Chapter 357 Epilogue: The Story After that (1/2)

Chapter 357 Epilogue: The story after that

War zone.

No, it should be said that the former war zone.

The war is over, but the soldiers may not be able to return to their hometowns.

The noble class will not retain extra emotions for these recruited militias/soldiers - they just symbolically give these recruited soldiers a little money and leave.

They also take away most of the resources left by the advance team.

The knight class and the mage class are unwilling to stay in this frontier land for a long time. They would rather return to their comfort zone, the prosperous and thriving city.

These people who have been wandering around in their hometowns all their lives and have never left their villages and towns were abandoned by the nobles.

Nearly 70,000 recruited troops were left in place, and the nobles who recruited them did not waste their money to send these recruits home.

Winter, after autumn is the cold winter.

Some people left, following the footsteps of the nobles to leave this once war-torn land and embark on a long journey home.

Even if those who helped them said that there would be no more invasions here, they were still unwilling to stay on the border for long.

But more people could no longer find their way home, so they chose to inherit the outposts built by the advance team here and make this place their home.

It was difficult to open up settlements and build roads in the forest, but the battle between the advance team and them almost turned this difficult-to-open up land into an area that could be developed.

The trees were burned, and the ashes left behind nourished the earth, and the life immersed in the earth made the soil more fertile in the coming year.

Towns were built, and the outposts built by the advance team had complete infrastructure. Those who stayed here only needed a little improvement to get a habitable area.

The advance team brought seeds and resources, and one of their tasks was to reclaim land and plant crops.

As a step to open up the frontier, prepare for the people who follow.

One step, one step.

They failed, and all the pioneering equipment was left to the local civilization when they evacuated, including seeds, resources, and wealth.

Ji Lin hesitated and took only a part of the engineering machinery as samples, and handed over most of the pioneering equipment to the army organized by the local civilization - and buried all the spare parts. If they really decided to settle here in the future, these parts would help them a lot.

The nobles dismantled all the detachable and light engineering machinery, and left with the products emitting runes and magical auras.

This was enough to prove that they had defeated the enemy, and boasting about their resumes was far better than sending these conscripted civilians back to their hometowns.

As for the heavy engineering machinery that was difficult to carry away, it was abandoned in the camp.

Large-scale population mobility, perfect infrastructure construction, and pioneering engineering equipment for auxiliary work made it possible for this place to become a town.

Some people said, do it.

There will be no robbers to stop their construction, no lords to collect taxes from them, and no nobles who regard human lives as worthless.

They really shed blood for this land, and they also paid heavy casualties to contain the enemy.

The soldiers and farmers who were recruited struggled to wield shovels in this frontier, count resources, and concentrate population.

In the first year, they had a difficult winter.

After the end of autumn, winter came. They had too little time to prepare. After the short late autumn, the cold winter followed.

Many people died.

There was a shortage of food and energy in the camp. They needed to leave enough grain for next spring.

You can't eat grain. Even if people starve to death, you can't move the grain. Without grain, there is no way to complete the sowing in the spring, and there is no way to live here for a long time.

60,000 people, it's really a big number, so big that the food supplies left by the entire advance team are not enough for them to consume.

The prey that the hunters hunted in the mountains is just a drop in the bucket under this number.

Only a few cool snowflakes occasionally fell from the sky. They learned to convert the warehouse into a large house for central heating to keep these 60,000 people alive in the hardship, and learned to pile wood together for central heating to reduce heat loss.

Sixty thousand people huddled in the portal station. The area was large enough and had enough houses to accommodate sixty thousand people.

They were forced to learn to cooperate and allocate resources in a cruel winter.

There were only apprentices and low-level mages in the camp. They did not have the help of mages. The conscripted militia could only learn to operate the war equipment and engineering equipment left by the advance team.

Use these engineering equipment and learn the design of these engineering equipment.

Then imitate and then manufacture.

They read the books that the advance team did not take away in the cold winter. The fantasy stories comforted them in the cold night. There were more books about the complete magic and rune system left by the advance team. This knowledge was not high-end and elegant.

But it built a perfect route.

These books were in great reserve, even if some were taken away by Ji Lin and some by the nobles.

The remaining large number of books was enough to meet the reading needs of those who stayed, and the system quietly implanted temporary text modules in these settlers-so that they could understand the texts of other worlds.

Knowledge is not stored in a vault, but is passed on through the people rolling in the mud.

Human power alone is not enough.

In spring, the snow water turns into spring mud.

After cultivating the land and sowing seeds, the conscripted soldiers put down their magic rifles and dug out the tools left by the advance team to start farming.

In order to make the advance team partially self-sufficient, the team carried fine seeds carefully selected by mages and elves. These fine seeds eventually reached the hands of the local civilization.

The nobles focused all their attention on visible wealth, on magic technology, and on the drawing of runes. These seeds were put aside in disgust by them, and eventually they all ended up in the hands of the soldiers who were abandoned here.

Fertile land, good seeds, determined people.

Pieces of land were turned into farmland, and the conscripts who were once farmers allowed the seeds brought by the advance team to germinate and sowed seeds full of vitality.

Wheat, potatoes, rice.

One winter, one spring.

The remaining 60,000 people spent two difficult springs and two winters.

Along the road to the camp, using the battlefield as farmland, the arcane energy and lost lives that once surged above it eventually nourished the land - they were given a flat area without obstacles, with fertile soil.

Digging canals to divert water and farming intensively.

