The weather in Ashinir has not been very calm these days. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

February was drawing to a close, and as if winter was finally about to show its might in the city-state, known as the Land of Eternal Spring, the successive downpours and bitter winds made those who were not prepared shiver even indoors.

The tavern in the alley at the entrance of the city gate in Nancheng District, the middle-aged proprietress supported her side face that had been a little fat in the past six months, and sighed again and again, although the mercenaries and the local residents would always politely shush each other and ask each other for warmth, jokingly saying that it was okay to run around to drink like this all day and answer her with the reason of drinking to warm up, but at this time, the weather was really cooler because of the rain and wind, and these guys who were spoiled by the pleasant climate of Ashinier were all nested in the quilt of their hotel room and refused to move a single step。

Even if they really ran over, they all asked for a bowl of beet soup, so they ran to the side of the oven with a pottery bowl and a chair, and gathered around to breathe, just a little warm chat and fart there, and the drinks and main meals, which were the main income of the people, were not bought by anyone.

"Ahh It was as dark as it was inside, and on a rainy day, she couldn't see the faces of the people at the door, only that there were a lot of them, but the smile on her face changed in an instant as the rain flowed down the floor, the dampness that seeped into the wood, and the cold air that shook the bonfire when she opened the door.

"Close the door for me, and take off your wet cloak, you guys!" said the West Coast lingua franca in Avenella's accent, and the men at the door froze for a moment, then one of them seemed to turn back to the others and say something, and they all began to take off their cloaks. However, when they took off all the wet cloaks, the appearance of the group exposed to the dim candlelight stunned everyone, including the proprietress of the hostess.

The man at the head was a tall mercenary, but unlike the man in the tavern who sat in a cheap armor mixed with leather and chain mail, the rusty but still expensive cuirass on his body resembled the equipment of a knight's lord. The two white-haired girls standing next to them were obviously savage Roans, and they didn't look dirty and vicious like ordinary Roans - the taller girl also wore a blue mercenary badge, which meant that her status was higher than that of the mercenaries next to the fire.

It's just that even these three people, who are already quite eye-catching, are still not as good as the seventeen people who are outfitted with all the West Coasters, with brown skin and black hair and very characteristic national costumes.

The leader is petite but it is obvious that the girl with a high status can be seen from the colorful clothes is a big highlight, but in addition, the alien warriors who reveal a fierce temperament in the back are also people who can't take their eyes off just when they move up, although they don't wear any mercenary badges and are not wearing sophisticated metal armor, just the sharp eyes and the hand that is always on the handle of the scimitar and the slightest vigilance between walking, it makes people feel that they should be similar to the two in front of them, and they are also excellent fighters who belong to the blue card class。

-- This is a big customer, unlike the northern city district, which is very lively because it is a commercial street, the southern city has always been only a few ordinary farmers and low-level mercenaries who will come to the mining area, and it seems that people who belong to the middle and upper levels will not patronize it at all, so we must seize this opportunity to earn enough money today. The proprietress thought so, and then felt a little uneasy about her previous behavior of yelling at them, so she hurriedly ran over with greater enthusiasm to shush and ask for warmth, trying to hide the dissatisfaction that her previous behavior might cause, but before she could speak, the tall mercenary led by the group raised his hand.

"Is there any fish, here. As he spoke, the proprietress could clearly see the petite brown-skinned girl behind her, and many others whose eyes lit up at a certain keyword.

"Well, ......yes, yes," she replied, and the tall mercenary spoke again, "Well, I don't have any silver coins—" The proprietress 's expression instantly darkened at the words, "Is gold okay?" and then the next moment became ecstatic.

- This group is naturally our sage, they have made their way north after reaching an agreement with Muna and the others, and it is impossible for the team of a dozen steppe people not to be eye-catching, plus everything that happened in Soladin before. The group kept a low profile and drove back from the country road until they entered the territory of Avenella.

Although even the country was not very peaceful, Henry turned his head and explained in Sumu to Muhammad and Muna, among others, that the lingua franca of the West Coast, although it had some Lamanite vocabulary, was mainly in the local dialects, so that they could only understand a very small number of words and could not fully understand the general meaning.

