Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Lin Jie was stumped completely—become the Overlord of Saint Malo Town?
What the heck—this was just outright bullying!
Yes, it’s bullying, definitely bullying! Just look at this ruined, lifeless town—it was like an undeveloped wasteland! Although owning a town was way more useful than owning territories like guild bases, this nearly 99% ruined town would probably require at least a few hundred thousand gold coins to rebuild it!
Lin Jie was certain that Qiu Yuan was unable to fork out such a great sum of money.
However, as an Overlord, if one could not refurnish their own territory, they would be deemed as super irresponsible, and hence their reputation would be reduced!
This NPC was simply such a bully!
Qiu Yuan had not recovered from the ‘surprise’ she received. After all, the ranks of a town were much better than territories like villages and guild bases. Under normal conditions, one would be able to make lots of money by owning a town!
“See this? See this?” Qiu Yuan stood akimbo and announced proudly, “You said that this mission was not worthy? Ha, me here had already foreseen that the rewards for this mission would be very high!”
Lin Jie let out a bitter smile and did not know what to say.
The Engineering Grandmaster Nordilus Saint Malo brushed his beard smilingly, and couldn’t help but strike up his thumb at Qiu Yuan’s words. Wasn’t this such a cute girl—she was still busy helping her seller to count the money from selling her! He spoke in a relieved and trusting tone, “Then, I shall hand Saint Malo Town to you. I hope that it will revive to its prime under your hands!”
Qiu Yuan put on a serious expression, “I promise!”
“I shall make a move first! I will appear again when you run into any trouble.” Nordilus laughed merrily and made gestures to leave.
“Wait!” cried Lin Jie as he stopped him. “Well, Qiu Yuan has gotten her reward, what about us?”
Nordilus brushed his beard and smiled benevolently. “Young adventurer, what do you want?”
Lin Jie threw a look at Zheng Ziliang, who understood his meaning and took out the Azure Heart. He addressed Nordilus respectfully, “I want to create a Mechanical Lifeform, and I hope Master can help me with this!”
“Oh? The Azure Heart?” Nordilus looked at the item in surprise, then shook his head.
“One requires the Law of Life to create a Mechanical Lifeform. You are just a mid-level Engineer, and it is not befitting of you to own a Mechanical Lifeform. However, I promise you, I will help you with this when you are strong enough!”
If other players had heard this, they might be fooled by this NPC’s words, and really think that they had activated some hidden mission. They might save up the Azure Heart and wait for the day when this NPC returned and helped them create some magnificent machinery. Only Lin Jie knew that this fellow was just bluffing people!
Nordilus•Saint Malo was the son of Saint Malo Town’s mayor. In the whole of Saint Malo Town where everyone made their living through farming, only the mayor’s son was literate, practiced swordsmanship, and learned magic. The whole Saint Malo Town was like an aboriginal tribe clan, where only the clan leader had the far sight to allow his son to learn such things.
As the town mayor’s only son, Nordilus was naturally loved by the whole town. This genius was also the townsfolk’ pride—within 10 years, he had studied all the books within the town’s library, such as “The Chronicles of The New Age’s Civilizations,” “Sword and Man,” “Analysis of Magical Elements” etc. When he reached adulthood, he was already an Advanced Warrior, Middle-level Mage, Middle-level Bandit, and he was famous within the Guild of Light!
However, Nordilus was not spared from the chunnibyou characteristics of being a genius. When carrying out a mission, he had seen an extinct technological product—the Half-god Titan! This Engineering product, which made use of Magical Strength and all sorts of precious materials, completely subverted his perception of the world. He gave up his study of swordsmanship and magic and eventually converted to become an Engineer.
Though it pained the mayor to see his son going down the ‘wrong’ path, he still supported Nordilus’s choice and bought all sorts of machinery from the open markets to let his son experiment with them. In fact, the whole Saint Malo Town was turned into his laboratory—during that time, human-sized metallic gargoyles could be seen in the town every few steps.
These gargoyles had absolute power, unbeatable bodies, and good battling skills, but the only thing they lacked was… life! However advanced, no technology would be able to give those gargoyles life—unless he could get certain “law” to work for them. Hence Nordilus was deeply troubled by this fact.
As a player, one could never imagine how deeply loved the genius Nordilus was within the whole town of Saint Malo. They always greet him with kind smiles whenever they saw this young lad running around the town, knowing that he would, at days go without eating or sleeping for the sake of doing his beloved research.
One fine day, when Nordilus exploded a patch of land in Saint Malo Town for his 384th experiment, he found a book which taught him how to absorb ‘moonlight’ and transform it into the Powers of Life. The overjoyed Nordilus immediately sneaked out from his house that night and experimented with this—it was lucky that the moon was especially bright that fateful night.
