The power of thousands of years is shown in the second half of the road.
There is almost nothing that can be called a road here. When the stone slabs covering the soil break and create gaps, dense vegetation grows one after another under the combined action of sunlight and moisture.
It's ironic, but the reason why the section of road behind us is relatively well-preserved is, to a certain extent, thanks to the abominable thick fog that persists all year round. The thick moisture and often fluctuating temperatures in the wetland zone make the Bao Forest shrouded in thick fog most days of the year, and it is precisely this situation that causes most of the shrubs and grasses to be lost. Without enough light, only the weeds with the smallest need for sunlight can grow.
Apart from this, there are only large perennial trees whose crowns are higher than the fog and can freely obtain sunlight.
But this phenomenon no longer exists in the second half of the Baka Trail.
Mobigas before the classical Lamanite era was a civilization with engineering and technological capabilities that were comparable to the original Lamanite civilization. As a typical example of the city-states in the later period, Katigali, located in the middle of the Baka Ancient Road, is such a combination city. It has the function of fortification and can accommodate more than 3,000 people. It is a relatively well-equipped city-state.
It seems that the preference for sunlight is not just a peculiarity of the Lamanites but a common phenomenon on the entire east coast, even if it is built in the Bao forest that is filled with thick fog all year round. The construction site chosen by Morbigas for Kadigali is also a very rare highland exposed to the sun in the entire forest. This seemed to be a beautiful idea at first, just like early polytheistic beliefs often The kingdom of the gods depicted.
The city-state that stands out among the mist-shrouded forests is illuminated by the sun. People living in it stand on the city wall and look out. In an instant, they will realize that they are actually above the clouds, among the gods. country’s illusion.
However, even the Mobigans never expected that their civilization would decline so quickly.
Thousands of years have passed, and this city has been surrounded by wildly growing vegetation due to its exposure to the sun. It has long become a forgotten ancient capital that even the locals in the south are unwilling to search for.
If not forced by the situation, even Henry and his party would have no intention of going here.
The threat of the undead is just one of them. To be honest, considering their speed of travel, it is not that scary. The bigger reason is that even if Rono and his group of more than a dozen people are discarded, the remaining rations will still be insufficient for more than forty people.
Constantine is a materialist who always makes decisions based on rational thinking and comprehensive interests. Even favors and actions to win over people's hearts are for the sake of future profits - this makes him a very good leader. .
And why he didn't discard Rono and others before, in the final analysis, he considered the unity of the team.
The Padrosi Empire is a highly hierarchical country. Even if the mercenaries and merchants from the civilian class have different positions from Ronno and his group, they are classified into the same category in terms of status.
Yes, Ronno and the others are thugs, bandits, and villains.
But how much better is my group than them?
Even if they are good citizens, just a few mercenaries and merchants, do they really have any weight in the eyes of the nobles?
The answer is obviously no, and in such a situation of lack of food, first of all, the most worthless guys who are hated by humans and dogs are abandoned, so what happens next?
Is it possible that the noble knights starved themselves and gave all the food to them?
The long-established concepts of class and origin make it easy for every move by both parties to be branded as an entire class. If Filippo did something like that, the common people would say, "Sure enough, nobles are like this." And when people like Ronno were abandoned, although in the eyes of many merchants and mercenaries, they were They deserved it, and they couldn't help but wonder whether they, who were members of the common class, would be the next to be abandoned to the corpses.
One stone stirs up a thousand waves. Although Constantine originally brought Rono and others with the intention of using them as cannon fodder, his original intention was to let them die as vanguards on the battlefield instead of abandoning them due to lack of food like this.
This is the last resort, especially if he does this kind of thing as the top leader of the entire team, it will be easier for the common people to feel that it is the unified will of the nobles, and they will choose to sacrifice when there is a bad situation. These lower class people.
No matter how talented he is, his personal abilities and leadership abilities are extremely superior. Constantine is no match for the long-established concepts formed by the entire empire and the instinctive understanding in people's hearts.
He could explain, but they could also not listen.
