Chapter 130: Half a Year of Simulation Harvest (Part 1)

As Allen's golden finger for surviving in Middle-earth, the Simulator had not been idle over the past six months. However, once he possessed a fief, Allen stopped activating new identities in Calradia. He was deeply worried that if he served under other kings, he might end up fighting against himself. Unable to manage two fronts at once, he would certainly find himself in a dilemma.

As for playing a double agent, Allen knew his personality wasn't suited for such schemes, so it was better to honestly develop this one territory. Over these six months, Wincode Castle had brought in over 20,000 Dinar in revenue. Allen immediately used this money to purchase a significant amount of armor, which he distributed to his newly recruited Citizen Soldiers.

Even with hundreds of craftsmen and a stable output of iron ore, mass-producing armor was quite difficult for Allen. This was only considering the relatively crude types; one shouldn't even dream of high-quality Plate Armor or chainmail, as the craftsmen under Allen's command lacked the capability.

Therefore, under Allen's orders, these hundreds of craftsmen were modeling weapons after the Elven Spear to equip his Citizen Soldiers. Weapons like spears were quick to craft since they didn't require much iron or complex blacksmithing techniques. Allen sat on a vast forest and lacked no suitable timber, though processing it was just a bit slow.

In Wincode Castle, Allen had nearly three hundred soldiers under his command, along with their families, totaling about a thousand people. They lived around the castle and, according to Calradian law, were appendages granted to Allen along with Wincode Castle.

Under his long-term management, their sense of identification with their lord had grown increasingly strong. If there were no accidents, in a few more years, as long as Allen abandoned this identity, he could likely bring them with him to Middle-earth to live a more stable life. However, if he wanted to gain more benefits in Calradia, they were Allen's foundation.

Currently, the development in Calradia was going quite well; at the very least, the background was strong, and there was no need to rush into considering exchanges.

However, in order to practice his "Qi Technique," Allen frequently activated new identities in the Magic Continent and kept performing exchanges. As a result, the time here moved too quickly, and fanatics who believed in the dark cult of Deluoya had actually appeared in various parts of the continent again.

There were several waves of them around Zendar spreading their faith. Since the identities Allen exchanged into were almost all ordinary people, and after descending, he would spend most of his time rushing to Zendar to practice his Qi Technique while waiting for the main storyline to progress. Additionally, during his first simulation, Allen had left a large sum of money in the house he bought from Manid, saving him from having to "bow for five pecks of rice" after every simulation.

Currently, Allen's various simulated identities did not have any major conflicts with these fanatics. After all, they hadn't yet reached the point where one had to die for not believing. However, this trend was becoming increasingly obvious. When Allen refused them, the leaders of those fanatics often glared with malice, spouting crazy words like "Darkness is about to descend, and everything will be judged."

Ordinary villagers might think these people had something wrong with their brains, but Allen knew the plot of the Magic Continent was about to officially begin. Moreover, he had waited in Zendar for a long time without discovering the protagonist. Instead, the house he bought had people of different identities living in it every so often, successfully attracting the attention of the local constable, Harik. This capable, middle-aged man had appeared at Allen's door several times with Zendar guards, attempting to probe the composition of Allen's organization. Little did he know, everyone was played by Allen alone.

Allen had tentatively asked Holimion, Tuoju, and Karl—the subordinates he had summoned—what his appearance actually looked like. In their descriptions, their lord's appearance was more or less the same, but in the eyes of Constable Harik, the person living there was different every time.

He had originally thought that his appearance would not change after entering the simulation. Allen had confirmed this conclusion through certain methods, but now he had some different guesses. The Simulator must have applied some blurring treatment to his appearance; what he saw and what the people in the script saw were in completely different states.

"Also, if the appearance were the same, it wouldn't be normal for that guy on the opposite side to raise his blade and hack at me with an angry face when I beat up Hunter near Veluca. Who could see someone exactly like their childhood friend and kill them without any reaction? At the very least, they should be stunned for a moment."