It was not until the third year that a perfect production system was established, food began to circulate normally to support the 60,000 people, and people finally did not have to tighten their belts to survive the difficult autumn and winter.

The first child was born.

In the fifth year, the first fixed construction machinery produced entirely by this small town was launched. They combined the mechanical structure they had seen from the steam structure with the technology left by the Magic Empire's advance team to create a machine that could assist their machinery.

There are too few of them and too much work needs to be done.

In the seventh year, the first bionic engineering machinery was launched. Its body was mostly made of wood, with a small amount of steel components mixed in. It moved quite funny - and they had no way to make these things move on their own. Only some joysticks are left for people to sit in.

These shambling creatures are clumsy and slow, lifting materials with their steel-and-wood arms.

In the tenth year, things were on track. The small border town organized a caravan and walked out with the resources and products they produced. People were surprised that a small town with a large number of people unexpectedly appeared here.

The caravan transports resources produced in the small town and brings back various handicrafts that are not produced in the small town.

In the eleventh year, news of the mainland war reached their borderland through couriers.

The small town's industry is becoming more and more prosperous, and the food they have developed is enough for them to make some processed products, and there is even some leftovers for export to other cities.

In the eighteenth year, many refugees came to their hometown through the passage, and the population of this border city exceeded 200,000 for the first time.

A prosperous town.

"Uncle Yas, look!"

The crystal in the child's hand reflects a light purple light in the sunlight, and the broken prisms are bright and elegant.

"I picked it up in the woods outside."

Yas took the crystal from the child's hand and put it in the sun, with a trace of nostalgia in his eyes.

"You should also pay attention to safety when you go out to play."

Yas, or rather the former recruit, touched the child's head and handed the shattered crystal on the arcane focuser back to the child's hands.

"This is the remains of a magic crystal. It's really rare... There shouldn't be many of these crystals obtained from damaged arcane generators."

On this battlefield that has been cleaned countless times, someone can always dig out the relics left over from the war twenty-five years ago.

A broken rifle, several broken crystal blocks, and bones buried in the pit. A broken notebook, some broken staffs, and raw materials that have begun to sprout.

They used to have scavenger teams to recover usable wood and iron blocks from the battlefield, but now the scavenger teams have also been disbanded.

The traces of war will be erased by rain, snow, wind and frost, and then disappear from people's memories - technology will be integrated into the process of civilization as it develops.

But there are very few people who can remember the stories of the past.

Compared with the war that was so far away that it almost disappeared from the minds of each of them, the suffering when opening up the land was more unforgettable for them.

Those soldiers who actually set foot on the battlefield and come into contact with the enemy are still only a few.

They only had half a year to fight the enemy, but they had twenty-five years, or the entire rest of their lives, to fight against nature.

Everyone arriving at the border is struggling against nature.

"Give it to your Grandpa Snow, he should like it."

Yas smiled and pointed to the tavern not far away. The veteran also spent twenty-five years with this small border town.

With a broken hand, he gained greater prestige in the eyes of everyone, and opened a tavern as the town gradually developed.

After quitting smoking, drinking became his new pleasure.

The veteran hung the things collected on the battlefield on the tavern. In the center was the rifle he had used. He used this rifle to kill a dozen soldiers from the advance team.

The child stuck out his tongue and held the bright broken crystal in his hand.

"Grandpa Snow will take my crystal and hang it on the wall. I don't want it. I want to keep it for myself!"

Yas smiled and cursed, watching the child running further and further down the stone road.

"What a brat."

The recruit leaned against the tree, his eyes falling on the shade of the tree that was shaking off some broken light. In a trance, he felt that he was back in the afternoon when he was swinging the rune sword at the tree.

————

Twenty-five years seemed a bit long for the elves.

So long that some human mages have passed away, and the hair of the remaining people has turned gray.

Twenty-five years is one-third to one-quarter of human life.

The human mage walked out from behind Eno, and his eyes also fell on the door-shaped stone frame in the distance. Thinking of the high-spirited advance team twenty-five years ago, they passed through the door with resources and arrived in another world.

"Grandmage, I don't think our meeting should be today."

The elf commander turned around and looked at the human mage with a large number of mechanical auxiliary components on his body.

"The auxiliary machinery you created allows people with low magic talent to cast spells, and the Imperial Central Council also agrees to let you have a seat in the House of Commons."

"You don't need to promote me like this. It's just a group of people who have lost most of their magic talent to save themselves."

The human mage smiled and rejected his compliment... It's just the last struggle of a group of people who no longer have talent. They have understood and manipulated spells and felt the surge at their fingertips.

"Human life is still short, but it's good to be able to do something at the end of life."

Eno sighed.

"Actually, I want to go to the other side of the door again."

They are waiting for the portal to reopen, but as the human commander said to him when they parted, the door will not reopen in their lifetime.

"Are you still waiting for the next war?"

The human mage said, and Eno could hear the faint sarcasm in his tone.

They were all losers in that war, and fate did not give them a second chance.

Eno didn't speak, his eyes fell on the sunset that was slowly sinking into the horizon.

Overexpansion tore the empire apart, and the failure of the war almost destroyed the advance team he led, but they learned a lot.

Many, many things.

But they had no way to find their original enemy to fight.

"I invited you here this time in the hope of promoting the improvement bill of the empire's colonial areas. The current model of the empire will only cause more and more disasters..."

Whether it's theirs or ours.

Eno looked at the portal that might never open, and put away his thoughts.

The setting sun cast a brilliant light, but they all knew that the sun would rise as usual tomorrow.

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