Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

And so Heivia threw aside his shovel, grabbed his military rifle, and headed outside the base zone. A conifer forest that seemed to jut out of the white snow surrounded the area. It was an area of nature that seemed like it would have more wild animals than they could ever want.

Quenser had been dragged along, but he put down the rifle Heivia had shoved into his arms.

“Let’s go back. The superiors will come after us if they find out. I can already hear them going on about lacking a love for animals or something.”

“C’mon, I know you’d rather have some juicy meat over those rations that taste like petroleum jelly. And I don’t understand why they praise you if you shoot an enemy soldier, but they get mad if you shoot an animal.”

“That’s because bullets aren’t free. They used the tax money to buy them in order to kill enemy soldiers, so I’m betting they just don’t want us wasting them,” explained Quenser, but Heivia was not listening.

He was heading deeper and deeper into the thick forest, following deer tracks in the snow.

(…I’m not going along with this.)

Quenser picked back up his rifle and sat on a nearby stone.

He looked back toward the maintenance base zone.

However, he was not looking at a line of thick reinforced concrete buildings. The base zone Quenser belonged to was a mobile base, so it was made up of a large collection of vehicles. These base vehicles were much larger than even large trailer trucks. The soldiers’ quarters, the radar control tower, and everything else were located onboard those large vehicles. Even the Object maintenance area was put together by lining up several giant trucks that were dozens of meters long.

That was yet another aspect of the rules of war that Objects had changed.

Rather than fortifying a single defensive position, it was more militarily important to be able to swiftly get the Object to any place it needed to be.

Quenser thought as he stared at that base of the new age.

(My superiors with their military decorations are sitting in a warm room sipping coffee as they wait for the Object to return.)

However, holding a grudge was not going to lessen the Alaskan chill and Heivia was right about Quenser being tired of the bland and tasteless rations.

Quenser dug through the pocket of his military uniform that he was still not used to wearing. He pulled out the survival kit he had been issued along with the knife he did not know how to use. The kit had everything needed to treat wounds as well as tools to start a fire or catch a fish.

(In an age where Objects deal with everything, even this is a waste of taxes.)

When stored, the fishing pole was only about as long as a ballpoint pen, but when extended, it was around 50 centimeters and looked like the kind of pole that would be used to catch wakasagi. However, it was made of a military carbon something-or-other so its strength and flexibility were exceptional. Instead of bait, the kit had a few different types of lures. It seemed they had tried to find a way to allow one to fish without wasting any bait.

Quenser walked around for a bit and found a meandering stream. He broke the ice covering the surface and let the fishing line hang down into the water.

“Ahh, today sure is a peaceful day,” he muttered despite being on the front line of a battlefield.