Necromancer, summoning 055? What the heck?

Chapter 182 Redemption in Despair: Black Gold Deep in the Swamp

Although it was the height of summer, the night breeze still carried a touch of mild chill because the area where the "Rotten Swamp" tribe was located consisted of a large wetland swamp.

Amu's roar carried far and wide among the sparse bushes and jagged rocks.

Lin Zhong, on the high ground, was reporting the situation to the lord in the distance via walkie-talkie. This muffled shout faintly reached Chen Mo's ears.

Lin Zhong promptly added: "The fugitives appear to be human, two adults and two juveniles, and they are warning us!"

The lord's resolute command came through the walkie-talkie: "Rescue them!"

Since the other party could still issue a warning under such circumstances of fleeing, Chen Mo was willing to give him a chance, regardless of whether it was a trap or not.

Perfect timing, this journey has been rather boring for you, my lord.

The first two battles against the "Stonehoof Tribe" and the "Rotten Claw Tribe" were certainly exhilarating and easy, but they were too fast, averaging less than half an hour each.

It didn't even take as long as the initial negotiations and the post-battle cleanup!
After traveling for days and nights, this is it?
But they couldn't be allowed to turn back and fight again, so the lord could only walk away dejectedly.

Because the removal of these two "regional stabilizers" was so effective, the situation on this side was resolved so quickly that the surrounding small tribes, who had long harbored grudges, immediately started fighting. The smoke of battle filled the air and the flames of war raged. The Han Hai Territory's team did not want to get involved, so they avoided the battle zones and took a detour back.

This detour led them to the edge of the "Rotten Swamp" tribe's territory.

About ten minutes earlier, the reconnaissance team had already detected the orcs' movements. At that time, they were not sure whether the orcs were coming for them, so they immediately expanded their reconnaissance and vigilance.

The Han Hai Ling Lord's Guard, equipped with portable reconnaissance drones, constantly monitored all sides of the camp.

The half-elf ranger Cyril Morrowind also brought his Nighthawk, a magical flying raptor that can warn rangers not only through various movements and calls, but also briefly share dynamic vision with them within a certain distance.

It can be considered one of the best among magical scouting creatures.

No wonder that although Selyl praised the drones, she wasn't interested in them at all, but instead loved the lord's telescope.

The high-magnification far-infrared telescope, combined with his "night hawk," can significantly reduce the number of times he uses field-of-view sharing, greatly reducing the physical burden on the birds.

While monitoring the orcs' pursuit, the troops of the Vast Ocean Territory adopted a cautious and wait-and-see attitude.

In this situation, it must be said that the Night Hawk is indeed much more useful than a drone. At its closest point, it was less than 100 meters away from the orcs, and the orcs did not notice anything unusual.

There's just a bird in the woods!

As soon as Lord Chen Mo gave the order, Selir immediately floated down the hillside like a gentle breeze.

At this moment, Amu's family was basically in dire straits.

The otter-headed beastman, who had been playing a "cat and mouse" game, heard Amu's shout and sensed the presence of a third party, so he quickly sped up his movements.

The wolf howls and the orcs' savage shouts drew rapidly closer from behind, and Amu could even clearly hear the cracking sound of the dire wolves' claws crushing dry branches.

Despair, like a cold tide, slowly engulfed Amu's heart. He could only subconsciously tighten his grip on the baby carrier with his left hand and pull his wife, who was already staggering and almost crawling on the ground, with his right hand.

The wife held her daughter tightly in her other hand.

The family was thus bound together, stumbling and struggling, awaiting their final fate.

Then, I heard a few short, sharp sounds, and something sped through the air.

"Uh!"

"Ouch——"

Pfft!
The orc's muffled groan was stuck in his throat, and the dire wolf let out a mournful howl, falling heavily to the ground along with its master. The series of sounds were so dense that they almost overlapped into a single long note.

When Amu turned around in surprise and doubt, the three otter-boar orc riders who had been following him, along with their war wolves, had already rolled down in the grass.

The archery skills of a fifth-tier elven ranger are reliable.

In just a few seconds, six arrows were fired, one each from three orcs and three wolves, with an arrow whose fletching was still trembling slightly, driving into their throats!

"What are you all standing there for? Come here right now!"

Taking advantage of the moment when Cyril was sniping and rushing into the battlefield, Lin Zhong used three different languages ​​to loudly remind the family of four below the slope.

As if waking from a dream, Amu once again dragged his children along and began to climb laboriously up the slope.

Behind her, Selir abandoned her bow and brandished her sword, dancing gracefully among the six orcs in the second row.

The orc's roaring hammer couldn't even touch the ranger's clothes, while every time Selir struck, an orc cavalryman fell.

