Wintertown, Lords Mansion.
“Oh, My Royal Highness! What are you doing with so many bones, potatoes, and coal?”
“The exiled refugees outside the city are gathering together and are about to rebel! Let us hurry and leave this lousy place to return to the royal capital!!”
“It does not matter if I lose my life here, but Your Highness must not meet with any misfortune here!”
The middle-aged butler Trist’s voice rang unceasingly in Levi’s ears.
Yet the black-haired youth sitting on the iron chair appeared extremely calm and collected.
The youth had a refined appearance, with black hair and black eyes, and despite his young age, he carried the bearing of someone in a position of authority.
Levi’s fingers tapped rhythmically on the table.
“Old Trist, if I leave this place, it would be equivalent to voluntarily renouncing my status as crown prince.”
“Just do as I say and bring a sufficient amount of bones, potatoes, and coal. I naturally have a way to resolve the refugees outside the city.”
“If it fails, I will have no objections even if you tie me back to the royal capital.”
Trist let out a slight sigh; His Highness the Sixth Prince was still as willful as ever.
But since His Highness had already said so.
Trist made up his mind that the moment the refugees outside the city showed any signs of riot, he would escort His Highness back to the royal capital even if he had to carry him.
“…Your Highness, I will go right away.”
As Trist went out and closed the door, the authority-wielding expression on Levi’s face instantly vanished.
After confirming there was no one else, his heart began to surge:
“Are you kidding me? Weren’t I at home playing ‘Minecraft’?”
“How did a flash of thunder happen, the screen go black, and when I opened my eyes again, I became the Sixth Prince of the Dawn Kingdom?”
“However, the only good news is…”
Levi looked at the status bar and inventory slots at the bottom right of his vision.
On the left were ten dark red hearts; on the right were ten large chicken legs.
Silently chanting to open the inventory, that familiar four-slot equipment bar, four-slot crafting grid, and a total of 27 inventory slots appeared before Levi.
[Achievement Unlocked: Open inventory!]
That’s right, Levi’s golden finger came from his favorite game, ‘Minecraft’.
Levi called it the ‘Steve’s System’, because the protagonist of the Minecraft game was called Steve.
This meant that Levi was already a powerful entity combining various conceptual abilities into one, where things like falling from high altitudes without breaking bones, taking a lava bath, and rapid health regeneration at full hunger were just a piece of cake.
If he pulled out technical Minecraft…
tsk tsk, he didn’t even dare to think about it.
Precisely because of this, Levi had just told his butler, Trist, to collect a large amount of bones, potatoes, and coal in the territory.
MC players who frequently farmed knew that these three things represented an inexhaustible supply of…
baked potatoes.
Bones could be crafted into bone meal, bone meal could accelerate the growth of potatoes, and potatoes after being baked would become delicious baked potatoes.
However, Levi naturally did not have a stomach large enough to eat so many baked potatoes.
He was preparing them for the starving and freezing refugees outside the city who could riot at any moment.
Speaking of this, one couldn’t help but mention Levi’s current situation.
Levi had transmigrated into this world with his original body, replacing the original owner’s position.
Fortunately, the original ‘Levi’ looked identical to him.
Furthermore, after receiving the memories of his predecessor, Levi already knew that this was a western magical world, possessing various races such as elves, monsters, humans, and dwarves.
More than a dozen kingdoms, duchies, and empires sat upon the Eiresia Continent, and beyond this continent, unknown continents even existed.
The power system of this world was called ‘Professionals’, starting from the First-Tier Professional up to the Sixth-Tier Professional, which was the limit mortals could reach.
However, everyone could hold multiple professions concurrently, hence there existed entities whose total tier sum exceeded the sixth tier.
His full name was Levi Charles.
The Charles family was the royal family of the Dawn Kingdom, and Levi Charles was the Sixth Prince of the Dawn Kingdom.
The place where he currently resided was a northern border town named Wintertown.
This was Levi’s territory.
Half a year ago, King Charlie Charles distributed his eight children to various regions of the kingdom and announced the selection criteria for the future crown prince.
“Within five years, whoever can govern their territory the best will become the next king of the Dawn Kingdom.”
Although the idea that the king disregarded the gender of his offspring, allowing both princes and princesses to participate in this selection, was indeed very advanced, yet no governance criteria were provided at all—how would one judge whether a territory was ‘governed’ well when the time came?
