Holm was a serf - but he was not born as a serf, earlier he was a miner in the mines.

Miners, not slaves.

There are two types of people working in the mines, free miners who voluntarily go to dangerous mines to "dig stones" in order to support their families, and slaves who do not have a free body, and freedmen, who are the private property of the mine slave owners, equivalent to the tools and livestock in the mines, but the two are no different in some ways - they are just consumables that can die in the mines at any time and no one cares after death.

Home's loss of freedom is dramatic: he's not a "settled" miner, he's more interested in finding something new than digging for stone in a hole, whether it's a new ore or a plant, as long as it's something new. At this point, it was often teased that his ancestors might have some dwarven blood, but Holm had always embraced these teases. He worked in the mines, thinking all day about whether he could dig something amazing underground, and finally one day, he really "dug up" the "treasure".

He bumped into the scene where the mine owner's wife was having an affair with one of the mine's overseers.

It was easy for the overseer to kill one or two miners or slaves, and it was no problem to fool around with the cave-in or something like a mine collapse afterwards, and Holm had even seen such a scene with his own eyes, so he chose to flee in the first place - and never returned home.

After a year as an exile, he settled in Old Cecil, and the previous Viscount Cecil did not expel him, but he had to sell himself as a serf to survive.

Under normal circumstances, this is all he had to do with his short and miserable life - locked to the land, the life of the serf Holm will never change, there will be no new opportunities and hopes, he will be burdened with the heavy pressure exerted by the landlord, he will crawl among the dirt for the rest of his life, and live as a serf for the remaining ten or fifteen years, and if he can get lucky (or unfortunately) have an heir in the process, then his son will also inherit the status of a serf, and live under the whip of the landlord for the rest of his life. And his early experience as a miner and the small, restless curiosity of his youth will one day disappear from his memory.

But after that disaster, everything changed.

The old Cecil is gone, the landlord is gone, the land is gone, the new lord has come out of the legend and led the survivors to build a new home at the foot of the Dark Mountains, facing a new land and a dark mountain full of secrets, the lords have issued one incredible new decree after another, and the serf Holm has been rewarded for his role in the "defense of the trap" in the fall, and he has become free again, even freer than the freedmen.

The lord allowed the lord to do all kinds of work according to his personal strengths, and rewarded anyone who worked hard, and on the bulletin board in the town center, new recruitment revelations were posted almost every day, and anyone in the realm who wanted to subsidize an extra household could respond to the lord's call through this channel - it was an incredible reward for the people of this day and age that the lord had opened up so many jobs and paid them, not to mention that it was still the winter when they could only starve to death at home— So every time a new recruitment announcement is posted, countless people who are waiting for work (or waiting to support their families) flock to find a job that suits them.

The vast majority of the people in the realm were illiterate, and they could only listen to the soldiers standing in front of the bulletin board read it to themselves, but the soldiers would only start reading the new revelations six hours after they had been posted—in order to figure out the recruitment a few hours earlier, Holm had learned thousands of words in just a few months, and had been able to stumble through the bulletin boards.

And in evening schools, there are not a few people like him who strive to be literate for similar motives: literate people can know the details of the recruitment a few hours in advance and go to the personnel department of the Ministry of the Interior to sign up for clerks, while those who are illiterate often have all the posts already filled by the time they do, and those who did not try to read in the first place are now regretting it.

And Holm was very glad that he had learned the text in time, and when the lord announced the organization of a new group of exploration teams into the mountains, he went to sign up as soon as possible: the number of people required by this team is not much, although it is a little risky, but the reward is higher than that of the skilled workers in the factory, besides, there is also a squad of magic infantry in the team to protect, how much risk can it be?

The newly organized expedition into the Dark Mountains descends a newfound mountain trail and encounters incredible mutated animals, plants, and rocks along the way, and Holm is the leader of the team thanks to his experience in the mines, his somewhat nimble brain, and his best level of literacy (of course, another important reason he became the leader of the team is that he has been personally rewarded by the lord, which is a rare honor), and under his leadership, the team finds the peculiarity in a loose weathered rock, a "rough stone" with a lilac luster.

In the process, Home's curiosity, which had been smoothed out by life, gradually revived......

Led by the soldiers, Gawain and Amber found the "Expedition Stronghold" in the Dark Mountains, where several improvised tents were set up in a small clearing in the mountains, and heavily armed Cecil combatants guarded the small camp, and Gawain met the leader of the expedition team, a small but stocky middle-aged man.

