Chapter 289 : Chapter 289
Chapter 289. Opportunity
When Fulan reached the place where Anna had left the black horse, she saw this scene.
At the entrance to the village, there were many black wolf and deer carcasses. They had all been piled at the village entrance, and merely drawing close was enough to smell a strong reek of blood.
“What are they doing?” Fulan was very puzzled. Was it not said that the smell of blood would attract other monsters?
Why was this village not afraid of monster attacks? Why had they placed these monster corpses directly outside? Was this some special custom of the village?
Fulan shook her head and decided to go inside first. Everything else could wait.
But when she had only walked a short distance into the village, she smelled the fragrance of meat, which made her think of something.
“Are the people in this village that strong? They still have enough power to resist monsters, so they hung those monsters outside just to attract even more monsters here...”
At that moment, a man named Brian walked past Fulan from ahead, holding a bowl of rare meat soup. He had never imagined that things would turn out like this.
According to his fixed impression, the work of dealing with monsters should have been something done by knights whose arms were thicker than his thighs.
Although he knew that the knights who often came to their village to clear out monsters could not be considered true knights, and at most could only be considered knight reserves, the sturdy bodies of those squires, who could lift a tree thick enough for two people to wrap their arms around with their bare hands, still shocked him somewhat.
There was no knowledge of Professionals in their village at all. His understanding of those Professionals was only slightly better than that of those Earthlings from Fulan’s previous life who knew nothing.
All he knew was that those knight lords were very powerful, and that the monsters around them needed to be cleared away by those knight lords. That was all.
Brian had previously believed that the woman named Anna did not possess any real power, and that she was someone like them, who could only tremble under the threat of monsters.
But after he personally saw Anna draw the shortbow on her body, and the boom that erupted from it almost made him lose his footing, he knew that Anna was actually far from normal.
He found it difficult to imagine that arrows which had usually been able to cause only a little penetrating damage could, in Anna’s hands, become like high-speed iron balls.
He watched Anna shoot an arrow that missed and struck the side of a great tree, blasting a large hole into it.
There had even been one time when he saw Anna shoot at a wild wolf. After the arrow hit, the wolf’s body rolled backward for three meters...
These exaggerated displays even made Brian think that she was much stronger than those knights.
Now, there was no need to worry about the monster problem around the village, but Brian still had one concern in his heart.
That was the village’s taxation problem. In the past, the one who came to collect taxes was an administrative officer who was at most slightly stronger than them. Now that their village had a ‘superhuman’ in it, would they dare refuse to pay?
If Anna also became like the previous administrative officer and invented all kinds of excuses to levy excessive taxes on them, would they dare refuse to pay?
Everything seemed to have been decided from the moment Anna displayed that astonishing power. This was what Brian was most worried about now.
He did not know how long it would be before Anna began levying firewood or food from them, or made them build those strange structures.
But now, aside from worrying, he seemed unable to do anything else.
Just as Brian was walking quickly toward his house with those thoughts weighing on his mind, Fulan called out to him.
“Hey, stop... Do you know where a blond woman wearing leather armor is?”
Brian stopped and turned sideways to look at Fulan. Although the cold wind was already making his neck somewhat unbearable, the moment he saw Fulan, his mind began to think.
First, Fulan’s voice and clothing were things Brian had never seen before, and she had come up to ask for Anna immediately.
Then Fulan’s identity was very easy to guess. She was this village’s newest lord. Anna had said before that the lord of this place would arrive very soon.
“Follow this road to the end, then turn right. That’s where she is.”
“All right. Thank you.”
Fulan did not hesitate and immediately walked away, while Brian looked at Fulan’s departing back. Then his heart hardened, and he followed her.
When Fulan reached the ‘church’ she had told Anna to handle first, she saw a strange house.
The house had not been renovated for long, and even now, it had not yet been completed. She could see many temporary footholds around the house, as well as tools and wood scattered around it.
At the main entrance of the house, it was obvious that the doorway had been enlarged by a great deal. Ugly traces of the original doorframe remained on the ground.
Inside the house, it seemed somewhat spacious. She could see a specially made stone platform, which was meant to hold a divine statue.
