Chapter 313 - 280: The Flustered and Exasperated Feathered Serpent God

Chapter 313: Chapter 280: The Flustered and Exasperated Feathered Serpent God

After Uncle Musa left, Shire reorganized his thoughts.

For the most part, things were developing as he had predicted. The only surprise was that Auberto had actually joined Valentine’s Guard Corps, and it seemed he held a fairly high rank.

But all of that was still too distant for Shire to worry about right now. His current concerns were what the tribe would eat, the fact that their supplies hadn’t been replenished, and how many people he needed to take on patrol tomorrow.

Before he left, Uncle Musa had also specifically asked if he should send the weapons he’d obtained over to Shire through the Teleportation Gate right away.

Shire thought for a moment and rejected the proposal. He desperately wanted those items, especially the Short Crossbows. Unlike the Hand Crossbow he carried at his hip, these were weapons produced by the Fran Kingdom for its army. Aside from a few minor flaws, their reliability was guaranteed. Moreover, they were brand new—not some obsolete junk so old the strings had fallen off. The reason he hadn’t asked for the Long Crossbows and Heavy Crossbows was mainly because the Short Crossbows were the perfect size for the goblins. Besides, the forest didn’t offer much room to effectively use a Long Crossbow.

He found it amusing just thinking about Uncle Musa’s description of Count Valentine’s "constipated" expression. This batch of weapons was apparently a reserve Third Prince Theodore used for granting favors. But now, Uncle Musa had managed to trade Basic Beast Cores directly for brand-new items. It seemed the officials in Plantagenet City had the same character as when he left.

At the same time, something else made Shire very happy: he now had a large amount of liquid capital. It was all from the Gold Coins provided by the Third Prince. Each one was a brand-new Small Gold Coin of the Fran Kingdom, and the Plantagenet on the front and the portrait of the first King on the back showed no signs of wear.

"Say what you will, the Poodle certainly has a talent for trade." He tossed a Gold Coin from his hand, sending it in a golden arc before it landed in the money chest in the corner.

’With this money, I can speed up my plans,’ Shire thought as he opened his notebook and looked at the plans he had made earlier. ’Winter is when many people are looking for temporary work. It’s the perfect time to have Mary organize them to make clothes for the tribe. Shoes will probably be too difficult; they might not be up to the task. But I can still have the many women around Yangjiao Town organized to sew winter clothing for the goblin Race.’

His tribe hadn’t even had enough winter clothes for everyone to begin with. Now, after taking in over 600 goblins from the Feathered Serpent Kingdom, all sorts of supply shortages had become glaringly obvious. "Beds, utensils, daily necessities, clothing," Shire muttered, rubbing his temples. "We don’t even have enough cups for one per goblin."

For now, the cups were placed neatly on a platform by the underground river. Anyone who was thirsty would grab a cup, drink some hot water, and then place it in a large barrel to the side. Bai Mao and the others would wash them regularly.

Bai Mao had previously mentioned to Shire that they didn’t need to constantly drink hot water. Their goblin Race used to just cup their hands to drink from rivers and streams. If they got thirsty enough, they would even drink muddy water.

"We are... resilient." That was what Bai Mao had said to him after Shire claimed that drinking hot water would help them live better. After all, goblins had been doing that in the forest for thousands of years and seemed no worse for wear.

But Shire stubbornly insisted that his tribe must drink hot water. He even required Bai Mao and the others to use a large cauldron to keep water boiling for long periods and maintain it at a suitable temperature.

"Maybe this is just a stubborn fixation of mine," Shire had said to Evita, as the Centaur girl also didn’t quite understand the insistence on drinking hot water. "Maybe no one would ever realize that a certain goblin got into trouble in the forest because he drank unclean water. Everyone would just think he was probably running slow because he hadn’t eaten enough, and ended up getting chased down by a leopard, killed, and dragged away."

At Shire’s insistence, the tribe quickly adopted the habit of drinking hot and warm water. The transition was smooth, with no major issues. In Buck Teeth’s words, "This just reminds me of back when I was with the Bear Goblins. I couldn’t fight for any food, so I could only drink the thin, green broth at the bottom of the pot."

There was one drawback to this approach: fuel consumption increased rapidly. Fortunately, the Centaur Race was currently building a village, so after they felled trees, there were plenty of branches that could be used. But if they continued this way in the future, the consumption would be enormous, and they would need to assign a group of people to a dedicated "wood-chopping team."

"Winter... two more months of it. This is going to be tough," Shire lamented, tapping his fingers on the table.

He had heard from the Centaurs that the temperature seemed to be gradually dropping over the years. Winters years ago hadn’t been this cold, but now Shire felt the temperature was around ten degrees, like in his past life. He estimated it would probably get even colder as time went on.

The Elephant Lord had said the same thing. This temperature was a major detriment to the elephant herd. Although they squeezed into the underground Fortress at night, lying on the straw mats Shire had prepared for them, the elephants had to huddle very closely together. They encircled the young elephants in the middle, pressing against each other for warmth. If the temperature dropped any further, he worried some of them might get sick, especially the calves.

The young elephants were very playful. With the Elephant Lord’s permission, these little ones ran wild and frolicked in the forest clearing. They would swing their still-short trunks to chase the goblins, lower their heads to nudge the Centaurs, and even flap their ears while snorting at the three-meter-tall Giant Caocao. Thanks to the young elephants’ antics, the entire tribe often erupted into gales of laughter, even in the depths of winter.