RPAGF Chapter 3 Monster?
Chapter 3 Monster?
After Thorne led his people back to their homes, he continued walking toward the woods not far away.
After all, although there is now a dilapidated village on his territory, it is at most a change from starting from 0 to starting from 0.5. It is a slight improvement, but not very meaningful.
In plain terms, he still needs to personally continue developing the farming, since he sees no farmland or pastures around the village.
To prevent themselves and the others from starving to the point of collapse and dying within a few days, they need to build a wooden bridge across the river. They also need to make a batch of hoes to cultivate wheat fields on the other side of the river.
In addition, you need to dig through the soil layer as soon as possible to reach the rock layer before you can continue making stone tools.
Soon, he carried another tree back, and then he saw a jumble of odds and ends scattered in the open space in the center of the village.
There was a worn-out axe, a few pieces of dry firewood, half a dry, gritty-looking piece of black bread, and a berry branch that looked like it had just been broken off from a berry bush.
"Is this their way of thanking me?" Thorne threw the log off his shoulder to the ground and looked at the dilapidated objects in front of him with a sigh.
"It's not gratitude, it's a silent submission. After all, you can't expect a group of illiterate farmers to kneel down and swear allegiance to you like knights, can you? The fact that they've done this already shows their stance."
Alex walked over and looked at the dilapidated things in front of her. Although she couldn't hide the disgust in her eyes, well, she couldn't ask these villagers to do any better.
"You know what, I think I'm starting to feel like a lord. At least they all seem to like me, don't they?" Thorne scooped up the things on the ground and placed them in the shade of a wooden shack.
Immediately afterwards, he resumed beating the poor log he had carried, first hammering out four planks, then making it into a workbench and placing it on the ground with a thud.
"What is this?" Alex asked, leaning closer with some curiosity.
"You can think of this as my alchemy workbench," Thorne said, picking up two planks from the ground.
To Alex's surprise, the wooden plank, which was a full cubic meter in size, fell into Thorne's hands and turned into two small cubes that circled his fingertips.
Next, he arranged the two small squares vertically on the nine-square grid on the worktable in front of him. The next moment, the two wooden boards melted together like putty, eventually turning into four wooden sticks.
"Wow... wait, don't proceed to the next step, let me compose myself first." After saying this, Alex rubbed her temples as if she were a little tired: "You can control the shape of matter, even if that matter is hard?"
"In a way, yes." Thorne thought for a moment and answered in the same way, although he felt that he might be being underestimated. But he was not in the mood to explain.
As he spoke, he picked up a few more planks from the ground and placed them on the nine-square grid of the worktable along with the sticks in his hand.
As the planks and sticks are arranged and combined in a specific way, the materials merge together again in the next moment, eventually becoming a wooden axe.
He then made more planks and sticks, and more wooden axes.
He neatly laid the wooden axes on the ground and called out towards the village, which had just returned to its rooms at his signal: "Thank you all for coming with me to the forest over there to cut down more timber. Today we need to build a wooden bridge to the other side of the river, and then I will lead you to cultivate wheat and make bread on the other side to obtain food."
After Thorne finished speaking, he picked up a wooden axe and walked towards the forest not far away.
Alex was puzzled as she watched Thorne walk into the forest with his axe, without threatening or bribing his people.
Although she had already labeled Thorne as someone who was bad at personnel management, she had at least mentored apprentices, even if he hadn't managed people before.
Apprentices are the type who only move when instructed, and won't move unless told to. And these people, even more clumsy and apathetic than the apprentices, are even more so; she didn't believe Thorne wouldn't know this.
So, is this about making oneself the bad guy while pretending to be the good guy? He should have told him that himself, otherwise, how would the responsibility be divided if something went wrong? That's the professional ethics of a mechanical engineer.
She quickly returned with her axe to Thorne and began hacking away at a tree, asking as she chopped, "Are you asking me to order or coerce them?"
"I don't think it's necessary to be so extreme," Thorne said, stopping his axe and smiling. "Besides, I think they will come. The supplies that the villagers spontaneously brought out in the open space of the village just now already speak for themselves."
"I think it's more like the taxes they pay for you, just to appease you as the lord who also acts as the tax collector. If you want them to come out and work voluntarily, you'll probably have to prepare two whips and corresponding labor and laws."
