Mount and Blade System: Start from Pioneer Lords

Without reinforcement, a single rain could trigger a collapse or landslide.

After months of effort, the results were obvious. The hillsides had been excavated to a depth of seven or eight meters, and the giant stones brought by the ogres were cut into thick walls resembling dams.

Directly ahead, a stone wall as high as a two-story building rose slowly, connecting the boundary lines of the stone dams on both sides.

Originally, the Feder craftsmen wanted to use hardwood to make heavy city gates, but Li Wei thought they were too conservative.

He could easily chop a large gap in that thing with a few sword strikes. Although the Minotaurs couldn't do it as easily as he could, it was clear that a wooden door couldn't stop them at all.

With a mere suggestion from the lord, the blacksmith's workshop workers worked overtime to forge a complete iron gate, a full palm's width thick, six meters high, and four meters wide. It took ten ogres to drag it to the bottom of the city wall.

In the end, it took almost a day just to install this iron gate.

It can only be said that although this world doesn't have large machines like cranes, it has ogres, creatures of immense strength.

They are simply the best choice for construction work.

Otherwise, without them, transporting this iron gate would be a problem.

So far, Highcliff Fortress can barely be called a small city. Although it is still a bit shabby, it is far ahead of other pioneering lords.

The lord has heard that one pioneering lord still lives in a leaky wooden house, with only a few hundred residents and only a dozen guards brought from his family.

Their efforts are more about survival than pioneering. After all, not everyone is like Li Wei.

If he didn't say it, no one would believe that Highcliff Fortress is a newly developed territory that is less than half a year old.

In the days that followed, as the situation became more volatile, more and more bandits in groups of three or five wandered to Highcliff Fortress. Some natives who had heard of the ruthless character's reputation chose to avoid it. Some bandits who had traveled south from the depths of the wilderness and had not heard of Highcliff Fortress actually gathered and chose to try to attack.

This attempt was naturally like hitting a stone with an egg. The Feder archers' volleys turned the unarmored bandits into hedgehogs, and their morale collapsed as they fled in all directions.

"A storm is brewing," the lord said with his hands behind his back, his tone filled with emotion.

Judging the big from the small, the fact that this wilderness could be disturbed so uneasily showed that the Minotaurs heading south were definitely larger than imagined.

"These bandits' eyes are red with hunger. I cut open the belly of one of the bandits and found only a few undigested toes and hair. They are so hungry that they have resorted to cannibalism," Zha Te said, wiping the blood from his hands with a handkerchief handed over by a servant, his tone heavy.

Only it, who had been hungry before, could deeply understand to what extent a person would be hungry before resorting to cannibalism.

This discovery also made the other orc barbarians present silent. If they hadn't joined Highcliff Fortress, their tribe would have obviously suffered population losses this winter due to food problems.

The reason Mu Tuo and the others went south and were captured into the arena was because their tribe couldn't support so many strong men, so they had to send a group of them out to fend for themselves.

"No wonder they attacked Highcliff Fortress knowing they were no match. It turns out they regarded this place as their only lifeline," Li Wei shook his head.

The Ke Xianri tribe's southward journey couldn't have been simply to drive away these wilderness natives. The main purpose was probably to plunder supplies.

These strong men, each three blades tall, were all big eaters. If they didn't plunder supplies, their own food would have difficulty supporting them through this long winter.

So, it was completely expected that these bandits heading south would have no food to live on.

Honestly, Li Wei was surprised when he heard that there were as many as seven or eight hundred warriors in this Minotaur tribe.

Generally, tribes of this powerful race, including men, women, and children, would only have a few hundred people at most, like trolls, who often lived in families of dozens or a couple of hundred, because the surrounding resources were not enough to support a large number of members who didn't know how to farm.

Hunting or herding yielded extremely limited food because there were only so many resources around. Once the population increased, a food crisis would occur.

Now it seemed that no wonder they could become a large tribe, fattening up the tribes in the wilderness every year, and then heading south to plunder supplies when winter was approaching.

It could be said that the nobles of the Northern Territory had suffered from these bull-nosed people for a long time.

If these Minotaurs plundered enough supplies on the way to return, then everyone would be happy. But if they didn't get the supplies they needed to survive the winter, then who knew what they would do.

