Iron Powder and Spellcasters

  Chapter 13 Graduation Package Distribution, and This Good Thing (Part 1)

   took over the post, and Winters and Budd carried halberds and patrolled along the military school fence. They didn't carry muskets, because muskets were much heavier than halberds.

   And there is no gunpowder and no projectiles at the gate, and the musket is just a decoration. If Winters thinks, he doesn't even want to take this halberd.

  Luyuan is not a treasure trove, and the Army Military Academy is called poor and white. The joint-provincial army school philosophy has always been to save as much as possible, and to use the saved money to run more schools.

   Such a poor place where mice have to cry when they go in, and it is filled with strong young men.

   Not to mention thieves, even ghosts have to go around.

   For the school, the main purpose of night patrol is to prevent individual students from sneaking out of the school at night. But catching two officers and students who wanted to escape from the bed would not make a move.

   At the same time, it is very unreliable for officers and students to catch classmates. Winters has sneaked out a few times while his classmates were standing at night guard, and came back in the middle of the night.

   Every time he walks through the main entrance, he doesn't need to climb over the wall at all.

  The two walked for a while, the sky had completely turned dark, and the time to turn off the lights had passed.

   The Luyuan at night completely bid farewell to the noise of the day, and the campus in the dark is like a beast dormant in the shadows.

   Winters often had this feeling on his night patrols: the military academy was not a dead thing, it was breathing rhythmically every moment.

The neighborhoods around    also fell asleep like the military academy. Only the far harbour area never slept, and Winters could even vaguely see the lights.

   There is a place for alcoholic drinkers and service providers who are looking for fun.

   Outside the military academy wall, there are some crude stone tables next to the residential area. The stone table is shaded by a few broad-leaved trees, providing shade on sunny days and shelter from rain on rainy days.

The   stone tables are built by nearby residents, and small businessmen usually set up stalls on the table to do business with the military and students.

   Winters pointed to the stone tables and suggested to Bud, "Sit down for a while."

   "Okay, sit down for a while, I also want to smoke." Bud smiled, seeing that Winters was too lazy to leave.

   The wind is a bit strong tonight, and it is blowing from the sea to the land. The wind brought a lot of water vapor, and the sky above Guitu City was already covered by clouds.

  The moonlight becomes faint after passing through the clouds, and the road is only a little better than a moonless night.

   Winters frowned: "Look at the wind and clouds, it might rain tomorrow."

   Rain is not good news for a person who is on a journey back home.

   The two sat on the stone table, and the wind from the sea wiped away the sweat from their bodies, and took away the heat from their bodies.

  The heat of the day is gone, and it is now a cool and comfortable night.

  Bud took out an old pipe from the small satchel on his body. He first put some crushed tobacco leaves in the bowl, and then pressed it down, and then repeated the process of "loading tobacco leaves-pressing" twice.

  Winters watched Budd finish filling the cigarette, and with his left hand, he kept his thumb on his index finger and lit the tobacco in Budd's bowl.

   This is a little perk of having a good friend of the caster. As long as Winters is there, Bard never has to worry about where to find fire.

   "Ike also said that he envied me during the day. If he finds that the biggest advantage of being a spellcaster is the convenience of lighting cigarettes, I wonder if he will say anything of envy." Winters thought to himself mockingly.

   A considerable number of men in this era are either smokers or alcoholics, and many of them are both. The vast majority of people who don't smoke or drink don't want to, but because they can't afford it.

   Winters is one of the very few people who neither smoke nor drink, and as a spellcaster he must avoid any addictions as much as possible.

  Because Antoine Laurent believed that the addictive "poison" would corrode the caster's will, paralyze the caster's perception, and destroy the spellcaster's spell ability.

   Winters professed to worship no one, but that was self-deception, because of the subtle self-esteem of young men.

  Three years of pre-school and three years of Luyuan, Winters read all the books, archives and letters he could find about Antoine Laurent.

  Public, he sees publicly; secret, he secretly sees. If all goes well, Winters should start writing a biography of General Antoine Laurent by the age of thirty...

   All in all, Antoine Laurent said that addiction is not good, and Winters is determined not to be contaminated.

   saw Bud take a puff of cigarette comfortably and exhale slowly. Winters finally decided to open up about the question he cared so much about.

   "Have you figured out where you're going to be assigned?" Winters asked with concern.

   Under the weak firelight, Bud's expression was as usual, unmoved by Winters' question.

   "I didn't go to find out." Bud replied unhurriedly: "You can guess it without inquiring. It's nothing more than being dispatched overseas."

   After saying this, Bud continued to focus on smoking, a recreational activity that was damaging his health.

   He looked at ease and didn't seem worried at all about his imminent assignment overseas.

   "Where did you make it so easy to send overseas?!" Winters suddenly became anxious.

   But Bud smiled at Winters, as if saying "don't worry about me, it's nothing", and continued smoking a cigarette.

   Winters looked at Bud, at Guitucheng at night, and at the sleeping school, and finally sighed helplessly.

  Bud doesn't feel sorry for himself, but Winters is sad about Bud's situation.

   Overseas dispatch, strictly speaking, means that military academy graduates are assigned to large and small nodes along the maritime trade route.

  The two places close to the mainland are the Holy Muluo Empire and the Freman Empire. The capitals of these two empires are world-famous bustling cities, and the alliance has consulates.

  Being a military attache in the consulate of Huahua World is a beautiful job that everyone is fighting for.

   But the "overseas dispatch" in Winters and Budd's mouth is obviously not such a good job, but is assigned to a farther, more sinister end of the world.

  Tomorrow, Winters will embark on a journey home. He will be a trainee in his homeland, the Ocean Blue Republic for a year.

   This time next year, Winters is going back to school. Because strictly speaking, he has not really graduated, and this year he was a trainee with the rank of warrant officer.

   And the military cadets sent overseas, as long as they get on the overseas ship, they don't even want to go home.

   I don’t even want to attend the graduation ceremony next year, because it will take more than a year to come and go.

  Nominally, the officers sent to various trade points were to protect the overseas interests of the Alliance.

   But many times they are bare officers. If there are no soldiers and no power in hand, there is no chance of meritorious deeds.

  Want to go home? Either be put in a coffin, or survive until retirement.

   To understand why Bud was sent overseas and Winters was not, it was necessary to understand the graduate distribution system of the Military Academy.

   If you want to understand the graduate distribution system of the Military Academy, you must start from the very beginning of the school.

   One of the purposes of the old marshal's establishment of this military academy is to bridge the rift between the alliance countries, especially the differences between the armies of the republics.

  Because the Confederate country is not exactly a "country", but a "confederation", her full name is the Free Alliance of the Republics of Senas. The political ecology of the alliance can be described by citing the classic quote of former Union Secretary of State Humphrey: "Country? What kind of country are we? Aren't we five primitive tribes that hate each other?"

   (end of this chapter)