As Alex spoke, she put down the axe, pulled out one of the leather straps from her overalls, and decided to be the bad guy herself. There was no way around it; somehow, a white cotton ball had emerged from that big dye vat of the capital. Since he was unwilling to be the bad guy, she would have to take on the role herself.
The moment she turned around, a look of confusion appeared on her face. She stood there for a moment, thought about it, then fastened her belt back onto her overalls, picked up her axe, and went back to chop down the tree.
She saw the figures carrying axes approaching in the distance. Clearly, she didn't need to be the villain right now.
She didn't quite understand why, but after calming down and thinking about it for a while, she was able to come up with a reason for it.
After all, conformity and admiration for the strong can be considered two of the fundamental codes of human beings, and perhaps they don't need to be distinguished so clearly. These two can also be regarded as a kind of trait.
A large number of people can be a form of strength. On the other hand, if a person becomes strong enough, even a large number of people will appear weak compared to him, and the weak are destined to be conquered by the strong.
Powerful natural disasters will conquer these people, powerful tax officials will conquer these people, powerful bandits and mountain bandits will conquer these people.
Correspondingly, the powerful figure that is constantly cutting down trees will also conquer these people.
And so, the first conquered man staggered out of the village house, picked up the wooden axe from the ground, and headed toward the woods.
Following closely behind were the second, the third, the fourth...
As Thorne felled another tree, he saw a familiar yet unfamiliar face appear opposite him.
He glanced at the wooden axe in the other man's hand, then at the other villagers who also carried wooden axes, and slowly walked towards the woods. Thorne smiled and asked, "What's your name?"
"Leicester, my lord," Leicester said as he swung his sword at a tree he thought he could probably cut down.
"Thank you very much. Please rest assured, you don't need to cut many. Apart from the ones I cut, only four to six trees will be enough."
After Thorne finished speaking, Lester simply nodded and mechanically began chopping down trees. However, his hesitant expression clearly indicated that he wanted to say something but refused to.
Thorne noticed his expression and said, "Please say what you want to say."
"My lord, I don't think your construction here is of any use. No matter how you build it, these things will be lost as soon as those monsters come."
Lester spoke as if he had exhausted all his courage. After he finished speaking, he didn't dare to raise his head or open his eyes. He just kept chopping down the trees in front of him silently, as if waiting for a whip to lash him at any moment.
Alex then asked curiously, "Are those monsters you mentioned very powerful, comparable to those two trees?" She then pointed to the several thick, enormous trees lying behind Thorne.
"Very powerful," Lester said decisively. "Legend has it that he was an evil necromancer who could manipulate countless dead people and skeletons."
Thorne was somewhat surprised. Necromancers... weren't those supposed to have been wiped out by the Kingdom's Spellcasters' Guild?
Moreover, the cost of training a necromancer is not low. How could a wild necromancer appear in this remote and impoverished place?
After much thought, it's highly unlikely that a legitimate necromancer would appear here. If it were a genuine necromancer, they would definitely not even bother with this small village.
Even if they took a liking to him, they wouldn't leave these people alive, so at most he would just be a mage apprentice who accidentally learned a couple of necromancy spells.
A necromancer apprentice is not so difficult to deal with. Apprentices do not have the elusive spells of a real necromancer; they only have the most basic ability to control corpses.
The corpses that a necromancer can control are not created out of thin air, but rather real corpses that are transformed into undead servants. There have been no reports of large-scale natural or man-made disasters in the vicinity, so the undead army under this necromancer's command cannot be large.
Ultimately, they can only be compared to a mercenary squad that is not afraid of pain, injury, or death, and their combat intelligence is not even as strong as that of an ordinary mercenary squad.
Those fragile undead could be easily killed by me with one hand, but that was back then. Now that I've become a lord with land and people, I certainly can't just wield a greatsword and go on a rampage.
After all, he can only make wooden swords nowadays, which are really not very harmful.
However, even if he couldn't wipe them all out by himself, he could still protect the village and repel the undead mercenary group.
Thinking of this, he looked at Lester and asked, "Do you have any dreams? For example, that your village would be like a big city, with impenetrable walls on all four sides?"