Another day passed, and a malicious incident that no one expected occurred in Highcliff Fortress.

A bandit group attacked the slaves' location at night. By the time the Highcliff Fortress guard arrived, the slaves had been killed, and the food and farm tools had been looted.

Highcliff Fortress was divided into two areas. One was the residents' area, located on the hill and firmly protected by the city wall. The second area was the slaves' residence, located at the foot of the hill, with rows of small wooden houses.

Compared to the residents' area, which was guarded in three shifts and patrolled all day, the slave area was patrolled only by their self-organized members.

A few kobolds who were negligent in their duties at night caused this incident, so they didn't send a message to the guard in time.

If he hadn't been killed by the bandits, Old Neil would have hung them on the road sign as a warning to others. Now the old kobold was sweating profusely.

Because he had learned magic and diligently led the slaves to cultivate wasteland, his status had risen sharply, and he had recently moved into the residents' area.

But now something had happened in the slave area under his management, and a mistake could undo all his efforts.

Li Wei didn't say anything, just remained unusually silent, taking the orc personal guard and jackal scout team, plus a few ogres pulling carts, and set off at dawn, returning only at sunset the next day.

Each of them was soaked in blood, as if they had swam in a sea of blood, their faces full of fatigue, and even the energetic dire wolves collapsed on the ground, not even willing to lift their heads.

At the same time, the carts pulled by the ogres were filled with the heads of bandits who were still terrified to death, some lizardmen, some leopard-headed men, as many as a thousand.

Under the lord's instructions, the barbarians placed these heads not far from Highcliff Fortress and built a Jingguan [a mound of enemy corpses], as a warning to other bandits with malicious intentions.

Countless crows were attracted and competed to peck at the flesh on these heads.

The unclosed eyes of the heads still retained the remaining fear of their lives, coupled with the shrill screams of the crows pecking at them.

Just one look could trigger the fear hidden in one's instincts, making one shudder.

No one in Highcliff Fortress commented on this, just silently doing their own work, but not daring to look up too much.

Those on the hill could easily see this spectacle as long as they looked up.

Old Neil, anxious as if on fire, waited and waited but didn't receive a summons from the returning lord. In the end, he could only take the initiative to plead guilty with thorns on his back, but unexpectedly ran into the lord enjoying a massage from a goat girl and a rabbit girl. Before he could say a word, he was kicked out and scolded.

After glancing at the door that was slammed shut with a "bang," the old kobold breathed a sigh of relief, a relaxed smile on his face, straightened his clothes, put his hands behind his back, and left.

He had already used the land fertilization technique on all the cultivated land in Highcliff Fortress, so he had nothing to do during this time. He could only go and chat with a female kobold he had recently taken a fancy to, telling her how many difficult epic stories he had experienced before finally becoming a Highcliff Fortress leader.

The effect of the Jingguan was visible to the naked eye. A bandit group of about a thousand people who accidentally wandered here, looking at the heads that had been pecked by crows and only had some meat left, silently bypassed this ruthless character and continued south.

Even if they faced the Minotaurs, they would at most defeat them and be done with it, but this kind of devil who piled up their heads for public display after their death, letting the wind and rain, the sun, and the crows peck at them, made the fear in their hearts suppress their hunger.

Thanks to the deterrent effect of the Jingguan, no more short-sighted bandits attacked Highcliff Fortress, and life suddenly became calm, making the residents of Highcliff Fortress a little unaccustomed to it.

The tension of an impending storm gradually faded away with the passage of peaceful time.

The only major event left in the vicinity was Lia's arrival, and waiting was always a tormenting thing.

Fortunately, news came the next day that the team from Whiteflow City would arrive tomorrow morning.

The next day, early in the morning, the lord's hall was full of people.

"Again! Again!"

The silver dragon girl said with red eyes, impatiently slapping away Olak's hand and personally shuffling the cards.

The one who organized the game was naturally the head Sofia, and the ones playing cards were Li Wei and Olak, the old orc.

Everyone got up early, but received news that the arriving team was delayed because the wheels of the carts were caught in the weeds, wasting some time to clear them, so they would arrive several hours late, probably at noon.

With nothing to do, everyone started playing cards to pass the time.

"Are you sure you want to play again?"

The lord tried hard to suppress his laughter, but couldn't help it.

