Starting with the sentries on the frontier

"I'm sorry to bother you," Zag said, his mouth watering at the aroma of meat broth wafting from the room. But he didn't forget his purpose and brought up the excuse he'd already rehearsed many times on the way: "The Golden Palace has new regulations. They think our uniforms as sentries are too flimsy to perform our duties properly, so they want to add armor, at least leather armor... You know, those big shots always make decisions on a whim and then make things difficult for us lower-ranking people."

It sounded like a perfectly reasonable reason, and David had no doubts at all, since he couldn't possibly go to the Golden Palace to find out if this was true or not.

Besides, he wouldn't refuse business, so he stepped aside and gestured, "Come in and talk. But is it in such a hurry? Making you come all this way so late at night?"

After saying that, he called to his wife, "Lily! Get two bottles of beer from the cellar!"

Zag's lies became increasingly convincing. He deliberately frowned, his expression gloomy, and said, "I'm worried that once the Golden Palace officially issues the order, someone will trace it back to me, and I'll be in big trouble! That's why I came to you for help tonight. All I need is leather armor on the key areas, and the sooner the better!"

Faced with his good friend's request, David readily agreed: "That's easy. Lily can help, and I have a pair of freshly made leather knee pads here. I can also sew two pieces of leather skirt armor onto your outer garment. It won't take much work!"

Zag thanked him happily, "Thank you so much!"

"Don't mention it! By the way, have you had dinner yet?"

This was a difficult question to answer. Although David was the only blacksmith in town and earned a good income, he had three children and two elderly people to support, so he wasn't exactly well-off. Therefore, Zag had no intention of freeloading.

Zhang Rui, who lives in a modern society with abundant material resources, may find it hard to understand this behavior, but as someone who has spent more than a week in the Cabbage Town and has eaten potatoes, cabbage and dried salted fish for a week, he knows all too well how scarce material resources were in this era.

Ordinary families really didn't have a single extra grain of food. In even poorer families, they ate black bread mixed with sawdust, a kind of hard bread that could be used as a weapon for self-defense. Once you've eaten it, you'll feel like you'd rather be dead. It was sour and rancid.

But when paired with hot roasted potatoes and cabbage soup, and the dark bread is soaked until soft, this is the typical daily meal choice for ordinary low-income groups.

The meat soup in David's house was a "delicacy" that even Zag, who had 800 shillings in savings, had never dared to dream of. Naturally, he was too embarrassed to shamelessly ask for a free meal.

Unfortunately, his uncooperative belly betrayed him.

"Uh, um, I ate it."

No sooner had he finished speaking than Zag's stomach rumbled in protest, making him blush almost instantly in front of David.

"Hahaha, looks like I haven't eaten enough!"

David didn't expose Zag's clumsy lie. Instead, he put his arm around Zag's shoulder, led him to the dining table, and half-forced, half-invited him to sit down, saying, "Eat some more! You're still young! How can you not eat your fill!"

Then he yelled at his wife, who had already gone to the cellar, "Lily! Get another sausage and a basket of potatoes! This soup isn't enough!"

Lily was a kind and gentle woman. When she climbed out of the cellar, she was carrying a basket filled with potatoes and two sausages.

She chuckled and placed the basket by the fireplace next to the dining table, saying, "It's a rare treat for Zhag to come as a guest, so the sausages should be grilled until they're sizzling with oil to make them truly fragrant!"

"I want some too!"

David's youngest son joined in the commotion, swallowing hard.

Lily patted her son's head and asked, "Honey, your belly is so swollen it looks like a mud crab's shell. Are you sure you can still eat?"

The little guy rubbed his indeed bulging belly, sighed dejectedly, and said, "Then tomorrow, I want to eat grilled sausages too!"

"Tomorrow probably won't work, darling. How about next Monday?"

"Then we'll have to skip one meal of meat soup!"

"Breakfast or grilled sausage, you can only choose one, darling."

"Then let's have grilled sausages!"

