The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 39

The problems arising from incorporating the defeated troops became apparent when they set up camp that evening.

The supplies were the first thing to be exposed.

The expedition originally carried enough dry rations for twenty people to last three weeks. After leaving the swamp, they consumed some of it on the way, and distributed some more to the wounded soldiers in the fortress.

The remaining supplies are now needed to feed several hundred mouths. The first meal was only halfway prepared when the medic in charge of supplies came to Perfit and reported a figure in a low voice: at the current rate of consumption, the remaining dry rations would not last more than a few days.

Chertzov included the few barrels of salted meat and flour that the defeated soldiers had brought out of the fortress in the total inventory, but even with all of these, when divided equally among the people, each person's portion was barely enough to fill their stomach, let alone be full.

Secondly, there is discipline.

The main force of the routed troops was the remnants of the Ninth Border Division. Although these veterans had not touched a bullet for a long time, they still maintained the most basic military skills. They would take the initiative to set up sentry posts when setting up camp and would spontaneously form two columns instead of a mess when marching.

They would even use old bugles to sound reveille at dawn, although Perfitt forbade them from doing so in order to avoid attracting the attention of the infected.

But the other stragglers who broke away from the direction of the capital were a completely different story.

They came from at least six or seven different regiments. Some of their commanders had died in St. Petersburg, and some couldn't even remember their own unit numbers. They only survived by following the crowd into the fortress.

If you make them stand guard, they'll squat down and cover their heads after a while; if you make them keep watch at night, they'll be relatively sober on the first shift, but by the second half of the night they'll be so sleepy they can't keep their eyes open.

Perfitt had to have the flag captain and Ludwig readjust the personnel, picking out soldiers with military skills to form a separate squad specifically responsible for reconnaissance and night watch, while everyone else was assigned to the logistics group to do only manual labor.

This is a reasonably feasible solution.

Those defeated soldiers, who had been starving for a long time, were not good at anything else, but they could still do heavy work such as carrying firewood, helping the cooks fetch water, and grooming the horses.

Give them a meal, and they'll briefly snap out of their apathy and obediently finish the tasks assigned to them.

Perfitt walked around the camp and saw several young soldiers using bayonets to trim branches around a pile of freshly cut shrubs, preparing to build a windbreak. Although their movements were slow, they were indeed working.

She stood by and watched for a while without making a sound to disturb them.

The shortage of supplies finally reached a critical point on the third day of the march.

During his midday break, Chertzov took two lists to Perfit's carriage: one showing the total amount of food remaining, and the other his estimated minimum daily consumption.

He didn't say anything extra, he just handed her two lists.

After reviewing the list, Perfit returned it to Chernzoff, remained silent for a moment, and then had someone summon Allen.

"I need you to help me design a large transmutation array. The transmutation direction is food, and the raw material is wood." Perfit turned to Allen and Morris, speaking slowly but clearly, "You should all be familiar with the organic matter transmutation arrays in the standard textbooks, so the basic structure doesn't need major changes."

The key lies in two places: at the raw material input end, the organic matter in the wood must be decomposed in advance, so that its form changes from solid fiber to basic organic matter that can be directly used by the alchemy array; at the product output end, it is locked into a starchy mixture.

"If these two nodes are drawn correctly, the transmutation array will function. Leave the rest to me."

Allen and Morris exchanged a glance.

The process that Perfitt described was something they had never encountered before in the Langton lab—decomposing wood fibers and then recombining them into edible starch, which was almost touching the boundaries of the organic matter transformation array.

But Perfitt simply sketched the rune paths and array curves of those two nodes on the frozen ground with his toes. The lines were simple, but the direction was very clear.

Allen glanced at it and nodded as if he understood. He then squatted down, took out some special chalk from the toolbox, and started drawing on the ground with Morris.

Perfit stood behind them and watched for a while.

Allen's wrist remained steady as he drew the input decomposition nodes, while Morris added half an auxiliary rune to the output end of the product—he couldn't explain the principle, but based on decades of maintenance experience, he knew that adding a filter node at this position would make the transmutation array run more precisely, and Perfit didn't stop him.

After the magic circle was drawn, Perfit instructed several Ross soldiers to move the spare firewood they had cut down and tied to the wagons along the way to the eye of the circle and stack it up. Then he raised his staff, pressed the end with the Philosopher's Stone fragment to the edge of the eye of the circle, and poured his spiritual power into the transmutation circle through the staff.

Red light spreads outward from the tip of the staff along the array patterns.

The firewood began to disintegrate the moment it touched the red light—not burning, but pulverizing. The intact branches quickly decomposed into fine filaments, which in turn decomposed into even finer gray fibrous powder, and then reassembled within the transmutation array's conversion zone.

One piece of black bread after another took shape from the red light. It was grayish in color, had a rough surface, and a firm and dense texture. It weighed several pounds when you held it in your hand.

The whole process was very quick; the red light in the array came suddenly and receded just as fast.

When the red light faded, most of the firewood on the ground had disappeared, replaced by a pile of gray-brown, black bread neatly stacked on the ground, emitting a smell similar to a mixture of burnt flour and fresh sawdust.

Perfit picked up a piece of bread, broke it open, sniffed it, and then took a bite himself.

"It's edible. The texture is like chewing sawdust, and the taste is like burnt wheat bran, but the carbohydrate structure is stable, so it's digestible and filling." She flipped the remaining half of the bread over in her hand and added, her tone as calm as if she were recording sample data in a laboratory, "For someone who has been starving for days, this is a good thing."

The freshly baked bread was still steaming in the cold air, and the smell of burnt flour and sawdust wafted out on the wind. The defeated soldiers surrounding the transmutation array almost simultaneously took a step forward, only to be glared back by their respective sergeants.

No one spoke, but their eyes were fixed on the gray and black bread on the ground.

Several young soldiers were swallowing loudly, their Adam's apples bobbing up and down, so loudly that even Morris, standing opposite them, could hear them, but none of them reached out.

Cherzov picked up a piece of bread from the ground, examined it from all angles, took a big bite, chewed it, swallowed it, and then turned to the old sergeant standing behind him and gave him a number in Ross.

That's the amount of food everyone will get tonight.

Sergeant Major Rahman paused noticeably when he heard the number, as if he doubted that he had misheard. Then he turned to look at the routed soldiers behind him who were still craning their necks to peer into the magic circle.

Those men had faces covered in mud from several days, sunken eyes, and tattered uniforms, but at that moment, their eyes shone as they stared at the bread.

It wasn't hope, but something more primal: to survive.

Rahman saluted Chertsov, then turned and walked toward the crowd to begin organizing the distribution.

He didn't shout, but simply gestured to point out the names of a few people. The soldiers whose names were called squeezed out of the crowd faster than ever before, forming a crooked line outside the transmutation array, wiping their hands repeatedly on their uniforms.

Perfit placed the half-eaten bread on the edge of the wagon and said to Chernzov, "We can replenish the firewood along the way. We can use bushes, abandoned farmhouse beams, and even dry grass. Don't be too stingy."