"Special pass? Captain, thank you very much. I was just thinking that it would be too troublesome if I had to queue up every time."
Shade raised his glass to the captain. Captain Rades was very happy that he could help Shade:
"You've helped me so much, this is nothing. Oh, by the way, I forgot to congratulate you."
He smiled and lowered his voice:
"Champion of the 1854 Tournament."
As he spoke, he clinked glasses with Shade. It was already Tuesday, and the news of the competition that ended last Thursday had already spread throughout the Old Continent. Captain Rades certainly knew about it.
"It's nothing."
"You are so humble. You are probably the most amazing person I know."
Then the captain started talking about something new in his work:
"Don't think that special pass is so great. The garrison of Carsenrick near here has also set up border checkpoints, and they also have similar passes. I don't know how many of these two special passes are in the hands of nobles on both sides. I heard that they have already been sold on the black market."
He shook his head as he spoke:
"If you ask me, the bigwigs above have their own ideas, but such border checks are actually useless except for causing trouble for the citizens and villagers on both sides."
He still lowered his voice when he said these words, but it was obvious that he had been holding it in for a long time:
"Yesterday evening I met a woman with a child. They wanted to come here from Carsenrick. She was a villager from Carsenrick and married a villager from Drarion. Some time ago, she took her child back to her home in the south to visit her parents. She didn't expect that when she came back, she had to go through the registration procedures, but she couldn't write."
"What should we do then?"
Shade couldn't help but ask.
"Let her go back to her village in the south and write a letter to prove her identity. Or ask someone familiar to go to her husband's village and send someone to pick her up."
The captain sighed deeply:
"This is just what I saw. There are many other troubles."
Xia De also pursed his lips, not knowing what to say. The captain saw that the topic he brought up had made the atmosphere a little dull, so he took the initiative to talk about other things:
"What are you going to do in Mikaela Blast Furnace City? Do you need my help?"
"No, no, I'm not familiar with this place yet, so I want to visit both cities before I start investigating. Besides, isn't there a famous Old World wonder in Mikaela Blast Furnace City - the glass blast furnace? Now that I'm here, I have to take a look."
"Then you are really lucky. Although I was transferred here to work, I can't go to Carsonrick."
Despite this, Captain Rades still gave Shad a lot of tourist information about the Mikaela Blast Furnace City, which he heard from his colleagues. In addition to tourist information, Captain Rades also mentioned the famous colleges and universities in the Green Lake area. He still remembered that when he met Shad in Midhill Castle, it was in a local school, so he also suggested that Shad try his luck with the professors of folklore:
"If the Edwards family wanted to study strange knowledge, they would have to ask others for advice. This kind of research cannot be understood by just reading books, right? Maybe more than a hundred years ago, they sought help from the local school."
The captain said that this gave Shade a new idea.
Captain Rades still had the task of inspecting the camp, and Shad also had to hurry to cross the border to the neighboring country, so the two planned to say goodbye after drinking. Shad would still be active in the local area for a long time, and they would have plenty of time to meet again in the future.
While the two were chatting, the bar owner, who was wearing an apron and a headscarf, brought drinks to the table next to them. The three guests at the next table spoke in heavily accented Carsenric, cursing the Delarion army for setting up checkpoints at the border. It seemed that they had encountered considerable trouble when crossing the border.
The men who were talking were all dressed like ordinary farmers. Their faces were red from the wind and a little dark from not washing for years. Their clothes, which looked like they had not been washed for a long time, were covered in patches and their shoes were covered in mud.
They had obviously drunk too much, and their voices were getting louder and louder. And unfortunately, due to the special environment, the people in the Green Lake area more or less understood the languages of both countries.
Captain Rades, who had his back to them, also heard those dirty complaints, but he didn't want to care. However, when the proprietress brought them wine glasses and quietly reminded them to keep their voices down, the man sitting behind Captain Rades, almost back to back with him, suddenly grabbed the proprietress's hand:
"Oh, you damned Delarion bastard, you want to cause trouble too?"
As the vulgar slang was uttered, the sound of the wine glass falling to the ground attracted the attention of everyone nearby.
Captain Rades apologized softly to Shade, then stood up. Without even asking any questions, he turned around from the table and kicked the rude man to the ground.