Meanwhile, David urged Zag, "Take off your coat. Lily will sew the leather back on for you when she's free. The leather is all ready!"

Zag awkwardly retorted, "Now?"

David laughed again: "What, are you shy, a grown man like you?"

Zag was too embarrassed to admit that he did have some, but since he was wearing other clothes underneath, he readily took off his outer garment.

As he took off his clothes, he even secretly sniffed them to make sure there was no strange smell before he felt relieved enough to drape them over the empty chair.

Conditions in this world are not good. There is no washroom in the sentry post. If you want water, you have to fetch water from the well at the entrance of town.

Obviously, taking a bath was out of the question; it was something he could only "enjoy" each week when he returned to the Redcurrant Mill to reunite with his nominal mother, Mrs. Marsh. Although bathing in water boiled in an iron kettle and then mixed with cold water was hardly "enjoyable," it was the only way he could maintain his dignity.

If houses in the town weren't so expensive, he would have preferred to move there with Mrs. Marsh. At least the newly built houses in the town could be equipped with running water pipes, so they could have filtered drinking water directly into their homes instead of having to go through the trouble of fetching water from the town's well.

This technology was brought by the eldest daughter of the lord's family who returned to the Eastern Territory last year. I heard that it is already a very mature technology in the royal city, and it has been popularized even in the northernmost territory of Northam. Only the Eastern Territory has not been able to install complete water supply facilities because it is so poor and backward.

Fortunately, Earl Gold Helmet was a good lord who was willing to do practical things. In addition to his own residence, Gold Helmet Fortress, he also allocated a large sum of gold pounds to the three remaining towns in the Eastern Territory: Cabbage Town, Mud Crab Town, and Eastern Territory Port, to rebuild the water supply and drainage facilities, which benefited Cabbage Town.

Unfortunately, this did not benefit Zag, since the funds for the Association's watchtowers were mainly handled by the Abnormal Events Handling Association under the Golden Palace Mage Research Institute, and were not within the scope of the lord's responsibility.

Instead of asking why the lords didn't consider the guild's outposts, we should ask why the guild so blatantly ignores these outposts that extend like tentacles into every town.

Xueqiu commented, "They've always been like this. They avoid doing anything if they can, then apologize when something goes wrong, continue doing nothing, and then 'sincerely' say they wish they had done something else. Tsk!"

Fortunately, Zag has already decided to move away from the town, so waiting another week isn't out of the question.

Based on the memories left behind by Zag that he had glimpsed, and his personal experience last week, he had quite a few private commissions every week, just for those scattered events below level 2. Even if he only intercepted half of them, he could still save enough for moving expenses and start-up capital for renting a house.

Not too much, just add to the existing savings, a hundred... well, seventy or eighty gold pounds will be enough.

Perhaps we could go to Eastgate first, as it's more bustling and offers direct access to Northormouth by boat. From there, it's much closer to the royal city and also much safer.

Moreover, there is a black market in Dongchui Port. We can try to go there to see if we can learn more skills or unlock new "professions" to prepare for making a living in the royal city in the future.

"Sigh, life is getting harder and harder these days!"

While Zhag was lost in thought, he didn't neglect multitasking. Hearing David's complaint, he nodded in agreement, "Yeah."

Although he couldn't quite hear what David was complaining about—was it the weather? The temperature? The increasingly dark clouds? Or the increasingly barren land?

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【Cabbage Soup】: Half a head of cabbage, half an onion, a piece of pumpkin, a potato, a carrot, a tomato, and a handful of fresh peas. Mash the pumpkin into a puree, chop the remaining vegetables into chunks, and put them all into a pot with water. Simmer until the soup thickens. Finally, add herbs, basil, and black pepper to taste.

The version of this dish without cabbage is the most popular "vegetable soup" in the High Kingdom, but the residents of Cabbage Town invented a version with cabbage and insisted on renaming it "Cabbage Soup".

"It absolutely has to have cabbage from the eastern border region to taste right!"