Chapter 81.1: 【Lut Gholein】
After confirming this finding, Fei quickly started thinking in his mind.
He was considering how to share resources between the Diablo World and the real world. Although Fei wasn’t sure if there was anything else that could help him bring a lot more resources from the real world to the Diablo World aside from the storage belt, obviously this small pack of winter wheat had opened a bright window that Fei had never thought about before in his chaotic mind.
As he was thinking, Fei walked towards Akara’s small tent.
He found Akara busy composing all kinds of potions in front of the seemingly ragged tent that had a magnificent interior. He took out the pack of winter wheat out of the storage belt and gave it to Akara.
“This is ……”
Akara took the small pack and an unbelievable, surprised expression appeared on her face.
It was incredible; she could feel a thick life energy inside the small cloth pack. Akara was both familiar and unfamiliar with this sensation. It was very deep and distant in her memory.
Long, long ago, 【Rogue Encampment】 didn’t plant their own crops to maintain their survival. However, in the past sixty years, along with the slow passage of time and pollution and corrosion of rogue continent by Diablo’s evil hell force, the majority of crops and plants were damaged by the dark force. Seeds with this purity and amount of life energy in them were extremely rare to find. That caused the production of crops and food in the camp to lower and lower, and ultimately they stopped producing crops. For a long time, the residents in the camp had to rely on breeding some chicken, ducks, cattle, and some other poultry and a type of wild plants called Bracken Roots that couldn’t be massively planted to struggle to survive.
Akara clearly felt that the small pack of winter wheat seeds that Fei brought weren’t polluted by the evil force at all and could be successfully planted and grow well in the Diablo World. Due to the quality of the soil in the Diablo World, the quantity of production might be lower compared to normal…… but compared to letting young rogues go into the dangerous moor which was dominated by monsters and demons and find those Bracken Roots that tasted very bad, even though the production would be low, it would still be a great light and a huge hope for 【Rogue Encampment】.
“In my world, this crop is called winter wheat. It has a strong vitality and is ideal to be grown on Rogue Continent where it is cold and humid…… Akara, you can ask people to try to plant it in small quantities first. If it is successful, I will bring more seeds to you and it can perhaps ease the food crisis that is happening at the camp currently.”
“Ah, that’s awesome…… Thank you so much, Mr. Fei. I can feel the purity and liveliness from these seeds. You have brought hope of survival to the camp.” Priestess Akara changed her usual profiteering face and solemnly bowed to show her thanks.
“Eh……You don’t have to thank me. Hehehe, if you could provide me with some free potions, items or scrolls, perhaps it would better than thanking me with words.” Fei put on a “fake” friendly smile.
“That’s impossible!”
Instantly, Akara’s profiteering character returned. Mr. Fei, as a leader you should be setting examples for everyone in the camp; you absolutely can’t get stuff for free without doing any work. Plus, the number of potions and items I can make are extremely limited. It can barely provide the rogues in the camp with the necessary protection. Mr. Fei, your demand is too much. Even if I produce free potions for you every minute, it wouldn’t be enough for you.”
Fei was silent.
A greedy profiteer would always be a greedy profiteer.
But then again, what Akara said really was the case.
Fei extinguished his idea of getting stuff for free. He turned around and saw the bottles and jars that Akara was using to make potions and smelled the pungent air. He suddenly thought of something and smiled as he asked, “Akara, why didn’t you find a helper to assist you in making potions? That way, you could increase the production, hehehe!”
“Do you think I could configure the potion out of thin air? Every potion takes a ton of precious and rare raw materials and herbs. They don’t grow in the camp and can only be found in places such as the moors and other extremely dangerous places. To collect and harvest these herbs and materials, the rogues can only go to those extremely dangerous and evil places when Diablo’s powers on Rogue Continent is at the “low tide”. I’m not exaggerating. Every potion I make is saturated with the blood of the poor children……” Akara was suddenly saddened when she spoke of this.
Fei smiled as he pointed at himself with his thumb and said, “Hehehe, Akara, don’t you think you have a perfect candidate standing in front of you for that job? Hehe, perhaps I could help you collect and pick these herbs and materials. In return, my request is very simple. You only have to teach me the names of each herb, how to identify them, and the formulae for making the potions. Hehehe.”
“You?”
Akara raised her eyebrows and was instinctively about to bicker with Fei, but she suddenly realized something as her eyes shined. She observed Fei closely as she glanced through Fei’s body and felt a suddenly realization. “Hehe, you are absolutely right. Come here. Hehehe, let’s start now. Hahaha, let me tell you how to identify each raw herb ingredient, their rating and their level!”
……
“Zealand Grass, Lantern Core, White-Strange Leaves, Magic-Chaos Ratten, Star-Light Grass, White-Bone Vine…… Eh, no, no. Blood-Bone Vine…… What else? Fire Roots? Poisonous Spiders’ joint bone?”
After an hour.
Fei was contaminated with a pungent herb smell. He continuously spat out something from his mouth as he stumbled and fled from Akara’s mysterious small tent. He was murmuring a series of herb names. His distracted expression looked as if he had been severely ravaged by a Tyrannosaurus.