The man's two drunk companions rushed towards Captain Rades with the wine bottles on the table, and were knocked to the ground one by one by the burly middle-aged officer with a cold face. This made Xia De, who had originally planned to lend a hand, just stand up and have nothing to do.
“Old South.”
The captain muttered something, noticing some unfriendly looks from the crowd. There were more than three drunkards from the South in this tavern. But because of the captain's uniform and the holster on his waist, no one dared to say anything.
The tavern suddenly became quiet, with only three people on the ground groaning in pain.
"You two, go to the camp gate and call the guards over. Tell them that Captain Raddes has discovered the stowaways."
The captain said to the man at the next table on the left, who nodded and walked quickly to the door. Then the captain said to the bewildered proprietress standing by the wall:
"Don't worry, I will take care of these three guys. You should hang the Delarion badge on the wall so that these Southerners won't dare to cause trouble."
Because it is the border area between two countries, the pubs and hotels in the countryside usually hang up the emblem of one country to indicate their nationality.
"Also, their wine money will be charged to me."
The captain spoke again, but the trembling woman just shook her head and seemed afraid to speak to Captain Raddes.
The guards of the camp arrived soon. After seeing their superiors, they dragged the three fainted men away without asking any questions. Captain Rades also walked out of the tavern, and then said to Shade, who had come out a step ahead and was standing at the door looking at the rural scenery:
"I'm so sorry that you had to see this."
"No, no, this has given me a better understanding of what is happening in the Green Lake area right now. I didn't feel that when I was in Tobesk, but now that I'm here I understand what it means to be at the forefront of a battle."
Xia De put on the black hat that he had not worn before:
"But it looks like the proprietress here won't welcome you anymore."
He looked into the tavern through the half-open door.
"Yes, I beat up the people from Carsenrick here. In the future, the people from Carsenrick will come here less often or feel disgusted with this place. If I hadn't done anything just now, the proprietress would have been taken advantage of. She runs a tavern here, so it's impossible that she has encountered such a thing for the first time... But I just couldn't help it."
The captain shook his head and said goodbye to Shade:
"Mr. Watson, I'm sorry to have wasted your time. Let's say goodbye for now. Come find me when you have time. I'm always in the camp. If I had time today, I would really like to see your current Rhodes deck."
"Thanks again for the special pass."
Shade said, and then looked at the three men being carried away by the guards. The onlookers were discussing the fate of the three men. This kind of trivial matter was not punishable by hanging, but hard labor in the military camp was inevitable:
"Captain, you're probably going to be getting busier and busier these days."
The border area is still a rural area between the two countries, but it is not difficult to find a carriage on the Carsenrick side.
The border between the two countries has been a major transportation route since long ago, and there are special horse-drawn carriages waiting here to pick up passengers. However, these are not the kind of horse-drawn carriages in the city that pick up one or two passengers and then set off. Instead, they wait until the carriage is full before setting off.
Most of these carriages have no roofs, and if it weren't for the comfortable seats, they would be no different from the carriages used to transport grain. Xia De was the second person to negotiate a price and get on the carriage. He didn't have to wait too long before four more guests negotiated a fare with the coachman and got on. Then the group officially set off.
Such a trip was also very interesting for a stranger. During the journey with the sound of horse hooves and bells, he did not forget to observe his fellow travelers. The gentleman who came before him was dressed very similarly to Shade, both wearing black coats and dirt-resistant pants. However, the gentleman's hat and boots looked more upscale, and the handkerchief hanging from his pocket was not as good as Shade's - Shade's handkerchiefs were all prepared by Leicia.
The guests who boarded the carriage after Shad didn't look that interesting. The four of them split into two groups, the first of which was a country woman with a headscarf and a teenage boy carrying a basket of eggs, and the second was an elderly couple leaning against each other.
Shade was not the only one who was bored with the journey and not very interested in the countryside. While Shade was observing people, others were also observing him.
So, the gentleman who boarded the carriage before Shade, after confirming that Shade was the only fellow traveler in the carriage who might have something in common with him, started to talk first:
"Sir, you don't look like you're from Green Lake."
"How do you know that?"
Shade asked with a smile, also happy to have someone to talk to.