The sound of the Dragon-Turtle Cart was monotonous.
The swaying carriage felt like a classroom on a hot summer day.
The combination of the two made the young girl inside the carriage drowsy.
Her petite figure was most striking for the almost overflowing assets at her chest. A complicated black long dress made her look exceptionally slender except at those full areas, giving her a delicate and fragile feel.
She had troublesome, waist-length silver hair and a pretty face that instantly won people over. Beneath the clear, slender outer corners of her eyes was a tear mole, making her a beauty who would be highly praised even in the Royal Capital.
The girl's name was Melina. She was a transmigrator, and her golden eyes gazed out of the carriage in boredom, her left hand resting on the handle of her lace parasol.
Outside the window were simple, repeating natural landscapes: mountains, forests, grasslands, mountains... and, having forced the Dragon-Turtle Cart to stop cautiously dozens of times already, the apex predators of the natural world gliding across the sky: dragons.
Roar—
The Dragon-Turtle Cart stopped again.
Dragon-turtles were animals with great stamina, capable of coming to an abrupt halt even while dragging a heavy carriage that was five meters long, wider at the bottom and narrower at the top.
Only, it was the passengers inside the carriage who suffered.
The passengers were jolted forward by the sudden stop. The few people sitting on seats in the cramped carriage were sent flying forward because this world lacked seatbelts.
Melina picked up the compact lace parasol at her side and thrust it outward. A terrified, tower-like behemoth of a burly man was pressed right back into his seat by a parasol that looked like a toothpick compared to his build. Shaken and still recovering his wits, he turned his head and saw the girl, maintaining her elegant sitting posture, pulling the parasol back and gently resting its tip on the floor.
Tap.
The tip of the umbrella touched the ground.
The burly man came to his senses, first showing a very grateful expression, but as his gaze drifted downward, his face turned as red as a steamed Chinese mitten crab, and he violently jerked his head away.
"Many thanks, miss."
"Just a little help." Melina straightened her back. To the unpretentious locals, this movement was far too stimulating. The burly man stared straight ahead at the empty space, his eyes fixed, not daring to move an inch.
"Are you from Hamlet Town?" Melina asked offhandedly.
"Yes!" the burly man replied as if reacting to a reflex.
"An Explorer?" Melina tapped the umbrella handle lightly with her left index finger.
"I'm just a Gatherer, though I suppose that counts as an Explorer, hahaha." The burly man laughed heartily, then scratched the back of his head with embarrassment.
A Gatherer was one of the branches of the Explorer profession. Ninety-nine percent of the world's regions were unknown domains to pure-blood humans, teeming with all sorts of terrifying monsters, much like the forest before them. Fending off or hunting these monsters, expanding human living areas, and collecting the foundational building blocks of civilization from these regions—this profession was called an Explorer. And Gatherers were the most ordinary kind of Explorers, rather like basic resource gatherers in games like Age of Empires II who had the ability to chop wood, mine, gather berries, and hunt small herbivores.
The burly man before her was an ordinary Gatherer.
Yet even the most ordinary Gatherer had the ability to harvest over a ton of food in a single day by themselves, and could run effortlessly while carrying a ton of heavy weight on their back.
They were practically superhuman.
"What's your name, miss? I'm Cha... Rylsde Benom, everyone calls me Charlie." The down-to-earth man, harboring some romantic notions in his heart, looked at her eagerly.
"Melina is my name." She toyed with the umbrella handle. "A Gatherer is also an Explorer, so you should have what Explorers possess as well: [Armament]."
"Are you curious about this?" Charlie pulled the dagger from his waist like someone presenting a treasured artifact.
It was called a dagger, but only relative to his build. To Melina, it was a respectable single-handed sword.
It exuded a faintly yellow color with the texture of bone. The lower half of the blade was unsharpened, while the upper half was sharpened and imbued with a faint azure glow. This was an [Armament].
It was a piece of equipment processed through special techniques to infuse Magic Factor into it, enhancing the physical abilities of the user.
Only those who possessed an Armament could become Explorers.
Melina gazed at the dagger.
