Chapter 2 Adapting to Home Belongings, Sword and Magic Continent
During dinner, Ray met Uncle Hagrid and Aunt Linda, whom Neil had mentioned; they were a married couple.
Hagrid had a strong physique and dark skin, while Linda was a plump woman with a constant smile on her face.
They brought the two brothers a pot of stew and some rye bread.
To Rae's surprise, Hagrid seemed to have tears in his eyes when he saw him.
He gently squeezed Ray's arm and then looked closely at the scar on his head.
"You've lost weight."
Linda looked at Hagrid with a smile.
"Look at what you're saying. The child has just recovered from a serious illness. He'll gain weight back if he eats more."
Ray gave a stiff smile; he was somewhat unsure how to handle other people's concern.
His parents died early, and his grandparents in the countryside raised him until high school before passing away. He completed university on his own with student loans. But man proposes, God disposes; the apocalypse struck just a few years after he started working.
Strangers came and went around him.
In the apocalypse, relationships between people are filled with wariness and indifference.
"Only the two of you brothers are left. If it weren't for the monster attack, your parents wouldn't have died so young..."
Linda nudged Hagrid with her elbow and glared at him, stopping him from continuing.
Hagrid immediately stopped talking, showing his tact.
"Well, if you need anything in the future, just let Neil come to us."
"Okay. Thank you, Uncle Hagrid and Aunt Linda, for taking care of me during this time."
Judging from Neil's affectionate attitude towards them, the Hagrids had indeed provided them with a great deal of help.
It's common to kick someone when they're down, and it's equally common to stand by and watch indifferently.
The Hagrids, who helped Neil even when it was uncertain whether the original owner of this body would survive, deserve his gratitude.
"Silly child, why are you thanking me?"
Linda patted his head, her eyes full of affection.
Lai chatted with the couple for a while longer before leaving, leaving behind half a bag of rye flour.
The days passed between taking medication and rehabilitation training. The Hagrids would occasionally bring them food, making Ray feel a little embarrassed.
Being a young man, Ray's body fully recovered after a month.
During his recovery period, with Neil's help, Ray sorted out their current belongings.
A two-story building, a vegetable garden behind the house, a small plot of farmland, and a big yellow dog—according to Neil, it has one-eighth of a monster bloodline.
The original owner's parents, Victor and his wife, left them an inheritance of seven gold coins.
The purchase of food in winter and the planting in spring cost half a gold coin, and the original owner's unexpected injury cost another portion.
They now have only three gold coins, thirty-two silver coins, and some copper coins left.
Given the purchasing power and productivity levels of this world, one gold coin is enough for a poor family of three to spend for a year.
The Victors left them a considerable fortune.
But if they do nothing, they'll eventually run out of money. Rae has to find a way to earn money to support himself and his adopted brother.
For the past month, Neil had become Ray's little shadow, following him around all the time. This meant Ray had no chance to test his abilities.
Once he was able to do physical labor, Lai immediately took Neil to tend the vegetable garden and pulled out all the weeds.
Before the original owner was injured, he had already planted the land with his younger brother. But after he was injured, Neil took care of him wholeheartedly, and all the seedlings in the vegetable garden suffered.
Although they grew with difficulty, they all looked thin, small, and unhealthy.
Some areas were completely overgrown with weeds, without a single seedling. Lai simply cleared up those areas. He found some unfamiliar seeds and watered and planted them directly.
Something is better than nothing.
Ray also went with Neil to see his family's farmland.
To his surprise, the wheat in the field was growing well and there weren't many weeds. He later learned that Hagrid had asked his three sons to help take care of it.
The world was in the early agricultural period, a few hundred years in the past, and wheat and rye were the main grains.
Most of the farmland in the village is planted with wheat and rye.
They only plant one crop a year, and without the aid of modern machinery, the yield isn't very high. They also have to pay a third of their grain to the city lord each year.
A bad year brings drought or flooding, which further reduces the harvest.
So the people here don't live very well; sometimes they can't even guarantee they have enough to eat and wear.
The small village where Ray lived was located on the outskirts of the Eton Forest, a suburban area, and the nearest town was half a day's walk away.
Because of its remoteness, the area is sparsely populated, with fewer than fifty households in the entire village.
Therefore, the management of land reclamation in the village is not particularly strict; you can simply register with the clan elders.
The Victors only moved here in the last twenty years. Farming is not their forte, so they haven't cultivated much land. After paying taxes, they can barely afford to feed their family of four.
After all, his family has limited manpower.
Hagrid was Mr. Victor's distant cousin, who was also Rye's adoptive father. Hagrid provided a great deal of help to the couple in settling down here.
Neil told me that Victor had been a knight. And among their inheritance were indeed a gleaming steel sword and two old daggers.
However, since Lai's body had been lying down for too long and he was somewhat weak, he couldn't use the steel knife very well, so he hid it in the box.
Keep in mind that in this era, a knight's steel sword was worth a considerable amount of gold coins, so it was possible that some unscrupulous people in the village might steal it.
Thousands of years of history and culture have taught us that the saying "possessing a treasure invites trouble" is no joke.
The houses in the entire village are all built of wood and stone, and the houses are not close to each other.
Viktoria is more remote, located on the edge of the village, and is more than 50 meters away from its nearest neighbor's house.
