Rebirth in a Ruined Nation! The Life of a New Strategist Starting From Now - Chapter 10

A Reform for Food Preservation! (1)

Rufa was a beautiful girl. She had big eyes that had a tinge of red, a smooth nose bridge, and her most distinctive feature was the blue hair that seemed to glitter as it reflected the light from the window.

That blue hair was the characteristic of the Sarshans that lived on the south continent located beyond the sea. 

Only a pure-blooded Sarshan has blue hair.

So if a Sarshan married someone from another country, like a Rudek citizen for example, their children won’t have a blue hair.

Pure-blooded Sarshan wasn’t rare in the Rudek Kingdom since there were many sailors who came to Rudek from the south continent.

You could see a fair amount of Sarshans in Rudektrad, and in the Gedland Port

But a pure-blooded Sarshan at Rufa’s age was a rare sight.  People who came to the Rudek Kingdom from the south continent were sailors or merchants, and they rarely brought their entire family with them. In addition, this place was a knight’s quarter. It was even more rare to see a pure-blooded Sarshan child in this kind of place.

I looked at her as if to observe her, then she hid behind Grantz-sama. Ah, I might have scared her.

“I’m sorry! It’s rare to see a Sarshan girl so I ended up staring! Your name is Rufa, right? I’m Roa. Nice to meet you, Rufa.”

I put on the widest smile I could create and put out my hand to her. Then, she timidly came out of her hiding. She’s like a small animal. Cute.

“Well, you both will get familiar with each other with time. Tell me if any of you need my help, alright? I’ll leave the rest to you two then! Ah, right, if you need extra manpower, just tell me! I’ll send some of our guys that had nothing to do here. Good luck!”

And he left. The handover ended with just that!?

For a while, there was an awkward silence between us. I looked at Rufa while scratching my cheek, and she looked at me too.

“…Um… Well, how about we create the inventory now? Rufa, can you read and write?”

She nodded.

“Um…Can you calculate? Ah, it’s totally fine if you can’t!”

She nodded again. So she had a good education. That means it was unlikely she was sold here as a slave.

“Alright then. I’ll check the content of the box so Rufa, can you go to Grant-sama and ask him for a notebook?”

“Okay”

She spoke to me for the first time. I felt a bit happy.

***

In the future where the Rudek Kingdom was destroyed, I spent 40 years roaming the continent.

I went from country to country, took some odd jobs, and kept living aimlessly.

Every night, I saw the dream of the peaceful days I could never return to. For me, that dream was a nightmare. To see things you could never experience…wasn’t that precisely a terrifying nightmare?

Rather than a new home…I was searching for a place to die…

I have experienced many things in that 40 years. I knew many ideas that didn’t exist? here, and many technologies that didn’t exist yet. 

For the thing I learned while searching for a place to die to be useful now, where I was trying to live, it was quite ironic.

“…It’s all meat.” (Roa)

“…Yes. All of them are meat.” (Rufa)

After Rufa returned with a notebook, she helped me open the boxes and we discovered something surprising.

The contents of the boxes were all dried, thinly sliced meat. Nothing else.

They filled all the wooden boxes in this spacious pantry with nothing but meat. Were the members of 10th Divisions mysterious creatures that could only eat meat or something!?

“Still…Dried fruit…no, at least shouldn’t they have some dried fish?”

I said, still trying to process the sight in front of me.

“I remember hearing the knights complain they are tired of the preserved food.”

Of course! Anyone would get tired of eating nothing but dried meat for days.

“I should talk to Rays-sama about improving the preserved food soon. I mean, eating nothing but meat will also be bad for their health…how about I go all the way and do canning?”

“Canning?” Rufa tilted her head in confusion. Ah, right, canning didn’t exist in this era yet.

30 years from now, a food preservation method called ‘canning’ would appear in the Empire. Using this method, even vegetables could be preserved for a long time, so this method soon spread to the entire world. 

The canned foods were so popular to the point there were many stores that specialize in making them. The essential tools for creating canned food like jars were easy to get, so I might be able to create some. Let’s give it a try, and if it succeeded, I’d send an official proposal to Rays-sama.

When I was lost in my thoughts, I sensed Rufa’s confused gaze, so I hurriedly gave her some explanation.

“I read it in a book. There’s this ancient method of preserving food by putting it inside of a jar then putting the jar into boiling water to remove air.”

“….I’ve never heard of that before.”

Well, that’s because that method didn’t exist yet.

“How about we try it, then? Let’s also try honey pickling. Let’s start making a new kind of preserved food after we finished numbering the shelves!”

Plus, everyone’s morale might increase if they all ate good food before battle.

As I declared my plan energetically, Rufa looked at me with doubt.