Chapter 326: Take It Off, Claire

"Well I could do it," Adrian finally said. "But I don’t like discriminating between different parties in my camp. If the soldiers are going to eat something, you guys are going to have to eat the exact same thing."

He crossed his arms.

"So if you want something fancy with multiple side dishes and all of that, then you will have to provide me the raw ingredients to serve the entire army that exact same dish. I am not going to sit around and make you special stuff."

Sebastian was slightly taken aback by the blunt refusal.

He looked back at the other nobles.

"Guys, why don’t we just eat with the soldiers tonight?" Sebastian asked them. "We can make our final decision after that. Trust me on this. I have tasted his food and it is extremely good. They are simple dishes but they are incredibly heartwarming."

The nobles just looked at each other.

It was pretty clear that they weren’t entirely convinced by the idea of eating peasant food, but they still decided to give Sebastian some face. They slowly nodded in agreement.

Adrian just chuckled when he saw that.

"Okay fine then," he said. "You guys can join the soldiers. No one is stopping you guys from grabbing a plate. Just go and stand in line."

He then turned to look at Frankenstein.

"Also, when are all the vegetables and stuff that I asked you to bring going to arrive?"

Frankenstein stepped up since his territory was the closest one to the camp.

"It should be here by the afternoon," Frankenstein replied. "Perfectly in time for you to start cooking dinner."

Adrian nodded.

"Okay great then. You can expect something nice this time."

The nobles nodded and Sebastian actually looked pretty excited about it. A few other people standing nearby were excited too, mainly Claire, Serena, Aria, and the rest of his inner circle.

Adrian excused himself from the group and walked straight back to his own tent.

The moment he got inside, he just collapsed onto the small military cot his soldiers had set up for him. He lay flat on his back and just stared up at the canvas roof of the tent, thinking about various things.

’I’ve stalled for three days,’ he muttered to himself. ’And since their muscle recovery is going to take some time after all those forced drills, that adds two more days. So that is five days total.’

It wasn’t really enough time to be honest.

He wanted to keep them out of the meat grinder entirely, but he knew he couldn’t protect a bunch of strangers forever. At some point, they were going to have to fight the war.

’I guess they will just need to get some real experience,’ Adrian thought.

He needed to let them have at least some real combat experience so that they would actually understand the severity of everything that was going on. Most of these nobles just didn’t understand how scary and dangerous it was for the people to fight for their lives since these guys were only used to sitting at the back and watching like they were playing some sick game.

’I need to find a way for them to experience it. Maybe then they’ll understand how it’ll feel... of course, if they come back alive that is.’

He turned his head to look at the open entrance of his tent.

Claire was just standing there.

"What are you doing?" Adrian asked.

Claire sounded a little hesitant and nervous as she just sort of froze in place.

"M-my lord," she stammered slightly. "I was just standing here. There really was nothing specific going on in my mind."

Adrian frowned when he heard this.

"Okay fine, whatever. Come inside, there is something I need to talk to you about."

Claire immediately walked into the tent.

As she stepped into the light, Adrian noticed a pretty big difference in her appearance. Just a minute or two ago she was standing right beside him at the meeting wearing her full set of heavy plate armor. Right now she still had the thick steel breastplate and the heavy leg armor pieces, but her entire arm sections were completely gone.

She was literally just standing there with bare arms all the way up to her shoulders.

Adrian raised an eyebrow.

"What is with the look?" he asked. "Is this some new sort of fashion trend for female soldiers or something? Because I really don’t see this being useful in actual war scenarios."

Claire’s face flushed a little.

"I just took them off because it was itching inside," she said quickly.

"Okay, my bad."

Claire cleared her throat. "You said you wanted to talk about something?"

"Yeah," Adrian sighed, sitting up properly. "I just don’t know what to do about this war anymore."

He looked at her and saw her awkwardly shuffling her boots on the dirt floor. The heavy metal plates on her legs clanked together slightly.

"If you are feeling uncomfortable in that armor you don’t really have to wear it," Adrian told her. "Just take it off. We are inside my tent, and this is a safe place after all. You aren’t fighting anyone in here."

Claire just froze right there.

She stared at him, completely at a loss for words.

In one way, a lot of soldiers didn’t mind taking their armor off in front of people. In fact, most of them actively helped each other take their armor off because of how incredibly heavy and annoying it was to put on and take off by yourself.

But to Claire, this felt entirely different.

Even though she did the exact same thing back home and asked the other female knights in Oresfall to help her remove and put on her gear, doing it in front of Adrian was crossing a massive mental line. Even before the female knights were recruited into his army, she used to have a few maids at her house who helped her put the armor on.