Lei thought this was fine, at least it avoided a lot of unnecessary trouble.
He tried his best to adapt to life here and learn about this unfamiliar world through Neil. Fortunately, Neil was young, only twelve years old, and Ray used the excuse of aftereffects to keep him from suspecting anything.
Besides magic, what surprised Ray even more was that this world wasn't just inhabited by humans!
This is a continent filled with swords and magic.
In more bustling cities, magicians are said to be a common sight.
However, the village where Lai lived was too remote and poor. Even the town of Rosen, to which it belonged, had no more than a hundred magicians.
Each town has its own mayor, and a dozen or so towns together make up a small city.
The small town will have a local lord who will manage all the land within his jurisdiction.
Above them are the castle lords who own castles and tens of thousands of acres of land, and finally, the castle lords nominate and select the king.
The church controls people's beliefs, but the castle lord is the actual center of power in the country.
The idea of becoming a castle lord is too far out of reach for Jane right now; her priority is to earn money to support her younger brother.
In addition, there is some good news.
Here, the maximum human lifespan can reach two hundred years.
Ray's body had just reached adulthood, he was only twenty years old, which meant that he was not only ten years younger, but also had an extra hundred years of lifespan!
He actually received some of the original owner's memories, though they weren't complete. He didn't possess the original owner's body; rather, the original owner truly died during that fever.
In the afternoon, Ray took Neil to the woods near the village to collect two bundles of dry branches, and then they went home to cook dinner.
After eating mixed grain porridge for three days in a row, he finally realized that Neil only knew how to make this one dish, so he naturally took over the cooking task.
Even when there was nothing to help with while cooking, Neil liked to stay by Lai's side and help by handing him seasonings or something.
Lai mixed wheat flour and rye flour together to make dough, then rolled the dough into a large sheet with a rolling pin, folded it in an alternating pattern, and cut it into noodles.
While the water in the pot is already boiling hot, put them all into the boiling water at once.
Neil placed the cleaned mushrooms and greens on the cutting board and took over the task of cooking the noodles.
Lai was going to fry bird eggs in a slightly smaller pan; he planned to make hot noodle soup for dinner.
I scooped a spoonful of oil from the oil can into a pot, and after the oil was hot, I cracked two bird eggs with spots on them.
Vegetable oil is more expensive than animal oil, so most households use animal oil that is rendered from animal fat. It has a somewhat fishy and gamey taste, which Lai Yi doesn't quite like.
The bird eggs are laid by the red rockbird, one of the few domesticated animals in the area.
After frying the quail eggs, Lai added a ladle of hot water, which quickly turned milky white. He then added mushrooms, greens, and noodles, and the simple hot noodle soup was ready.
Neil was eating with gusto, but Ray found it rather bland.
He hasn't eaten meat for almost a month! Meat! He desperately needs meat to supplement his nutrition.
But Neil stayed with him and wouldn't let him hunt in the woods. When pushed too far, he would look at him with teary eyes and sharpen his knife at the only four egg-laying ruddy shelducks in the house.
Lei wanted to facepalm.
Because of those few poor red rockbirds, Ray's hunting plan had been delayed until today.
He needs to find an opportunity to go out alone.
He desperately wanted to test whether he still possessed supernatural abilities, or rather, magic. The roof also urgently needed repairs, requiring suitable timber found in the forest.
The rainy season is just around the corner, and if we don't take care of it, the house will get moldy sooner or later.
Moreover, once it's fixed, Neil can go back to his own room on the second floor instead of sharing a room with him.
After dinner, Ray and Neil resumed their daily exercise routine: push-ups, sit-ups, or running around the neighborhood.
The village aunties would sometimes whisper that Ray had lost his mind, but Ray ignored them, and Neil didn't care about such nonsense either.
After his serious illness, Ray's body is somewhat weakened. In addition to continuous exercise, he and Neil are required to eat a bird egg every morning.
There's a little anecdote about eating bird eggs.
Neil wasn't too keen on eating the bird eggs himself; he wanted to save them up and sell them in town by oxcart at the market. One bird egg could sell for four copper coins, so a hundred eggs would be four silver coins!
Good health is the foundation of everything. Only with a healthy body can we be prepared to meet the challenges of the future, right?
Ray successfully shut Neil up with the excuse of needing to replenish his body, and forced him to eat with him.
The effect is actually quite significant.
After a while, Neil's face finally regained some color, and Ray was able to wield the steel knife for more than ten minutes. This is something to be happy about.
However, the matter of testing magic troubled him somewhat, and he was always itching to try it out, thinking, "What if?"
Lei was constantly looking for opportunities.
A note from the author:
----------------------
At the beginning of the century, all things were born.
The supreme deity, in its mercy, tore through the chaos and died from exhaustion.
His eyes transformed into a spirit that loved nature;
His mind transformed into a race of people skilled in thought;
His heart transformed into a powerful and aloof dragon race;
His blood transformed into a passionate beast race;
His hands transformed into a creative dwarf;
His feet transformed into seductive demons;
His soul transformed into a dark and damp spirit;
The lice on His body transformed into disgusting goblins.
......
—Selected from the eleventh poem in Volume One of "Selected Poems of Wandering Poets"
(Tip: Bards have a penchant for black goblins. If you want to strike up a conversation with a particular race, just start with "goblin" and you're guaranteed to succeed.)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