Militiamen have the lowest status among the imperial army, and as the war develops, it is basically professionals who fight it. This is largely due to this reason. Xiao Jiujiu, who has independent will and various inner thoughts, makes random assumptions on his own. Due to his limited ability, he is unable to judge the situation clearly, and instead of working together, he starts to cause trouble. Militiamen and individual lower-level mercenaries have done this many times. .
The food supply problem must be solved, and then we must seize the time to escape from this damn wilderness and return to the scope of the civilized world.
He generally had some ideas on how to do it, but first of all, they had to walk through the long and dense grass.
As the terrain rises, the mountain road becomes more and more difficult to navigate, not only because the flat stone road has long been torn apart, but also because of the wild growth of weeds here. As the road surface rises and the light becomes more abundant, they grow faster and taller, although there are no huge trees growing because the terrain here is located on the edge of the Bao Forest and looks like a cliff edge. But the dense weeds and shrubs with tenacious root systems were enough to make the group's journey forward miserable.
At first, he could ride directly on horseback and wade through the weeds. The closer he got to the city of Katigali, the more lush the vegetation became. In the end, he was already as tall as a person. If not on horseback, even Henry and Neither Constantine could see the road ahead clearly.
"The plants here are weird." Horno, whose hair shone brightly in the sun, whispered close to Henry. After she used magic last night, her identity could no longer be preserved, so she opened the door directly now. He took off his hood, showing off his blond hair and pointed ears.
The fact that there was an elf in the team, and also an elf elemental mage, caused a small sensation. However, due to a series of factors such as hunger, cold, life threats, and the dreams that the witch made them have, no one delved too deeply into the matter. .
Rather, many people felt a lot more at ease after learning that there was a magician among the accompanying team.
Although most of them knew nothing about magic, even after Horno explained it, they still couldn't understand the difference between elemental mages and wizards. But Henry and other people who knew magic did not intend to expose it. Although in fact, the magic systems of elementalists and wizards were completely different, the situation in the team was difficult enough, and they still allowed them to embrace it. It's better to have the illusion that "we also have companions who are good at magic and can deal with the witch".
It's just that the God of Doom doesn't seem to want to let them go.
Henry also noticed what Horno called "something weird" early on.
The vegetation here is a bit too lush.
Humanity.
It is humble and small.
Whether it is human creations or the damage caused to the ecological environment by humans, they will be repaired by time and the power of nature itself, and will eventually become nothing. This is the reason why elves, who have long lifespans as people of nature, do not object to human hunting and logging. As long as there is no threat of exterminating a certain species, even druids will not take care of it.
Because even if humans cut down all the trees in this forest, it will only take a "short" one or two hundred years for the forest to return to its original environment.
The concept of a long-lived race is completely different from that of human beings. It would not be surprising that the ancient Baka Road was abandoned after thousands of years and even the city of Katigali itself was completely destroyed by the growing vegetation, but Horno If we still say that the plants here are weird, in the final analysis, it still lies in their species.
After all, this place is still part of the Bao Forest. Even though the light is more abundant than other places, other aspects have not changed much.
Even the types of plants are the same.
Because the local environment changes in different organisms, this is a natural part of the natural cycle, but even so, with only the light being slightly different, the plants in this area look like they have changed from Abu Serra The ones shipped over are generally out of place, which is obviously counterintuitive.
"Cheer up and stay vigilant. No one has been here for at least two thousand years. We are no exception to anything we encounter here." After hearing Horno's words, Constantine said this in a louder voice. This sentence is a bit exaggerated. Until hundreds of years ago, the roads inside the Bao Forest were actually endless. At that time, adventurers might have come here to explore.
But it is better to be lenient than to be careless. If there are indeed adventurers who have come but did not leave any circulation records, either the ancient city of Katigali is ordinary and has nothing of value.
Otherwise, those adventurers will never come back.
They can only hope for the former now.
The knights were driving forward with the machetes they had collected from the villagers in their hands. This one-handed tool with a forward center of gravity was not as good as a long sword in combat, but it was far more comfortable than the latter when opening roads.
