Mercenaries and Adventurers

Zhao Ji was riding a horse on the county road heading north.

The sky was extremely gloomy, and the good weather of the previous two days was no longer there. It felt like the second heavy snowfall of this winter would fall at any time.

At this time, he was wearing the full set of hard cowhide armor that he usually wore and a clean wolf hair cloak. He was carefully identifying the road on the ground, for fear that if he was not careful, the horses would take him to the wild fields beside the road.

Fortunately, someone drove a horse-drawn carriage through the dirt road on the ground not long ago, and the imprints of the wheels are still obvious.

After Knight Lanisa handed the task to him that day, Zhao Ji immediately took the document that could be exchanged for coins to the government office, and it took him a while to exchange it for the bounty he got.

After getting the bounty, Zhao Ji immediately returned to the hunter's stronghold, picked up all the gold and silver coins on his body, turned around and left Kendall City, and dug a new pit next to the place where the coins were previously buried outside the city. Buried in a small money box. It contains all the gold and silver coins he got from his adventures, as well as the elven coins and dwarf coins he picked up from the ruins.

There is really no need for those high-value gold and silver coins in daily life. The copper and iron coins he usually hangs around his waist are enough.

After returning to the town and purchasing some supplies for the trip, Zhao Ji returned to the stronghold and waited for his companions to return.

Knight Lanisa had informed him that he could roughly tell the hunters that he was going out to kill werewolves, but he couldn't tell them exactly where he was going and how he was going to kill them.

If the companions still have questions, they can ask the hunters to talk to her.

He had just come back, so he didn't need much to prepare for going out. He had enough camping supplies and enough food for him and his horse to go back and forth to Wumihu Village.

Just these are enough.

As for this trip to Umi Lake Village, on the surface, Knight Lanisha handwritten a letter asking Kil to deal with the sunken fish lurking in Umi Lake. Secretly, of course, he wanted to kill Ruf Wolf himself, who can turn into a werewolf. .

The other party is a villager with some status in the village, so he can't force himself. And it was impossible to tell other uninformed persons about this matter, so Lanissa Knight asked Kil to be careful. After going to Umi Lake Village, he first used the matter she arranged to deal with the sunken fish to contact Wolf.

If the opponent carelessly leaves the village, Kil can kill him directly outside the village. After killing him, Kil returned directly to Kendall City to return his life to her without having to explain the situation to the people in the village.

After waiting, the knight himself will naturally send someone to the village to announce that Wolf was driven into the forest by wolves some time ago and was possessed by the evil spirit in the forest, so he must be killed.

And if Wolf is careful not to leave the village, then Kil needs to find a way to provoke him and lead him out of the village to fight. But if the other party gathers villagers who know nothing about this matter, Kil will need to take another letter written by her and hand it to the priest who is the master of rivers and lakes in the village. The other party is amazingly powerful and also very popular. Villagers trust. With the help of this priest, the situation will surely be reversed.

But this is a last resort.

This letter written by Kiel asking for assistance can only be used if the situation in the village is bad.

Knight Lanisa will later reward Kil with different bounties based on his own methods and results.

Get rid of them cleanly and secretly, and the reward is the highest.

Knight Lanessa knew that Kil had recently built himself a set of fully covered metal armor, so she would reward Kil with a modified war horse that could carry the vest and wear the armor. Although it is impossible to compare with the knight's war horse that she has raised since she was a child, it is just a war horse that has been transformed using a special transformation method, but it will still be much stronger than the war horses in the ordinary army.

In order to dispel Kil's doubts, Knight Lanisha briefly explained the relevant news to Kil.

It turned out that Lanissa Knight knew someone in the provincial capital who had this magical method.

If Kil completes her task neatly, Knight Lanisha will inform Kil of the person's name and address, and provide a letter, and the other party will modify Kil's horse for free.

But if Kil fails to complete the task neatly and fights the werewolf in the village and causes casualties among the villagers, the reward will be halved.

She'll only reward you with some tips on combat, and a nice bounty.

But if Kil cannot take down the werewolf Wolf alone and has to seek help from the priests in the village who believe in nature gods, then his reward will only be coins.

Of course, considering the danger of werewolves, this bounty is not low.

That not-so-low bounty was a reflection of Knight Lanissa's eagerness to kill the werewolf who was the source of all this.

After coming back to his senses, Zhao Ji checked several letters and documents in the box and made sure that he had brought them all.

Then he looked up at the lead clouds in the sky, and felt more and more that there would be snowfall later, so he urged the horse under his crotch a little to speed up, so that he could travel longer distances before the snowfall and reach Wumihu Village earlier.

-

The caravan traces on the road continued to the left at an intersection. He carefully checked the sign indicating the intersection.

After walking to the left for half a day, you will reach the southeast ferry of Hekou Town. If you continue to move north along the road, you will arrive at Wumi Lake Village on the edge of Wumi Lake after at least two days of traveling at the current speed.

Zhao Ji pulled up the hood of the wolf fur cloak and covered it with his helmet, and then closed the visor of his armor to ensure that he did not breathe the cold air outside directly.

