It's almost June, the rainy season in the Serengeti is coming to an end, and the dry and hot dry season is coming. However, in the royal capital of Mias, everything around is still in the middle of spring, thanks to its clever location. The royal capital of Mias, Algaedus, is a city built on a vast dead and active crater called Marcellano, which is about 300 fats (450 meters) above sea level and covers an area of 368 square kilometers. The entire Macerano crater can be considered a separate ecosystem, where small groups of wild animals lived in the era, including antelopes and bison, and naturally wolves.

Mt. Macerano is geographically part of the Pamela Mountains, the masterpiece of the entire orogeny of Mias in ancient times, and to the west of it can be seen the majestic main peak of the Pamela Mountains, the Langgulal Peak (about 1,500 faz, 2,250 meters above sea level); On the north and south sides are rainforests growing from mountain ranges; Two rivers from the Pamela Mountains to the north and south merge to form the Rama River in the east, and the valley is a fertile and flat land.

King Memnon of Mias was standing on the highest tower of his palace and looking out, where he could clearly see the warriors and hunters gathered in the square. At this time, he will lead one-third of the country's adult men to follow the migrating herd, and they will return to their cool homes in two months to escape the heat of the dry season.

Suddenly, he felt a soft body press against his back.

"What's the matter, my lovely queen?" Memnon smiled and grabbed the little hand around his abdomen.

"I'm too reluctant to part with you."

"There's no way around it, you see, you're already pregnant, and it's too hot outside, and it's not good for you and your baby."

"It's all your fault, it's this time of year that I get pregnant, so I can't accompany you to hunt." The queen said coquettishly.

"What every year, counting this time, it's only three years in total." "This time I want a daughter, a petite and lovely daughter like you." ”

"Then it's up to the gods to take care of you." The queen laughed.

"Of course the gods are on my side, otherwise how could they have sent you to me to be my wife?"

"I'm less proud, the reason why I was deceived by you was not the idea of your good prophet."

"Speaking of the Prophet, I wonder if Mbega's journey is going well, he must have met Lord Luce." Thinking of this, Memnon once again set his eyes into the distance.

"They're going to be fine." The queen snuggled up in the king's arms.

"It's great to have you by my side, Alona."

"Me too, Memnon."

In 352 A.D., after defeating the Qaedas, the fame of Memnon and his tribe soon spread throughout the Serengeti. One after another, many small tribes came to him, and the leaders of those tribes saw with their own eyes that the once formidable leader of the Ghada, Benin, was respectful to the young man, which made them believe the rumors even more.

"Mbega, what have the steppes said about us in the past two months?" Memnon asked with a smile.

The 12-year-old boy, Mbega, was not a member of Mennon's clan, but an orphan from a neighboring village. When he heard that Memnon was recruiting soldiers to volunteer against the whites, he secretly took a piece of salt and called it for the village elders, for his father had been killed while resisting Hertz's army. Memnon liked the little fellow very much, and regarded him as his younger brother, and let him stay with him as a squire.

"Ah, what an exaggeration of their legends. Some people say that you are like the great god Usam, who has six arms and spits fire from his mouth. Others say that you are a giant who can easily pull up the peak of Langgulal. ”

"Hehe, so I'm such a monster, hey, Lord Luce, what are you looking at?"

"Oh, I'm looking for your other four arms." Sogrend laughed.

"Well, Lord Luce, there is a legend about you." Mbega saw Sogrede joking with Mennon and unconsciously wanted to defend Mennon. When the boy first saw Sogland, like many black men, he felt an indescribable sense of strangeness. The fact that there was a white man helping his hero made him both proud and worried. The pride, of course, is because a hero like Memnon is willing to serve even a white man, and he is worried because he is afraid that this intelligent white man will not have any good intentions.

"Tell me, I should have three heads."

"Pretty much they say that you are a powerful mage who can send lightning and thunder at your enemies, and that you will scatter beans and summon the armies of Hell to serve you. Of course, you have to have three heads and three mouths to say spells, so you can cast three different spells at once. ”

"Ahaha, Lord Luce, give me a head so I can do my magic." Memnon followed Mbega's words and immediately fought back.

"Alright, that's the end of the joke, let's get down to business." Sogrend said.

"Then I'll quit first." Mbega said.

"No, you stay, Mbega." "At your age," said Memnon, "you should learn more wisdom, and you will be my most important helper in the future." As he said this, he saw Thorgrande smiling and nodding at him, and the future King Mias knew that he had made the right decision.

