prynovel Chapter 77: A Little Regret
Chapter 77: A Little Regret
The logic is finally complete.
This is not a simple natural disaster at all; it is actually a typical case of a broken financial chain.
Without money to buy equipment, the defenses will crumble. Once the defenses crumble, the undeveloped farmland will be trampled by monsters. Without a harvest, there will be even less money to pay the soldiers, creating a vicious cycle with no way out.
However... it can't be said to be unsolvable.
The roasted whole lamb stood up, his eyes gleaming with the shrewdness of a capitalist. He finally realized just how enormous a pie he was facing.
"Taking down a few armored boars won't save your lives. Because you've lost your foundation of capital to withstand risks."
He took off the rough burlap sack he had exchanged with Lucas from his waist, walked to the tactical sand table, picked it up with one hand, and turned the sack upside down.
With a whoosh, hundreds of brass coins cascaded onto the wooden sand table like a waterfall. The rough edges of the coins rubbed against each other, producing a crisp metallic clanging sound.
In this incredibly realistic game world, wealth is the hard currency that can instantly revitalize an entire village.
These coins are not food or medicine, and cannot immediately solve the immediate problem, but for Archer Village, money represents hope.
The militiamen around them, who were starving and dizzy, all straightened up in unison, their Adam's apples bobbing uncontrollably.
Herina's breath hitched for a second, her gaze fixed on the pile of coins that reeked of money.
"I'm not here to beg for food, I'm here to invest."
The roasted whole lamb rested his hands on the edge of the table, looking down at the archery instructor who was driven to desperation by debt. "This cash is enough to provide you with the liquidity to get through the coming winter. I want to buy out the harvest rights to all the abandoned farmland outside the village for the next six months, plus fully pay the back wages owed to your brothers."
Herina's eyes lit up, but she still tried to maintain her dignity as a mentor: "Outsider, what do you want?"
Two things.
The roasted whole lamb held up two fingers. "First, process my transfer immediately. Second, once you take my military pay, your militia will be under my command, guarding my farmland on the outskirts. Are you in or not?"
Herina slowly raised her head, her eyes filled with wariness and astonishment, yet her gaze honestly swept back and forth between the maple leaf coins and the whole roasted lamb.
"This amount of coins isn't enough; you'll need to pay more."
After a quick mental calculation, Herina came to this conclusion: perhaps these few hundred Maple Leaf Coins would be enough to solve the current military pay and other problems, but what about the next few months? What about next year?
Hearing the archer instructor on the other side make a request, things became much easier.
Roasted Whole Lamb was thinking to himself that he could borrow money from those old guys first. Little Snail had successfully changed jobs, so he should be able to spare some money.
The other guys are fine too, but Xiaoyu is out of the question. This poor guy doesn't have much game currency to begin with, and he has to buy meat for his dog and order extra meals all the time.
"Okay! I'll add another 1000 Maple Leaf Coins later, but I'll have to wait until I get the money at Pearl Harbor."
This offer is worth considering.
Herina looked at her soldiers, who were starving and skin and bones, and then at the pile of gold and silver on the table, enough to sustain the village's life.
Faced with the immense pressure of survival, the ancient and rigid apprenticeship rules seem utterly worthless.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then reached out and gathered all the maple leaf coins into her arms, letting out a heavy sigh.
"Take him to the altar at the back." Herina turned around, her back looking somewhat helpless.
The roasted whole lamb straightened up and dusted off his hands. He'd had his moment of glory, and he'd secured the land, but this was just the beginning. Squeezing the two tons of grain the agents desperately needed from this barren land wouldn't be enough with just money.
He followed the militiaman who was leading the way to the altar. It wasn't the complex model he had imagined from the game; the altar was just a simple wall and a pile of broken stones.
In front of the stone wall is a flat workbench, and the wall is covered with the remains of various bows and crossbows.
The whole roasted lamb, stripped of its tattered leather jacket, lay naked on the worktable. The cold touch of the stone surface made its muscles instinctively contract.
"Changing jobs is not child's play, much less charity." Herina walked to his side, holding a bluish-gray stone slab engraved with a wind totem.