"Yes, yes, dear guest, please sit down there, feed you guys, move from there a little bit, it's just such a little temperature and shivering next to the fire What kind of mercenary, hurry up and move a place to come out, give some space!" Receiving a golden Ella coin, the proprietress began to make room for them, her high voice and the local accent of Avenella reminded Mira of everything before she met Henry, and now that a short time had passed, the girl felt a little nostalgic in retrospect, after all, regardless of her blood or history, this is where she grew up, and where she has roots.

And it seems that Mira is infected by homesickness, and Lina next to her also looks at the place left and right. Both are girls of the same age and both Luo'an, and the two have established a friendship that is not shallow for some time, and it is absolutely impossible not to attract her attention in this place where her friends grow up and there are a large number of Luo'an people around.

With a touch of sentimentality and inexplicable affection, Lena looked at the scene inside the tavern. The unrestrained steppe people have no such concerns at all, and Muna, who had just sat down, was unable to sit comfortably in her chair because of the words mentioned by Henry before, as if she had grown a tail, and always kept looking in the direction of the kitchen - although the Kursimu region also had forests and other things, it still belonged to the grassland, and aquatic products or seafood, which were not strange to people on the west coast and the south, were only able to eat once or twice occasionally on the grassland, even if she was a royal family.

The principle that scarcity is expensive is common everywhere, so after arriving at Avenella who can slow down and eat normal food, Muna is immediately attracted by the richness and freshness of the food here.

"It's not air-dried-it's not air-dried--" she couldn't help but say this sentence in Lamani when she tasted the vegetable soup for the first time, Mira still remembers it vividly, just a few bytes of the hard life of the steppe people, and then Muna looked at her excitedly and asked, "Do you eat this every day?"

-- The country has changed so much in one year.

The contrast between the vacant houses and rough dirt roads of the south and the smooth ranks of merchants and mercenaries in Ekasta is as lively as the Ottolo Empire on the other side of the Tambur Mountains, and the prosperous towns of the southern city-states, where only cereal paste can be mixed together for three meals and everything is boiled together, and the diet of the Ottolo people has also improved greatly after contact with the Ottoro people, in addition to the fact that Prince Edward himself has made great efforts to promote a recipe that has also contributed greatly to the improvement of the diet here。

The vast Ottolo Empire had an almost unlimited market, and the Avenela had to rely on the West Valijes to sell all kinds of precious minerals and magical products to the east coast, thus eliminating intermediaries and customs duties, and bringing in a staggering amount of income, and truckloads of high-priced goods were sold to Ottolo, replaced with seeds, grain, and all kinds of common materials needed for development.

As the people became richer, their diets became abundant, more and more tea farmers went to Vavasika, and local tea became more common, and with the abundance of cheap labor brought by refugees who had fled from the aristocratic struggle on the side of the Valiya side, the peasants, accustomed to eating only light, tasteless, and nutritious cereals, were able to effectively fill their stomachs and even choose what to eat for the first time. Worrying about whether you have to eat the next meal has become worrying about what to eat at the next meal, and with the improvement of living standards, the average weight of the people is also rising.

――Is this really the Avenella you know?

Mira suffers a serious loss of realism, but some of the things she encounters along the way remind her that the country isn't all rosy. Ordinary people can only see that the standard of living is improving step by step, and there is nothing wrong with them living in the present, and many things have indeed made great progress compared to a year ago. The plain of Acasta is no longer the main city of Ashinir along the road of construction, and many of the new villages and towns will later evolve into equally prosperous cities, and even Ashinir is now twice as large as it used to be, and even outside the entrance to the south gate, where everyone enters, there is a whole row of scaffolding, and the unmolded limestone is placed under the rain-proof wooden shed, and the wooden bowls for drinking water left by the workers who run to rest for a while are still clearly visible because they are stained with ash to take them。

But beneath the surface of this prosperity, injustice remains.

After the defeat and the death of the king, the West Valyers could no longer hold their heads up like the proud people of the strongest kingdom on the West Coast, and in order not to be forcibly conscripted by the lord to be used as cannon fodder, they did everything possible to ferry or cross the dangerous forest to get here. The Sivaliers, who had been high up in the sky, now bowed their heads to the Yavenela who were taunted by them as boars or grooms, and were filled with the smell of horse dung and pig manure, and did the work of the most lowly servants in an attempt to obtain a mouthful of food and a place to stay.

