Chapter 587: Life Principles, Collecting Metal Ingots

The atmosphere had just been tense, but once the two of them verbally agreed on the trade, the atmosphere actually eased up.

Perhaps the furious tone, the tightened expressions, and the nervous atmosphere that Jier and Yamila both displayed were all performances intentionally put on by both sides.

You perform, I perform; both of them, on this stage with no audience, used themselves as stage characters to put on a show.

After the trade was thoroughly settled, Jier sat down generously; he pinched a lemon milk cube, popped it into his mouth in one go, and then took a large gulp of warm lemon flower tea.

"Whew, absolutely wonderful!" Jier exclaimed. This was the best meal he had eaten in the last few days. Especially since he had crawled into the carcass of a Forest Deer to sneak into the Jiedian this afternoon, the smell of warm flesh and blood had made him unable to eat much all day, but fortunately, the taste of lemon effectively neutralized that sensation of flesh and blood, allowing him to eat some snacks and drink some tea.

"When is the trade?" Yamila asked.

Jier didn't stand on ceremony and took another piece of snack into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed it before he had time to answer Yamila's question: "Anytime is fine. How about right now?"

Yamila thought for a moment, then picked up the potion on the wooden table, hung it back on her belt, stopped drinking the tea, put on her boots, threw on her cloak, and was about to go out.

Jier hurriedly grabbed two more snacks to stuff into his mouth, rushed to get up to take his Dwarf Soldier Spear from the wall by the door, and then chased after Yamila toward the outside.

Yamila did not put on the hood of her cloak, but it seemed she had activated the invisibility magic on the cloak, and suddenly only her head remained floating and swaying in the air.

"You look quite terrifying like that in the deserted Forest," Jier muttered, and Yamila rolled her eyes at Jier.

"You don't understand, this is a basic self-protection measure. When you disappear from the eyes of certain living things, many troubles naturally leave you as well."

After saying this, she waved at the Magic Hut behind her and shouted: "Mimi, follow us! Get up and move!"

"Mee—"

The Magic Hut let out a sound, then trembled, and the three-story wooden house rose from the ground. Three long, thin white legs extended from under the house's foundation, propped up the entire house, and then, swinging those seemingly slender but actually immensely powerful white legs, it slowly walked to catch up with the moving Jier and Yamila.

"Lead the way! 'Warrior of the Agricultural God Church' Jier." Yamila addressed Jier with a hint of mockery.

Jier felt it was inexplicable; while leading the way in front, he turned his head and said to Yamila: "You seem to have some hostility toward this title of mine? What did the Agricultural God Church do to you?"

"It's not the Agricultural God Church, but those of us who use Magic don't really like those stubborn church people. Heh—never relying on one's own power, but relying on the bestowal of another existence one worships; in essence, this is a manifestation of cowardice."

Yamila disdainfully gestured with her little finger, which in local gesture customs meant contempt.

But Jier could slightly understand the reason for these different thoughts, so he explained: "That is the result of you standing too high. In this world, not everyone is like you, possessing innate talents, systematically mastering the power of Magic, and backed by a powerful Mage teacher, capable of solving a large number of things that ordinary people cannot solve in their entire lives."

Jier shook his head: "Many ordinary people, they only spend their whole lives taking care of crops in the land to make a living and raise their families. They basically cannot solve anything else. But this is also a common and universal way of living. You can stand high up and look down on all living things, or you can stand together with the crowd, busy with all sorts of trivial matters in life."

"Different lives have different ways of living; there is no distinction between high and low, because the length of the lives we experience is about the same. Although you might say you have seen this complex world, mastered amazing Magic, and know many big figures, others can also say they have planted how many crops, harvested how much real food in their lifetime, and have a close relationship with their family, living a very satisfied life."

Jier stretched out his hands and gestured left and right: "Can you really say that two different lives are truly higher or lower at this moment?"

Yamila still wanted to be stubborn, but Jier continued: "Every kind of life has its unique joy. Believing in gods might seem like a helpless manifestation of cowardice to you, but it might also allow those farmers to trust and unite with each other, connecting everyone's spirit together, everyone trusting each other, everyone helping each other, and having the same goal. I believe this is an experience you, as a Magic Apprentice, have never had, right?"

