from a store, or make it yourself.

Not a difficult concept.

Based on what the cook told me, having someone in the regiment who can cook is incredibly useful, and they’re considered to be valuable party members.

If you go off of that metric, I suppose I did pretty well… My mind is laden with these kinds of exhaustive doubts.

During my vacation, one month after entering the training facility… I escaped my seniors, who were trying to rope me into going to a brothel with them.

The pittance I’d been paid thus far would’ve vanished in a heartbeat!

The subtle connections I’d built among the senior officers became apparent at that moment, but I lacked the guts to go through with it.

The upside, however, is that they’d begun to tolerate my nightly excursions.

The cookies I’d been producing had become my own form of pseudo-currency; a method of financing goodwill with my peers.

I’d even given the lady I’d trained alongside some, secretly.

She was surprised at first, but liked the taste and smiled.

That’s good.

Hopefully, it’ll lighten her mood a little. Every time that I saw her she looked as if she was struggling.

Various things happened, and… Two months of military service had almost passed.

“It’s already time for these trainees to officially become conscripts. huh.”

A superior muttered to himself while on night duty.

I’ve already got a rough idea of most of the regulations and functions I’ll have to serve.

After acclimating to the two months of training, you’re assigned to a unit as a part of your studies, where you’ll be taught how to fight and various other miscellaneous tasks.

The training school apparently can’t provide that type of training, and it’d be a huge waste of potential manpower.

So, we’ll receive combat training while there, and depending on the results, you’ll either end up back in training school, or not.

Based on what I’ve heard, there are non-combatants soldiers, but they’re considered to be lower in rank to us.

In regards to combat itself, I haven’t had to experience much of it… thanks to Brute.

Even so, I think my throwing skill has allowed me to contribute to the fights, at the very least.

Sleep Rabbits and Electro-Jellies no longer get the jump on me.

The moment I encounter one of them, I’m able to instantly finish it off with a well placed rock throw.

“Does that mean there will be people graduating?”

I suppose it’s been a short, yet long, two months.

“It depends on the unit, really. You could be out in the sticks, there’s plenty of jobs available to a soldier out there, all kinds of miscellaneous tasks. A soldier’s work isn’t all about fighting.”

I feel as if I’ve heard something similar before.

There’s supply, maintenance and a whole bunch of other units.

“That being said… There’s a large-scale expedition happening in just less than two months time. A large number of soldiers, both new and old, will be deployed, so I’m sure we’ll meet again there.”

“An expedition?”

“That’s right. We’ll be capturing a dungeon with a large sortie of troops. Apparently, a powerful troop that aren’t Magic Warriors or Dragon Knights have joined the country’s forces. They’re said to be a lot stronger than us.”

A powerful troop… huh.

I’ve a sneaking suspicion he’s referring to my classmates.

That ritual is supposed to multiply your strength by leaps and bounds.

In that regard, what would my position be?

To rephrase that, the people of this world are obsessed with an individual’s race, but hair color and skin color are a non-issue.

For example, I’ve been made painfully aware just how much Orcs, like Brute, are hated for smelling bad.

I haven’t smelled anything strange from Brute, not like whenever a truck loaded with pigs would drive by.

Worst case scenario, he smelled a little bit sweaty.

I’d say on the same level as a student who’d just returned from club activities? Nowhere near enough to cause a stir over it.

Maybe their sense of smell differs from mine?

“There’ll be an attack on a grand-scale. A lot of adventurers will be present, so you should try and build some connections while you’re there. If you’re good enough to be noticed, you may receive the qualifications to become both a soldier and a quasi-adventurer simultaneously.”

Oh, right, I remember that being explained to us back at the Adventurer’s Guild.

A ‘Quasi-Adventurer’.

I have a classmate who’s doing something like that.

“You may even see the Magic Warriors or Dragon Knights up close. They’re the aspiration for a soldier… They’re top of the line jobs, some of the guys even want to be put in the maintenance corps.

Sigh… is my only answer to that.

A Magic Warrior is someone who pilots a golem to fight, and a Dragon Knight is, as the name implies, someone who rides a dragon.

Well, regarding ‘Knights’, you’d need to be an aristocrat to be one, naturally.

As for high profile adventurers? They can be something called a ‘Free Knight’.