Charlie asked curiously:
"Aren't you an Explorer? M... Miss Melina."
"No." Melina withdrew her gaze.
"But your strength..." Charlie looked at the slender lace parasol resting against the girl's left hand. He was an Explorer, after all, and could tell that the umbrella in her hand was no Armament. Nor was it a Magic Factor-enhanced device meant for ordinary people; yet this ordinary umbrella had stopped him in his tracks. That could only be explained by the girl's own monstrous strength.
"I am a Banshee," Melina said calmly.
"Oh!" The burly man Charlie couldn't help letting out a sound of astonishment, and even the other passengers in the carriage looked over with curiosity.
There were many human races born with powerful Magic Factors, such as Elves, Vampires, and so on, and Banshees were one of them—full name: Primate Homo Banshee species.
Many Banshees were extremely powerful Explorers, even possessing the ability to hunt Wyverns single-handedly.
To a lowest-tier Explorer like Charlie, Banshees, Vampires, and Elves were akin to legends.
Noticing that Melina had fixed her gaze on his Armament again, Charlie generously said:
"Miss, would you like to touch it?"
"..."
Melina looked away, her lips twitching. "No," she said. "I'm afraid I might break your knife. It's a fine dagger, the mold design and processing are both very good..."
"Hahaha! That goes without saying!" Charlie laughed heartily. "Our Hamlet Town lacks a lot of things, but one thing we don't lack is weapons! Those old men at the blacksmith shop are the main reason why so many people from the surrounding areas visit Hamlet Town... Oh right, miss, you said you aren't an Explorer, so what brings you to our town, a place where even dogs won't bark?"
Melina smiled faintly and touched her cheek with her right hand:
"I have a reason I must come."
A few days ago, she had received a letter sent by her senior schoolmate. She had little impression of this senior and practically no friendship with her, to the point that when she received the letter, she even suspected for a moment that it had been sent to the wrong person. But when she broke the red wax seal on the letter, took out the stationery, and saw only a single line of words on it, she knew this letter was meant for her.
"Hello, fellow transmigrator, I've been reborn."
The envelope also contained 50 Gold Lei (with a purchasing power of around 5,000 yuan), a map of the Weeping Peninsula with a small town named [Hamlet Town] circled in red, and an address within Hamlet Town.
An invitation.
The cart started moving again, and the burly man quickly forgot about his hometown, instead muttering:
"Why do these dragon-turtles just stay put like cowards the moment a dragon shows up..."
The right index finger and thumb of Melina's right hand formed a circle around her eye socket. "It's just a trait of Wyverns. They are predators of the sky. To prevent their eyes from drying out, they've developed thick, translucent corneal membrane organs, which makes their static vision extremely poor, but their dynamic vision exceptionally good. To them, animals look like moving patches of unusual color, whereas stationary objects blend seamlessly into the environment."
Because of what had happened earlier, the burly man listened with great patience, then nodded:
"Hahaha, although you explained it very clearly, miss, I don't get it. What dynamic, what static, I don't get it."
Melina's right hand stiffened for a moment before she casually placed it back on her thigh.
"Dragons can only clearly see things that move; they can't clearly see things that don't. So when a dragon flies by, staying sti... motionless can prevent you from being attacked."
"Oh oh, I get it now!"
...
The closer the Dragon-Turtle Cart got to the Weeping Peninsula, where Hamlet Town was located, the wilder—[primitive]—the scenery along the way became.
Wild Magic Factors were scattered across the untamed primeval forest, giving rise to rows of giant trees over a hundred meters tall. On the massive branches splitting from the towering trunks hung dragon nests resembling bird nests.
"Don't look at how dangerous it is here; as long as you come at noon, those dragons won't appear. You can gather a lot of good stuff here! I love this place!"
The local burly man, whom Melina had helped on a whim, enthusiastically played the role of a tour guide.
Charlie didn't just act as a Gatherer; he also had a glorious past of facing small Black Dragon Species around four meters long and two meters tall, though most of the time he helped with cargo transport and gathering work between several towns.
One could tell just by looking at Charlie's sturdy build.