"Crack——!" Even in winter, standing in the broad daylight wearing a metal armor and wielding a machete to open a path among dense vegetation is still not an easy task. After slashing with the knife, he held the chopped bushes in his hands and threw them to the roadside. At this time, the mercenaries wearing relatively light armor had an advantage.
The team moved forward slowly, and all the mercenaries came to the front to clear the way, so the ones behind the formation became the Imperial Knights.
More than a dozen nobles riding heavy armor and holding spears carefully guarded the rear, fearing that a group of corpses would suddenly catch up with them again in the mist hundreds of meters away.
Fortunately, the strength of the horses' feet was not comparable to that of two rotten and stiff feet. The distance they had opened was estimated to take two days of walking at the slow speed of the zombies to catch up.
However, letting one's guard down is not a mistake that such a professional would make.
"Swish - swish!" He raised his knife and dropped it. He didn't know whether he was worried about being abandoned and therefore worked harder or simply because the burden was less. The mercenaries in the van quickly opened up a new channel again, but this time the reaction was huge. different.
"Wha—!" A dark figure emerged from the haystack. "What the hell—" Morrow was so startled that he almost sat down on the trampled haystack.
"Pap-pap-pap-pap-" And when they looked closely, the thing flapping its wings and running away turned out to be a wild turkey that is common in the south, and it was quite big.
"Live, there are live animals here!" Another mercenary raised his hands in joy and cheered. Moro also had a smile on his face, but in the next second he quickly changed his color: "Hurry up and get the crossbow! Quick, don't let it run away!"
The crowd, who had not tasted meat for a long time, reacted. After a while, they were still unable to catch the wild turkey due to the dense vegetation. "Look! What I found!" But everyone who turned around found something else. Where the pheasants were scared away, the mercenaries found a large nest of fire chickens each as big as a goose egg. egg.
"You can make egg soup today!" For five or six days, they only lived on dry food and wild fruits. Even the stock of bacon had been exhausted and they couldn't hunt prey. What a painful experience it was. Only they could You know it yourself.
People often overlook how much good food can boost morale.
We have mentioned in the past that "laymen talk about strategy, experts talk about logistics." If this Laman idiom is extended in popular language and said in a meaning that everyone can understand, it will become: "Let the soldiers have enough food." They can fight the good fight.”
Reliable logistics ensures that people are well fed and drunk, which not only ensures high morale, but also improves physical strength and energy.
The obtained turkey eggs were carefully collected and placed on the carriage. People who were worried about the bumps also wrapped them in a lot of linen cloth. After advancing for a certain distance, the turkey, which was probably worried about its offspring and ran back to check, also lost two crossbows and became their dinner.
"This is the law of the jungle, don't blame me." Morrow clasped his hands and said before slitting its throat with a knife to bleed it. In the case of food shortage, even chicken blood was not wasted but was filled in a kettle. After draining the blood, they placed the turkey among the cargo to avoid direct sunlight.
After the road leading to this section was overcome with difficulty and slowly, although they still had not reached the city of Katigali, they made other unexpected discoveries.
"Wild rice!"
The original Mobigas people also considered self-sufficiency when they established the city-state here, so they opened up many rice fields on the slopes outside the city. Over the past two thousand years, most of them have disappeared due to lack of care, but some of them still remain. After becoming wild, they have been mixed into weeds. If there were not people from farmers among the mercenaries, they would still be there. You may not notice that these ears are much smaller than those grown in farmland.
There was a small piece of wild rice field, which was quickly cut with a highland-style machete taken from the hands of the deceased villagers. Although it was not particularly large, it was enough to satisfy a team of more than 40 people with other food.
After confirming that they could not reach Katigali City today, they opened up an open space next to the rice field and prepared to camp. After using stones found everywhere to break open the rice husks to get the rice inside, the mercenaries Several more sweet potato plants growing lushly were also found nearby.
Due to sufficient light and water, these sweet potatoes are very large.
The cauldron was set up.
After a long absence, they were finally able to have a full meal.
Everyone had sincere smiles on their faces. Only Horno walked to a dark place alone, picked up a handful of soil with his fingers, put it in front of his nose and smelled it.
