A Helping Hand in the Snow

Retaliation from a stone.

Colin muttered a complaint.

However, the stone hadn't hit his position, missing by about two meters.

After a few seconds of deathly silence, Colin secretly rubbed his ribs, which were aching from the impact, while forcing a smile to reassure Shana that he was fine.

Colin's gaze swept over Shana involuntarily, and he felt that the dirt was probably softer after all.

After all, his back hadn't been hurt by the fall, but his chest was aching from the collision.

"Ah, I—I'm sorry." Shana apologized sincerely.

Even without her help to block it, the stone wouldn't have hit anyone; the whole situation was just a little bit awkward.

"Do you need me to help brush the dirt off your clothes?" Shana asked.

"No, no need."

After Colin politely declined, he shifted the topic without a trace to escape the awkward conversation. "Compared to this small matter, I think we should go take a look at the explosion site now."

When she heard him mention something related to the explosion, Shana's eyes lit up, and she nodded in agreement.

Not long after, Colin arrived at the spot where the explosives had been placed and saw a shocking crater in the ground.

The pit was over half a meter deep and several meters in diameter, which was enough to demonstrate the terrifying lethality it had caused. However, the soil around the deep pit appeared very "soft," feeling like fluffy cake underfoot.

[System: Through observation, you discover that the explosive power is not much different from the data descriptions you once saw online.]

[Therefore, you are very certain that even though there are many strange things in this world, the scientific knowledge you possess should not have failed here.]

The corners of Colin's mouth curled up. He had been worried that this place, which contained special energies like magic, might significantly reduce the power of guns and cannons.

But fortunately, the prompt gave him a satisfactory answer.

Beside him, everyone looked astonished. Shana took a deep breath of the "fragrance" lingering in the air. She didn't know what she was thinking of, but her voice, usually gentle and amiable, carried a hint of excitement:

"How many of these things can you manufacture?"

She had seen it very clearly from start to finish; using that unique weapon required no magical activation.

This meant that even ordinary people could use it!

If it could be mass-produced...

Shana felt that just thinking about it made her feel happy.

"Making a dozen or twenty barrels now shouldn't be a problem."

Colin recalled for a moment and said casually, "It mainly depends on how much Frost Stone is left in that mine."

He wasn't too worried about the Niter being mined out; given the productivity efficiency of people in this era, that was unlikely.

Unless those upper-class rulers who were clearly Extraordinary beings came to mine it themselves, but that was even more impossible.

Therefore, it was foreseeable that there was still plenty of Niter remaining.

With the various functions of the system, even if he were alone, he could quickly refine a large amount of explosives.

But the problem was that mining Niter in the tunnels was very troublesome. If Colin didn't want to be tied down to this place, he had better set up a production line.

That would require quite a few hands.

People were very cheap.

To put it bluntly, in this current background, a human life might only be worth one or two hundred milliliters of water or a single piece of bread (for a lord who didn't want to resort to cannibalism).

However, the limitations of Hurricane Lamps, blood, food, and the territory itself prevented Colin from triggering a population boom.

Moreover, if he missed today, the cost of a population boom would only grow higher.

Once the initial servants who were unable to be fed all starved to death, the price Colin would have to pay to trigger a population boom would be staggering.

The deeper he thought, the more Colin felt his pressure increasing.

In an instant, the joy and sense of achievement brought by the Black Powder were washed away completely.

At this moment, in a Level 2 Territory within the fog, a Level 2 lord named Huang Weiyang was comfortably enjoying the roasted rat meat in his hand.

Although there were no spices, no salt, and no seasonings, the charred, crispy aroma of the meat was still lingering, and the fragrant fat blending with his saliva made Huang Weiyang feel the instinctual craving for protein.

"I worked hard for over a dozen years and couldn't afford a house, yet I never expected to have a house in a godforsaken place like this."

He laughed at himself, feeling a bit nostalgic for the small apartment he used to rent.

Even though he hadn't flushed anything down, the toilet would clog every day, but at least he wouldn't be in a situation where he might die just by stepping outside.

And the soy-sauce-flavored tech stocks he invested in last year had been rising; he had planned to splurge at the end of the year, but he never expected to end up here.

However, just as he was reminiscing about the past, a loud, distant boom made his whole body shudder.

"What was that?!"

He was confused for a moment, then remembered the information he had seen on the chat channel not long ago, his face turning pale.

No, it couldn't be that coincidental, right?

Although he had just been talking big about hoarding guns and even felt a bit of schadenfreude, now that the matter was happening to him, the taste was quite different.

Now, the people in their area had become a granary.

The man looked at the Regional Channel, where most people were still completely oblivious, unaware of what had happened.

But some nearby individuals had noticed something unusual.

"I think I just heard a sound. Does anyone know what happened?"

"Didn't notice. Why, is it that strange?"

"I think I heard it too. It sounded like thunder. Besides that, I wonder how the group that went to explore the woods is doing. Those few active guys from earlier suddenly stopped talking."

"It's no big deal. They probably died."

"Everyone, I'm going to tell you something, but please don't be afraid when you hear it."

"What is it? Don't be so mysterious."

"Yeah, spit it out. Stop dragging your feet."

"Someone in our area managed to get their hands on explosives."

"."

In an instant, the Regional Channel went silent.

But a few seconds later, messages exploded again, and even the lurkers were flushed out by this news.

"Holy crap, did you hear wrong? There are millions of areas, how could we be so unlucky?"

"To be fair, yeah, the probability is way too low."

Huang Weiyang looked at the messages scrolling by, gave a bitter smile, and typed a message.

"I've served in the military and have seen these things. I guarantee I didn't hear wrong. That was definitely an explosion, not thunder. We really are that one in a million."

"Damn it, explosives! Shouldn't this be sanctioned or banned?"

"."

The Regional Channel was suddenly flooded with venting messages.

These were all people who had gone out to explore, and they knew exactly what having access to Black Powder meant at a time like this.

As the venting subsided, the man hesitated for a moment before tentatively asking:

"How about we team up and go talk to that person? I think I have a rough idea of the direction."

Talk? What a joke!

Everyone knew exactly what he meant by that.