"Yes, sir." Mbega was encouraged.

"Well, I'm going to get started," Thorgrande reminded, "and now we have more and more allies, and according to yesterday's counts, in the past two months, fifty-four tribes have joined our camp, and there are fifteen thousand warriors capable of fighting. ”

"Wow, there are so many of them!" In total, the village where Mbega was born has just over a hundred people.

"Don't be too busy to be happy just yet." Memnon touched the boy's head.

"Quantitative growth is certainly a good thing, but then there are problems. First of all, although there are so many warriors, the tribes are very scattered, and if we are attacked suddenly, we will still be defeated by each one. Secondly, compared to the 15,000 soldiers, there are ten times as many women, children, and elderly people who cannot fight, and how can we protect them in the event of a war? Again, even though we have fifteen thousand soldiers, Hertz and Efini can still devote more than ten times as many troops here as we do, and if we are outnumbered, where do we take refuge? Finally, in the rainy season, our army can use the lush grass to maneuver around the enemy, but what about the dry season? ”

"The first problem, I have a way to solve it." Memnon said.

"Tell me about it."

"We divided the fifteen thousand warriors into three groups of five thousand men each, and gathered them in turn to train and hunt, and in the event of any sudden situation, five thousand warriors in combat readiness would be enough to defeat the vanguard of either Efini or Hertz."

"Do you have any thoughts on the next three points?" Thorgrande asked.

"I'm willing to listen to your advice, I can't think of any good way for a while."

"To solve the last three problems, you really only need one thing."

"Just one thing?" Memnon and Mbega spoke at the same time.

"Yes, we need a favorable base. This base must have a sufficiently large and strong concealment so that it can accommodate those who cannot fight; It must also provide shelter all year round, and if the enemy dares to invade there, then we can use the terrain to give them a heavy blow. ”

"Since Lord Luce said so, he must have already chosen an address, right?" Mbega asked.

"I've already thought of it, but I think that as a local, Memnon should be more familiar with that place than I, a foreigner, and that it is not affected by the rainy and dry seasons." Thorgrande does not give the answer directly, preferring to enlighten these dark-skinned people and make them understand that they are not inferior to other races in intelligence.

"I think I know what you're talking about." Memnon tilted his head and thought for a moment.

"Where?" Mbega asked.

"The Jungle." Memnon replied with one such word.

In addition to the vast Serengeti savannah, there is also the tropical rainforest around the Pamela Mountains. The people of the grassland simply call it "jungle", and for those who live on the grassland, it is a mysterious and strange place. Aside from going to the edge of the jungle to harvest some timber and crafting weapons and tools, the jungle has nothing to do with them. Of course, the people of the steppe also knew that the jungle was inhabited by a group of equally dark-skinned inhabitants, whom they called "bush people". The Jungle People are shorter than them, and their language is somewhat different from theirs. There was little interaction between them. Because of their small stature, the slave traders looked down on them, and they also avoided the blow arrows of the bushmen with unknown poisons.

"We have no contact with them, we don't speak the language, so it's not appropriate to rush into their territory." Memnon said.

"There is one thing other than music that can connect any people in the world who do not speak the language or blood." Thorgrande said with a smile.

"What's that?" Mbega asked again.

"Trade." Saugland also replied with one word.

Sogrend's plan was also very simple, of course they could not send a business delegation to discuss this matter directly with the inhabitants of the jungle, not to mention that the whole concept of trade in Mias was only in the primitive stage of barter. Therefore, Memnon only collected a batch of supplies from various tribes that they could not use for the time being, and began the first trade between bushmen and steppe people in the history of Mias.

They first consulted with the older elders and found a water source close to the jungle. According to the hunters' careful investigation, it was confirmed that this was indeed a place where jungle people often frequented to fetch water. As a result, a self-service trading post was set up here. The steppe people laid out three large straw mats on the side of the jungle people's path. The mats were filled with things that were only produced in the grasslands and rarely found in the jungles—roasted antelope ribs, bison skins, crocodile teeth, and some iron and salt. Around the outpost, some herbs were lit to drive away the beasts.

The Mias still had doubts about this plan, and in order to calm everyone's doubts, Memnon and Sogrend decided to ambush themselves not far away to observe the results of this plan. They brought some dry food and settled down on a poplar tree 100 fats away from the mat.