Although the visor is also made of iron, Zhao Ji cleverly wrapped a layer of fine cloth outside the visor so that his face would not be too cold.

As he expected, not long after he crossed the fork in the road, some light snowflakes fell from the sky.

Judging from the thickness of the clouds, these snowflakes will soon grow in size and continue to fall for several days.

-

A few days later.

Braving the wind and snow, Keir appeared outside the village of Umi Lake on the edge of the big lake.

After entering winter, the entire Wumi Lake gradually freezes. Logically speaking, this season should be a good time for fishermen to walk onto the ice and cut a hole under their feet for winter fishing.

Unfortunately, in the past few years, Knight Lanissa, under the advice of the priests of the Church of the Lord of Rivers and Lakes, which has great influence in the local area, imported several sunken fish from the Northern Dwarf Kingdom through the church's channels to resist the swimming in the Northland. Wolf Queen.

This winter fishing matter was forced to give up.

Because of the sunken fish, they will hide under the ice of lakes in winter, waiting for wild animals or humans to walk by on the ice, and then deliberately break the ice with the horns on their foreheads to prey on animals that fall into the ice water.

Now, although we no longer have to worry about the northern wolf swaggering into the village from the lake, winter hunting is completely impossible.

Fortunately, during other seasons, villagers can fish on a catamaran made of two fishing boats joined together. This kind of catamaran with excellent stability and wide hull is not something that capsized fish can do anything about.

When Lanissa Knight returned to Wumihu Village with an injury, she had discussed it with the village stewards. Now that the Northland wolf has been exterminated, there is no need for the sunken fish in the lake.

At this moment, Keir naturally used this reason to come to this natural village on the bank of the big lake.

"drive."

Gere touched the horse's ears and urged it to complete the last section of the road as quickly as possible.

As they gradually approached, Keir looked at the village in the face of the snowfall.

The large fields outside the village wall have been abandoned for a long time, and the field ridges that were tidied up a few years ago have long been buried by the snowfall in recent days.

Only the old scarecrow still stands in the lonely dilapidated field.

But the clothes woven from wheat straw on the scarecrow's body have long been eroded and ruined by the wind and snow. Some of the scarecrows had no heads, and on them stood a pitch-black crow looking curiously at Kiel. The soil under some scarecrows' feet has loosened, and their entire bodies are stuck crookedly in the fields, looking quite like Michael Jackson's difficult dance moves.

For some scarecrows, it is estimated that the farmer owner who made them did not pay enough attention to it, and all that is left is a cross-shaped wooden pole standing in the field in a daze.

Keir chuckled a few times, but couldn't help but feel happy for the villagers' new life in the coming year.

Being blocked by the Northland wolves in the village has really affected the development of the village. It is impossible to leave the village to farm normally, it is impossible to go to the wild fields alone to collect firewood, and it is impossible to buy cheap goods from the merchants who boldly come to the village.

Not to mention, the newly arrived migrants stopped settling in Wumihu Village after hearing about the current situation in the village.

Kil shook his head. Fortunately, these difficult days are finally over. Starting next spring, they will be able to return to their normal new life.

Looking past the abandoned outer fields, what comes directly into view is a tall wooden wall surrounding the entire village.

The trunk of the main body of the fence is very thick, and it looks like it was built by cutting down tall trees from the large forest to the north. There were many dark red marks everywhere on the wooden fence. With just one glance, Keir could tell that those dark marks were caused by the blood of the Northern Wolf splattered on it.

It seems that as the fellow hunters said, when the situation was at its worst in the past few years, the Northern Wolf launched a large-scale attack on the village.

But there is still no large-scale attack.

There were various signs of repairs on the upper part of the entire wooden fence. There was probably a walkway for people to walk on the inside, because Kier had already seen some village militiamen carrying spears waving to him from a distance.

Since there was a tall wooden wall blocking the outside of the village, Keir was not able to see the inner village buildings beyond the wall. He could only see three tall sentry towers from a distance that solidified the outside world. At this time, there were also militiamen on duty on the sentry tower, drawing circles with the torches in their hands toward the militiamen below.

Keir guessed that this meant that he was a human being.

Judging from the looks of the militiamen waving at him on the fence, there should be no ill intentions.

Also, the villagers' only opponents are wolves, and every human being is a reliable pilaster to them. After all, no one would take refuge in the beast, right?

ah?

-

Due to the obstruction of wind and snow, Kiel's view was not very wide, and he could not see how many gates leading to the outside world in Umi Lake Village. But he at least knew that the road under his feet must lead to a most commonly used entrance and exit.

"Who are you? Why did you come to us alone!"

At the end of the road at the foot of the horse's hoof, the warning window above the wooden gate opened. An old man with a gray beard pushed aside the young people watching the excitement and asked Keir condescendingly.

Kil did not see that the various militiamen who came over were wary of him, so he easily put down his caution and answered: "I am a member of the hunter team under the local lord Lanisha Knight. The new ones who joined this year , being sent here naturally has something to do."

Someone next to him asked: "I've never seen you before. The lord just came back a few days ago with the team that defeated the Wolf King and the Northern Wolf. I remember clearly that there is no one like you in the team."