And the ordinary people who have been watching the color of the Lord of Sivalier all their lives have turned over and become the master, and the party that suffered the violence has become the violent party - yes, they all have their own reasons and hatred, and it is not incomprehensible that these people want to vent their anger, but this anger continues like this, and if it breaks out again one day, how should they respond?

Human beings are always so good at dividing each other's camps, with the higher status side pointing fingers at the lower status and the lower status of the person with a bad attitude, and humbly bowing their heads to those who are higher than themselves. Obviously, they are all human beings, just because they are born with different skin colors and hair colors, their life trajectories can be completely different.

This is true between the Avenella and the West Valiers, but beyond them, even the Ottolos, who seem to have been of great help to the country, are not immune.

"Jingle bell—" The door was pushed open again, and the cold wind blew in again, making Muna and the others, who had been gulping down their bread before the fish came up, shiver - they were originally from the hot grassland, and although it would cool down when it rained there, such a situation still caught the thinly dressed group by surprise.

"Uh-huh-" Muna shuddered, but luckily there weren't as many people as they did, so she quickly closed the door again. "Put the cloak at the door, there's nowhere to hang it!" said the tavern's proprietor, busy cooking Henry's food, and yelled at this side before going about her work. Mira glanced at three of them, all dressed as merchants, and only two were mercenaries with weapons.

"These bastards Ottoro. The merchants, who were obviously natives of Avenella, scolded in dialect as soon as they let go of the small tavern: "It was clear that the unit price was 30, and when Danno ran over, he said that he was damp and could only pay half of the price, and this kind of ghost weather still urged us to hurry and make things not go wrong?" I said that I would wait for a few more days and not listen, and I said that I would not do business if I postponed it, and went to find someone else. ”

"Just because they're from the Empire, buy and sell, you damn bastards!" "Mike Mike - well, it's all over - " The conversation between the two merchants was exactly what Mira and Henry and the others had noticed along the way, just as the West Valiers had done in the past, except that now the higher object had become the Ottolo, and it seemed that there was much more to it - the merchant named Mike shook his arm and continued to scold, "No, man! I'll tell you, those stupid guards, what the hell did the king think of giving the Ottolos even more preferential treatment? Isn't this like Ottolo's dog, it's not enough that we've been a Sivalier dog for so many years, and now we have to change our master, really, His Royal Highness has fought for us-" "Mike!!" His friend covered his mouth, and the light dimmed, and these people saw the plate armor that Henry was wearing.

"Damn, you're going to be killed if you say that—" he whispered to his friend. "Alright!" and the proprietress behind her spoke, and our sage stood up, "Don't be afraid, I'm not a knight of the king. "Buckle button. He tapped the badge on his belt twice: "It's just a mercenary." ”

"Phew—thank goodness. The sage turned his head, and the two merchants breathed a sigh of relief, only the sage's action of getting up brought the attention of one of the mercenaries who had come in with the merchants.

"Henry?" the sage turned his head and nodded at the man, then went over to get the food he had just cooked.

"Then you're Mira—" This somewhat familiar voice sounded again, and the girl Luoan, who was chatting with Lena about her past life here, turned her head and looked at the other party for a moment before speaking, "Adella?"

"Well, it's my ......" At the beginning of the journey, the female deputy head of the Fude Mercenary Regiment, who had been traveling with her, still had red hair, but the expression on her face looked a lot more vicissitudes.

"You're all blue cards...... You've grown taller. She smiled and said, and Mira nodded politely, "Yes, you survived." ”

"Well, I'm lucky, but the rest of the mercenary group isn't so good, which is why I can only take on some individual tasks now, it's really providential...... A mercenary deputy head who doesn't have any subordinates, huh. She smiled self-deprecatingly and shook her head, the white-haired Luoan girl didn't know what to say, and there were not a few things she had experienced in the past year or so, but everything that had been a female mercenary had been in vain, although she had the level of the orange brand, it was obviously not so natural to find a mercenary group that was willing to hire and reuse her.

The girl couldn't imagine what the other party had lost and how much of the setback the other party had suffered, so she hesitated for a while, and finally could only say four faint bytes:

"It's good to be alive. ”

"Hmm. Adele was stunned for a moment, then nodded with relief: "Yes, it's good to be alive......"

"It's good to be alive......"

The candles flickered, and the reunited people didn't have much to say, and after returning to their respective groups, they enjoyed their lunch in the continuous cold rain. (To be continued.) )