Jier was right; Yamila had indeed never experienced such a relationship of full mutual trust. Since she was a child, because of the Spirit child reason, she was feared by her peers and treated as a strange cash cow by the elders in her family. And after she entered the Magic Tower, the many rules and distant interpersonal relationships within the Magic Tower also made Yamila's spirit feel exceptionally empty.

She had to put her mind on making money because her study and living expenses in the Magic Tower were all funded by the great Noble behind her. According to the agreement, after she finished her studies in the future, or if she failed to finish, she had to serve as a Magic consultant in the Noble family, handling any matters related to Magic for the Noble family for a period of twenty years.

But if she paid back the money the other party spent to cultivate her, she naturally wouldn't have to spend twenty years of her time in the same place. Although if she wanted to pay back the money, she would have to pay back even more, Yamila had been working hard for this all these years.

Although she hadn't managed to save much money.

Afterward, Yamila squinted at Jier: "These words don't sound like something someone of your age could say. Some of the boys and girls I know of your age mostly have glory or something like that on their lips, or they worship some hero characters in stories."

She looked Jier over carefully: "Instead of you, talking endlessly about the principles of life. However, what you said also makes some sense. I haven't experienced other people's lives, so naturally, I cannot easily judge how other people's lives are specifically. There are thousands of paths in life. If I think that farmers who believe in the Agricultural God are bad, then how would those who are more successful than me judge a small Magic Apprentice like me? I'm afraid in their eyes, I'm just a wild dog on the side of the road, right?"

Jier smiled: "Then what am I? A long-eared rabbit? Or a wild cat in a tree?"

Yamila laughed: "You, you're just a parrot with a very sharp mouth!"

"Mee!" The Magic Hut Mimi didn't know what it said, but Jier couldn't understand it, while Yamila laughed even harder after hearing Mimi's cry.

The two and the house walked north for a while and soon approached the place where the conflict occurred at noon.

Yamila saw the open space ahead and raised her eyebrows: "You hid the things here? It's not impossible, but the problem is, how did you transport those heavy Metal Ingots here without being discovered? And transporting them in large quantities?"

Jier smiled mysteriously: "Don't you worry about that. Everyone has their own secrets, and everyone has their own special abilities. Just like your perception ability is very amazing, I naturally have my own methods."

Yamila guessed: "It must have something to do with that huge Divine Power Creation of yours. You once said it was a god-given ability, so I suppose it has some special skills? Let me think, it is a Divine Power Creation that is almost completely invisible, and only you can clearly see and touch it. Then, if things are swallowed into its stomach, are they also invisible because they are wrapped by it?"

Yamila fiddled with the Invisibility Cloak on her body: "Just like this cloak of mine, I didn't cast invisibility magic myself, but because my body is covered by the cloak, after the cloak becomes invisible, my body also becomes invisible."

Facing Yamila's guess, Jier smiled slightly: "That makes some sense, but unfortunately, no."

Yamila, who wanted to say something else, paused and stopped talking.

Jier led the person and the house to the first place where he buried the Metal Ingots, kicked away the fallen tree trunk covering the Metal Ingots with his foot, and revealed the large number of Metal Ingots in the pit below.

Yamila raised her hand and released a white glowing orb. The white light emitted by this thing illuminated a large area around it; although it was not as clear as the daytime, it was enough to see things.

"One Metal Ingot is two hundred kilograms, there are fifty here, about ten tons." Jier pointed to the dark Metal Ingots in the pit and said.

"Is this all?" Yamila asked suspiciously.

"Of course there is more than this; I stored the Metal Ingots separately."

Sighing, Yamila said helplessly: "What a cunning little Knight."

After saying that, she clapped her hands, and the Magic Hut that had been following behind stepped forward. Two thin and long white hands extended from the wooden windows on both sides of the house, grabbed a Metal Ingot downward, and nimbly picked up the Metal Ingots on the ground with both hands working, sending them into the house door one by one.

Jier looked up and saw that the house door was completely open, and the internal tables, chairs, and decorations had moved to varying degrees, lifting up a large area of the floor after entering the door, revealing many internal structures below.

There were pulsating flesh tissues, mechanical gears and springs that opened and closed, and even more glowing Magic mechanisms moving back and forth. More than that, there were small hands extending from under the floor, which took the heavy Metal Ingots sent in by the big hands outside, carefully preventing these things from damaging the complex mechanisms around them, and sent them all the way to the deeper parts of the Magic Hut.

"Can this Magic Hut Mimi carry so many heavy Metal Ingots? You know, this wooden house doesn't look as heavy as these Metal Ingots in total." Jier asked a question.

