New Era, Year 521, early March.
Lynn tiptoed and scanned the surroundings, the sunlight was glaring, he raised his hand to cover his eyes.
Dense forests in the north, barren hills in the south, rushing rivers in the west, towering mountains in the east.
Lynn’s face showed some confusion.
Is this... time travel?
A few minutes ago, he was playing a newly released online game that perfectly combined manor farming with mount and blade.
The graphics were stunning, each frame could serve as wallpaper.
No mods, no accelerated construction, no one-click production, everything relied on sheer effort.
Day and night, he had been grinding for seven consecutive days, fearing to lag behind.
Suddenly, his vision went dark, and upon reopening his eyes, he found himself here...
This game could truly consume one’s life!
Calming himself slightly, a vast array of memories surged into his mind, quickly merging.
Lynn’s expression grew complex.
He was Lynn Blake, the illegitimate son of Marquis Duca of the Karedi Empire.
Even though he was already an adult.
As an illegitimate child, he wasn’t even worthy of bearing the Ducas surname.
The land beneath his feet was the coming-of-age gift given to Lynn by Marquis Duca.
Claimed to be a coming-of-age gift, it was actually just throwing away a piece of wasteland to get rid of him.
It was a three-month journey from the Marquis’s Castle to here.
The journey was distant, infested by bandits, beasts roaming rampant...
A man merely fifteen years old could easily perish on the way.
Life and death, Marquis Duca didn’t care.
Just an illegitimate son!
But the elder son awaiting the hereditary title, to protect the marquis’s reputation and family bloodline’s stability, sent his followers to end Lynn here.
His dear elder brother was truly quite fervent.
According to this world’s primogeniture law.
No matter what, the marquis title would never fall to Lynn, who had just arrived at the Marquis’s Castle less than a day.
Lynn now stood at the southernmost point of the Marquisate.
Also on the border of the Karedi Empire.
Even on the Empire’s map, this place doesn’t exist.
After all, the Karedi Empire is vast, with many unexplored areas.
No towns or villages were visible within dozens of kilometers around.
However, quick shadows are fleeting at the forest’s edge!
Lynn had nothing with him except the blood-stained grant of his fief, only his hands.
Revenge aside, the pressing issue is how to survive!
Lynn began to contemplate.
Absolutely impossible.
This land was far from the Marquis’s Castle, yet it’s still Marquis Duca’s territory.
If spotted by the manor lord or merchants from towns or villages and reported to his dear elder brother, his elder brother certainly wouldn’t mind letting him die again.
Go to another lord’s fief?
The thought was immediately dismissed.
With his physical prowess, he might not even escape the Marquis’s territory before being captured by another lord and made a slave.
Desolate, secluded, beasts and poisonous insects, dangers everywhere.
Lynn shifted his thinking; this is the borderland of the Karedi Empire, hardly anyone comes here.
For him, it seems like a path to survival?
But, how to find a way to survive in this wasteland?
Currently, the season hasn’t reached early spring.
At night, temperatures drop to near freezing.
Lynn felt that if not eaten by beasts in the forest, he might freeze to death at night!
Lynn’s vision blurred slightly; a text panel appeared in view.
[Imperial Myth System loading]
[Heavenly Artifacts mode loading complete]
[Other modes pending unlock]
Lynn was surprised, but soon recovered his composure.
Imperial Myth, the game he had been grinding before traveling through!
Involving role-play development, management simulation, real-time strategy, expeditions, and more.
Starting as a Free Person, through hard work, gradually building the Imperial Myth!
[Heavenly Artifacts] belongs to the management simulation mode.
Simply put, it’s all about grinding Life Skills—farming, tree chopping, hunting, logging, forging, building, trading.
Lynn squatted slightly, grabbing a weed with his right hand, gently exerting force, and uprooting it from the soil.
A semi-transparent window floated before his eyes.
[Successfully uprooted weed, Collection Experience +1]
Lynn felt completely numb.
After traveling through, he still needed to grind?
However, since he came, he might as well settle down.
Suppressing his complex feelings, Lynn scanned the surroundings again.
With [Heavenly Artifacts], he was destined to be a farmer.
A born agricultural prodigy.
Lynn crossed the weed thicket, standing on the Crescent Bay riverbank; dozens of tall pine trees grew on the elevated bank.
Four to five hundred meters to the left of Crescent Bay lies dense forest for logging raw timber.
Directly across the distance were towering mountains, ripe for stone quarrying.
The right was a low hill wasteland.
Less than a hundred meters from the river, allowing for water retrieval and fishing by the riverbank.
The view was unobstructed, any danger could be seen at a glance.
If a hatchet were crafted, he could fell the pine trees on the elevated bank and build a shed or wooden house.
As a seasoned manor lord player, Lynn was well-acquainted with these processes.
He bent down and began clearing the weeds underfoot.
Grabbing a withered grass stalk, exerting slight force, pulling it out completely.
[Weed removal successful, Collection Experience +1]
[Obtained linen seeds*1]
Looking at the prompt on the text panel, Lynn was unsurprised.
Weed removal could yield linen, which, after processing, could become linen fiber, and linen fiber could be woven into fabric.
He casually tossed the linen aside and continued clearing out the weeds.
After clearing roughly ten square meters, Lynn stopped.
He sat down heavily on the weed heap, panting heavily.
His neck was covered with red itching spots, marks scraped by the fine hairs of the weeds.
His body was hot; if it weren’t for the temperature being only a dozen degrees, he would already be drenched in sweat.
This wasteland had never been cultivated, the soil was compact; pulling out one weed didn’t feel like much.
But as more were uprooted, the more his energy was depleted, leading to increasing fatigue.
With a thought, Lynn opened the Heavenly Artifacts panel.
[Construction: Level 0 (0/100)]
[Planting: Level 0 (0/100)]
[Collection: Level 0 (13/100)]
[Production: Level 0 (0/100)]
[Breeding: Level 0 (0/100)] Follow current novᴇls on noveⅼfire.net
Looking at the panel showing thirteen points of Collection Experience, and the cleared area, Lynn felt inexplicably fulfilled.
His mind was filled with newfound knowledge about Collection.
Indeed, with enough grinding, one can constantly become stronger!
However, Lynn could sense the diminishing effect; pulling one weed no longer yielded one experience point.
Solely relying on hands to pull weeds resulted in painfully slow experience gain...
After resting for half an hour, Lynn rose and searched near the cleared area.
Having just gathered some sticks, several shell-shaped stone fragments several meters ahead caught his eye.
[Flint: Siliceous rock, can be used to craft stone tools or start a fire.]
Lynn’s eyes glistened instantly.