With the map in hand, the war fog all around still hadn't lifted, but the positions of the various resource points within it were already visible. Han Huohuo led the Mechanical Wolf straight, no detours, charging right for the nearest wild-wolf lair.
The tools had been smelted down, and there was no iron.
Not a single gathering job could be done.
That damned Gou San!
The only resource he could collect now was by using the Mechanical Wolf's overwhelming combat power to hunt!
Everything was scarce in the early game, but for most Lords, food was obviously the most lacking of all.
Whether feeding workers, feeding farmers, recruiting soldiers, or keeping beasts — all of it needed food!
Farming had a seven-day harvest cycle, nowhere near enough to handle the first wave of challenges. So in the early stage, food came mainly from gathering, hunting, and fishing.
The mountain path wasn't very steep. Between the camp and the official road at the foot of the mountain stretched one enormous gentle slope. Han Huohuo frowned a little. The slope made walking easy, but if an enemy attacked, it wouldn't make for good defensive terrain.
"Awooo......"
He'd barely taken a few steps when a wolf's howl came from the distance. Even though Han Huohuo had set out to hunt in the first place, hearing a wild beast's cry up close for the first time still made him stumble in fright.
Holy hell — that's a real wolf!
He didn't dare go straight up to it. He ducked behind a big tree and peeked out. Far ahead, two vicious wolves were crouched at the mouth of a rock den.
These were Forest Wolves!
Contrary to what a lot of people assumed, Forest Wolves didn't appear in packs. In fact, only steppe wolves and desert wolves moved in packs; Forest Wolves were lone hunters, or paired off one male and one female.
He checked the Forest Wolves' stats from afar. Not bad — not very strong. A little tougher than Gou San, but certainly no match for a Mechanical Wolf.
【Tier-1 Forest Wolf】: lair guardian, tamable.
【Combat Power】: Strength 4, Defense 2, Endurance 6, Intelligence 1.
【Special Skill】: Wolf Howl — for fifteen seconds, the Forest Wolf's attack speed increases by 20%.
【Drops】: wolf meat 30–50.
【Chance Drops】: wolf hide, wolf fang, blueprint.
The sight of the vicious wolves set Gou San's calves trembling nonstop — he wasn't doing any better than Han Huohuo.
"Get in there! Take out those two wolves!"
"Me?"
Gou San's face turned an ashen green. With Loyalty at 100, he had no will to refuse. He hefted his blade, then stole a glance at the giant mechanical wolf beside Han Huohuo.
Standing, the giant mechanical wolf was more than a meter tall, like a young calf — reassuring enough.
At Han Huohuo's command, the Mechanical Wolf didn't hesitate a fraction. It surged forward, charging the vicious wolves head-on without a trace of fear.
Mechanical warriors were the most obedient of all troop types: perfectly compliant, utterly fearless — flawless killing machines.
Heartened, Gou San gritted his teeth — to hell with it! — and rushed in behind the Mechanical Wolf, blade raised.
Han Huohuo hid behind his tree and watched the battle from afar.
Send yours truly to fight and risk his neck in person?
Not a chance!
I'm the Lord! I will absolutely never gather or fight with my own hands!
The mountain path was flat, perfect for a mechanical army to charge. In an instant the giant mechanical wolf had reached the Forest Wolves' lair. The two wolves spotted the intruder, sprang up at once, tucked their tails, and lunged ferociously to meet it.
For all its bulk, the giant mechanical wolf moved nimbly. With a light flicker it dodged the lead wolf's pounce.
It twisted to the side and brought an iron claw smashing down on the wolf's back.
Wolves were inferior to the cat family precisely because they fought mainly with their teeth, their claws nearly useless in combat. But the giant mechanical wolf was different. That iron claw came down like a tiger's — one swipe snapped the Forest Wolf's spine.
The first Forest Wolf was crushed flat to the ground, whimpering, instantly out of the fight.
The other wolf gave a grief-stricken howl but didn't flee. A savage green light burned in its eyes; its jaws split open, viscous fluid running down its teeth, and it pounced fiercely.
The Mechanical Wolf had just crushed the first wolf, its claw not yet returned.
This Forest Wolf seized the opening. It leapt and bit down on the Mechanical Wolf's back. The back was all metal joints, and they clacked and ground under the bite — then the metal wolf suddenly wrenched its head around, opened its mechanical maw, and tore out the Forest Wolf's throat in a single bite.
It didn't take the slightest effort!
By the time Gou San came panting onto the battlefield, blade held high, both vicious wolves already lay dead.
Fierce!
That giant mechanical wolf was just too fierce!
Only once the fight was over did Han Huohuo creep cautiously closer. Having confirmed both Forest Wolves were dead, he had Gou San load the carcasses onto the giant mechanical wolf's back.
He glanced back at the lair.
【Forest Wolf Lair】: each week you may recruit two Forest Wolves from the lair to fight for you. Recruiting one Forest Wolf costs 50 units of food and requires the recruiter to possess the Taming skill.
Han Huohuo had no interest in recruiting Forest Wolves — he had no food, and no Taming skill either.
Besides, he had a far fiercer Mechanical Wolf; he didn't need these tame wild wolves.
For now, all he wanted was the wolf meat.
He was about to leave and head back to camp when —
A far more terrifying roar came from the distance. The sound was so frightening it was a hundred times worse than the Forest Wolves' howling, and made the legs go weaker than a tiger's roar.
Han Huohuo's heart nearly leapt out of his chest.
He hurried to poke his head out and look.
Thankfully, the monsters were still far off, about a hundred-some meters away, only two of them. They didn't seem to have noticed this place — they were just roaring idly.
