Feland World.
The Age of Titans and Dragons.
High Barbarian Mountain, where the grasslands met the forest.
The sun blazed overhead, its fierce heat scorching the earth!
"High Barbarian Mountain Tribe, the Royal Court has issued its decree! Fifty Eaglemen warriors are to be conscripted! You have thirteen days to reach the Vast Sea Forest and await the God of Thunder's orders!"
Above the cliff.
An Eaglemen messenger with gray-black wings hovered in the air, clutching a bone spear in his talons as he shouted down at the Eaglemen on the cliff.
Below, among the Eaglemen gathered on the cliff.
Jiang You raised his head in confusion, looking around him and up at the sky.
Where... have I ended up?!
He soon noticed what was different.
Everyone around him had a human face with a bird's beak, eagle feet and wings, and a body covered in gray-black feathers. They were Eaglemen.
The Eaglemen wore crude animal hides. They were thin and sallow, clearly suffering from long-term malnutrition.
He himself was a young Eaglemen child, standing beside a female Eaglemen.
Soon, the young Eaglemen's brief memories surfaced in his mind.
"Messenger! Our tribe has barely two hundred Eaglemen in total. If all our able-bodied adults leave, how will we survive in this wilderness? Please grant us some leniency."
A tall Eaglemen man in his prime stood at the front of the crowd on the cliff, pleading with the Eaglemen Envoy in the air.
But the messenger cared nothing for whether they lived or died. He merely said,
"Hmph! That's none of my concern. Arrive on time and you live. Fail to arrive, and your tribe will be wiped out!"
With that, he beat his wings and flew away, leaving the Eaglemen stricken with fear.
Night fell.
A bonfire was lit on the cliff.
What little meat the Eaglemen tribe had left roasted over it.
The able-bodied Eaglemen ate their meat in silence, their families gathered beside them.
Jiang You and his mother likewise stood beside a male Eaglemen.
The male Eaglemen was tall—the chief of this tribe, the very man who had begged the messenger for leniency that day.
After finishing his meat, he turned to Jiang You, sighed, and stroked his head with a smile.
"My son, you must grow up strong and healthy!"
Though Jiang You was now a different person, he had merged with the young Eaglemen's memories, and those words still moved him.
Then his father looked at the female Eaglemen and spoke solemnly.
"A Zhi, the war between the Titan Race and the Primordial Dragon Race has lasted a thousand years. Ten years ago, our fathers left and never returned. This time, whether we live or die is just as uncertain. Once I'm gone, I'll be relying on you to raise little You."
The female Eaglemen's eyes grew wet.
"Yi, can't you refuse to go? We could leave High Barbarian Mountain and hide somewhere far away."
"We can't. The Titans and dragons have divided the whole world between them. Here, we can at least scrape by. Anywhere else, we'd only be wiped out."
His father spoke helplessly.
"Yi, you must come back safely!"
"I will."
Early the next morning.
All the able-bodied Eaglemen flew west under his father's leadership, bound for the Vast Sea Forest.
On the cliff, the elderly, women, and children watched the departing warriors, instinctively holding their children tighter.
Three years later.
In a forest near High Barbarian Mountain.
Jiang You stood in the treetops, a short stone spear gripped in his talons, his cold, slit-pupiled eyes fixed on the ground below.
Three forest wolves were attacking two thickhide boars, one large and one small.
The forest wolves had already torn away half the smaller boar's head. It was thoroughly dead.
The larger thickhide boar, driven into a frenzy by the loss of its young, ignored its wounds and charged with its head lowered and tusks raised.
One forest wolf was impaled and fell dead. Another had its belly slashed open and lay panting on the ground.
The remaining forest wolf dealt the thickhide boar the finishing blow.
Just then, an eagle's cry rang out.
Jiang You swooped down from the treetops, raised his stone spear, and drove it straight into the forest wolf's eye.
As the forest wolf died in agony.