After surviving three long, hot days, by the evening of the third day, several humanoid figures finally appeared. Although they were some distance away, it was easy to identify them as humans rather than apes, as they both had a clay pot on their heads.

The bushmen were initially attracted by the smell of vanilla, and we can imagine their initial surprise when they discovered the abundance of supplies. For people who are accustomed to living in the harsh conditions of nature, these things of food and clothing are so precious and important. This made the jungle people dare not imagine that they would have such good fortune, and the heavens have sent them the supplies they need that are difficult to obtain but very much needed. Chunks of meat are a luxury nourishment for bush people; They are also hard to come by, with large sheets of high-quality and sturdy leather; Crocodile teeth can be used to make arrowheads and magic tools; Iron and salt were also useful supplies that they coveted. When the bushmen carefully confirmed that these were neither dreams nor traps, they happily danced around them in celebration, and then sent for their companions to inform them, for the team could not carry all the supplies at once.

"I hope they really understand what we mean as you think, Lord Luce." Memnon let out a long sigh of relief as he watched the bushmen sing and dance as they moved their things away.

"They will, Lord Memnon, and remember one piece of advice from me." Sogrend said.

"I'm listening."

"Treat the bushmen as your relatives and compatriots, because you have the same color of skin and the same simple soul, and they will surely regard you as their own relatives and compatriots." Sogrend said solemnly.

Three days later, the scouts who stayed behind reported to Mennon about the bushmen's movements: early this morning, a group of bushmen had moved a bunch of things back to where they had taken their supplies. Memnon wanted to see it at once, but Sogrend reminded him that it would be better to gather enough elders to witness it, and that it would be enough to convince the crowd.

In the evening, the elders of a dozen or so tribes in the vicinity who had provided supplies arrived, and Mennon led the large group to the water source. The scouts who stayed behind didn't touch the items, they were just keeping an eye on them to avoid being taken by beasts or anyone else. When the elders arrived, led by Memnon, Thorgrande motioned for the elders to see for themselves what the giveaways were.

"The aroma is so pleasant, it seems to be some kind of fruit wine, and the last time I drank it was many years ago."

"What's this bottle? The smell, ah, I see, that a little bit of this potion on an arrow and a spearhead is enough to bring down an adult elephant. ”

"Oh, this wood is so strong, it's so much better than what we cut at the edge of the jungle, so much so that we can make at least 100 new javelins."

Memnon originally wanted to distribute the supplies sent by the bushmen to each village in proportion to the supplies provided by each village. Thorgrande prevented him from doing so, much to the confusion of the future King Mias. The Westerners told him that the variety of these things was very diverse, and that the Memnon could not distribute them to everyone fairly and correctly, so it was better to keep everything in a centralized store for the time being, and then publicly auction it to the villages, and the goods obtained from the auction would be the goods for the next trade with the bushmen. Memnon followed this wise advice, and sure enough, the people of Mias showed great interest in this new business business. The next day's auction was a great success, and after Memnon counted the auction proceeds, he found that the materials had far exceeded his expectations, and were worth about 1.3 times the value of the first batch.

"Give them all to the bushmen." Sogrend suggested again. This made Mbega feel a little strange, the white man at the auction counted every little bit of income accurately, and in the blink of an eye he was so generous to throw away such a large fortune.

"Lord Luce, that's weird."

"You don't understand this, Mbega, this is where he is really cunning, you have to learn from this wisdom of his." Memnon said with a smile and touched the boy's head.

As a result, the bushmen seemed to think that this was the generosity of the steppe people, and they were not to be outdone, and when they gave it back, the value of the thing was a little higher than that sent by Memnon. After a few such exchanges, Thorgrande limited the scale of the material trade to a certain extent, because any further increase in quantity would be beyond the normal production capacity of both sides. To their real delight, the other tribes of the Junglers seemed to know that there was such an opportunity to do business with the Junglers, as the hunters had discovered several small-scale trade places initiated by the Junglemen. In this way, the Mias people, who lived in two different environments, began this kind of mutual exchange without meeting.

On this day, Memnon took Mbega to inspect a new trading post. Just as the two of them and another hunter crouched down to inspect the bushmen's cargo, Memnon suddenly felt a slight itch in his neck, which he thought was a mosquito, so he touched the itch and found that it was a blowgun arrow made of crocodile teeth. Memnon thought something was wrong, and when he looked back, he saw that the other two companions were already lying on the ground, and he immediately lost consciousness and fell to one side.