Chapter 1: The Beginning of the Beginning
A few months later, an adventurer's camp called 'Bay of Pigs'.
Patched dilapidated tents and haphazardly erected wooden huts were disorderly arranged throughout the camp, and all kinds of human and animal excrements and some strange animal entrails could be seen everywhere on the ground, quarrels between adventurers, bargaining between merchants and adventurers, mixed with the screeching of iron and the laughter of the **shalts, and all kinds of noisy voices mixed together, showing people how wise the man who named the camp was.
Winter has passed, early spring is coming, and the Bay of Pigs is as lively as ever.
Beside a tent made of a light gray cloth curtain brushed with tung oil, several adventurers in leather armor cut down a withered chestnut tree with one-handed axes, and set up a bonfire with the dead branches to roast a ferocious rabbit half a circle larger than a domestic dog.
Orange-yellow flames licked the rabbit meat, and some spices made with grated rosemary, sage, peppers and salt were evenly sprinkled on the rabbit meat. The person who sprinkles the spices is very careful, because the value of these spices is much higher than that of the rabbit itself. After a while, the unique fatty aroma of meat, accompanied by the spicy aroma of the seasoning, diffused in the slightly fishy air.
Over the rye beer in the oak glass, the adventurers sang a ballad:
"My dad gave the property to my eldest brother;
There are more weeds in your fields than in your crops;
The front of his shop was covered with cobwebs;
Our family declined generations ago;
Instead of wasting the years, it is better to pick up the long sword and fight;
We are risk-takers, and there is nothing we can't do;
Hunter-gatherers, that's no better;
There is nothing wrong with killing people and setting fires;
You're going to ask me why?
It's all about living!"
......
A slender girl with freckles on her cheeks walked past the group of adventurers, and one of them got up and shouted, "Hey, beauty, it's too cold, come and sit here, I'll definitely warm you up!"
But the girl did not even look back, as if she had not heard his cry at all, and walked on. The "enthusiastic" adventurer sat back down to the laughter of his companions.
The girl jumped over a puddle in the middle of the road, smiled and greeted a middle-aged woman who was mending her clothes, and finally stopped at a stall selling rye bread.
She wore a somewhat old pale blue cardigan dress, and some messy burgundy hair hung down her neck and covered her half-exposed whiteness. The girl seemed to want to buy a pound of dark rye bread, but the price did not seem to be negotiated with the seller.
"Ten copper coins, nothing less. The lame seller said. "There's no mill here, there's no bakery, and I have worked so hard to bring it from the town of Tarun. ”
The girl pointed to the charred part of the rye bread with her pale fingers, frozen by the low temperature of early spring, and argued loudly about something, but the seller just shook his head unmoved, and let the girl have as much as she could speak.
The girl found that words alone did not seem to impress the seller, so she naturally lifted her hair and slowly pulled down the deep V-shaped neckline of the long skirt with her other hand, and the fairness of the buttoned bowl almost jumped out with slow movements.
Then in the seller's expectant stunned look, the girl covered her neckline again, picked up the bread, threw down two copper coins, and Shi Shiran left.
Her firm fairness was in bloom as much as her age, but that didn't stop her from knowing how to use it.
"If you don't have any money, you should use 'them' to make more money!"
The seller scolded and complained, but he didn't catch up, I don't know if it was because of the bad legs and feet, or because the price of the two copper coins was not very satisfactory, but with that white look, it was barely acceptable.
The girl took the bread and walked along the narrow, winding road in the camp. She stopped beside an open-air blacksmith shop and roasted her hands over a red-hot fire. The sparks that the blacksmith splashed when he struck the iron fell on her somewhat pale skin and shabby blue dress, and the slight pain on her skin did not make her care, but the little scorched black of the long skirt after being burned by the sparks made her feel a little distressed.
After absorbing enough warmth from the blacksmith shop and kicking away the two wild dogs that wanted to beg for food, the girl continued on. She kicked hard, and the wild dog whimpered and ran away. The girl was dexterous like a moonlight butterfly, shuttling among the burly adventurers, skillfully avoiding the big hands that wanted to take advantage of them.
