Chapter 150 Humanitarian Spirit

Leo passed through the water curtain into the courtyard and saw that a huge, lush oak tree had appeared by the side of the grand Sun Lake.

Half of its sprawling root system reached into the lake water, while the other half anchored into the mountain on the lakeshore.

Freya was running in frantic circles around the giant oak, desperately trying to bite its roots.

Several roots and branches of the oak tree were whipping through the air like lashes, struggling to drive away this annoying marmot.

Leo widened his eyes in wonder and asked curiously, "Weren't you a little deer last time?"

A voice filled with pride came from El, "I can attach myself to many living forms and exercise simple control over them!"

"It took me three months just to walk here from the hillside!"

Leo followed the straightened roots of the giant oak to their origin, spotting a grass-grown pit a hundred meters away by the edge of the oak grove.

Clearly, El had spent these past few months productively; she had made the giant oak walk a hundred meters!

"You are so strong! Well... I mean your perseverance."

As they spoke, Leo could sense the mental fluctuation of the big tree vanish, reappearing instead in a pigeon resting upon the canopy.

"Coo! I can become a coo too!"

Freya refused to be outdone, "I can fly as well!"

Freya leaped high into the air as a pair of little yellow duck wings popped out from her back, flapping rapidly. However, they only managed to slow down her descent by a tiny, negligible fraction.

Furious and exasperated, Freya went right back to gnawing on the tree roots.

El had no choice but to hurriedly reattach herself to the giant oak and resume whipping her roots to chase Freya away.

Putting aside the playful chaos, Leo lowered his head and earnestly posed a soul-searching question, "Master Bobak, are you there?"

"I need your guidance."

"I am here."

As Bobak's gentle voice echoed from the depths of his mind, Leo shuddered violently.

Master Bobak's voice was as warm and powerful as ever, but this time, the spiritual link conveyed not just his voice, but a hint of something different.

It was a biting frost wind, the roar of a giant dragon.

Death aura filled the air, and despair was quietly born.

Leo felt as though he were standing behind a frosted window in the dead of winter, watching a scene of bitter ice and snow flash by outside.

An intuition struck him: if he were to stand in the very position Master Bobak currently occupied, he would be frozen into an ice sculpture in less than ten seconds, instantly shattered into icy debris by the howling blizzard and the fierce dance of a magic dragon.

Standing beneath the blazing July sun, Leo asked with chattering teeth, "Master Bobak? What is going on with you?"

After a minute, Bobak's voice returned. This time, all those anomalous sensations had completely vanished, evidently blocked out by his formidable mental power.

"Ah, apologies. Just finished beating an ice dragon to death."

Leo's jaw practically unhinged in shock.

Master Bobak had beaten an ice dragon to death while taking a call!

Stuttering slightly, Leo said, "Am, am I, am I interrupting anything?"

He suddenly felt that compared to the kind of problems Master Bobak was dealing with, the troubles he himself was facing seemed utterly trivial and hardly worth bothering anyone over.

"Not at all. What is on your mind?"

"Well, I want to save some people."

With the fastest speed possible, Leo rattled off the speech he had spent two days brewing, detailing the events that had transpired in Isenpor as thoroughly as he could.

"I don't expect to save everyone, but I'll do my best—save as many as I can. That's reasonable, right?"

Unexpectedly, Master Bobak countered with a question: "Why do you want to save them?"

"Whether it is the wilderness tribes or beast clans, during times of famine they all drive the old, the weak, and even a portion of their own kin out into the wasteland to fend for themselves and die."

"Survival of the fittest is the law of nature."

Leo hesitated before replying, "Is it possible... because I am human, and I care about humanity?"

Communication on the spiritual plane required no overly complex words. From Leo's consciousness and emotions, Master Bobak could readily perceive the humanitarian spirit Leo wished to convey.

Master Bobak fell silent for a moment, then chuckled gently, "You, oh you."

"For a human, you are far too kind."

An elven druid who cherished all life actually called *him* kind!

Leo found this utterly unbearable—both sentences were deeply provocative!

So he began to quibble, "Isn't this also a chance to develop our strength? Once this window of opportunity passes, we won't get another chance to take in so many people."

"The Riverbend is so remote; in peacetime, not even a stray dog would bother coming here."

Bobak smiled without a word, then asked instead, "Then why are you coming to me? Having good principles alone isn't enough; you need sufficient strength, and on that front, I cannot help you."

"I'm mainly seeking spiritual support, because it feels like aside from you, no one else would support me..."

Freya's voice interrupted Leo, "I support you very much! And the little mouse does too!"

"Shut up. You eat enough for five people, which basically cancels out my efforts to save four!"

Leo's smile turned slick and worldly as he rubbed his hands together and continued, "As for secondary matters, I was hoping for some guidance—like, say, how to quickly acquire tens of thousands of tons of food..."

Leo spoke in an exaggerated, comedic tone, not truly expecting Master Bobak to provide practical help. It was a classic case of asking for the moon with the expectation of negotiating down, hoping the other party might offer some useful advice.

A Great Druid who had lived for five hundred years could save the Riverbend Territory a decade or two of groping in the dark with just a pointer or two.

Yet Master Bobak's reply exceeded all expectations.

"Tens of thousands of tons of food isn't entirely impossible..."

"Huh?"

"You know of antler cassava, don't you?"

"I've seen it, eaten it too," Leo said with a puzzled expression. "Isn't it poisonous?"

The antler cassava of this world was a wild tuberous plant rather than a domesticated crop from Earth, and its toxicity far exceeded that of the cassava in Leo's memories.

During the period right after Leo transmigrated, the villagers of the Riverbend caravan frequently ate this to stave off starvation.

However, because it was intensely poisonous, it could never be eaten raw. It had to undergo thorough processing before tiny amounts could be consumed, and the elderly and weak could not eat it at all.

Given Leo's physical fitness, he wouldn't be able to withstand the toxicity of even a single pound of antler cassava.

Countless desperate refugees who gnawed on antler cassava had been poisoned to death.

Moreover, this stuff was as dry and tough as ordinary tree roots, filled with fiber. Even after being boiled in a large pot for an entire afternoon, chewing it felt like gnawing on sun-dried, aged mountain yams.

No one would ever touch the stuff unless starvation was staring them in the face.

Antler cassava was resistant to both cold and drought, capable of surviving even in frozen soil, and grew abundantly across the Wolf-Chasing Plain.

Like the antlers of giant stags, they burrowed everywhere underground, and any random plant dug up would yield dozens if not hundreds of pounds.

Unfortunately, only the iron stomachs and formidable vitality of creatures like orcs, boars, and horned boars could barely manage to digest their potent toxins.

Even kobolds would die from eating too much of it.

Only the newly joined ogre tribe spoke of antler cassava with high praise.

Having eaten too many poisonous mushrooms, Krog's two-headed ogre tribe had seen their red skin turn a cyan-blue, causing them great distress over their ugly complexion.

As a result of subsequently eating massive quantities of antler cassava, their cyan-blue skin was poisoned right back to red.

Consequently, antler cassava had become their second favorite food, right after meat.

The wilderness tribes lacked agricultural technology, yet they managed to sustain such large populations precisely because tuberous plants like antler cassava existed.

This food, inedible to humans, was their secret weapon for survival in the wasteland.