Mage Veigar

Chapter 412: Borrowing Food
Gray Crow City, meeting hall.

Vega held his daily meeting here, and each officer was reporting to him the latest situation in the army.

"Report to the General."

The first to report were several division commanders: "Everything is normal in the army. Although the weather has been cold recently, we have not fallen behind in training and can launch an attack on the enemy at any time."

"Report to the General."

The second staff officer reported: "The defense works have been basically repaired, and all the nearby cities are in good condition."

"..."

The officers finished their reports one by one, and finally the logistics chief stood up slowly with an embarrassed look on his face.

When Vega saw that the person who stood up was the Minister of Logistics, he first raised his hand to stop him from speaking, then rubbed his forehead in pain, and finally picked up the tea on his right hand and took a few gulps, then signaled the Minister of Logistics to report the situation.

"Report to the General."

The logistics minister hesitated and said, "The military supplies are only enough for 10 days. If we don't get new supplies after ten days, I'm afraid we..."

The second half of the sentence is self-explanatory.

A shadow thus shrouded the conference room, as every officer knew what the consequences would be of food shortage.

Veigar coughed and said, "As usual, this news is kept secret from the entire army. I don't want this news to be leaked from your mouths, otherwise you know the consequences."

"Yes, General."

The entire army made a promise to Vega. They knew that once this news was leaked, not only would the enemy be able to rest easy, but the entire army would also collapse prematurely.

"General, with all due respect."

A division commander could no longer hold back and said, "It is not a good idea to drag this matter on. General, do you have any good ideas? If not, I do have a plan to solve the current dilemma."

A gleam of brilliance flashed in Vega's eyes.

He made a gesture of invitation: "I'd like to hear more about it."

The division commander was not pretentious. He gritted his teeth and said, "According to my investigation, I know that every civilian household in the nine cities under our control has sufficient surplus food..."

Having said this, the teacher stopped talking.

Vega did not continue to ask questions, but waved his hand and said: "Let me think about this matter. Today's meeting ends here. Let's adjourn."

Everyone walked out of the meeting room one by one.

In fact, Vega had considered this matter.

After all, it is now the harvest season, and every household must have enough surplus food. As long as these nine small towns are searched, the problem of food shortage can be easily solved.

But this is indeed a temporary solution.

Once he does this, it means he has lost the support of the people. If a war really breaks out, I'm afraid these civilians will become the last straw that breaks the camel's back.

Moreover, an army that has lost the support of the people cannot go far.

This is also the difference between bandits and regular troops in history. No matter how powerful the bandits are, they will never be able to gain any influence.

Therefore, unless it is absolutely necessary, Vega does not intend to attack civilians in the war. Instead, he wants to build good relations with civilians and truly follow the will of the people.

Learn from history.

The Eighth Route Army won the hearts of the people and grew stronger with its iron rule of "not harming the hair of a person".

Therefore, plundering the people's wealth is completely a practice of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. This is why Vega once considered it, but rejected the idea immediately.

But today is different.

He has reached the end of his rope.

In front of Vega lies an endless desert. The spring water in his hand has run out, and he only has a bottle of chronic poison left. He can either die of thirst here, or drink the poison and delay his death for a few days. What should he choose?

With a flourish of his brush, Vega wrote four large characters on a piece of white paper:

"Borrowing grain" plan.

In the end, Vega decided to "borrow" food from the people of the Nine Cities to solve his urgent problem.

Please be sure to believe Vega, this time he is really "borrowing" food.

Just now, he had a flash of inspiration and thought about how to use this "borrowing of food" to lure the jade and make Theon reveal his flaws.

That's right.

Since the enemy doesn't reveal any flaws, why not lure the enemy into revealing them?

As his thoughts unfolded, Vega wanted to slap himself. Even a sage would fall into hell because of some temptation.

At best, Theon is just a person with strong self-control. As long as you are human, you will make mistakes. Although opportunities are given by God, you can indeed use some means to create opportunities and win the battle in the end.

So how do you do it?
After spending a whole night formulating a plan, Vega issued a cruel order to his subordinates at dawn.

"Borrow" grain from the people of the nine cities.

Therefore, on that day, including the city of Jaco, Vega's 20 troops took away about half of the food from every household by force and plunder.

"No! Don't take our food."

"Please, we have four children at home and the remaining food is not enough to survive the winter."

"Bandits, you bunch of bandits, get out of the East Coast."

"Kill you! I'm going to kill you! I won't let you go."

"..."

The civilians were complaining. They worked hard for a year to collect taxes and paid half of them to the government, but now Vega took away half of them. Most people were close to collapse, and their original impression of the East Coast Army plummeted.

"Please don't misunderstand, we are borrowing food."

Although the officers had high-sounding excuses and did not kill civilians without authorization, anyone who was not a fool could see that the army was simply short of food, so it would be impossible to return the food to them even if they were targeted.

"Here, this is your IOU."

These officers didn't care whether the civilians accepted it or not. They followed Vega's orders and gave the family an IOU of the same amount as the food they took as proof. So they slapped the receipt on the table and left with the food.

This is totally like being a whore and trying to be a virtuous woman.

Some angry civilians tore the IOU into pieces on the spot and cursed at Vega's army.

Within a day.

The army under Vega's command has become notorious and has been accused of being bandits.

Now the civilians in the nine cities no longer hope that Vega's army can unify the dynasty. Instead, they hope that the eldest prince's forces can defeat Vega as soon as possible and behead this evil villain in public.

Some of them even felt that.

Even at the cost of his life, he could still assist the army on the west coast and bring Vega to complete defeat.

However, Vega selectively ignored these situations, did not control public opinion, and did not order the army to deal with these troublemakers.

After looting the food.

Vega simply ordered all cities to transport food to the granary city of Nora, and did nothing else.

But these big moves obviously could not be hidden from Theon's reconnaissance troops.

(End of this chapter)