As the cold blade flashed past in the dim moonlight, another wolf rider's head flew into the air with an incredulous expression. The last wolf rider finally realized the big trouble and desperately urged his mount to escape.

However, the dire wolf had only taken two steps when its limbs suddenly went limp and it collapsed to the ground.

Its side had been cut open at some point, revealing a deep gash that exposed the bone, and its internal organs were spilling out.

Selir appeared like a wisp of smoke beside the orc rider who had been thrown from his dire wolf. Blood beads were still visible on the tip of his scimitar. Without even glancing at the orc who was terrified and soiling himself, he swung his blade and ended the orc's life.

The battle began and ended in just over ten seconds!
Clean, efficient, and silent.

Amu was dumbfounded. In the darkness, they couldn't see the specific situation. They could only hear the screams of the orcs coming to an abrupt end. Only when the figure who had dealt with all the orcs walked towards them did they instinctively huddle together, trembling.

Amu didn't want to run anymore, mainly because he couldn't run anymore.

If the other side could deal with these orc wolf riders so easily, then dealing with themselves wouldn't be much more troublesome than stepping on an ant.

He was definitely afraid, but Amu had no other choice. Besides, the current situation couldn't be worse than when he was being chased by the orcs.

Then he heard a tone that was both strange and familiar.

"Don't be afraid, come with us, you're safe!"

It's Qiyue Southern dialect!

I haven't heard it for over a decade, but that unique accent still lingers in my dreams countless times.

Amu's tears rolled down his cheeks instantly.

A few minutes later, the family passed the first checkpoint.

The other party conducted a very thorough search, not even sparing the little baby on their back.

The person searching Amu was male, while the person searching his wife and daughter was female. This "strange" sense of respect, which he had never experienced before, left Amu somewhat dazed.

A few minutes later, Amu's family underwent a second check-up.

Several magicians activated a magical sensing array and thoroughly examined the family of four to confirm that they were not carrying any magically activated or magically elemental items.

Then, before entering the human camp, they went through a third checkpoint.

The human guards, wielding strange long poles, scanned Amu from head to toe, ruthlessly confiscating all his metal objects. As a result, Amu, now without his waist buckle, had to hold up his pants with one hand and carry the doll with the other.

Having recovered from the series of thrilling and exciting events, Amu had a vague feeling that he was about to meet someone he had never encountered before in his life! Then, they received a warm reception from Lord Chen Mo.

This is Lord Chen Mo's temporary camp, located in a sheltered depression on a small hillside. The shape of the hill cleverly conceals the camp's magical glow, and turning into this place gives one a feeling of sudden enlightenment and a bright new vista.

The camp was well-organized, with patrolling guards who were human, beast, and half-beast, but the one sitting in the middle at the head of the group was undoubtedly a human.

Amu knelt down with a thud and kowtowed several times.

"Thank you so much, sir, for saving my life! Thank you so much, sir, for saving my life!"

Chen Mo rubbed his forehead.

Although the lord has repeatedly emphasized in the past, "Don't kneel, don't kneel," the time, energy, and words wasted on this are enough to make many originally simple things extremely complicated.

For ordinary citizens who have never dealt with the lord, if you don't allow them to kneel, they will tremble so much that they can't even speak clearly.

If you make him kneel down, he'll feel at ease and at least he'll be able to respond normally.

Looking at the crooked and shaky house, Chen Mo whispered a few instructions, and soon, the guards brought over a simple meal and warm water.

The aroma of the food instantly captured the attention of Amu's family. The child's eyes were fixed on a piece of dried meat that was clearly jerky, and he made gurgling noises in his throat, but he didn't dare to reach for it. He just kept looking at his father.

Amu didn't dare to reach out, but Lin Zhong took the dry rations from the guards and stuffed them into their hands, saying in a friendly tone, "Eat up, have something to eat to calm down, I have something to ask you!"

Amu took a big bite, barely chewed, and swallowed it with his neck stiff. Then he wiped his mouth with his hand, quickly licked the oil off the back of his hand, and kowtowed several more times.

"I've finished eating. If you have any questions, I'll answer them clearly!"

"Why are the orcs chasing you?" Chen Mo asked.

"Reporting to you, sir, I escaped. The camp has requisitioned all the food, and they're even sending men to the Vulture Cliff mine. Once they go there, they'll definitely not be able to come back!"

Amu's voice was still trembling: "I didn't want my child to become a slave, so I... I tried desperately to run away, but I still couldn't escape!"

Chen Mo nodded. Over the past period, the pressure from the orcish Qishan camp had spread to the entire White Deer Plain. Large tribes could still bargain with Sargeris, but small tribes often became the victims who bore the heaviest burden.

