Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

The refugee camp, once without boundaries, was now encircled by two rings of "walls" made of wooden stakes and ropes.

Approximately six meters separated the two walls, and soldiers clad in armor patrolled the space in between.

Any refugee who dared to enter the open space between the walls would be whipped as punishment, and if they reoffended, they would be hanged—these were the rules personally established by Bard.

"No escaping! No shouting! Don't snatch food during porridge distribution!" These were the three rules Bard set for the refugees, and the punishments were monotonous, only two: whipping for first-time offenders and hanging for repeat offenders.

The corpses hanging from the stakes in the open space served as the most straightforward warning.

Even Andre and Tang Juan felt that Bard was going too far, not to mention Winters, Moritz, and Mason.

But Bard was determined to carry on this way.

Major Ronald had no good solutions for dealing with the refugees; he selected young and strong men to be soldiers, and the rest were thrown outside the city, receiving some overcooked wheat porridge daily.

He was only delaying.

Winters and Bard, on the other hand, wanted to address the issue thoroughly.

...

"What's your name?" Winters asked without looking up.

The trembling refugee farmer in front of him replied, "Peter."

Behind Peter, disaster victims wearing tattered clothes formed a long queue that seemed endless, stretching deep into the refugee camp.

They weren't queuing out of discipline; the pain from the whips and batons was too much.

Hearing the farmer calling himself Peter, Winters felt a splitting headache, for this was the fourteenth Peter he had encountered that day.

There was little choice, as commoners and nobles alike repetitively used those typical names.

Not to mention that some noble clergy even restricted the choice of names, decreeing that their subjects must pick from the scriptures.

Many farmers never left their small villages in their entire lives; with a limited population, having duplicate names wasn't an issue.

But Winters now needed to "assign identities," and the duplication of names became a significant problem that plagued him.

Fortunately, he had already thought of a solution.

"Which town, which village are you from?" Winters asked the farmer.

"Qingfeng Town," the farmer answered softly, "Shibi Village."

He dared not speak loudly because the refugee camp was under military law, which strictly forbade noise.

Anyone who yelled was immediately seized and whipped.

Only through such severe methods could the less than three hundred soldiers temporarily suppress the refugees, whose numbers were several times theirs.

This was not a sustainable strategy, and Winters had to relieve the pressure before an explosion occurred.

Looking at the farmer's face, darkened from years of labor, Winters said helplessly, "You're dark-skinned; you'll be called Peter Black."

The farmer named Peter was stunned and took a while to nod.

Winters quickly scribbled a few rough characters on a piece of paper: "You are Peter Black from Qingfeng Town, Shibi Village. Don't get confused with other Peter Blacks."

"Sir..." Peter asked timidly, "Is there another Peter Black?"

"Yes," Winters hummed lightly. "Plenty. How old are you?"

"What?"

"How old are you?!"

"Thirty-one."

"Do you have land at home?"

"No, I grow sugar beets for Lord Kvass."

"Married?"

"No."

"Then you don't have children, right?"

"No."

"Your father, mother, are they still alive?"

Peter's nose tingled: "They're both gone."

"Condolences," Winters sighed. "Keep living well; there will be a way out."

Peter, not understanding, just nodded blankly.

Winters then took out a small wooden tag, wrote "Peter Black from Qingfeng Town, Shibi Village" on it, and handed it to him.

"This is your name; you'll need this to receive food from now on," Winters pointed behind him. "Go over there, show this to that person, and proceed to the Qingfeng Town camp."

Peter hadn't come to his senses yet; he stood there dumbfounded.

"Go!" Winters's eyes unconsciously widened.

At that, Peter understood and ran forward.

He couldn't resist pulling out the wooden tag to look again; it had a line of letters and a string of numbers.

"Is this my name?" Peter thought. Someone had taught him to recognize his name, but he could never remember it.

He hadn't run far when another soldier stopped him.

The soldier roughly snatched his wooden tag, glanced at it, and then roughly stuffed it back into his hand.

"From Qingfeng Town! To the southernmost camp!" the soldier advised gruffly: "Choose wrong, and you'll get a whipping!"

Peter Black from Qingfeng Town, Shibi Village, continued to the very southern end.

After his tag was checked again, the soldier guarding the entrance let him into the Qingfeng Town camp area and even gave him a large piece of black bread.

In the camp, he unexpectedly met a fellow townsman—another Peter.

Before that, he didn't even know that his fellow townsman, known as "Fisheye Peter," was also in the refugee camp.

"What Peter are you?" Fisheye Peter asked eagerly, saying happily, "The lord said Fisheye was unpleasant and awkward, so I'm not called Fisheye anymore. I'm Peter Fisher now!"

"I'm now called... Peter Black," Peter Black replied with a hint of pride.

On the other side, another farmer approached Winters.

"What's your name?" Winters asked without raising his head.

"Peter," the farmer replied softly.

A groan emanated from the deepest part of Winters's chest as his head ached even more.

...

Separating the refugees was seen as an imperative by the group of six; they could not be allowed to congregate.

For the refugees, numbers equaled courage.

A single disaster victim might be timid, but a hundred could raid a village, while ten thousand could plunder a city.