A bald adventurer crouched on the side of the road where the girl passed, dipped in a dark sauce and munched on roasted chili peppers from a wooden bowl. The adventurer's bald head and eyebrows were covered with beads of sweat, accompanied by the sauce running from the corners of his mouth, dripping on the ground.
As the girl passed, the bald man sneaked up on the girl with his sauce-laden hand. The girl had already noticed it, and flashed lightly to the other side. But the speed of the bald man's shot was too fast, and with a crisp sound of 'pop', a large sauce-black handprint was printed on the rounded arc of the girl's long skirt.
"Ah!" the girl cried out involuntarily, and she stopped, turning her head to look at the handprint formed by the sauce at the back hem of her long dress, her face showing anger. She stretched out her foot and kicked the bald man's big smiling face like she was kicking the two obnoxious wild dogs.
The girl's feet were wearing a pair of gray sewn boots full of traces of age, and the size of these boots was a bit large compared to the girl, as if the original owner of the boots was not her.
But at least for now, they are worn on the girl's feet and serve as a girl's weapon.
The bald man laughed and blocked the girl's kicking foot, he blocked it easily, and did not even get up, and took off the gray boots that the girl was wearing on her feet, and shook it proudly in his hand. And when the latter was about to have a seizure, he threw it back.
The girl took the shoe, knowing that she could do nothing with this hateful adventurer, and after a demonstrative curse, she left in a huff. After taking two steps, the girl seemed to feel a little unwilling, and turned to the bald head again, baring her teeth and crossing her arms in front of her chest to form an 'X' shape.
On this continent, crossing your arms over your chest is an insulting gesture that has a similar meaning to the middle finger.
On the way, the girl stopped again to watch the excitement: a blacksmith with thick arms was boneing an adventurer, and the sound of the thin adventurer yelling in pain, and the 'click' sound when the bones were broken back into their original positions, filled the girl's brows with laughter, and her eyes were bent into a crescent moon with laughter, and the hazel freckles on her cheeks were so cute.
In a place like 'Bay of Pigs', you can't expect to have any profession, so some of them also work part-time as tailors or cooks, and blacksmiths are likely to work part-time as orthopedic doctors, at least their hands are definitely enough.
As long as there is money to be made, many people here "can" be versatile.
It could be seen that the girl's mood had changed for the better because of the adventurer whose bones were broken and the sound of 'click, click', and she even hummed a ballad softly:
"I want a nice pair of red dancing shoes,
Dancing shoes should be inlaid with beautiful gold-rimmed butterflies,
But the shoemaker said that I did not have enough gold coins.
For my dancing shoes,
I had to let him vent on me.
And the shoemaker said that he had lost the red dye,
For my dancing shoes,
I had no choice but to offer my crimson blood again;
......”
Next to a dilapidated wooden house, the girl stopped, and kicked open the half-hidden door of the wooden house with her 'weapon', and when she strode into the house humming a song, she closed the door with the same movement, not paying any attention to the whole wooden house, which trembled slightly, as if it was in danger of collapsing at any moment.
Sitting next to the bed in the room was a male adventurer with obvious northern barbarian characteristics, the adventurer's figure was burly and strong, and his forehead was tattooed with a black tattoo composed of special patterns, which was a unique symbol of the northern barbarians on the mainland.
However, the male adventurer in front of him was not a pure-blooded northern barbarian, but a half-blood, but his other bloodline was not obvious, and it was not revealed on his body or face.
The stubble on the barbarian adventurer's head indicates that he was once bald, and down the newly grown sideburns, there is an ugly scar on the adventurer's throat, like an ugly centipede lying there.
He held a two-handed longsword mixed with magic iron in both hands, his expression was serious, and his eyes stared at the longsword without blinking, even if the girl came in, he didn't care.
The girl frowned in dissatisfaction when she saw that the barbarian adventurer ignored her. She placed the rye bread on a simple table made of tree stumps, and walked straight to the barbarian adventurer.
"Am I not as good as that broken sword?" said the girl angrily to the adventurer, and seeing that the adventurer still ignored him, she raised her voice again, "I'm talking to you, Barrett!"
......