Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest

Chapter 43 - 43 12 Exploration

?43: Chapter 12: Exploration 43: Chapter 12: Exploration Roman prepared to explore this land.

Sige Town only accounted for a tiny corner of the basin, occupying a position at the basin’s mouth.

To the north lay tens of thousands of acres of cultivated land.

Without these lands, when viewed from high above, Sige Town would appear as nothing but an insignificant black dot on a blank piece of paper.

There were plenty of places to explore, but they also brimmed with danger.

The Wilderness referred to areas that were environmentally hazardous and primitive, filled with swamps, streams, lakes, and a great number of wetlands.

Swamps could swallow a man whole, forests housed fierce beasts, and those unexplored territories were virtually impassable.

Roman, Gwivelle, and Green formed an expedition team.

With two fine horses, Gwivelle, who could not ride, shared one with Roman, and with a small amount of living supplies, they set off—

Without any attendants or chefs, an excessive number of people would only be a burden, slowing down their advance.

The fewer the people, the better, as it made movement easier.

After advancing over ten kilometers by horseback, the trio had to dismount due to entering the swampy area where they carefully avoided natural traps to find passable paths, sometimes having to backtrack when they hit a dead end.

Sige Town’s exploration of these Wilderness areas was also in progress, but the pace was incredibly slow, and they couldn’t even produce a detailed map.

If it weren’t for Roman’s arrival, in a few decades, as the population of Sige Town naturally increased, they might have crossed the swamps and forests to the north, establishing new towns and villages on the grasslands opposite.

By noon, the three had only made it about thirty or forty kilometers.

Roman was not impatient as they located a safe camp in the swamp.

Green took down the iron pot, Gwivelle collected firewood, and they started a fire to boil water.

Moments later, Roman returned holding two otters that had been pierced by arrows.

[Hunting Experience +1]

Hunting was mainly about improving skill levels through the act of hunting.

Roman had already gained basic wilderness survival experience by killing wild beasts and had a preliminary ability to handle his prey.

His awkward skinning and butchering, removing the head and guts, and roasting the carcass on a stick followed.

Gwivelle sat by the fire on a tree root, her bright eyes fixed on the meat in the fierce fire, almost drooling.

The barbecue led by Roman was not a success.

To put it more accurately, it had a unique flavor reminiscent of charcoal.

This furrowed Roman’s brow, as he thought that perhaps he should have brought Dota along, an experienced hunter who surely had grilling skills.

But the prompt, [Cooking Experience +1], made Roman dismiss the idea.

Green looked at the charred meat…

Was this supposed to be barbecue?

Forgive his bluntness, but he had never seen anyone so ruin something in his life.

Roman tore off a leg of meat, gently scraping off the charred layer with his fingernail, and passed it to Gwivelle, who was not picky at all and started gnawing on the leg.

She was so easy to please, it seemed the manor life hadn’t spoiled her little mouth.

Roman also tore off a piece and chewed on it vaguely, saying, “Green, you eat.”

Green’s face twitched, and after two seconds of silence, he decisively said, “I’ll eat the dry food.”

“You despise me?

I hope you can maintain this defiant attitude in the future.”

Green immediately laughed out loud, “Even if I starve to death or die in this swamp, I won’t eat food that not even a pig would touch.”

“You’d better remember your words.”

Green scoffed, “I am a knight, I have spirit!”

Gwivelle blinked innocently.

While the two were arguing, she sneakily stuffed another piece of meat into her cheeks, much like a little squirrel.

And Roman, watching Green’s brave words, simply sneered silently.

Just you wait!

I’ll get that Cooking skill leveled up in no time!

A brief rest and then continued on.

There was a small incident during the journey, a horse lost its footing and sank into the swamp.

Despite being as cautious as possible, the trouble was still unavoidable.

Roman and Green had no choice but to forcibly drag the horse out of the swamp, while also wiping it down and calming it to prevent it from getting frightened and falling ill.

Warhorses are incredibly expensive in themselves, and special warhorses can be counted among demon beasts, able to carry hundreds of pounds and still run freely.

It was in the Duke Domain that such warhorses were bred.

Otherwise, Roman wouldn’t have received these five fine horses when he split from his family.

After all, a warhorse on the market is worth 4 Gold Coins, and some special warhorses are even more precious, costing dozens or even tens of Gold Coins.

This made Roman treat them with great care.

Green and Gwivelle followed Roman through this swampy area.

In this era, going on a long journey was a very adventurous thing.

Indeed, once one left the human villages and towns by about forty or fifty kilometers, it basically counted as a long journey.

The Wilderness is vast, and once one delved deep into it, unless they had an extraordinary memory and an excellent sense of direction, it was basically impossible to return the same way they came.

But Roman had no such worries.

He had never seen a farm owner get lost on their own farm.

“Breathing Story” would display the big map and his location on it.

However, Roman soon found that his luck wasn’t too good.

Just as they were about to leave the swamp, an adult demon beast boar went mad and charged at them.

Roman, carrying the Riptide Great Bow, sensed the boar’s attack beforehand.

When the boar came within twenty meters, he shot an arrow through its skull, killing it swiftly and neatly.

It seemed the wildlife here hadn’t endured the brutal beatings by terrifying bipedal primates.

It was time to give them a lesson.

Happy to gain +1 Hunting Experience!

Regrettably, Roman couldn’t take it all with him, only cutting off about ten or so pounds of leg meat and tying it to the back of a horse.

Then, they encountered a dense forest, where thick bushes covered the entire ground, preventing any footing, much less allowing a horse to pass through.

Encountering venomous snakes or scorpions would have been terrible.

Roman had no choice but to take a detour.

It was also in the afternoon that Roman noticed a resource zone icon on the interface of “Breathing Story.”

It was the icon of a mineral resource.

Not all minerals have clear markings like iron ore.

Most veins are just like mixed forests; miscellaneous ores might contain anything.

Roman had basic knowledge of geology and minerals.

He took some time to find a spot that could be surveyed.

There, a rugged rock mountain lay in a depression; with stones strewn about and an extremely steep slope, completely bare of vegetation.

Roman had to walk over to conduct a preliminary investigation.

He sifted through the piles of broken stones, picking and even digging into the soil of the mountain, spending a good fifteen minutes until he finally unearthed a slightly crystalline stone from several meters deep.

It looked like a chunk of ice, but its interior was cloudy white and not transparent.

Roman sniffed it gently, then stuck out his tongue to taste it, his face quickly breaking into a smile.

Roman tossed the stone to Green, saying, “Try it.”

Green was taken aback, but licked it from another angle, quickly tasting a strong, bitter saltiness that made him spit out the taste.

“What is this?” Green blinked, his mind not catching up for a moment.

“Hm,” Roman snorted, “Rock salt!

There must be a Salt Mine under my feet, and the layer is very shallow, only a few meters or perhaps a dozen meters thick.”

He figured this low-lying area might have been a salt lake in the past, which got buried underground during the lengthy geological movements, and through chemical precipitation, it gradually crystallized into this kind of halide mineral.

Green suddenly realized what the Salt Mine meant for Roman, his eyes also igniting with fervor.

His Fine Gold Sword and Secret Silver Armor were right under their feet!