Accept a man's food, and you hesitate to criticize him; take his money, and you hesitate to act against him.
That principle held true everywhere.
The lumberjacks had never heard that saying, but after Ajax handed out the copper coins he had brought, giving every one of the camp's two hundred-odd lumberjacks at least five, they decided he was a good man.
Report him to the Restoration Army soldiers?
Are you nuts? If we report Ajax, will those grunts give us meat to eat?
No, they would not. They would even turn around and take the finely minted copper coins from the lumberjacks' pockets. And so, the lumberjacks collectively decided not to report Ajax.
Through the simple, brutal method of throwing money around, Ajax temporarily won the lumberjacks' trust.
Time rewound further.
On the fifth day, while the unaffiliated players were still happily enjoying their scout PvE, Barbarossa was lying on a wooden raft.
The raft lay anchored in the middle of the slow-flowing river beneath the cliffs. At noon, scorching sunlight shone down through the gap between the two sheer cliff faces overhead, falling on Barbarossa and illuminating his body in all its appalling condition.
Barbarossa was not doing well. Apart from a pair of baggy shorts, he had no clothing on at all.
His skin was pale, swollen, and wrinkled. Bruises and torn wounds from collisions covered his shoulders, back, and thighs.
Traces of blood were still seeping from a fresh wound on his arm that he had received just over ten minutes earlier.
But although Barbarossa looked frightening, he was not the worst off. That distinction belonged to the other player beside him.
That player was likewise without clothes. He sat at the edge of the raft, holding a makeshift fishing spear and staring intently into