"Why do I still have to wait?"
Zhou Jue had slept wonderfully, so soundly that he had even started dreaming about the open beta for World of Disorder.
But when he woke drenched in sweat and watched the sun gradually setting outside his empty dorm room, a sense of loss inevitably rose within him.
He suddenly thought of the game he had signed up for. He knew full well that testing couldn't possibly begin so soon, but he still felt a little sad.
"What the hell is that goddamn dev team doing?"
"What the hell are you doing? I'm about to get eaten!"
"Didn't you say these sheep were safe?"
"Fine, I was wrong, okay? Anyway, now they want to eat me!"
"No shit. What would sheep eat if not grass? Meat?"
"I told you, I'm a tree, not grass! On your right, hit it!"
Surrounded by a small flock of sheep, Ed swung a perfectly shaped hardwood club, striking hard at a sheep closing in from his right.
The sheep took a blow to the head, but its square pupils only grew sharper, and faint glimpses of fangs showed at the corners of its drooling mouth.
"I think it wants a taste of you, too."
Little Green shouted inside Ed's head:
"Stop trying for a no-hit run, or this could go south."
"Then who's going to replace the chunk of brain I'm missing?"
Ed argued, but his actions already agreed with Little Green's plan. His brain was certainly important, but the safety of his own life, which most likely couldn't be revived, was clearly more important.
He suddenly exerted force with both hands. The streamlined club stopped swinging and striking and instead thrust straight forward, tip first.
The vicious-looking sheep was about to turn its head aside when it suddenly saw a flash of green bloom at the tip of the staff...
Smells so good!
Driven by instinct, it reflexively bit at it.
The sharpened wooden staff pierced in beside the sheep's mouth, then drove backward, emerging through its side and plunging into the ground.
The sheep wasn't dead. Vines stretched out from beneath its white-and-green fleece and began flailing wildly around it.
But this was useless. After driving the long wooden staff into the ground, Ed had already let go and backed away.
One finger on his left hand rapidly grew and changed color, taking only a few seconds to become a pointed staff exactly like the first.
As the sheep fell, the others still tried to seize the chance to ambush Ed, but once the second staff rapidly grew into being, the rest of the flock scattered in an instant.
With those creatures no longer holding him back, Ed went over and delivered another three or four blows before the sheep and its vines finally drooped limply, losing all signs of life.
"Should I collect the brain now, or leave it until we come back?"
Ed asked Little Green out of habit. He was still learning the rules of this world.
"If you're going to collect it, do it now. Otherwise, it'll be corrupted before long."
The sapling sounded somewhat dazed, like someone lucky enough to escape a brush with death who was still shaken by it.
Ed nodded slightly at this, turning the pointed staff in his hand back into part of his body. Then he grew a hardwood chisel and a hammer from his palm and walked over to the dead sheep's head.
After some effort cracking it open, Ed finally packed the carnivorous goat's brain into a pouch pieced together from ragged clothes. That counted as a small unexpected gain.
The ability the Verdant Crown granted Ed allowed him to shape most bodily components, but something like a brain required the real thing.
A deer's, a sheep's, or even a human's would work, but a brain was indispensable for a successful soul summoning.
Ed's real purpose on this trip, however, was to visit one of the three villages now nominally under his name.
To welcome the incoming players, Ed needed to prepare some clothes and tools to keep the game's visuals from developing in another direction unsuitable for children.
That blood contract had given Ed nominal ownership of and a claim to this land, but the land didn't actually belong to him yet. That had already been verified earlier that day.
Those carnivorous trees wouldn't bow and scrape to Ed just because he was their nominal lord. When it was time to eat, they still wouldn't hold back.
The same went for the three villages in his territory. Ed couldn't even see their names on the map, so it was easy to imagine that his authority over them didn't actually exist.
Right now, Ed asked for nothing else. He only hoped that, like in a certain game from his previous life, the village ahead would have a guaranteed smithy spawn to make things easier for him.
The village to the northeast was about five kilometers from the castle. Because the flock had surrounded and attacked him along the way, Ed didn't reach the village entrance until dusk was setting in.
This was already his second day since transmigrating here. All told, it should have been thirty hours.
Relying on the power granted by the [Verdant Crown], Ed had neither slept nor eaten. Whenever he felt tired, he went to the river and sucked up water with his mutated palms.
Although the sky here was always gray, day and night still alternated, so Little Green could perform photosynthesis to some degree.
This meant Ed merely felt hungry without actually suffering weakness, fatigue, or other debuffs caused by hunger.
Ed had stayed in this energy-saving mode until now. He actually wanted to rest, too, but his gaming experience told him that members of the Tree Worship Church were probably still pursuing him. That made it difficult to truly relax, and he kept thinking of finding things to do.
After crossing a small hill, Ed finally reached the vicinity of the little village.
Looking down from the hillside, he could see houses scattered haphazardly across the flat ground below. A stream, narrower and much gentler than the river beside the castle, flowed through the middle of the village.
Ed made a rough estimate based on the number of houses and judged that the village had no more than a hundred residents.
Tightening the hood made of ragged clothes around his head, Ed held the walking stick formed from his finger and knocked on a household's door.
Little Green's presence was far too conspicuous and liable to leave a fairly deep impression. Ed had pieced together a hooded coat and a pouch from a few ragged garments he found in the castle, arriving here looking like a starving refugee fleeing famine.
Soon after the knock, a response came from inside the thatched cottage.
The wooden door creaked open a crack, and an old man draped in a blanket warily examined the visitor outside.
"I'm a traveler. I ended up here while taking a shortcut. May I ask where this is?"
The old man looked the hooded man up and down and said hoarsely:
"This is Upperstream Village."
He tipped his chin toward the stream a few dozen meters away, indicating that the "upperstream" in the village's name came from that stream.
Ed nodded slightly, guessing to himself that the other two villages were called Midstream Village and Lower Reaches Village. Then he asked his second important question:
"May I ask if there's a blacksmith in the village?"
As he spoke, Ed raised the walking stick in his hand.
"Those animals attacked me, and I lost my short spear's head on the road."
The old man looked at the exceptionally straight stick and felt that it did look like part of a spear or short spear.
He thought for a few seconds before saying:
"There's no smithy. Neither Upperstream Village nor Midstream Village has one."
"Oh? Then does Lower Reaches Village have one?"
Ed found it a little strange that the man had specifically emphasized that, and quickly pressed him.
"Lower Reaches Village? There hasn't been a Lower Reaches Village for ages. They call themselves 'Dragonborn Village' now. The blacksmiths all work over there. They look down on our shabby little place."