Transportation Captain

After carefully putting away the two precious treasures, Mu Yuan stared at the large pile of junk whose information he could not identify and fell into deep thought.

He was somewhat reluctant to part with this junk.

He did not expect any self-concealing divine artifact to be hidden among it. He simply felt that throwing it away like this would be too wasteful. After all, they were antiques!

After picking through it for a while, Mu Yuan took the weathered books, expired potions, damaged equipment, and several other items, then gave them a simple packing.

He had no decent backpack, and Deathbone and the other skeletons did not know how to weave bamboo baskets. It seemed impossible to find any equipment that could store items.

However, after summoning Deathbone from reality last time, Mu Yuan had discovered some wondrous uses for the Lord's Mark.

—As long as a troop unit held an object, he could then store it in the Mark, and the object would be brought into the Mark Space as well.

It could not hold too much, and the items could not be transported to the real world, but it was still equivalent to a small spatial storage bag.

Just a little too small.

He looked at Deathbone. "Have everyone take whatever they want from the remaining things. Carry away as much as they can. The junk can be put to use too."

With that, he headed outside the tower.

Bone Two, Bone Three, and the others had no sense of proportion. They might accidentally dismantle the tower. Mu Yuan was not afraid of the tower being dismantled—he had already taken everything he needed. He was afraid that he would still be inside when the tower collapsed.

Soon, under Deathbone's translation and direction, the skeletons walked out carrying various bizarre objects.

One skeleton had put a bucket lid on top of its head. Another had poured sand and gravel into its armor, which kept leaking out. The skeleton with the greatest carrying capacity was Bone Two. It had stuffed a great deal of miscellaneous junk into its hollowed-out chest and several other holes, truly making the most of its limited intelligence.

The enormous Great Slimes, on the other hand, could not carry much cargo.

Anything placed on them would slide off before long. As for stuffing things inside them, that could easily cause indigestion and lead to all sorts of accidents.

They were Slimes, not four-dimensional storage bags. How could they stuff just anything inside themselves?

"Wait, where's Dole?"

His big meat pad seemed to still be inside.

At the entrance of the Ruined Tower, a mass of indescribable matter squeezed its way out.

It was several times more bloated than the Great Slimes. At first glance, it looked like a pile of miscellaneous objects heaped into an ellipsoid, with no sign that it was a Slime at all.

Only upon closer inspection could one see that it was a mass of mucus wrapped around all sorts of miscellaneous objects.

...It still did not look like a Slime.

"Dole?"

"Goo-goo. Gigi."

It—it could barely walk anymore.

Then carry less!

Mu Yuan's face darkened, but Dole simply could not bear to throw away a single item. If it had not been unable to pull anything else, it would have dragged along even more.

After much persuasion, Mu Yuan finally convinced Dole to learn how to "transport in batches."

Dole's huge eyes lit up like light bulbs. It chirped and gurgled, seemingly having learned a new technique.

Mu Yuan had also learned a new trick.

"It's decided. From now on, you're the Transportation Captain, Dole."

"Goo-goo-gi?"

Dole still needed to make several more trips to transport all these miscellaneous items back to the territory. The work would probably continue until nightfall.

But that was not a problem.

The Ruined Tower was not far south of the territory. With the strength the territory currently possessed, moving around a little at night was not dangerous.

What Mu Yuan was considering was, "Since Dole is so good at carrying things, why not dismantle the entire Ruined Tower and bring it back?" After all, constructing the Mage Tower would require investing the necessary materials. If so, the waste materials obtained from dismantling the Ruined Tower could at least fill part of that gap, right?

Whether it worked or not, there was no harm in trying. It would not take much effort, anyway.

It would only cost Dole some effort.

No, wait.

Since Dole wanted to move things so badly and was extremely delighted and willing, strictly speaking, it did not count as costing any effort.

"However, since I've appointed Dole as the Transportation Captain, I'll have to evolve it a bit more... At the very least, its carrying capacity should increase significantly after evolving."

"Hmm. I'll go to the Association tomorrow and buy some Remnant Souls of Little Slimes."

After controlling his character back to the territory, Mu Yuan rested.

He switched to the Tai Xuan Forum. What the players in the Newbie Zone talked about most was the Resource Assessment, which had received the most attention lately.

One promising newcomer after another was constantly competing for this single spot. Some players from families that were not well-off were even going bankrupt purchasing Remnant Souls, just to fight for the resources distributed by the Association.

After all, the more ordinary players wanted to pass the trial, the more they needed to seize this opportunity to receive official benefits.

Mu Yuan reckoned that, with his slight evolutionary ability, he had a good chance of surviving the Lord Trial. But an ordinary player who could pass the Lord Trial without needing official benefits... It was not that none existed, but such a player would stand out more.

Besides, who did not love free benefits?

As a poor ordinary person, Mu Yuan was extremely tempted by this valuable benefit.

"Let's set defensive troop units aside for now. But I've heard that the official Newcomer Support Package also contains Miracle Blueprints for defensive structures."

Of course, it could not contain a rare-grade Miracle Blueprint like the Mage Tower. Even a Common Grade Miracle Blueprint, however, was extremely valuable and immensely useful. As for Mu Yuan, it was not merely a question of whether he could afford one—he did not even have a way to purchase one.

Mu Yuan strongly suspected that the Trading Area he saw on the forum was merely the trading area for "newcomers and ordinary veteran players." He had never seen anything like a Miracle Blueprint there. Of course, it was also possible that lord-related goods were under regulation because of their strategic value.

He guessed that only after entering the circle of lords would he be able to buy such goods.

Mu Yuan was extremely eager to obtain blueprints, Soul Sand, and other general resources.

"Not only that, but only after passing the assessment will the officials disclose certain lord-related information to players, including the key points of territory construction, the conditions for upgrading a territory, how to obtain high-quality territory residents, and so on."

"This information is even more important to me."

The Eternal World naturally had ordinary civilians. It was just that his territory was located in the wilderness, where he could barely see a few players, let alone ordinary civilians.

Countless territory residents lived within the cities of Great Lords.

Ordinary civilians could take on all kinds of work, filling the gaps left by troop units that only knew how to fight. As for high-quality territory residents... they included combat talents, research talents, production talents, management talents, and so on.

However, the ordinary people of the Eternal World seemed to originate from more than merely reproduction and childbirth. There were countless other sources as well.

Perhaps he would only be qualified to learn about these things after passing the Resource Assessment, or even after becoming a true lord.

The assessment for Baiyun Province was tomorrow.

Many newcomers from Baiyun Province had already grown nervous on the forum. Today was the sixth day since logging into the game. By this stage, most newcomers had already been rescued by official teams and transferred to Safe Cities established by Great Lords. The newcomers who remained were all hoping to compete for the resource benefits.

Many newcomers were not confident, but what if they passed? What if the other newcomers in the same period were not very impressive? Would they not then have a chance to stand out?

It was worth a gamble!

If they failed to obtain a spot, they could make a strategic retreat.

The newcomers seized the final night and pushed their main forces to cultivate with all their might, striving to break through one more minor level.

They themselves were also constantly gauging the level of their peers through the forum, using it to make their own judgment.

Mu Yuan was not particularly nervous, but he also needed to figure out what level would allow him to obtain the benefits for free while... not standing out too much.