For most people in Zelandia's new camp, each day was little more than a repetitive shuttle between three points and two lines: tent, mess hall, construction site.
And amid that daily repetition, time quietly arrived in April.
Green Grass Festival.
It signaled that spring had truly arrived. Ice and snow melted, all things revived, and with the coming of the damp season, everything began to stir. It was a day for letting go and enjoying oneself to the fullest.
City residents would scatter flowers, carefully tended in temples and castles long beforehand, over the snow to drive away the bitter winter and pray for a bountiful harvest in the coming season.
Merchants, meanwhile, would hire laborers to load their various flagship goods onto wagons, then post mercenary recruitment notices in taverns, hiring adventurers as an extra layer of protection along the trade routes.
After all, some adventurers were more or less acquainted with certain bands of brigands and city guards along the way.
In such circumstances, a bit of money could often avert an encounter battle that was doomed to be unprofitable, or spare them certain taxes through a different method of tax calculation.
By that reckoning, hiring these seasoned adventurers was well worth it.
But for certain Silvermoon City merchants at this time, their southward trip to Water-Drawing City was not merely for trade. They had another task to carry out.
That was to recover the deposit for their intended property purchases that the Hogg Trading Company had "swindled" from them.
Yes, they felt they had been played.
Ever since the batch of migrants who had headed to that so-called new northern city, Minas Tirith, before the new year returned to Silvermoon City once again, these merchants had felt they had been deceived.
Yet with the pressure from that