Vinter’s Hollow had never seen anything like it.

  By the third day after recruitment, the muddy fields outside the hollow were filled with marching feet, shouted orders, and the occasional explosion from someone trying to teach “discipline” with a boot to the ribs.

  The so-called army had grown to nearly three hundred.

  But it was still a mess.

  ---

  Karl stood at the edge of the training ground—a flat stretch of field where pigs used to graze before they were stolen or eaten—and watched the disaster unfold.

  One group was attempting spear drills.

  Another had confused left and right for the third time in ten minutes.

  A third had begun a mock sword duel that devolved into a slap fight.

  And all of them were being “trained” by players who had maybe played a strategy game once or watched a documentary about Roman legions.

  Karl sighed.

  “They’re enthusiastic,” someone said beside him.

  He turned. It was one of the ex-Royal Guards—balding, sharp-eyed, arms crossed.

  “But they don’t know a damn thing.”

  “I noticed,” Karl muttered.

  The guard squinted toward the line of bumbling formations. “You want them to learn how to march, fight, hold formation? You need real soldiers to teach them.”

  Karl nodded slowly.

  “Then start with you.”

  ---

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  And so the solution was born.

  Each player-captain was assigned a veteran: former imperial grenadiers, mountain infantry, mercenaries, or Royal Guard.

  The players remained in charge—these were their squads, their pride—but now they had a professional watching their backs, barking real orders, and explaining why you don’t hold a pike by the blade.

  Training improved immediately.

  Formations stopped looking like drunken choirs.

  Weapons were held properly. Commands obeyed.

  The shouting was just as chaotic, but now at least it had rhythm.

  ---

  Meanwhile, another system took shape in the background.

  Rations.

  Karl had neither time nor resources to feed three hundred mouths—especially when half of them had been recruited in exchange for promises of “high protein diets.”

  So he turned to the Star Key.

  And the Star Key gave him access to the shop.

  Food was the easiest to create.

  Cans of thick stew. Oil-packed sausages. Blocks of yellow butter. Vacuum-sealed crackers.

  But there was a cost.

  ---

  Players quickly learned the rule: if you wanted your men to eat, you had to pay.

  And not with silver.

  The shop only accepted **real** things—bits of gold, silver rings, copper coins, heirloom pins. Any item with weight and purity.

  In return, Karl offered food that made the average mercenary cry.

  “This… this is pork?” one soldier whispered, holding up a slice of preserved belly fat. “Is this… cheese?”

  Another moaned with joy. “By the gods, what kind of cow makes this?”

  Players handed out tins and pouches with smug satisfaction.

  Their squads, once muttering about “who is this weird captain anyway,” now looked at them like gods.

  ---

  And word began to spread.

  That the Prince’s army ate like nobles.

  That his commanders could conjure foreign food.

  That loyalty to the Starborn captains meant more than just coin—it meant survival, and comfort, and strength.

  ---

  One evening, a group of mountain archers—men who had once served the Empire but deserted after their pay dried up—approached Karl directly.

  “We were going to leave,” one said. “But your men fed us. We’ll stay.”

  Another, from the borderlands, knelt.

  “You gave us meat. I haven’t tasted meat in two winters.”

  Karl said nothing.

  He just nodded.

  ---

  Later, in the old tavern he’d converted into a war council, Tanir whistled low as he read the food records.

  “You’re feeding them like siege engineers in the capital,” he said. “How the hell are you affording this?”

  Karl smirked. “They pay me.”

  “You tax your own captains?”

  “I feed their men.”

  Tanir laughed. “Gods, you’re becoming a real prince.”

  ---

  Out in the fields, the moon hung low.

  New recruits chanted as they marched in rough columns.

  Players stood at the front, now more commander than clown.

  Veterans shouted praise, or curses, or both.

  And in the dark, more and more of these exiles, rogues, and war-tired killers began to believe:

  Maybe… maybe this is real.

  Maybe the prince will actually fight.

  And maybe—just maybe—they’ll win.