Standing around two meters and forty centimeters tall, his muscle mass had reached a terrifying degree. Though his center of gravity was unstable, it was more than enough for doing some gathering work.
If Melina stood straight up, she would probably be about the same size as him when he was sitting down.
...
Passing through the primeval forest, they reached a grassland rolling with hills, after which the primitive road finally vanished, leaving only desolate country grassy paths that would be unrecognizable without signposts. The paths eventually disappeared into the volcanic mountain range near the Weeping Peninsula. Passing a massive rock cliff, the huge Weeping Peninsula came into view.
The terrain of the peninsula was nearly a hundred meters higher than sea level, and its structural body was an inward-curving marine erosion structure, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.
Hamlet Town was located in the first half of the Weeping Peninsula, built against a massive mountain range called Lone Mountain. The vast majority of its buildings were situated at varying heights along the mountain, with the lowest layer being a city wall made of logs enclosing a relatively flat plain. This town-interior plain, called West Hamlet, held the embryonic forms of a livestock processing industry and an agricultural product processing industry. This world was abundant in resources, and humans had largely abandoned fixed animal husbandry and agriculture, switching instead to pure processing.
East Hamlet clung to Lone Mountain and served as the center and residential area of the town. The shabby-looking houses were all situated at the foot of East Hamlet, while slightly more decent-looking houses sat halfway up the mountain. From the outside, there were no commercial streets to be seen, only a grocery street that looked messy enough at a glance.
At the entrance were patrol squads composed of Ratmen keeping watch.
With unreadable attitudes and doing nothing but constantly complaining, they opened the gate and let the Dragon-Turtle Cart inside.
Once the Dragon-Turtle Cart entered, one could clearly feel the speed slowing down, and from the swaying of the vehicle body, one could sense the dragon-turtles' moods gradually entering a state of calm.
Most of the local residents got off the cart at the front gate. To be honest, unloading the cargo from the back of the carriage took some time. The residents of Hamlet Town exchanged wild wheat, potatoes, leeks, and other crops grown on the Weeping Peninsula, along with some small animals hunted by Gatherers, for catches from Innsmouth Town, a port town outside the peninsula. This ordinary cargo exchange between two towns embodied the basic principles of economics.
Gatherers like Charlie got off at the entrance of East Hamlet.
There was a rudimentary Gatherer Guild here, where they exchanged information and supplies, and basic blacksmithing facilities were also provided here.
Left on the cart were Melina and a merchant.
They got off at the official East Hamlet stop: the post office station.
The station and post office here had been combined, and as Melina saw after getting off, the station-post office hybrid was a large tiled house, with a rich smell of cheap liquor wafting out from its open windows—it also served as a tavern.
After getting off the cart, the merchant ran toward the grocery street as if fleeing.
Melina wanted to follow the merchant's escape route, wandering along the gravel road—barely worthy of being called a street—through the eastern part of Hamlet Town to observe the ecology of this small town established in an uninhabited, untamed wilderness. It would be even better if she could observe the unique architectural style born from [the wisdom of survival]. The climate changes on the Weeping Peninsula were relatively extreme; when she got off, it happened to be the transition between day and night. In just five minutes, Melina had gone from using Magic Factor to lower her body temperature against the heat, to raising her body temperature against the cold. The extreme heat and cold were like a desert, and the architectural style was also beginning to lean toward daytime ventilation and nighttime enclosure.
She took her first step, and the luggage placed at her feet floated up via magic as someone walked out from the station.
In the middle of the white segmented skirt where her midriff should have been exposed, the person wore bright silver armor, with steel armor sewn onto the long dress and long black hair tied into a neat high ponytail. Her face was beautiful, but possessed an exquisite quality that surpassed mere beauty. She was a female knight who instantly brought to mind a princess, though upon second glance she gave off an extremely dashing impression, and her deep purple eyes held a hint of wickedness that made her look a little less like a righteous female knight.
This woman was Melina's senior schoolmate.
She reached out, gently clenched her fist, and flashed an untamed smile:
"Yo, homie."
A single greeting that laid bare the fact that she was a transmigrator.