Looking at the other man's swarthy face and slightly rickety body, Gawain felt a sense of familiarity, and the satellite elf's memory worked well at this time, and he remembered that he did know this man: in the autumn battle against the aberrant Cecil, a serf named Holm was rewarded for his outstanding performance, and in order to set an example, he also gave a public commendation - it turned out that he really was not wrong.

"I remember your name was Home," Gawain nodded to the serf-turned-lord, "You're part of this expedition?" ”

"Yes...... Yes, my lord! Holm didn't expect Gawain to remember his name, and he was a little frightened, "You personally awarded me one...... A medal! ”

"You're a little fatter than you were then, that's good," Gawain smiled and nodded, "You found the ore?" ”

"Yes sir," Holm struggled to control his nervousness, he had already been on the podium once, and was a little calmer than the average person, "the first place of discovery is not far from here, I'll show you......"

On an open-air rock formation not far from the camp, Gawain saw several collection sites excavated by the exploration team.

This potentially valuable ore is "buried" in such a shallow place.

When Gawain came to the mining site, he saw that the ore was covered with a thick layer of grayish-white porous rock that seemed to have been weathered, and some ore with a lilac or pale blue sheen was "inlaid in" in it, as if it were some kind of condensation nucleus.

"The surface layer is a very small piece of ore, and the further down you dig, the greater the quality and volume of the ore, and the real mining value of the vein should still need to be dug deeper," Holm explained, "This soft, weathered rock layer is not very suitable for mining shafts - it can easily collapse, so it should be better to open it directly into a pit, and with Rebecca crystals, it is not difficult to blast the rock formation." ”

Gawain nodded: "I saw the report you sent back, you have found a lot of things that have never been seen in the outside world, and there are signs of mutation of animals and plants. ”

"Yes, my lord," replied Holm, "but this is the first time that a mineral of this magnitude has been discovered. ”

Gawain let out a "hmm" and looked up slightly to observe the surrounding terrain - seven hundred years ago, Gawain Cecil led his army to find a way through the dark mountains, and at that time this place had not been affected by the demon tide, and in Gawain Cecil's memory, there were no such strange things here.

They all came after the Tide.

Amber pulled out her dagger, curiously picked out a piece of blue-purple sheen from the excavated rock at one of the gathering sites, and placed it in the sun to observe: "What a strange thing, old ...... Gawain, this is what you said, the changes in natural matter under the influence of the Demon Tide? ”

"The essence of the magic tide is an extremely powerful surge of magic power, and although this part of the magic power cannot be used by mortals, it can still have a profound impact on the natural environment," Gawain said casually, "Believe it or not, there are many more magical materials that can be found in the ruins of the ancient Deep Blue Well than here." ”

Amber's eyes widened: "What a reckless person would dare to mine there!" ”

Gawain shook his head, but didn't answer her question.

He looked at the ores in front of him, but he was thinking more than just them.

He had speculated that the tide might not have just erupted once.

The surveillance satellite left in the sky is obviously an early warning facility for the magic tide (or similar phenomenon), and the previous disaster in Cecil's territory also showed signs of the imminent return of the magic tide, and in the monitoring records he hung in the sky in the past, he also observed the phenomenon that all civilizations on the earth suddenly and inexplicably disappeared, and the entire ecosystem shuffled and restarted from scratch.

In the "satellite age", his observations of the earth were incoherent due to serious "frame skipping", so many times he couldn't understand how the earth-shaking changes on the surface of the earth came about—in the blink of an eye, primitive man made magic cannons, and then in the blink of an eye, they lived in tree hollows again, and they also wore animal skins around the campfire and danced a square dance, and the geological landforms and plant distribution in their field of vision were also turned upside down, and there may have been decades of devastating wars in between, There may also be a flood and tsunami for 7749 days, but for a satellite spirit who waits for a thousand years, this "swift and short" disaster moment is really difficult to capture.

But there must be something causing this "shuffle" – if there is no other answer, then the only answer is the Magic Tide.

The Tide causes the properties of matter in nature to change, as evidenced by the fact that these things in the Dark Mountains have not been seen elsewhere.

And even if the tide fades, these things that have changed will not return to their original state, but will solidify into a new material material - as evidenced by the ores found in the Dark Mountains.

So if there has been more than one magic tide in the world, Gawain has reason to believe that most of the things in this world have probably been affected by the magic tide.

He came up with one of the boldest conjectures ever made:

Those magical materials, magical creatures, or ordinary soil and rocks that seem to have nothing to do with magic have all been gradually shaped into what they are today in the baptism of the magic tide.

The Devil's Tide is a "world-shaping phenomenon" that continues to occur and continues to this day.