Ultimately, all the burdens will fall on the shoulders of these lowly orc laborers, human civilians, and camp slaves.

"Why do you speak Qiyue language? Aren't you a local?"

Amu nodded hurriedly: "Replying to your question, sir, I was... I was captured from the south, from the Crystal Plains, more than ten years ago."

"Oh?" Chen Mo became interested. "Do you remember exactly which place it is?"

"I remember, I remember! Baihe Town, my home is in a village downstream from Baihe Town!"

After briefly confirming their origins, the lord inquired with great interest about the orc tribe.

The "Rotten Swamp" tribe is a medium-sized tribe. It was one of the newly established tribes after entering the White Deer Plain and was sent out by the main tribe "Long Teeth" to garrison it. It was named after the characteristics of this region.

They occupy this land stretching from the mountains to the river, and because it contains a large area of ​​wetlands and marshes, the land appears vast, but its resources are only average.

However, the otter-boar orcs are not picky eaters; they can eat any kind of animal, plant, or decaying matter. In addition, they have an extremely strong reproductive capacity. As one of the vassals of the "Longtooth" tribe, the Rot Swamp tribe has now grown to more than 3,000 adult warriors, while the number of other orc family members and laborers is close to 10,000.

On the White Deer Plain, it is already among the top 500.

Of course, it conquered all the territories of the surrounding small tribes.

This is one of the reasons why war broke out frequently on the White Deer Plain. Once the orcs had stable settlements and planting areas, their reproductive capacity would explode, and their population would expand like an inflating balloon, eventually exceeding the land's carrying capacity.

Then they had to expand into the surrounding areas to acquire more land.

During this period, humans, who were capable of land reclamation and farming, ate less than orcs, thus managing to survive among the orcs.

However, the expansion of wasteland eventually comes to an end. When territories border each other, friction, disputes, and even wars are inevitable.

After experiencing the man's kindness, Amu was finally able to carefully change from kneeling to sitting at the guard's request, and described in almost every detail the greed and brutality of the otter-boar beastmen.

Of course, he also described in detail the characteristics and resources of the Otter-Boar Orc territory.

On the south bank of the river, the main planting area is wheat and millet, which are mostly cultivated by humans, with a small number of orc laborers.

“Those clumsy barbarians can’t manage these fields well. They water them carelessly and don’t carefully till, compost, weed, or remove pests.”

"With the land in their hands, the harvest will be less than half."

"So even though the orcs don't treat humans as human beings, they still need to leave some of them to help them farm."

"There's a kind of fruit that grows over there. It's not tasty; it's very sour. But it can be fermented to make wine. The taste is so-so, but it's still a local product. The Otter-Boar Beast mainly makes money from it!"

"Hunting is what the beastmen are best at, but the prey in the mountains is getting fewer and fewer, there are hardly any animals in the swamps, and there are hardly any fish in the water..."

Chen Mo listened with great interest, maintaining a casual exchange of words. When he heard this part, he casually asked, "Aren't there any fish in the swamp? Does the water often dry up?"

Amu shook his head repeatedly: "The water in the swamp is very deep, and the silt is heavy. I don't even know how deep it is. The main problem is that the water is too dirty and has a strong smell. Fish can't survive there, and even animals don't want to go near it."

"The water was all black, and it smelled awful, it was pungent!"

“Those beasts, the Otter-Headed Pigs, have a keen sense of smell and seem to really enjoy that smell, often piling up black mud all over the camp.”

"Sometimes in winter, when it's unbearably cold and we don't have enough firewood, we'll secretly bring back some black mud to start a fire. It can be lit, but it produces a lot of smoke and a strong smell that makes people dizzy..."

Chen Mo was suddenly touched on a sensitive nerve.

"You mean, that black mud can be used to start a fire? Where does the black mud come from?"

"Sir, the black mud is dug out of the swamp. The black water has been exposed to the sun for a long time, and the surface hardens, forming layers of sticky black mud..."

Chen Mo stood up from his chair, his voice trembling slightly: "What does the black water in the swamp look like? Describe it in detail!"

"Yes, sir. The black water is very dirty. It seems to be bubbling up from the bottom of the river. It can stain the soil around it black, and even the soil that wasn't black has turned brown."

"When the sun shines on it, the water looks colorful and somewhat beautiful, but it smells terrible..."

Chen Mo took a few deep breaths and raised his hand to call Lin Zhong over.

"Go, find the location of the black water he mentioned, and take a picture of it for me! Take a detailed picture! Take a clear picture!"

"immediately!"

Chen Mo clenched his fist without making a sound.

If I heard correctly, what was gushing out of the swamp wasn't black water, but rather—

black gold!!!

(End of this chapter)