Chapter 307: Military Gruel

Adrian casually walked out of the command tent and headed straight to the open area where the food was currently being made for the regular soldiers.

He walked over and there he saw exactly six massive iron pots resting over open fires. All of them were almost one meter tall and one meter wide. They were completely circular, and Adrian could easily tell, just from a single glance, that each and every one of these massive pots had the exact same dish in them.

He looked over at the soldiers who were supposed to be preparing all of these dishes. There were exactly twelve of them assigned to the kitchen duty, but ten of them were just lazily sitting down on the dirt and slacking off, while only two people were actually stirring the pots one by one with long wooden sticks.

Adrian could clearly see how the two working soldiers were sweating profusely from the heat and how they were exhausted, constantly wiping their foreheads once every few seconds.

Seeing this blatant lack of discipline, he couldn’t help but frown deeply.

He looked directly at the eight soldiers who were lazing around.

"What exactly are you guys doing here? Why are you sitting down on the ground resting when your actual job is to cook for the army?"

The sitting soldiers quickly looked up at Adrian, genuinely wondering who he was. But they didn’t have to think too much or ask questions, because even if they didn’t know his face and couldn’t recognize him, they could instantly tell that he was a noble just by looking at his pristine, expensive clothes.

One of them immediately scrambled to stand up at attention, and the others quickly followed suit, looking nervous. The nobles usually never cared about what they did here so they weren’t expecting something like this.

And the one who first stood up began to quickly make up weak excuses.

"My lord! We already tossed in all of the ingredients into the water, and all that needs to happen right now is for everything to just sit there and cook. So there is absolutely no need for all of us to do the stirring work at the same time."

Adrian just squinted his eyes at the man.

"Were you all sent here to cook or not?"

The soldiers nervously looked at each other and they all nodded.

Adrian crossed his arms.

"Then why exactly are you cooking six massive pots of the exact same dish? And why aren’t most of you even doing any work?"

He didn’t wait for an answer. Adrian grabbed the long wooden ladle which was resting inside the boiling pot that was nearest to him.

He scooped up a large chunk of the thick liquid and conjured a plate in his other hand. Or at least, to the naked eye, it looked like he did. But all that actually happened was that he basically took out a shallow, curved bowl that looked like a plate directly from his spatial inventory. It was none other than a standard wooden pasta bowl. He took it out smoothly using his Dungeon Link, which basically manufactured it for him instantly.

Adrian aggressively dumped the scooped thing that he picked up from the pot straight into the wooden bowl.

He honestly didn’t even know what to accurately call it. It literally had the exact consistency of wet cow dung. It was thick, it was incredibly sticky, and luckily at least it didn’t smell like it. But it looked light brownish, which only made him think of human waste instead.

And it absolutely wasn’t a good visualization for an army meal.

He frowned in disgust as he looked down at it. He casually grabbed a bunch of clean wooden spoons from his dungeon storage and tossed them all into the bowl.

He forcefully shoved the bowl towards the nervous soldiers.

"Now. Come over here and taste it. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me exactly how it tastes."

The soldiers looked highly hesitant to step forward.

And just this single, tiny bit of hesitation was more than enough for Adrian to know that none of them were remotely confident in their own cooking. That was at least the first logical guess of his. Or second, they intentionally made it bad just to get it over with quickly so they could rest.

But nonetheless, under the gaze of a noble, they still awkwardly walked up to him and grabbed spoonfuls of the brown sludge.

Slowly, the first guy who even brought the wooden spoon to his mouth took a very small, hesitant bite at the corner of the spoon before he immediately made a scrunched-up face that just looked like he found it completely disgusting.

And the others weren’t any different. They all grimaced as they forced it down.

Adrian let out a soft, highly disappointed sigh.

He too took a clean spoon and scooped up a little bit of the thick, paste-like thing inside the bowl before he slowly brought it to his mouth to test it.

The taste itself was just completely, utterly bland.

It barely had any salt. It had no spice, no sourness, no umami and nor was there any sort of sweetness. There was literally almost no proper flavour in it other than wheatiness.

The one single basic thing that would immediately elevate the dish to an edible status was nothing but salt. But even with that potential fix, there was one major thing that Adrian absolutely didn’t like, and that was the texture.

He hated the slimy texture of this dish. Yes, it could theoretically feed a bunch of hungry soldiers at the same time, and it definitely looked like it was extremely easy to make in bulk. But Adrian just couldn’t physically bring himself to like it or accept it.

He logically wouldn’t mind eating it if he was situation where he had nothing else to eat, but this would be his last priority.