The territory assigned to each person was different.
Some princes and princesses were assigned large cities, starting their economic development with both light and heavy industries simultaneously from the get-go.
Meanwhile, Wintertown, which was assigned to Levi, had no money, no food, and no industrial construction whatsoever.
Furthermore, monsters haunted the northern border, and a Monster Tide attacked every single quarter, which could be described as hell-level difficulty.
And the bigger problem was, wasn’t this idiot king afraid that his children would all die from’sudden accidents’ in their territories, leaving the kingdom without an heir?
Oh~ It turned out that the birth mothers of these several princes and princesses were all dead, and the child born to the queen newly married by the king was just turning twelve, too young to participate in the selection.
The king’s so-called crown prince selection…
looked more like an arrangement to allow the New Queen’s child to firmly take root in the royal capital.
It seemed that this suddenly appeared cheap stepmother was no pushover either…
Ahem, getting off topic, Levi pulled back his thoughts and did not continue dwelling on these matters, since they were too far away from him.
The biggest problem facing him right now was that a Monster Tide had destroyed Tucker Town, which was one hundred kilometers away from Wintertown.
The refugees fled in all directions.
And the largest batch of refugees, numbering nearly a thousand people, had arrived at the city gate of Wintertown.
To be honest, this kind of situation was very strange.
Because Wintertown was very far from Tucker Town, and there was clearly a closer Mike Town, yet this large group of refugees inexplicably came to Wintertown to ask for asylum…
Levi vaguely felt that something might be amiss in this, but without any clues or evidence, he could only put it aside for the time being.
Wintertown had a poor harvest this year; it hadn’t even paid the taxes sent by the tax collector from above in full, and there was simply no grain in storage.
There was simply no way to take in these refugees.
Just as the butler Trist said, Levi’s best choice right now was to directly abandon Wintertown, return to the royal capital, and give up the opportunity to contend for the crown prince position.
If the refugees were mishandled and a riot broke out, the royal family would lose all face, and by the time he returned to the royal capital, his reputation would probably be ruined.
However, the pre-transmigration Levi Charles didn’t have much of a good reputation either; in the royal capital, he was proficient in all kinds of eating, drinking, and merry-making, which was why he was assigned to this lousy place.
He was originally an abandoned pawn in this crown prince selection; no one believed that the good-for-nothing Sixth Prince could make a comeback.
Yet Levi understood even better that returning to the royal capital now was undoubtedly going head-to-head with the New Queen.
By then, he probably wouldn’t even know how he died.
Of course, most importantly, he didn’t have the habit of calling a strange woman ‘Mom’.
He had the Minecraft System; why would he not develop his own forces in this borderland and instead return to the royal capital to deliver free kills?
Absolutely impossible!
Resolving the problem of the exiled refugees right now was Levi’s most important task.
Although Wintertown’s development in all aspects was currently subpar, with Steve’s Power, would he still be afraid that infrastructure couldn’t be built?
Would he still be afraid of insufficient food?
Kid, do you know the true value of the God of Blocks and Creation?
Levi’s gaze sharpened.
He made up his mind not only to survive in this world, but also to live magnificently enough.
His thoughts instantly became active.
Asking Trist to fetch a large amount of bones and potatoes earlier was precisely to quickly mature the potatoes.
And baking potatoes with coal required a large number of furnaces to perform the baking operation simultaneously.
Manufacturing furnaces required a large amount of Cobblestone.
Quarrying stone required a wooden pickaxe.
Wooden pickaxes and crafting tables needed wood to be crafted.
The train of thought was extremely clear; everything had to start from acquiring wood.
However, the nearest woods were far away at over ten kilometers out, taking several hours for a round trip—it was a bit too time-wasting.
Suddenly, Levi thought of something.
He stood up from the hard iron chair, looking through the window toward the back garden of the Lords Mansion.
There stood dozens of precious ornamental pine trees that remained verdant even in the harsh winter.
The price of a single tree was enough for an ordinary family in Wintertown to spend for a whole year.
However, value was value; in this border region, no one would pay that much money for these pine trees.
Looking at these precious pine trees, Levi revealed a prodigal smile.
“To get rich, punch trees first.”