Chapter 676: The Useful Packages

The receiving yard behind the Sixth’s storehouse smelled of wet straw, axle grease and somebody’s burnt porridge.

Hajin climbed onto an upturned crate with the catalogue glowing, surrounded by everyone who would haul its contents.

He clapped once to quiet the whole yard, "Okay, listen up, round two, and this time we buy the boring stuff that keeps idiots alive."

"Boring like what?" Loccy asked, ears flicking toward the glow.

"Food, bandages, splints, the stuff nobody cheers for until their leg’s bent the wrong way."

’Lenses are fun, but nobody survives the old road by staring at an interesting rock.’

He scrolled past a shimmering tent that promised to fold itself and jabbed the plain rows near the bottom instead.

[ Earth lot | 8,000 expedition food packs | 25 credits each | 200,000 credits ]

[ Earth lot | 2,000 medical-consumable kits | 100 credits each | 200,000 credits ]

[ Purchase confirmed | 400,000 credits deducted from spendable funds ]

[ Wallet total | 6,848,985 → 6,448,985 credits ]

[ Relief reserve | 5,000,000 unchanged | Spendable | 1,448,985 credits ]

Crates thudded across the yard in tall stacks, and two stable hands yelped and leapt clear of the nearest pile.

"Sorry, sorry, I should’ve warned you about the falling part!"

Juna prowled straight to the food stack, pried one sealed pack open with a single claw and sniffed it suspiciously. Her ears flattened at once, and she shoved the pack at his chest like a dead rat on a doorstep.

"That one’s rotten."

"That one is perfect," Hajin gasped, clutching it like a wounded baby, "that’s garlic noodles with beef, that’s my favorite food in two whole worlds."

She wrinkled her nose and backed up a full step, "It smells like a battlefield latrine."

"It smells like victory, you uncultured wolf!"

"Then eat your victory somewhere downwind of me," she sneered, tail lashing behind her.

He tore a corner, poured water from the trough kettle into a borrowed bowl, and waited with theatrical patience.

’Two minutes, sweetheart, then this cranky hunter learns what real happiness tastes like.’

The steam rose thick with garlic, and Juna’s nose betrayed her by twitching toward the bowl twice against her will. Hajin offered the first strand on a fork, and she glared at it before snapping it off like a fish.

She chewed slowly while her ears crept back upright, one suspicious degree at a time.

He leaned in close with both eyebrows raised, "Well?"

"Still smells disgusting," she muttered, then stole the fork from his hand, "but the beef’s mine."

"Hey, that’s my bowl!"

"You said two worlds, so share one of them," Juna drawled, already fishing out the biggest piece.

He took the fork back for one mouthful, and they finished the bowl together standing over the open crate.

[ HearthKeeper: He bought eight thousand meals and immediately fought a wolf girl for one bowl. ]

[ Seoul_Tactician: Juna went from "rotten" to "the beef’s mine" in under a minute. ]

---

Vella knelt among the medical kits with her sleeves tied back, unpacking the first one carefully onto a clean cloth. She laid out rolled dressings, folding splints, washing salve and a pair of blunt shears in a neat little row.

"Good," she murmured, pressing a thumb into the splint’s padding, "these don’t need me at all."

Hajin crouched beside her and poked the shears, "Isn’t that bad for business?"

"It’s excellent for business, since my cool mana stays saved for breaks and fevers that cloth can’t fix."

"And the rule?"

"Every kit gets signed out, nobody opens one for fun, and anyone who wastes a dressing answers to my ladle," she recited, raising the ladle like a royal scepter.

Two young clinic assistants practiced on a stable hand’s forearm while Vella watched them like a hawk over a henhouse. The first wrap slid loose at the elbow, and she tapped the assistant’s knuckles with her ladle without a word.

"Again, firm at the start, looser toward the heart, and nobody wraps a limb they haven’t looked at."

The assistant flushed and rewrapped it properly, and the stable hand flexed his fingers with a pleased little whistle.

’These kits don’t heal miracles, they just mean she isn’t spending herself on every scraped knee.’

---

A thin man with a healing cut across his brow waited by the gate, cap twisting slowly in both hands.

Hajin recognized him from Taren’s yard, one of the drivers Garrow’s men used as shields.

The driver stepped forward and bowed too low, "Sir, may I say something about the route?"

"Say anything you want, and skip the sir if it makes you nervous."

The driver crouched and drew the old northern road in the dirt, then stabbed a spot below the river bend. He circled it twice, and his voice dropped as if the fort might hear him from across the whole country.

"That’s the last real food stop before the road villages, and the fort owns the granary there."

"So anyone who arrives hungry has to beg them for bread?"

"Beg, or pay their way, and you know their price," he whispered, rubbing the scar on his brow.

Hajin stared at the scratched circle until his jaw ached, then hopped down from the crate.

"Fine, then we never arrive hungry," he snapped, sweeping a hand across the stacks, "every wagon carries enough to skip that stop completely."

"And the extra rations go straight to the road villages, so nobody up there needs a fort’s permission to eat."

He pressed three silver coins into the driver’s palm and closed the man’s fingers over them, "For the map, and don’t argue."

The driver blinked hard, then pulled his cap back on with shaking fingers and a crooked, grateful nod.

’You don’t get to sell bread to people you chained, you smug fortress bastards.’

---

Loccy marched past dragging a crate of the camp’s old cooking pots and kettles toward the lead wagon’s tailboard.

"Cooking gear goes on top," she declared, "where hungry people can actually reach it."

Hajin edged in front of the survey cases with both hands up, "Totally agree, great system, very smart."

Her ears swiveled toward the survey cases, then she hopped onto the wagon bed and lifted the top one off. Twelve garlic noodle packs sat hidden away underneath, stacked very neatly in the exact shape of a guilty little secret.

"Fifty silver says you didn’t think I’d look under there."

"Those are... for emergencies."

She folded her arms and tapped one foot, "What kind of emergency?"

"The kind where I’m sad and there’s garlic nearby?"

She puffed her cheeks and dumped the packs into the communal ration crate, then plopped the kettle right on top. He pouted at the kettle, but he let it sit there, and Juna snickered from the gate without turning around.

"Shared food stays shared," Loccy sang, patting the lid, "even if it’s your favorite."

"The beef ones ride with me," Juna called from the gate, one ear swiveling back toward them.

"Absolutely not, that’s theft with a tail!"

’Betrayed by a hare and a wolf over noodles, and the wagon hasn’t even left.’

Ferra’s apprentices called names off the ledger while the first loads went out, one named carrier for every single crate. The driver, both clinic assistants and four Alder riders signed for theirs, and Loccy rode the tailboard, waving both arms.

[ IronVanguard: Food first, bandages second, and he planned straight around that fort’s granary. ]

[ TacticalNerd: Loccy confiscating his secret noodle stash is the funniest audit I’ve ever watched. ]

[ ashley(mod): Second lot logged, food and medical kits only, every crate signed out by name. ]

The wagon creaked through the gate as an Alder runner squeezed past with a folded note between two fingers.

Hajin broke the guide’s seal and read it once, then slowly started smiling at the scrawled little map.

"Our road guide wants a meeting," he called after the wagon, "past the place where the fort’s patrols always turn back."

’Good, a door they never bother guarding is exactly the kind of door I like.’