Chapter 5: A Transmigrated Soul!

During the entire migration, of course, there were setbacks, conflicts, and casualties.

But in the end, whether it was those villagers who left halfway or the three hundred elderly and weak who reached their destination, at least most people survived.

In this era, for ordinary folk to accomplish such a feat was nothing short of a miracle.

The original Leo was naturally one of Uncle Ulyan’s staunch supporters; this wild, untamable youth only ever obeyed Uncle Ulyan.

When Leo walked into the tent, the bearded Ulyan’s face broke into a slight smile, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared. He glared and barked, “Have you healed yet? Roaming about all day—I’ve put up with you long enough!”

Leo instinctively shrank back, smoothly clutching his chest and putting on a pained expression, though he asked, “What are you discussing? We’re already here, why so much fuss?”

“What do you know? Three hundred people eating, drinking, sleeping, and relieving themselves—what isn’t a problem?”

Ulyan had no interest in explaining anything to a brainless battle maniac, waving a hand as if to shoo away a fly.

“Hurry up and recover. Once you’re well, take some men out to scout. Get a clear picture of the surroundings—chase off what needs chasing, beat up what needs beating. This will be our home from now on; we can’t be ambushed day and night.”

As he spoke, he turned to the man beside Leo. “Valery, take some men and dismantle the useless wagons. Set up some fences in three directions—just a few rows for basic cover will do. Once we’re settled, we’ll turn them into houses.”

The burly man named Valery was clearly experienced; he nodded and went out to his task.

“Lashka, take a few men, burn the grassland to the north clean, and tomorrow start clearing land for farming.”

“Alright.”

“Lusev, join the militia and sweep the surroundings. See if there’s anything we can sell. Our savings are running low.”

The elderly Lusev nodded without a word.

Lusev was the owner of the village general store, almost the only person who traveled between the village and the town year-round; all exchanges of goods between the villagers and the outside world passed through his hands.

Compared to the villagers who eked out a living from the soil, he was undoubtedly more knowledgeable and knew better what was valuable.

Both his sons had died in a beastman raid, leaving only a young grandson.

Like Valery and Lashka, he was one of those capable people who hadn’t abandoned the caravan partway.

Staring at the crude map on the table, Ulyan scratched his chin and confidently encouraged everyone, “I’ve lived here before—everything we need is here. If we all work together and survive the first half year, things will get much better after that.”

“Once we have some spare resources, I’ll bring in a surveying team. If we’re lucky enough to find a mine, we’ll be rich—ha ha ha!”

Yet his words failed to lift the spirits in the tent. The people gathered here were the backbone of the pioneering group, far more aware than the puppet-like villagers outside, who only struggled to survive.

To make it this far, the pioneering team was already at the end of their rope, out of ammunition and food.

Compared to that, the hardships of the migration were merely an appetizer.

If it were the old Leo, he would have been infected by Ulyan’s optimism, drawn by his visions of a bright future, and become passionate and full of fighting spirit.

He would have temporarily forgotten the misery of not knowing where the next meal would come from.

But he was no longer the person he once was, so he didn’t blindly rejoice. Instead, he stared at the map, lost in thought.

Uncle Ulyan had deliberately chosen to migrate at the end of winter and the beginning of spring, not only to avoid the large-scale raids of beastman scouts after the thaw, but also to try to cultivate enough land by the river bend before April’s rye sowing season.

With the fertile land by the river and a climate far milder than the banks of the North Ice River, as long as they had enough labor, the pioneering group could almost achieve self-sufficiency in grain in the first year.

The problem was that the caravan was now down to less than three hundred people, most of whom were old, weak, women, and children. Most families lacked survival skills and had no savings; they stayed only in hopes of Ulyan’s protection.

Those families who still had resources and able-bodied members had mostly been unable to endure the rigors of a winter migration in the North and had settled in prosperous villages or towns along the way.

So even in the best-case scenario, with all three hundred elderly and weak working the fields and achieving food self-sufficiency in the first year, they still had to face the problem of food supplies for more than half a year before the rye harvest.

Relying solely on fishing and hunting was impossible. Leo’s village, though naturally formed, was one of the rare farming villages along the North Ice River.

A hundred years ago, the village had been granted as a fief to a knight’s family by the lord of Frolov. In theory, apart from their own homes and allotted fields, everything else on the land belonged to the knight.

Villagers survived by farming. Not only did the local lord ban hunting and logging, but even if allowed, most villagers were too poor to own hunting tools.

The village’s best hunters, apart from Ulyan, were Leo—the self-taught wild child.

Moreover, the villagers’ homemade bows and bone-tipped arrows could only hunt rabbits and foxes; they couldn’t even bring down a full-grown elk.

If it weren’t so, when the kobolds attacked, a volley of arrows would have driven them off.

Not to mention, the wilderness in this world teemed with various non-human tribes, beast lairs, and even monsters.

Sending a group of weak villagers to hunt in unfamiliar wilds was simply courting death.

“A mine? What kind of mine do you want?” Leo pondered escape plans while gazing at the map.

Ulyan waved a massive hand. “Gold, silver, even a copper mine would do.”

“You’re dreaming. Copper mine? How about an iron mine?” Leo scoffed.

“Iron mine? What iron mine?” Ulyan and the others in the tent stared wide-eyed at each other. Where would an iron mine come from?

Leo fetched a spearhead from a box in the corner of the tent and tossed it onto the round table, saying smugly, “Isn’t this one?”

Apart from the blade tip, the spearhead’s surface was already thickly rusted, yet the dense pores covering it were still visible.

This was a spear left behind by the kobolds a few days ago, one of those Ulyan had collected.

The intact ones were distributed to villagers for self-defense, while the damaged ones were stripped of their heads to be reforged into farm tools for clearing new land once they settled.

The great dukes of the Empire fought each other, and not only lives but also vast amounts of weapons, armor, and war supplies were thrown onto the battlefields.

The cold northern lands were far more barren than the rest of the Empire; the little iron resources were monopolized by nobles, forged into weapons and armor, and sent off to the front.

This caused the price of iron among the common folk to soar; many villagers couldn’t even afford a hoe.

Seeing that everyone was still confused, Leo patiently guided them, “Where do you think the kobolds got their iron weapons? They couldn’t have bought them, could they?”

Ulyan slapped his thigh and exclaimed in delight, “You mean the kobolds found an iron mine?”

Leo pointed at the spearhead on the table; the answer was obvious.

Such things were easy to deduce with a little thought—especially for someone like him, steeped in the tropes of fantasy novels and games. “Kobolds” and “mines” were terms that naturally went together in his mind.

What occupied Leo’s thoughts was the mining and transportation of iron ore. What was the quality of the vein the kobolds had found? Was it worth mining? Where would the labor come from? How would they transport the ore and turn it into profit? Those were the real issues.

But the others didn’t think along these lines; their attention was drawn elsewhere.

Ulyan stared at Leo in disbelief and shouted, “By Mundo! You’ve grown a brain???”

That question instantly set off a commotion; everyone began talking at once.

“No way, my pigs are smarter than him!”

“I suspect he’s been possessed by one of the kobolds he killed!”

“Or maybe a demon’s soul crossed over into his body.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a soul swap! A soul swap!”

Leo looked at them speechlessly. How could they so quickly jump to the truth in a few words, yet be utterly unable to come up with a way to fill their stomachs?