Chapter 310: Lack Of Ingredients

Adrian looked across the ranks, making eye contact with his men.

"And apart from that, your secondary goal is to make sure that you keep the allied army’s overall morale high. Having thousands of people sad, starving, and depressed is not really good for anything. Sad people will not be able to fight to their fullest extent. Without any drive and without any clear goal, it is incredibly hard to achieve any real results."

He smiled confidently.

"So. Your job is to make sure that everyone is having a decently good time here in this military camp, and to give them the confidence that they are going to win this war. Because they definitely are."

The soldiers all nodded sharply in unison.

Of course, Adrian wasn’t exactly sure that they were going to win but he was sure of the fact that he had a higher chance of taking a win considering everything, even if the army lost against the Avarice’s defence.

Some of the older veterans instantly understood the deeper meaning of what Adrian was actually saying, and they respected him for that strategic foresight. And then there were the other recruits who were just insanely hyped up anyways just because it was a brand new, important order that their Lord had directly given them. And it also meant learning a highly valuable new survival skill, and none of them wanted to disappoint Adrian.

Seeing all of them nod in agreement, Adrian nodded back in satisfaction.

He just casually looked around the front lines and quickly hand-picked exactly thirteen knights instead of letting them volunteer because the great blessed lord of Oresfall had short term memoriy issues.

The ones he picked had the five elite kids along with 8 other soldiers who were all knights. On top of the original thireen, Aria, Claire, and Serena were also naturally picked to join his group.

And Adrian walked back with them directly to his new kitchen tent which looked pretty empty at the moment.

Adrian looked at the firepits and the trench before he turned his head to look at the small wooden warehouse that was constructed nearby. It looked like a cheap, temporary warehouse made from thin planks of wood.

Adrian turned back to his small group.

"Let’s go inside and check what is in there. We obviously need to use the ingredients that we currently have."

Everyone nodded, and Adrian confidently walked over to the warehouse doors and pushed them open.

And once he finally got inside, he just stopped and stared.

There were literally just endless, dirty bags of potatoes, onions, wheat flour, and cheap rice stacked against the walls.

But there was no salt, no spices, and literally nothing else other than potatoes, onions, wheat flour and rice.

Adrian just stared at the massive piles in sheer disbelief. He walked further in and he finally found a few wooden barrels in the corner, which he quickly walked over to and opened to see that there was pork lard inside.

Looking at all of this depressing inventory, he muttered angrily to himself, which the people near him could easily hear too.

"So... there’s basically just cheap potatoes, onions, wheat flour, rice, and some lard."

He rubbed his face in frustration.

"What the fuck am I honestly supposed to do with this? For fuck’s sake, there’s no salt, there’s absolutely no spices, there’s no chilies. Ah, this is incredibly annoying."

He aggressively kicked a sack of wheat.

"But I guess I can challenge myself to use what is available. But of course, I’m absolutely gonna use my own salt. This is just way too much bureaucratic bullshit."

Seeing Adrian looking and acting frustrated, the thirteen soldiers, along with Claire and Serena, looked a little hesitant to say anything because they didn’t really know what exactly was going on in his mind.

Of course, not Aria. Aria was just completely in her own little world, just happily looking around at the sacks without a care in the world.

Adrian thought about the severe lack of proper ingredients and took a deep breath before exhaling slowly to calm down.

"Okay. Grab a few sacks of each of these things and walk out. Bring a whole barrel of the lard too." he said as he walked past them.

The soldiers nodded quickly and immediately got to work. Adrian walked out of the warehouse with just Claire, Serena, and Aria following behind him.

Once he went back to the open kitchen tent, he looked at the three of them.

"What exactly do you guys think we should make with these things?"

Serena was the very first one to talk.

"We can... we can just give them boiled potatoes?"

Adrian just looked at her. And honestly, she wasn’t entirely wrong from a purely logistical standpoint. Potatoes themselves were really starchy, they filled the stomach fast, and they had a lot of dense calories, which was actually really good for starving soldiers.

But he just couldn’t bring himself to imagine the soldiers actually happily accepting a completely bland, boiled potato for dinner.

He thought about it for a while before he nodded slowly to acknowledge her idea.

And then he looked at the other two, "What about you guys? What do you think?"

Aria and Claire thought about it for a while before Aria spoke up.

"Papa, can’t we just make them plain rice? Because Big Sis Serena said we can also give them potatoes! Rice and potatoes sounds good, right?"

Even though she confidently said this, she wasn’t exactly fully convinced with herself. Because what she ate on a daily basis back in Oresfall was just so incredibly different and vastly superior to what she was even suggesting.

Adrian just chuckled warmly when he heard her, which only made her pout instead.

"Okay. What about you, Claire?"

Claire frowned deeply because she couldn’t really think about anything good at this point.

"Well," Claire started hesitantly, "if we actually had some spices, it obviously would have been vastly different. But we can use some of the lard to do the... the mixing thing with the chopped onions. I don’t really know what the exact term is called, but I have definitely seen my family chefs do it before."