But aside from that place, the other parts of the house had not been properly finished at all. She could still see a great deal of filth on the floor, and there were several cracked, broken gaps in the walls at the side.
Moreover, many miscellaneous objects were still being stored in front of the stone platform, as if they had not yet been dealt with.
However, Fulan was already quite satisfied. After all, one of the reasons she had sent Anna here was to have her make some preparations in advance, so that Fulan could save some time afterward.
“Anna!”
Fulan called Anna’s name in front of the house’s main entrance, and then heard a burst of footsteps from behind the house.
The moment Anna appeared before Fulan and saw her, her face filled with delighted surprise. She immediately rushed over.
“Fulan, you finally came. I’m starting to be unable to stand this damn place.”
When Anna had previously been hiding here and there with the team, she had not felt how cold the Northern Frontier was.
As a First-Tier Professional, her physique could withstand the cold for a very long time. It was only slightly uncomfortable.
At that time, she had been filled with enthusiasm, so she had not taken the bitter cold to heart at all.
After she arrived at the Northern Society, the temperature there was so warm that it almost did not seem like the Northern Frontier, and that made her forget the cold of the Northern Frontier.
But under Fulan’s request, she had come here, and only then did she experience for the first time how difficult the Northern Frontier’s cold was to endure.
In this village, all she could do was eat, sleep, and watch those people renovate the house according to her orders. Aside from that, she could do nothing.
Only in this utterly boring environment did she feel for the first time just how unbearable the cold was.
That was why she became extremely excited when she saw that Fulan had come.
“Since you’re here, does that mean I can leave? I want to go back to the Northern Society.”
Fulan looked at Anna strangely, then said:
“Not yet. This is only the beginning. My experiment hasn’t even started.”
As soon as those words came out, Anna’s face fell, and she sighed.
“All right. I did promise you before that I would help you complete this experiment... Then can I ask when we’ll be able to leave?”
“If we’re lucky, you can leave in one week. If we’re unlucky, you may have to stay here for three months.”
“Three months...” Merely saying those words caused Anna’s voice to carry an involuntary tremor, but she calmed herself down in an instant.
“All right. Then what should we do now? You won’t just ask me to keep repairing this house, will you?”
“Of course not. It’s just that even if I want to begin now, I still haven’t found a good entry point. I’m struggling over it...”
Just as Fulan was about to explain her thoughts to Anna, a commotion rose from the other side of the village.
Fulan and Anna glanced at each other, then both stepped forward.
---
When Fulan arrived at the site of the commotion, she saw that one place was crowded with people.
Those people had gathered around something, as if something had happened in the place they were surrounding.
When Fulan drew slightly closer, she smelled a thick stench of blood. Because of Anna, the entire village had a faint scent of blood lingering in the air.
But the bloody smell Fulan smelled now was like blood that had only just flowed out of a limb.
Fulan brought Anna forward and saw this scene.
A girl in plain cloth clothing was sitting on the ground, her face deathly pale and her whole body drained of color. She was gasping heavily. This girl was Ella, an ordinary resident of the village.
The most striking thing was the girl’s arm. At the elbow of her left arm, there was a huge bite mark, and now, the girl’s left hand had already begun to turn black.
“This arm can’t be kept,” a man who seemed to be the local ‘doctor’ said.
After carefully examining Ella’s wound, he came to this conclusion, and this conclusion made Ella’s already pale face look even more uneasy.
“There is a fluid in this monster’s teeth that damages limbs. This hand can’t be kept. The whole thing can only be cut off.”
At this moment, his face was full of gravity. Although he knew that the injuries caused by that monster could be resolved as long as the limb was cut off, who could blame them when he was the only doctor here?
Sometimes, the number of doctors also reflected the level of medical development in a place from the side.
He knew that amputation was a very normal matter. His master had once performed amputations in several nearby villages, and he had even carefully observed from the side and acted as an assistant.
But even his master could only achieve a survival rate of around twenty percent through various methods.
Even his master had only reached that level. As for his own skill, it would not be much better than his master’s. But now, he could only steel himself and do it.
Just as he was about to arrange the place, a voice came from behind him.
“Can you let me try? I only need two minutes.”
He turned back and saw Fulan holding a very special bottle in her hand. It was filled with a green liquid that shimmered with golden light.