Since the main storyline of the Magic Continent was approaching, Allen needed to focus most of his attention on the plot. At the very least, he had to find the protagonist and follow him to obtain the most powerful divine artifact on this continent.

It was impossible to continue as before, burying his head in training in Zendar all day.

This led to him being unable to simulate every day by exploiting the Simulator's bug. However, Allen's "Qi Technique" had reached a certain level, and the recovery speed of his mental power after a simulation was much faster than when he first arrived in Middle-earth. Furthermore, he would no longer fall into a deep sleep for days on end without waking up; at most, he would have a splitting headache during the day, and he would recover after sleeping for ten hours or so most of the time.

As for the Pendor continent, it was truly too dangerous. After all, it was a place where miracles existed, though the power of the gods had been weakened, or the environment did not allow it, so they could not project too much power onto the continent. However, this did not prevent the big shots there from possessing combat strength far exceeding ordinary people.

For example, the Noldor lord Aldaria, or the Slayer Wolfbird, known as "Uncle Wolf" in the Mist Mountains. Allen had encountered this guy once in a previous simulation and was split in two, weapon and all, by a Great Axe; it was one of Allen's most unbearable memories.

According to Allen's current strength, it was actually very difficult to open another path besides the Prophecy Child. Even if he could survive, most of the time he was just a mercenary or a Knight Order squire. Without a good entry point, it was hard to grow big and strong in a short time. The time wasted on this would be better spent digging deeper into the Prophecy Child, who could rely on the Elves.

After all, when Allen activated other identities, time on the Prophecy Child side still flowed, just in the Simulator's automated state. For safety, this identity spent most of its time hiding in the Elven capital, Elacrai, sparring with the Elven female instructor, Vendatil, on combat techniques.

When Allen used this identity to simulate again, besides having a bunch of quests laid out before him, his personal combat power had actually improved to a certain extent. One had to admit that the system's automation had its small benefits. Of course, there were downsides; Allen's rest lasted for over half a year, making Isilindil think he was either afraid or lazy, and every time they met, he looked at him with an expression of disappointment.

After all, Allen was just a Human, and the Elven blood in his body was so thin that it couldn't even bring him a long life far exceeding that of a Human. Once Allen descended himself, this situation underwent a fundamental change.

Allen not only used his Human identity to help Isilindil buy back several Elves who were being sold by the Ebony Gauntlet but also provided Aldaria with some information about the Ebony Gauntlet, which he had accidentally obtained while attending an auction.

This information prevented some young Elves who were hunting from being ambushed by the Ebony Gauntlet; instead, the Elves used the information to ambush those Elven traffickers clad in Ebony Plate Armor.

However, the Ebony armor worn by the regular knights of the Ebony Gauntlet was simply too thick. Even the combination of the Noldor Rune Bow and Noldor Rune Arrow could hardly cause much damage to them. In the end, after leaving behind a dozen corpses, these guys fled the forest in a panic. Even so, this was the most serious blow the Noldor had ever dealt to the Ebony Gauntlet.

For this, Aldaria's favorability toward Allen greatly increased, changing their previously lukewarm relationship.

Allen, of course, also participated in this ambush and personally shot and killed several Ebony Great Hammer wielders who had come to the Noldor Forest to ambush Elves for a quick fortune. After the battle ended, Aldaria shared a portion of the spoils with Allen, which included not only a full set of Ebony armor but also several Repeating Crossbows known as "Ebony Sniper."

This was an excellent Repeating Crossbow that could load seven bolts at once, and its damage and accuracy were not significantly weakened by loading so many bolts at once. Its performance in all aspects was not much worse than a single-shot Siege Crossbow.

After obtaining this long-range weapon, Allen immediately exchanged it out and handed it to the Dwarf blacksmith Fulei to study whether it could be mass-produced. Even the Tielqiuling Dwarf, who had already made large Repeating Crossbows, felt a little surprised by this delicate mechanism. Subsequently, Fulei, with the help of other Dwarf companions, began to deduce its workings after dismantling the crossbow.