At this moment, her tone regained the sternness and coldness expected of a mentor, "This stone slab contains special biostimulants. It will disrupt your original muscle growth logic and forcibly reorganize your fiber arrangement. If you can't withstand it, you'll never be able to draw a hunting bow in your entire life."
Before the whole roasted lamb could respond, Herina exerted force with her wrist, precisely pressing the heavy stone slab down his spine.
"Ouch! O ...
The whole roasted lamb let out a few rather unrefined groans, its hands gripping the edge of the worktable so tightly that its fingernails almost scratched white marks on the hard stone surface.
He clearly felt a sharp pain in his back, as if he had been repeatedly crushed by a blunt object and then torn apart.
Those originally loose muscle fibers are undergoing a brutal reweaving under the forceful intervention of external substances. The latissimus dorsi, trapezius, and even the biceps of both arms seem to have been injected with high-density carbon fiber, becoming exceptionally firm and full of explosive power.
Large beads of cold sweat dripped from his forehead onto the stone slab.
At the same time, an excessive amount of blood was forcibly injected into the retinal nerves, causing an unbearable soreness in his eyes. His cerebral cortex was frantically processing the surge of visual information. When he finally managed to open his eyes, the faint trails of smoke from the torches, and even the tiny particles flying in the air, became incredibly clear in his vision, moving at a speed that seemed to slow down considerably.
A dual leap in dynamic vision and upper limb strength.
"Get up." Herina moved the withered stone slab aside and casually tossed it into the nearby waste bin.
The roasting lamb propped himself up on the worktable, stretched his arms, and his joints made a series of crisp sounds.
His body, which was originally a bit bulky, now had muscles that were sharply defined, as if sculpted by a knife and axe.
Wow, this is more like a game! You get a power-up immediately after changing jobs.
Helena turned and walked to the weapon rack, took down a blue longbow, and threw it into his arms along with a heavy leather quiver full of iron-tipped arrows.
"Archery is not a magic trick."
Helena watched coldly as he clumsily caught the weapon and continued to teach the correct logic of archery.
"Don't expect any magic spell to hit the bullseye every time. Feel the wind's interference with the arrow, and use the bow to find the critical point of force. Always remember the kinetic energy recoil that the bowstring creates on your hand when it bounces back. The rest, you'll spend your whole life learning."
The roasted whole lamb weighed the blue longbow in his hand, one he had known since childhood. He gripped the handle with his left hand and hooked the bowstring with his right. He tried to exert force.
After passing a certain bottleneck, the bowstring, which originally required seventy or eighty pounds of force to draw, suddenly became incredibly light and was firmly locked in a fully drawn state.
"Good stuff." He released the bowstring, his confidence swelling.
Before he could even process his arrogance, a slap landed on the back of his head.
"Don't leave it empty!"
…………
Half an hour later.
The sun was blazing.
With his newly acquired weapon on his back, the roasted whole lamb stood atop the tall wooden watchtower at the village entrance, overlooking the vast, desolate land below.
According to the somewhat exploitative agreement we just saw, this piece of land is now officially under his name.
But as a gentle breeze blew by and he looked at the herds of thick-skinned, armored pigs roaming the fields, the smile on his face gradually froze.
The harsh reality struck this newly minted landlord hard on the head.
He'd made his boasts and secured the land. But even with his immense strength and excellent eyesight, how could one person possibly kill all the heavily armored wild boars roaming the mountains? Even if all the boars died, how could a modern man who couldn't even distinguish between leeks and wheat seedlings possibly grow two tons of grain in a short time to meet his quota?
The land was so barren that even weeds couldn't grow, and the indigenous people had failed to harvest anything after farming for half their lives. Even if he forced all the militiamen who were paid by him to eat mud in the fields, he couldn't go against the natural laws of plant growth.
A sense of despair began to spread; this wasn't bottom-fishing at all, it was taking over a completely rotten stock.
I should have known better than to show off like that...
Just as cold sweat was about to soak my back, I felt a vibration under the skin of my left arm.