Damn it, what the hell are you bellowing for? You nearly scared me to death!
【Mammoth Beast】: wild beast, cannot be tamed.
【Combat Power】: Strength 14, Defense 8, Endurance 30, Intelligence 1.
【Special Skill】: Trample — all enemies within a ten-meter radius are stunned for 3 seconds; monsters immune to stun are unaffected.
【Drops】: mammoth meat 300–500.
【Chance Drops】: heavy hide, ivory, fine blueprint, and an extremely small chance of a treasure.
These were two ancient elephants, more savage than tigers or leopards, foul-tempered, treading the earth, swinging their heads, lashing their long trunks — each pair of tusks easily three meters long!
Han Huohuo remembered these existed on Earth too, ancient creatures weighing as much as twelve tons! Nearly the size of a T. rex.
Can't mess with those!
A single Mechanical Wolf was absolutely no match. But the loot these monsters dropped was so good — the meat alone ran into the hundreds!
Greed had to match strength. Han Huohuo decided to retreat for now.
"Back to camp!"
The giant mechanical wolf carried the Forest Wolf carcasses and followed Han Huohuo back to the camp.
In the camp he broke down the two wolf carcasses, gaining 80 wolf meat, two wolf hides, and two wolf fangs.
All good stuff — the fangs could be made into weapons, the hides into armor.
But the fangs and hides were still bloodstained and gave off a foul smell; clearly they needed further processing before use, and Han Huohuo had no idea how to do it.
He stowed them away for now.
A pity — no blueprint dropped.
Han Huohuo figured the blueprint drop rate had to be very low, so getting nothing was normal.
The food description had turned an odd color. He tapped in to take a look.
【Food】: 20
【Premium Food】: 80, can increase Loyalty.
Huh?
So wolf meat counted as Premium Food. This was good — it not only filled the belly but raised subordinates' Loyalty. Solid stuff.
It was useless to him to keep, though. He needed to sell it off fast — Han Huohuo wanted some iron ingots to make tools.
He opened the system and found the market option.
【Tier-1 Market】: enables cross-time-and-space trading, a very... very important building. The Tier-1 Market charges a 20% trading commission; taxes are all settled in gold coins. Upgrading the market can lower the commission rate.
【Materials Required】: 50 wood.
Real daylight robbery!
Even normal trades between Lords got a commission skimmed off — was this forcing everyone to go gather their own supplies?
I'd starve to death before I'd gather anything myself. Absolutely not happening!
As luck would have it, he had exactly fifty wood left. Without hesitation, Han Huohuo built the market.
Wood -50
A trading market appeared in the camp.
The wood was wiped to zero in an instant.
Then he opened the forum, ready to hawk his food.
He found the forum full of complaints of every kind!
"This opening's way too hard. I finally ran into two refugees who said they'd work for me, but recruiting one refugee costs fifty food. Damn it, where am I supposed to get food?"
"Same here. I found a little black-imp native lair right outside my door, but with no food there's no way to recruit them."
"Forget it, go chop wood first. Food alone is useless — you've still got to build housing. This wood's a pain to chop. Damn, it's exhausting."
"Fuck, everything's short. A Lord has to go chop wood and pick berries with his own hands. This is bullshit!"
"Right? Why do I feel less like a Lord and more like a laborer?"
"......"
Suddenly, a show-off came online.
"Ding! Feast your eyes on this, everyone — guess what treasure this is? A blueprint! A D-grade rare barracks, the Longbowman Training Camp blueprint! I'm rich, hahaha!"
"Holy crap, you've got incredible luck."
"Lucky my ass. I saw a big shot who got a Chaos Pond blueprint right at the start — that's an S-grade blueprint for recruiting Xiangliu. Your longbowmen are useless by comparison."
"Xiangliu? For real? I looked it up — S-grade is the absolute top-tier barracks! Is that the nine-headed giant serpent Xiangliu from the Classic of Mountains and Seas?"
"I swear on my dick, of course it's real."
"......"
"......"
Everyone was stunned. Someone walks out the door and picks up a top-tier troop blueprint — how's anyone supposed to compete? Might as well just surrender!
"Don't panic, everyone. His blueprint's useless. I saw that blueprint too — I happened to be online when he was showing off.
Let me tell you.
Building a Chaos Pond requires a massive amount of resources, especially twenty extremely rare Sea-of-Fire Sulfur. There's no way he can get twenty Sea-of-Fire Sulfur within seven days, so what good is one blueprint? He might not even survive to the seventh day.
What's more, a Chaos Pond has to be built by water. If he were a pirate, fine, but he's a bandit. That blueprint's no use to him at all — at most he'll wait for a good moment down the line and sell it for a nice price."
"Ah, hearing you put it that way, I feel a lot better!"
"Yeah, the Longbowman Camp's more practical — you can train longbowmen straight away!"
"Big bro, how do you know all this?"
"I just caught one of the authorities' spies and tortured it out of him."
"The big bro is mighty!"
"The big bro is amazing!"
"......"
Han Huohuo was surprised. So troop blueprints came in grades? How had he never noticed?
He hurried to check his own Mecha Workshop.
Then he sat on the floor and went silent for a good while.
"Didn't they say S-grade is the top-tier barracks? Then what the hell does my SSS-grade Mecha Workshop count as?"
In a corner of the system, the Mecha Workshop was marked as an SSS-grade building.
A little scary!
And the crucial part: others needed an astronomical pile of resources to build a top-tier barracks, but building this Mecha Workshop had been completely free!
When you take a loss, shout it out loud — but when you come out ahead...
Never mind that. Yours truly's off to sell meat first!
Selling meat... why does that sound a little off?