“Hey……Mr. Fei. Don’t run. I have forty other raw materials and herbs for you to taste. Relax, these herbs aren’t bitter like the other ones. They don’t taste bad……” Akara had a reluctant and gloating smile on her face as she yelled and waved her hand at Fei.
Fei didn’t dare say a word back; he just continued to flee.
He passed a few wooden fences and several tents as he spat a few more times to get rid of all the bitter herb debris in his mouth. He then suddenly remembered something else; he walked to the centre of the camp and found the old man Cain, the “Free human scroll identifier”. He took out a few armour pieces and a silver storage ring from his storage belt and gave them to Cain. “Wise Cain, these items are from a mysterious place. I’m not sure if you could identify them for me.”
In fact, these pieces of armour were picked by Fei from the silver masked knight’s corpse, and the silver storage ring was from the poor four star mage Elvis. Fei put those stuff in his Barbarian storage belt before; when he was taking out the small pack of winter wheat seeds, he saw them as well. However, the status on the items were unidentified, therefore Fei wanted old Cain to help him identify them. Perhaps once Cain finished identifying them, he could ask blacksmith Charsi to modify them so that no one in the real world would recognize them again.
“Huh? These items are very strange….. Eh…… Weird, I have never seen anything like this before…… Let me take a closer look…… God! These are completely different magic engravings and patterns, and unheard of enchantment methods……” The white-bearded old man took the items from Fei’s hands and took a detailed look. Quickly, he was fascinated by them, just like an old archeologist that just saw an ancient treasure. He was stunned a little bit; he didn’t bother to acknowledge Fei anymore and just said, “The identification process might take a while. Come back in three days……” Then he turned around and walked away as if he was holding his baby.
“Damn, if you can’t identify the items, just tell me. What’s the meaning of the excuse……”
Fei opened his mouth as he “scornfully” looked at the old “obscene” Cain’s who was walking away and pointed out his middle finger.
Since the identification didn’t go as he planned, he decided to slay some monsters and demons to level up.
However, this novice map 【Rogue Encampment】 wasn’t effective for Fei to level up in anymore. A few days ago, he swept out all the monster and demons in the entire map again and made sure that not a single monster nor a crowd of demons could threaten the safety of the camp. At this point in time, the moor was more than tens of times safer than before. With the unique Big Bosses being slayed by Fei already, 【Rogue Encampment】 and its subsidiary maps weren’t challenging to Fei at all.
At this time, Elena was still in the real world. Fei thought about it for a while and finally decided to find NPC Warriv – the caravan leader, who was in blue. For the first time, he chose to head to the East. He decided to proceed onto the second big map in the Diablo World – a more dangerous and challenging town -【Lut Gholein】.
【Rogue Encampment】 was quite far from 【Lut Gholein】. If an ordinary rogue started traveling from the camp, it would take her about a year or two to get to 【Lut Gholein】. Fortunately for Fei, this travelling process for him was very similar to the actual game. Suddenly, the view in front of his eyes started to get foggy and blurry. Then as if he travelled through time and space, he felt and experienced the weightlessness and zero gravity. When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived at 【Lut Gholein】.
Everything around him was in a khaki color. This was a city that was located between deserts.
If the prior map 【Rogue Encampment】 was a little ragged temporary camp site, then 【Lut Gholein】 was a magnificent and vast desert city. Although it didn’t have the steep terrains and picturesque landscapes like Chambord, there were tall, solid defensive walls, beautiful fancy palaces, even safer inner city, two story luxury hotels and pubs, and a wide natural pier that was full of parked boats and ships…… It was impossible to find all these things and structures back in Chambord.
But for some reason, luxurious 【Lut Gholein】 gave Fei an extremely strange feeling – this seemed like a ghost city. There wasn’t any liveliness; there were barely any pedestrians on the road, and it was absolutely silent. Wind blew up sand into the air, and despite being autumn, there seemed to be an unspeakable chill.
Fortunately, there were still NPCs.
As soon as Fei stepped onto 【Lut Gholein】, a NPC approached him.
After a simple routine conversation, Fei had received the first quest in 【Lut Gholein】 from Atma, the owner of a public house – Head to the sewers under Lut Gholein and kill the boss 【Radament】 who occupied the sewers for a long time.
According to his prior memory, Fei found the entrance to the underground sewers and entered it to start the quest.
However, during the process of accepting the quest, Fei found something strange – It seemed like the NPCs at 【Lut Gholein】 didn’t like him very much. Their facial expressions and voices were very dull and lifeless. Compared with people such as Akara back at 【Rogue Encampment】, the difference was huge; it almost felt like he was talking to wooden dummies when he was interacting with them.
“Weird, why is that?”
It didn’t matter if it was the whole city or the NPCs in it, they all gave Fei the same feeling – that they were dead. The place was lifeless, as if it really was a ghost city.
With a ton of curiosity, Fei seized the moment and started his bloody massacre of the monsters and demons in the sewers.