Someone echoed: "Yes, yes, the lord's men are all hunters carrying bows and arrows, and there are no warriors who use weapons like you."

Kil was wearing armor covered with a cloak, and he was carrying a long spear with a wooden handle slung loosely on his back. The all-metal double-edged spear was still too heavy for him, so he kept it in the house and did not take it with him on this trip.

Kil patted his head and said to the militiamen above: "Find a villager who went to the wooden sentry tower camp to help. They must have seen me."

The old man at the window on the wooden door thought about it and thought it was true, so he arranged for someone to go to the village and call a villager who had been out before.

At the same time, he also ordered his militiamen to open the door and let Kiir in.

He closed the wooden window and said to Keir before closing it: "I've arranged for someone to go, but it's snowing heavily outside, so don't stay outside. Come in first, and then we'll talk about it in the village."

"Hey, don't you want to confirm?" Kil dismounted, feeling that the militiamen guarding the gate were too careless.

The door opened quickly. It seemed that someone was waiting at the door just now for the order to open the door, so after giving the order, they opened the door immediately.

A young man came out and looked at Kil's whole body curiously, and replied: "What can I confirm? You won't suddenly pounce on all fours and bite people. Besides, you don't look like those profiteers, either. What can’t come in?”

Kil shrugged, then pulled the reins of the horse and followed the young man into the tall wooden door.

-

The scene behind the door surprised Kil. He suddenly thought he was in the slums of Kendall City again. What comes into view is one house after another. Except for the gate, which has a little space, if you walk a few steps into the village, you will see that they are all villagers' houses next to the road that leads directly to the center of the village.

This made him open his mouth and say: "What's going on? Why are the streets so crowded?"

Yes, after all, Wumihu Village is not a large village with a population that can exceed Duolalin Village. From the outside, the walled area of ​​this village is not small, so it shouldn't be so crowded inside.

The young militiaman next to him had an embarrassed smile on his face, while he and his companions closed the huge wooden door, and inserted a wooden stick with a handle into the inside of the wooden door to seal the door. At the same time, he explained to Kil as if he had explained it many times: "This has been like this since I was a child. There are man-eating wolves wandering around outside. We have no place to farm, and it is impossible to just eat fish, so the lord let Everyone lives closer together, close to the street. The areas behind the houses on the street are all planted with crops and vegetables."

Seeing that this young man is still in good health, Keir guessed that their usual food wouldn't be too bad. It is estimated that according to this person, relying on the small amount of land left in the village for cultivation can also meet the daily needs of the villagers.

The bearded old man who had been directing from above walked down the wooden stairs next to the gate. He seemed to have a problem with his legs and feet. He limped down the stairs and picked up the words of the young people in their village.

"Thanks to the lord, the villagers didn't want to demolish their houses and move them out at first, but she kept asking for it, so we were able to spend a winter transforming the inside of the village into this."

The bearded old man smiled proudly: "So in the spring of the next year, when those profiteers came over selling vegetables at two or three times the price, you could only see that the backs of every house were full of new vegetables. Haha, those The plan of the profiteers failed, we severely reduced the prices of the vegetables they shipped. After all, the things have been shipped here, and it is impossible to turn around and transport them back to Kendall City, right?"

The surrounding militiamen all smiled after hearing this. It was obviously something that the locals were very proud of.

The bearded old man walked into Kiel slowly and looked at Kiel carefully for a while.

"Hmm, even though he looks young, he seems to have killed many people and beasts."

Kil lifted the visor of his helmet and looked at the old man curiously: "I have just participated in this winter's militia training to defeat bandits. I followed Knight Crow to kill some bandits that were disturbing the trade routes. Hey, how did you see that? ah?"

The bearded old man shook his head and rubbed his beard proudly with his rough and wrinkled hands: "When I was young, I joined the imperial army. It was easy to tell whether the soldiers had killed someone or not. And it was easy to tell. And , has killed people, and killed many people, you can smell it from the smell."

"odor?"

Keir felt strange, you are not a dog, and I am not a murderer covered in blood, how can you smell this?

A middle-aged man next to him couldn't stand it anymore. He pushed the bearded old man away: "Dad, you are talking nonsense again. Young man, don't pay attention to my old man's nonsense. By the way, you said you are Rani. Sent here by Knight Sha to do something."

After saying this, he pointed around: "But until next spring, there should be nothing in our village that requires a young warrior like you who has killed many people to do it, right?"

He said it politely, but he obviously still believed in what his father said. Kil was keenly aware of this.

But he didn't panic. He just stretched out his hand to signal some of the surrounding militiamen to be quiet.

"Don't worry, it's winter. I can't go anywhere by myself. Let's wait until the villagers who know me and can confirm that I am a member of Knight Lanisa's hunter team come over."

While he was talking, the militiamen that the bearded old man had sent to look for people brought back a few people.

"I'm back. I found a few people who went out to support the Lord."

And the person walking at the front happened to be Ruf Wolf.

On the surface, he is an ordinary person, the steward of the village. But secretly, he is the culprit responsible for the wolf problem in North County.