After months of research, Fulei told Allen that he had figured out the working principle of this crossbow and had made a replica, but this replica would quickly break down after being used once.

The reason was that he had never seen the material of this crossbow before, and the difficulty of truly replicating it was extremely high. Other parts were fine; substitutes could be found in the Dwarves' existing material library. However, it was very difficult to imitate the core components, which might require the Dwarves' ancestral precious metal, Mithril, to achieve a perfect replacement.

Allen actually had some Mithril, all of which came from the rich Orcish Bolg. Part of it was that large net used to hunt Skin-changers, which Allen melted down to get two fist-sized pieces of Mithril. The rest was the armor stripped from Bolg, which yielded some more Mithril after being melted down.

These spoils had been lying quietly in Allen's treasury. Originally, he intended to keep them for researching Rune Magic of the Elves. Now that Allen and the Elves of Pendor had not yet reached that level of favorability, he had no choice but to hand over a portion of the Mithril to Fulei, letting him try to craft these bolts that could be fired continuously.

Even though he had obtained many powerful pieces of equipment from Pendor, Allen had not found these items in the Simulator's shop. To spend Dinar to buy them, perhaps other conditions needed to be met, such as reaching the "Intimate" stage with the Elves. Right now, Allen and they had at most reached the "Friendly" stage; it would probably take a long time to reach "Intimate."

Of course, the "Friendly" favorability was not something that could be achieved just by ambushing the Ebony Gauntlet. Besides that, Allen also fought alongside the Elven troops led by Aldaria in the forest several times to resist the Gatu warbands' aggression against the Noldor. The number of participants on both sides once exceeded a thousand, which could be considered one of the few large-scale battles Allen had participated in on Pendor.

Even though Allen's current strength was considered top-tier among elite soldiers, he still received special treatment from the enemy after killing a large number of them on the battlefield. He suffered very serious injuries before the battle ended and fell into a coma. Afterward, he recuperated in Elacrai for a long time before barely recovering. This recuperation could be said to have wasted a large number of Allen's simulation opportunities.

However, the harvest was still acceptable. After winning, Allen not only received the Simulator's reward but also selected another set of weapons and equipment suitable for himself from the Elven treasury, and took a large number of Noldor Rune Arrows. His Twilight Knights had used up these special arrows and were in urgent need of replenishment.

Aldaria also took out several Jatu Warbeasts along with a Dragon Tear from the Gatu spoils and gifted them to Allen as a reward at the post-war banquet.

From this point alone, Allen knew that his relationship with the Noldor had reached a new stage.

The function of the Dragon Tear went without saying. Although the Jatu Warbeast could not compare to the speed of an Elf Horse, its physique was larger than an Elf Horse, and its load-bearing capacity and endurance were slightly stronger. However, it was not born with armor like an Elf Horse and required high-quality Horse Armor to fully exert its effect.

In terms of impact, the Jatu Warbeast, which was heavier when wearing Horse Armor, could be said to be a mount more suitable for heavy Cavalry. After Allen exchanged it out, he handed it to Tuoju, asking him to find a way to breed it with the existing horse breeds at Horse Pasture Village.

After several battles in the Noldor Forest, the Simulator rewarded Allen with nearly 10,000 Dinar, 150 points of Renown, and one point of Honor, which also gave Allen the qualification for a lucky draw again.

Now, Allen's identity as the Prophecy Child, under the cover of Paul, the tavern owner in Long River Town, had already set foot on the road to Lion City. This journey was because of the treasure map obtained from Blade Yawen. He had ignored this map for a long time, but during the time he was recuperating, he examined it in detail and prepared to go and investigate.

Because Allen knew that one Dragon Tear should be in the camp of the Red Brotherhood. The Elixir of Longevity was extremely important to Allen now. Even if he didn't exchange for the elixir, exchanging for some Elven subordinates would be good.

Besides the one from the Red Brotherhood, there was another one hidden in a certain city in the Kingdom of Ravenstern. The purpose of Allen initiating this journey was naturally for these two Dragon Tears.