[You killed a forest wolf. Experience +10]
Jiang You paid it no heed. He turned and flew toward the badly wounded forest wolf on the ground, then hurled his stone spear.
The spear flew straight into its throat.
[You killed a forest wolf. Experience +10]
The entire sequence was astonishingly fast, clean, and decisive.
Only after the fight ended did three young Eaglemen descend to the ground.
"Little You, you're amazing!"
"We'd barely flown out of the trees, and you'd already killed them all."
Jiang You smiled and nodded.
"A Sang, A Lie, A Lai, take some of the prey back first. I'll keep watch here."
"All right, little You. Be careful!"
With that, the three young Eaglemen worked together to carry away the two thickhide boars.
Once they had flown into the distance, Jiang You did what he could to mask the bloody scent of the three forest wolves, then flew back to the treetops.
He sat on a branch, gazing at the setting sun in the distance, and flicked the blood off his stone spear.
"Open panel."
[Name]: Jiang You [Race]: Eaglemen [Age]: 9 [Attributes]: Strength 5, Constitution 4, Spirit 9, Agility 8, Charisma 3. [Level]: Locked (sealed; unlocks when the game launches) [Skills]: Throwing (proficient), Spear Technique (proficient) [Skill points]: Locked (sealed; unlocks when the game launches) [Talent]: None [Quest system]: Locked (sealed; unlocks when the game launches) [Game Launch Countdown]: 3,650,136 days, 5 hours, 35 minutes.
At the sight of that [Game Launch Countdown], Jiang You couldn't help the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
He had transmigrated into an Eaglefolk with a disastrous start, and he couldn't even use the game system.
Am I an NPC or a player?
He let out a deep sigh.
I can't rely on the system for now. I'll have to rely on myself. At least I can check my attributes and skills, so it isn't completely useless.
The sunset's afterglow spilled through the leaves, bathing them in gold.
Jiang You snapped off a twig and traced it through the air.
Nothing else to do. Let's go over everything again.
I've been in this world for three years, and I'm certain now: this is the ancient era of the game Feland World, the Titan and Dragon Chapter.
When I first entered the game, it was already in the fifth chapter, the era of the Human Empire's rise.
By then, the age of Titans and dragons was long gone. After the great battle in ancient times, the Titans vanished, and the dragons retreated to Dragon Island.
There was so little information about this period. I remember only one account: three years before the final battle between the Titans and dragons, Yateli, the God of Thunder, killed the Primordial Dragon Emperor's beloved youngest son, the Blue Dragon King Arilletos, in a war over territory!
He was the ancestor of the blue dragons in later ages.
That incident was the spark.
The enraged Dragon Emperor committed his entire race's forces to a bitter war against the Titan Giants. Both sides were devastated in the end, and the Goblins seized the chance to rise!
When I watched the expansion trailer back then, I didn't pay any attention to the Eaglefolk's history.
At this point, the Eaglemen still have a Royal Court governing hundreds of thousands of them across the ancient world, and they count as one of the intelligent races.
At that thought, he looked himself up and down and sighed.
The Eaglemen, those pathetic monsters of the fifth chapter, will eventually be excluded from the intelligent races. Players won't even have Eaglemen as an option when they start.
Honestly, the Eaglefolk's innate potential really is low. I've tried plenty of methods from later eras on this young Eaglefolk body, but none of them have awakened any supernatural power.
No talent means no talent!
If I can't even awaken supernatural power, there's no point talking about the future.
He frowned deeply in thought.
But I remember a legend that kept circulating during the fifth chapter.
An ordinary turtle bathed in Titan blood in the Primordial Era, eventually became a demigod, and survived until the players arrived.
I'd originally planned to awaken supernatural power that way, too.
But over these past three years, I've heard that bathing in titan blood doesn't make you stronger. It burns you to death instead, without exception!
How did that old turtle survive bathing in titan blood and gain supernatural power instead?
Jiang You sank into thought.
I did that old turtle's quest. If I think it through carefully, I might find a clue!
Before you continue