The next day, Nordilus announced excitedly that no enemy would be able to invade Saint Malo Town ever again! He proudly displayed the Mechanical Lifeforms which he created for the purposes of protecting the town——Sub Legendary Warrior Machinery, Sub Legendary Mage Turrets, Sub Legendary Priest Robots…
Within the next 10 years, Saint Malo Town became the most secure town in The New Age! However, this did not last for long. Nordilus was met with a bottleneck soon enough: he wanted to create a Heroic, and even Immortal level gargoyle. After leaving large amounts of protection gargoyles to protect his hometown, he bade goodbye to his family, friends, and left the town.
What no one expected was that those Mechanical Lifeforms which was supposed to be guarding the town decayed and rotted away after Nordilus’s departure! Even more nightmarish was that a dark plague spread out from those Mechanical Lifeforms—the domesticated pigs started to rip off their owners’ heads, wheat plants sucked on the townsfolk’ blood… Just in one night, the whole of Saint Malo Town was turned into a devastated, plague area!
That situation continued to now!
It was easy to guess who was the ‘mastermind’ behind this—correct, the Law of Life which Nordilus created from absorbing ‘moonlight.’ This was a ploy from the Dark Shrine—not only did they stole Nordilus’ Engineering expertise, through this, they also brought a great calamity upon his hometown!
What’s most laughable was that this fellow only bothered to return home now!
All Engineers were lunatics! If one studied the histories of The New Age, they would find countless people sacrificing their lives for the supposed magnificent ‘science.’ Many would mutter and leave words of regret like ‘I have let my family down, for I had sacrificed my all for science’ on their deathbeds. Truth to be told—no one could decipher if such actions were supposed to be glorious or ironical.
However, Lin Jie was able to see through his facade—Nordilus was just a thorough lunatic who would resort to any means to pursue his interest!
“Well, I don’t like promises. I picked up an old diary just now, and in it, I saw mushy comments like ‘My son will come back and save the town,’ ‘I love him’ which almost corrupted my eyes,” said Lin Jie as he crossed his arms. “You’d better reward me with some gains which I can enjoy straight away.”
A cold light flashed past Nordilus’s eyes. “Young lad, you are in no position to discuss conditions with me.”
Whoosh—
A gust of blade aura slitted past the NPC’s face and blood dripped out slowly from his wound!
“The Wind Rider Blade Aura Executioner! From Wind Rider Sword Saint?!” Nordilus was shocked. He immediately changed to a more cordial tone as he spoke, “Well, I can help you. But I don’t have the materials required.”
Lin Jie smiled and started taking out the materials like the Water Alloys from his backpack, displaying all of them on the floor. At this minute, an idea occurred to him. He said, “Ziliang, take this sword and search around this town. Dig out whatever metal scraps you can find, and it will be best if you can find some gargoyles!”
Zheng Ziliang took Lin Jie’s Thunderbolt Sword and nodded seriously, running towards the town. The Sub Legendary Thunderbolt Sword thrust into the soil easily, and with a great shove, it brought out a piece of metal.
All these were the scraps of the previous gargoyles! If they could be included inside the Mechanical Gargoyle, its quality might become better!
Right when the both of them were playing mind-games with the devious NPC to get their rewards, Qiu Yuan pulled open the camp ruins’ door and released all the trapped townsfolk. She took out water and distributed it to all of them, and the little girl hugged her with overjoyed tears in her eyes.
“Eh… I say, Fu Sheng.”
“What?”
“I got a system notification that I gained more than 100% support from all the townsfolk of Saint Malo Town. As such, all construction fees are decreased by half, and the town’s development speed will be increased by 100%. What does this mean?”
Lin Jie stared at her incredulously. ‘What? Shouldn’t such rewards which involved construction actions be given only after a massive city fight?’
However, when he saw the NPCs’ grateful looks, Lin Jie finally made sense of this arrangement.
Although the saying of ‘one good turn deserves another’ was really clichéd and wouldn’t apply to most circumstances in modern times, this was what he saw before his own eyes now.
Turning back to Master Nordilus, Lin Jie smiled and said, “Master, that fellow’s too slow in digging out the required materials, I think it may take quite some time. How about doing some warm-up exercise before we begin the real process?”
“Oh, ‘warm-up exercise’? What a fantastic idea!” smiled Nordilus as he clenched his fists tightly, knowing full well that he was being blatantly threatened by Lin Jie. He was just thinking of any excuses he could use to beat up this ignorant human being from the alternate realms, and now—this bloke actually asked for it himself!
Kuang!
Kuang!
Lin Jie took out the Heart of Magma, Ten Millennia Frozen Ice, Weighted Concentrated Dark Ore and placed them all on the ground, and finally the whole skeleton of the Exodus Bone Dragon. After which, he smiled and said, “How about forging a gun as a practice?”