In order to lure this timid but unusually fond of treasure little silver dragon, Li Wei released a sea of water, letting her win ten gold coins, so now she really thought her card skills were superb and she was a genius.

She kept pestering him to play cards, mainly because everyone in Highcliff Fortress except him was a pauper, so she could only look for him.

Li Wei kept dangling her appetite, always refusing to play cards with her whenever she came to him, until he finally decided to take back this bullet that had been released early a few days ago when he was free.

At the beginning, he still let her taste some sweetness first, so as not to scare her away.

Just when this little silver dragon was hugging the gold coins that filled her little money bag and thinking she was invincible.

What followed was a crushing defeat, making this silver dragon girl start to doubt her life.

But she didn't think it was because she was not strong enough, thinking it was just bad luck.

As her little money bag gradually emptied, watching the glittering gold coins slip away from her hands again, this sense of sudden wealth and then sudden poverty made this silver dragon girl successfully get carried away.

"Sorry, two kings, four twos, I win again." The lord smiled and threw down the cards, his face full of I'm invincible, you can do whatever you want.

"Impossible, absolutely impossible!" The silver dragon girl looked at the cards in her hand that were no bigger than nine with a desperate expression.

Finally, she seemed to have thought of something. She had a flash of inspiration and actually became unusually tough, putting her hands on her hips and questioning, "How could your luck be so good? Every time you have the biggest cards, are you hiding cards?"

This cleverness came too late. She only thought of it after losing all her pants. The lord was about to burst out laughing inside.

This sense of immorality of bullying a little fool made him feel like he had to buy a bag of melon seeds to compensate this little silver dragon.

"Sir, am I that kind of person? If you don't believe me, come and search me."

Li Wei, sitting in the main seat, leaned back and opened his arms, looking frank and open.

The silver dragon girl, full of suspicion and for the sake of treasure, was unusually bold, not only daring to question the lord for the first time, but also actually stepping on the table and jumping into Li Wei's arms to search back and forth.

Unfortunately, she searched for a long time and couldn't even find a hair, so she could only climb down from the lord with a decadent expression.

Li Wei said with a smile: "You have now lost a total of six thousand and five gold coins to me. Given that you are so poor that you can't even take out a copper coin, you have also agreed to pay this debt with labor."

As he spoke, Li Wei took out a piece of parchment that had been prepared long ago from his arms. "According to your labor remuneration of two gold coins a month on Dragon Island, Sir, I will generously calculate you at two gold coins and fifty silver coins a month, which means you have to work for me for two hundred years to pay it off."

"But well, I may not live that long. Let's say a hundred years."

Li Wei wrote his name on the two pieces of parchment with a swipe and handed the quill over: "Sign it."

Looking at the treaty on the parchment, Sofia pursed her lips, and her white jade-like little hands trembled. The life of a dragon is very long, but a hundred years is not an easily negligible time for a dragon.

According to her current age, she will be an adult in more than sixty years, and a hundred years is only a few decades away from entering adulthood.

In short, signing this treaty means she will have to work for this human from childhood to adulthood!

"Li Wei, I will definitely win the next game! Let's play again, I will definitely win it back!"

Sofia grabbed the lord's arm in a hurry as if grabbing a life-saving straw, blinking her silver eyes, looking pitiful.

"Sofia, I must sternly refuse you about this. First of all, even if I win you, it won't benefit me in any way because I don't have a dragon's long lifespan. Moreover, you are already deeply mired in the mud and can't get out. In order to save you, I won't play cards with you anymore." Li Wei looked as righteous as a pope leading a lost lamb back to the right path.

"In the future, playing cards in Highcliff Fortress is only allowed for recreation and not for gambling!" Li Wei suddenly issued a new rule for Highcliff Fortress to the people around him.

"Also, in order to help Sofia quit her gambling addiction, no one is allowed to play cards with her!"

As the lord's order fell, Sofia felt the sky collapsing and collapsed on the ground all of a sudden.

Not only did she not earn money, but she also completely became someone else's working dragon. The silver dragon girl wanted to cry but had no tears.

She is probably the silver dragon with the most debt in history.

The lord, having achieved his wish, walked out of the lord's hall with his hands behind his back and a serious expression. When he was far enough away, he couldn't hold back any longer and burst into laughter.