Yamila smiled and used Jier's words from just now to retort to Jier: "Everyone has their own secrets, and everyone has their own special abilities. Just like I have excellent perception, you have a mysterious ability to transport things, and my good friend Mimi, it also has some amazing abilities!"

Jier suffered a heavy blow to his mouth this time and stopped talking.

After the Magic Hut sent these nearly ten tons of Metal Ingots inside in a flash, Jier knew that the amount of Metal Ingots agreed upon by the other party would not be just this much, so he led the person and the house to the next pit where the Metal Ingots were hidden.

It was not far away, just over ten meters to the side.

But this place was covered by the soil he had blown up, and if one didn't push away the soil on the surface, one would hardly imagine that it was piled full of Metal Ingots underneath.

"There are seventy-five Metal Ingots here, about fifteen tons." Jier pointed to the large number of Metal Ingots hidden underneath after pushing away the floating soil.

Yamila clapped her hands, and Mimi continued to use its big hands to start grabbing these Metal Ingots.

"By the way, what exactly is the specific quantity of the trade you agreed upon before? I'm not very clear about this." Jier asked.

Yamila rolled her eyes: "Oh my, let me think, it seems to be about one hundred tons?"

Jier said unhappily: "There should be a limit to joking, please tell the truth."

Yamila stuck out her tongue: "It seems to be ninety tons?"

Jier rolled his eyes and muttered to himself: "Oh, so it's a quantity of forty tons. Adding this to the previous one, that's already twenty-five tons, so giving you another fifteen tons is enough."

Yamila hurriedly waved her hands: "No, no, no, fifty tons, it really is fifty tons. A soldier needs about twenty kilograms of metal to be armed. Because this crude metal still needs Refining Qi, there will be quite a bit of loss later, so a soldier needs about twenty kilograms. Five people need one hundred kilograms, fifty people need one ton, and ten tons is five hundred people. Fifty tons of crude metal can arm about two thousand five hundred people. Adding the recycled metal from re-smelting the waste slag during the refining process, it can arm about another three hundred people."

"This batch of metal here can arm about two thousand eight hundred elite armored soldiers," Yamila said finally.

Jier gasped. He had fought against those Defeated Soldiers and knew how difficult those enemies wearing Soldier Armor were for ordinary people, and that was only with a little over a hundred of them. If it were over two thousand eight hundred elite armored soldiers, it would be terrifying on the battlefield; he might struggle to kill two or three hundred of them before being directly overwhelmed by the sea of enemies.

And if these soldiers were equipped with the crossbows of the Kendall Militia, it would be very difficult for an ordinary Knight to break through such an army.

"Is it really fifty tons?" Jier asked.

Yamila nodded, watching as these Metal Ingots were collected one by one into the body of the Magic Power hut, Mimi. She secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Actually, it wasn't as much as fifty tons. After all, when she first made the agreement with the injured and captured Knight Hartna, Knight Hartna only had two hundred soldiers under his command. Considering that there would inevitably be losses of manpower while crossing the Southern Mountains, her teacher, who drew up the plan, only needed these people to mine and smelt a minimum of thirty-five to forty-five tons.

She had added another five tons just because she wanted to take advantage of the situation a bit more.

She hadn't expected Jier to agree to it in one go, which made it difficult for Yamila to change her words.

She thought about how, although Knight Hartna's soldiers did not dig for ore themselves after crossing the Southern Mountains, they had boldly attacked and captured hundreds of Villagers, forcing these Villagers to dig for ore in their stead.

Although this was done very immorally and crudely, and ultimately attracted Jier, a mysterious young Knight inclined toward the Agricultural God Church, it had exceeded her expectations regarding the mining and Metal Ingots.

Jier definitely had more than fifty tons of Metal Ingots in his hands, but Yamila could only accept this current number.

Mimi quickly sent the ten-plus tons of Metal Ingots into its body. Logically speaking, it looked like it weighed ten or twenty-plus tons itself; loading twenty-five tons of Metal Ingots all at once should definitely cause a change in weight or center of gravity.

But the Magic Power hut didn't even sway, and the three slender legs supporting its body did not lower or bend due to the weight.

This was not right.

Jier looked up and glanced at the Magic Power hut, reaching this conclusion.

But he didn't know much about Magic, so he didn't know how the other party managed it.

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