Chapter 47: Who Isn't a Princess After All!

Leo, carrying a dung fork, was engrossed in studying composting techniques.

The northern lands were not unfamiliar with the concept of fertilizer. Farmers collected the droppings of cattle, horses, donkeys, and sheep, dried them, crushed them, and scattered them over the fields as fertilizer, or simply grazed livestock in fallow fields. In some remote woodland villages or wild tribes, slash-and-burn farming was practiced, taking the burning of fields to its extreme.

Yet, human waste was rarely used as fertilizer, because ancestral wisdom warned: human dung is poisonous and will kill the wheat seedlings.

As a veteran wage slave of thirty years, Leo fancied himself something of an intellectual, only to find, upon crossing into another world, that he was merely someone who knew things.

He knew everything at a glance, but could accomplish nothing!

The so-called poisoning of wheat by human dung was due to unfermented waste being spread directly onto the soil, causing a secondary fermentation in the fields and producing high temperatures that burned the seedlings.

All that was needed was simple composting fermentation.

But even the simplest high-temperature composting technique isn’t as easy as typing a few strokes on a keyboard and calling it done.

Leo could only search desperately through childhood memories, experimenting slowly as he went.

A village beauty, watching him, grew increasingly uneasy. Suddenly, she grabbed Olivia’s arm, crying out in terror, “Leo isn’t planning to eat dung, is he? Olivia, you’d better stop him quickly!”

Olivia finally could not bear it any longer. With her brief rest over, she led her thirty-two adopted sons back to work.

Leo had once seriously investigated the matter of Olivia’s ever-growing brood of canine sons. For a period, he secretly observed Fisha after she entered the camp, watching her interactions with the kobold pups.

Under the pretext of checking on her tribe’s survival, Fisha would crouch outside the stable fence, speaking with the kobold pups. She glanced around, making sure no one was watching, then suddenly pulled a puppy from beneath her clothes and tossed it into the pile of dogs with a slap, before turning and walking away.

Yes, after frequent contact with humans, Fisha had learned to wear clothes.

She had asked Olivia to transform her bearskin blanket into a bearskin coat, which not only displayed her status but conveniently allowed her to smuggle puppies into the human camp.

The last time, Leo sprang out and mercilessly exposed Fisha’s little trick.

Fisha was furious, so angry that she didn’t come to the camp for three days!

Sitting by the newly built canal, Fisha, Freya, and the little mouse swung their legs, watching a group of villagers laboriously hauling logs under Urien’s direction.

They were planning to build a watchtower atop the stone knoll in the middle of the canal tunnel.

The stone knoll, seven or eight meters high, combined with a three-meter-tall watchtower, would provide a commanding view of the surrounding flatlands, ensuring that any intruder—man or beast—within the river bay would not escape the sentries’ gaze.

The site was more than a thousand meters from the camp; once the horn was sounded, it would at least buy enough time for the militia to return and don their weapons and armor.

The militia had to work during the day, and they were the main workforce—they couldn’t labor in full gear.

Not just the stone knoll: Urien was also planning to build watchtowers and gates at both ends of the canal, enclosing the entire peninsula under their protection.

As for the plan to construct stone walls and wooden fences inside the canal, the workload was no less than digging the canal itself and was a lower priority—it could only be undertaken in spare moments.

Meanwhile, another team of more than thirty people had set out for the peninsula, preparing to open up the thirty-li road from the river bay to the western watchtower.

Road construction, of course, wasn’t as extravagant as building a cement or stone road.

This road, running along the riverbank plains, had already been traversed once by the pioneering convoy, establishing its basic route and shape.

The first phase required only the removal of troublesome trees and shrubs along the way, leveling some small two- or three-meter-high slopes, clearing obstructing rocks, and building simple wooden bridges over several streams flowing into the Anzeno River.

Urien’s requirements were modest: as long as the wagons could just barely pass, and wouldn’t overturn or fall apart like last time, it was enough.

Except for the miraculous World Tree Avenue, many roads in knightly territories were just like this, and traveling caravans often served as road maintenance crews.

If the road was rough or damaged, did they turn back? No, they’d stop and repair it, barely squeezing through.

As the river bay’s population grew and trade increased, this mountain road would naturally become smoother and more accessible.

Fisha watched the humans working with envy; compared to them, kobolds seemed utterly clumsy.

Most of the dogs, aside from mining, wouldn’t do anything else unless threatened by whips or starvation.

Fisha forced them to build a wall at the valley entrance, but within days, it was washed away by the stream.

She herself stood in the stream and wasn’t washed away!

A quick learner, she came to the human camp daily to observe and secretly learn their techniques, then went back to teach her kin by hand.

In just one month, she had stolen the sling technique, militia training methods, human cooking skills, and even the upright furnace iron-smelting technique.

She was even beginning to make crossbows!

But compared to the rapid development of River Bay, the kobold valley seemed frozen in place.

From her memory, nothing had ever changed.

If it weren’t for her efforts to maintain trade with the humans, the kobolds would instantly revert to eating mice and going hungry.

Unwilling to accept this, Fisha stood and shouted, “I am the kobold princess! Chieftain! Leader! The clever Fisha! I must work hard!”

Beside her, the giant groundhog tried to imitate the leisurely leg-swinging posture of the little mouse and Fisha, but her legs were too short—her plump belly pressed down so firmly she couldn’t move them at all.

Earlier, Urien had tried to ask for her help hauling logs to speed up the project.

But she refused, saying she had no shoulders!

Upon hearing Fisha’s declaration, Freya scrambled up, unwilling to be outdone: “I’m a princess too, elven princess, clever Freya!”

The little mouse looked at her proud friends, gathered her courage, and weakly said, “I’m a human princess, clever Gulveig…”

Sadly, her timid voice never reached her friends’ ears.

On the fourth day of dung experiments, Leo suddenly sensed something amiss.

He looked up warily and saw, standing atop the embankment outside the camp, a stranger of extraordinary stature.

This stranger was a giant, nearly two meters twenty tall, with enormous antlers atop his head, and long, dark green hair and beard cascading over his body like a waterfall.

He was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of fur shorts, his muscular form like a stone sculpture, tattooed with green markings.

The villagers working in the nearby fields and the militia keeping watch further away seemed oblivious to his presence.

Leo met his gaze, and the immense pressure instantly stiffened his spine; his focus sharpened until the world blurred, as if only the two of them existed.

Malfurion Stormrage!

No, it was the elven archdruid who resembled Malfurion—Bobak Marimotas!

He didn’t need to think; Leo instantly guessed the visitor’s identity.

(Volume One: Who Isn’t a Princess, After All? End.)