While the Captain was still coaching me about my armor, a group of new individuals came into the tent, in full armor. Captain Ogman looked up, his face brightening up at seeing them.
"Ah, here are the other members of our unit that were out. You can now put faces to the names," he says as he drags me along to the entrance to meet them. "Hey, take your helmets off and meet the new recruit!" He tells the group once we pull up, seeing them casually chatting with each other.
The five of them oblige and remove their helmets, with each of them greeting their leader. "Captain, good to see you." "Captain." "Oh, fresh blood, Captain?" "Of course, boss." "Didn’t expect anyone new already, Drake."
Hearing each of the different voices sound off concurrently was a bit nerve racking. Still, they each look at me with various positive expressions.
"Alright, from left to right, we’ve got Norris, Joster, Kino, Asher, and Dalia. And with that, the unit is all here!" Captain Ogman excitedly rattles off each member rapid fire. I shake hands with each one as he introduced them, with Joster giving the most firm handshake of the group.
I also quickly take note of Dalia, who only seems to have eyes for the captain, to which the man seems oblivious.
"Oh, yeah, Captain, runners have been going around. Apparently, those Avargustians already sent in a ceasefire peace treaty, and command is relaying it to the capital. In the meantime, camp is to be packed up and ready to move by nightfall. So, no sleep tonight. It’s back to base until next deployment," Norris chimes in, reporting what the group heard from a runner.
Then, literally right after he reported that, a lightly dressed man ran up to the tent and told the captain the exact same message. "Alright, you all know what to do: pack it all up and prepare to move out!" Captain Ogman orders everyone in the tent.
He motions for me to follow him as he walks toward the back. "Stick with me, and I’ll show you the ropes. Also, keep the armor on, as it’s mandatory during travel. Behind every tent is a wagon, which is where we pack our tent and loose gear or items."
The man then takes me to my bunk and gets on his knees at the foot of the cot. "The cots fold up. You just have to unhook these right here," he shows me exactly what he means. "Then, you simply pull it up and push it toward the head of the cot to where it is standing straight up."
He then walks back over to the table. "This also folds up, but differently. Un-latch the front legs, then lower the table until it is flat on the ground with the rear legs straight outward."
The captain dusts his hands off as he stands up after having shown me what to do. "Simple. The weapon racks are already flat enough. So, only other things are the chairs which get moved outside, along with any personal items. Alright, get to work."
After the quick lesson, I join the other Knights and start to fold the cots and tables up. Once that is done, we all begin to move all the chairs and personal items outside. This ended up taking nearly an hour to complete as we all finally stood in front of the large tent, with a pile of chairs off to the side.
"Dalia, go fetch two horses for our cart. Ynar, go find a Sentinel and let them know our tent is ready for compression. Everyone else, start loading the chairs and personal items to the front of the cart. Chop-chop!" The captain orders, personally picking up a few chairs himself, carrying them around the tent.
Taking another ten minutes to load up the cart, we all ended up waiting around for the other two to come back from their assigned tasks. Dalia was first, bringing over two enormous horses.
This is my first time actually seeing the animals of this world, yet I was astounded upon seeing the two horses. Thankfully, I had my helmet on, so no one else noticed my surprise. After all, these looked like normal horses, yet were twice the size of the ones from Earth.
She hooks the two horses up to the cart and then begins to lightly groom them while the rest of us continue to wait. Luckily, it was only a few minutes longer as a Sentinel soon flies over, carrying Ynar with a single hand. Placing the large, armored man on the ground, the Sentinel just walks over to the corner of the tent, where the tent identification code is and places his palm above it.
Then, a light blue rune appears for a moment before dissipating. Following the small light show, the tent begins to compress and fold from the right side to the left. Top to bottom, and rear to front. Eventually, it stops after having formed a large cube, the size of a van. The Sentinel nods and flies off, most likely going to another tent somewhere else.
"Alright, good work, everyone. Last bit, need five of you with me to lift up the tent to the cart." Captain Ogman says as he walks to one of the corners of the cube. I decided to join in, curious as to how heavy this thing is in this form.
I went to another corner of the cube, and four others joined in, filling in the remaining two corners. The last two Knights got on either side of the cube in the center to lift from there. We all reached down to get a grip and lift. I immediately groaned out, feeling the gargantuan weight that I felt had to be around the same as a small house.
Still, with six of us, we could still adequately carry it over, lifting it onto the cart and sliding it to fit snugly aboard.
"Rest up. We just wait for everyone else to finish packing up," the captain says as he lets loose a tired sigh.
I walk over to him, as I had a few questions and concerns on my mind. "Captain, that compression isn’t dangerous? I mean, couldn’t an enemy infiltrate the camp and use that to take a lot of us out?"
"Haha, you overestimate that rune. There’s a reason why we have to fold things up and take everything else out. The compression stops when it meets hard resistance, which is why the tent is still so large and not a small cube that could fit in one’s hand. The decompression rune has a similar effect when it expands the tent."
"Wow, pretty intuitive," I mutter lightly. "Well, how long, usually until the camp is fully packed and ready to go?"
He turns to me, a gleeful grin on his face as if excited at the prospect of getting to talk more. "A few hours. Most Knight and Sentinel tents get packed pretty quickly. It’s usually the communal tents, like the Command, Logistics, Quartermaster, Chow, and similar tents, that take the longest. Especially Logistics, with all the hundreds of thousands of items inside there."
"Seriously?! Shouldn’t we be going to help out and speed things along?" I ask, thinking that would be the normal action required to take.
The captain looks at me playfully. "Haha nope! Count yourself lucky you got our sector. Usually, when we Knights finish with our own tents and gear, we go to the nearest communal tent in our sector to assist. However, we have no communal tents in our sector."
"That is lucky," I utter under my breath as I lean up against the cart, continuing the wait with small talk.