At the Northern Fort V1C7

At the Northern Fort V1C7: The Vice Captain Feeds the Fox (1)

The Northern Fort was entrusted to the 9th Branch of the Kingdom’s Knight Order.

Its Vice Captain——which was the second-highest position in the branch, Grail, recently found a new pleasure in life.

Though he was both respected and feared by his subordinates, right now the sharp glint in his eye had grown softer as he stared at a certain living creature.

 

It was a fox cub that had settled down in the shed next to the barracks four days ago.

He had not checked himself, so he did not have any definite proof, but Grail felt that it was probably a female fox. Lovely and shy, she somehow gave off the feeling of a [girl].

 

While she normally woke up earlier than Grail, today it seemed that she had slept in. Inside the old shed, she was wrapped up in a blanket and was sleeping peacefully.

She looked a bit too small to be on her own, but he hadn’t seen the mother fox nearby yet. Grail’s hypothesis was that she had either been separated from her parents or abandoned, and then ended up wandering here on her own. She didn’t seem capable of procuring food herself, since he had never seen her hunting before.

 

Giving the sleeping fox cub a side glance, he left the window. After readying a change of clothes and changing, Grail headed to the dining hall in the premises. The dining hall exclusively served the knights working in the fort.

Maybe because it was still early, there was a sparse crowd when he entered. Though after about 30 minutes are so, the number of people would surely spike all at once.

 

“Good morning, Vice Captain.”

“Yeah, morning.”

 

While exchanging greetings with his subordinates who were also early risers like himself, Grail took his breakfast tray. After sitting alone and silently eating, he called out to the head chef while he was returning the tray and utensils. The head chef had worked in the fort for a long time, and was a middle-aged man with a good physique.

 

“Could I get the morning portion?”

“Ohh, Vice Captain-san. I made sure to put something aside specially.”

 

He had heard the stories from Grail and knew of the fox cub’s existence. And he always helped to prepare her meals.

Since he just had to prepare something with a lighter seasoning compared to the meals prepared for the knights, it wasn’t particularly difficult to manage. Today’s breakfast for the baby fox was a soup with turnips, cabbage, and bacon in it, together with bread that was soaked in the soup. Soup-type meals for breakfast were common.

Though I thought that foxes only liked eating meat, that didn’t seem to be the case for the fox cub. She ate vegetables, bread, and fruits happily.

On the contrary, she seemed to be bad with raw meat. Even though she’d happily eat meatballs and cooked meat, the one time I tried giving her fresh deer meat that was dripping with blood, she made a rather disgusted face and shrunk back bit by bit.

Maybe she had been raised off her mother’s milk up until now, so she didn’t recognize raw meat as food?

 

“This’ll be the first time giving her turnips. I hope she likes it.”

 

The head chef said while holding out a dish with food on it. Since the knights would eat anything voraciously, he didn’t pay as much heed to their food, but he took extra care for the fox cub’s food. She didn’t seem to like green peas that much, seeing how they were left behind on the clean plate yesterday.

 

“It doesn’t have any particularly unique taste to it, so it should be fine. Thanks as always.”

 

When Grail said that-

 

“It’s fine. I’m pretty happy to see her finish the plate.”

 

-the head chef laughed in response. While he hadn’t seen the fox in person yet, he was excited like a grandfather who had just gotten a grandchild. Apparently he was going to make jerky for the fox cub today.

Making a wry smile after seeing the head chef’s high spirits, Grail took the fox cub’s breakfast portion and returned to his room in the barracks.

 

Upon opening his room’s door, he saw the fox cub plastered onto the window. She probably woke up while Grail was at the dining hall.

Though she was stretching her neck out from on top of the wooden crate, from Grail’s point of view, all he could see were her front paws placed on the window, together with her large ears and the top half of her face.

She was probably hungry, and her appearance as she sniffed about while trying to peek into the room was destructively adorable.

It made even Grail, whose expression rarely changed, unconsciously smile.

 

“Food’s here.”

 

As Grail approached and opened the window, the fox cub quickly jumped down from the wooden crate and took a distance. While he felt she had become pretty used to him, it seemed that she was still scared of getting too close. Even after he left the dish with soup in it on the second step of the wooden crates, she loitered around it without approaching.

However, as soon as Grail closed the window, she quietly jumped onto the crate and started eating.

When he first started feeding her, she’d get nervous just from having Grail’s gaze turned towards her, but now as long as the window was between them, she was okay even with him watching her close by.

From time to time, she would look up and reconfirm what Grail was doing while moving her mouth and gobbling down.

 

“See you in the evening.”

 

Grail tapped on the closed window with his finger and called out to the fox cub. Each and every thing she did was amusing, and while he would never get tired of watching her, unfortunately, it was time for training.

Leaving the room, he headed for the training grounds outside.

 

As Vice Captain, much of Grail’s work involved desk work, with him having stare outs with documents. Even during training, he had to supervise his subordinates, so he lost the opportunity to move his body until he tired out. 

That was why prior to starting his work every day, he would train his body on his own. He would complete a basic training menu (though if the other knights were to do the same menu, they’d be rendered unable to move for a whole day) consisting of muscle training, long distance running, and practice swings.

Seeing Grail do this, his subordinates secretly called him [Iron Man] out of awe, but this fact was unknown to the man himself.

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