Chapter 25: Chapter 25

Winter had not arrived, but the weather was becoming colder with each passing day.

As Angora looked up at the bright skies in his stroll around town, he sighed by reflex.

That same blue sky would not be seen for three months when the frost arrives.

Nonetheless, the people in town were not slowing down despite the coming cold, but started to work harder instead.

Work such as harvesting spirit oats from the farms, the building of wooden houses, hunting for meat and fur, as well as fortifying the town against the revenants with wooden structures were all conducted without pause and complete synchrony.

It was fortunate that Angora had the Lord System, which was why agriculture and construction which took much time and great labor could now be completed even by idle old folks with simple prayers. That in turn freed much youthful labor who could accomplish more vital tasks.

“My lord, you’re here.” The old mayor appeared out of nowhere, his milky eyes showing a hint of delight when he saw Angora overseeing the construction progress of the new houses. “The last batch of those blessed oats has been harvested.”

“Well done. Let’s seize this moment before the snow comes to plants some vegetables.”

Angora drew out a cloth bag carrying vegetable seeds he redeemed from the System yesterday.

Before, the basic procedure for farming had been an unchanging cycle of: plant spirit oats→wait for them to mature and harvest→store half and sell half to System→earn game coin→spend ninety percent on new seeds→plant spirit oats.

The other game coin saved would be allocated to buying new farmsteads and build wooden houses.

Nonetheless, the number of oat seeds sold in the Penguin Farm Shop was limited. As it kept snowballing, Angora realized that it was every oat seed available on each day was not sufficient for their farmstead available presently.

It seemed that he has to first upgrade Penguin Farm if he wanted more seeds to be sold, which requires raising his level as lord and the fief prosperity on the ascension page. Either way, it was quite far from reach for the moment.

Angora himself held some grief at first, believing that the shop feature of the System was being too stingy.

Still, he relented eventually—in the first place, the interface was named Lord System and not Farmer King System.

While most would consider farmsteads equals food and that it was not normal to work the fields for the entire day, agriculture was a just part of his fief for a lord like him.

When the only grain silo in the town was stacked full of oats, Angora began to think about planting other vegetables or whatnot.

For the poverty-stricken townsfolk, it was happiness to have a full stomach every day. Still, for better or worse, Angora was noble-born—he did keep it together for days solely on rations, but having oats over all winter would definitely drive him mad.

***

The old mayor accepted the little cloth bag from Angora somberly.

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He had been moved to tears days ago when he witnessed the oats mature hours after being planted, to the point that even his deeply-furrowed wrinkles seem to have eased.

The old man instantly changed his noncommittal attitude towards Angora to overflowing respect following his miraculous feats.

It was a pity that despite Angora’s several attempts, he could not turn the old man’s perspective to ‘the great one is not Angora but the God of Games’. Otherwise, the old man’s passion alone would certainly have made devout believer.

“By the way, has there been more sightings of revenants outside of town?” Angora asked concernedly.

At the moment, everything in town was developing steadily. It was only those revenants roaming beyond that worried Angora.

“None yet.” The old man shook his head even as he held the bag tightly before his chest as if it was treasure. “Apart from the skeletons they saw at first, the young hunters still found nothing after patrolling for days around the area.”

“Is that so…” Angora sighed slightly in relief.

“My lord, you don’t really have to worry about it—Vela might have exaggerated things because of her lack of experience: it is perfectly ordinary for the royal army to miss one or two of those bone fiends in their purge, and they would never hold out against our hunters.”

The old man could see that Angora was quite concerned with the matter and hence helped reassure him. “Moreover, the army actually set the forests on fire just to kill them all. Indeed, the fact they withdrew so carefreely also makes it clear that not many of those revenants are still around.”

“Won’t new revenants come out from the Valley of the Tragic Dead?” Angora asked.

“They won’t. The revenants wouldn’t leave the valley in winter, or in the very least that had never happened in the sixty-odd years of my life. Be at ease, my lord—it would be fine.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Angora sighed.

Unlike the old man, he had the cheating device that was the System even if he lacked the mayor’s experience.

After all, the quest panel which usually did not really have much of a presence suddenly started to alert him to the quest: defend the town, wait for reinforcements. Out of his trust towards the System or indeed the mysterious god who created it, Angora felt that there would be enough revenants coming to threaten the whole town!

‘It would be nice to know when the other Players would arrive,’ Angora thought.

The quest itself required him to hold out until the other Players could reach them, and if that was the case, there must be fighters amongst those other believers… just like the knightly escorts of most liege lords.

Why wasn’t there be a countdown timer that tells when the other Players would come like the oats?

Just as Angora brooded, he suddenly shuddered.

The northern wind was howling. The weather seemed colder.

Angora looked up, but found that the skies that were perfectly clear for miles was suddenly laden with clouds of gloom.

A tiny white snowflake floated down from the darkening sky.

The frost has come…