CHAPTER 33: CHAPTER 31: SITUATION

The blood wolves, the most cunning and cruel hunters, in the extreme hunger of the cold winter, would even tear apart and kill the old and weak of the tribe as food.

Among the blood wolves, there is only a sense of pack mentality and no family concept, so Austin is confident in taming these young wolves.

Once these young blood wolves grow up, they will not only help the beastmen clear various ferocious beasts near their territory, but when the blood wolf tribe multiplies enough to be strong, they can select some robust beastmen to train as wolf cavalry.

With bows and arrows as weapons and the powerful mobility of the wolf pack, the combination of the two forms this advanced unit, which is undoubtedly a deadly weapon in this jungle.

In such jungle warfare, it almost proves to be invincible.

However, realizing such a wolf cavalry army is still some distance away in the future.

After feeding some food to the emaciated mother wolf and the ten or so hungry young wolves, the young wolves became less resistant to Austin and the kobolds.

Thus, under the guidance of the Blue Young Dragon, the mother wolf and the young wolves were brought back to Dragon Nest Village.

This cold winter season, with a great victory over the blood wolf pack and the fish caught in the lake reservoirs, there was no shortage of food in the Dragon Nest Village, and they could bear the cost of feeding these creatures.

Before leaving, the beastmen searched the entire Blood Wolf Lair.

Unfortunately, apart from some white bones, the whole lair contained nothing of value. However, Austin did find quite a few fruit pits on the ground, which were the seeds of the fruit from the nearby magic tree.

These fruit pits seemed worthless and did not contain any magic power, but Austin still instructed the beastmen to collect them.

Once the cold winter season passes, and it is time to clear and plant in the Dragon Nest Territory, these fruit pits could be planted; perhaps in the future, more magic trees might grow, yielding more magic-infused red fruits, constituting a substantial magic resource.

As for the tree beside the blood wolf lair, Austin intends to leave it in its place and see if it can be transplanted next to the Dragon Nest Territory after next year’s hot summer.

After cleaning the Blood Wolf Lair thoroughly, Austin and the beastmen returned to the Dragon Nest Tribe with their harvests to begin a phase of recuperation and rest.

The battle had thoroughly exterminated the blood wolf pack wandering around the Dragon Nest Territory, and henceforth, there was almost nothing in the entire territory that could threaten the Dragon Nest.

However, after that bloody battle, the Beastman Tribe also suffered significant losses. Although only one goblin died on the spot due to being directly hit by the Blood Wolf Leader’s talent magic, many other beastmen were severely injured.

Plus, after the beastman formation was blown open by the pack of blood wolves in a frenzy, many beastmen were injured, and the strength of the Dragon Nest Village dropped to its lowest point.

Fortunately, the battle exterminated over a hundred wolf packs, not only solving the immediate food problem for Dragon Nest Village; the wolf pelts provided also made life warmer for the beastmen in the village during the cold winter, so there were no major issues.

The time has reached a little more than the second month of the cold winter season, as the end of the cold winter approaches, hungry fierce beasts have begun to appear frequently wandering near the Dragon Nest Territory, attacking the village, just without any magic beasts attacking.

Moreover, ever since the night raid by the blood wolf pack on Dragon Nest Village, they had built a simple fence around the village, with beastmen guarding it every night, so the few attacks by fierce beasts were detected early by beastmen, with no damage inflicted.

Nonetheless, Austin instructed the beastmen to reduce their time spent outside, mostly staying within the Dragon Nest Territory to prepare for the plans post-cold winter next year.

"Simply surviving by hunting and gathering cannot sustain or support a large population."

From the evolutionary history of human civilization in past lives, it is known that for a clan’s power to grow and prosper, it must eventually settle down and develop agriculture to sustain a larger population and develop a more substantial civilized power.

However, in this world, particularly in the Kawa Great Forest, perhaps due to various reasons or the presence of extraordinary power, the many beastman tribes living in the Kawa Great Forest have not transitioned to an agricultural settled development and remain in the hunting-gathering civilization stage.

Even those tribes active at the edge of the Kawa Great Forest, bordering human territory, do not have the concept of agriculture and animal husbandry. From the mouth of the fox-faced Quik, it was known that those great tribes, due to population issues, could not gather enough food from the forest. Thus, when cold winters come, great hordes of beastman tribes spill out of the Kawa Forest like a flood into human civilization’s frontier to plunder.

Over a thousand years of mutual slaughter and skirmish have stained every corner with blood, making the frontier region where the Kawa Great Forest meets the Civilized Continent renownedly feared by humans, called the Bloody Defense Line.

During the thousand-year war, humans gradually built a giant Great Wall, spanning thousands of miles across the Bloody Defense Line, to block the southern beastmen from the Kawa Great Forest.

According to the fox-faced Quik, with the successful construction of the Bloody Great Wall and the formidable Iron-blooded Duke guarding the border, in recent years, the large beastman tribes at the Kawa Great Forest border have rarely been able to breach the Bloody Defense Line to enter the human realm, and their situation hasn’t been good.

Moreover, due to poor conditions in recent years, the major beastman forces north of the Dragon Nest Tribe have had continuous conflicts, even going to war several times.

However, none of this currently concerns Austin, and he did not ask the fox-faced Quik how he knew about these matters.

Those major beastman forces have tribes numbering over a hundred thousand, and even golden or legendary realm powerhouses exist within, not something Austin, with his small group, can provoke at this time.

In these last days of the cold winter season, although Austin has reduced the beastmen’s excursions to avoid attacks from hungry beasts,

it does not mean that the beastmen idly stayed in the Dragon Nest Village. In addition to daily training and catching fish, the beastmen had gained another task.

That was to create tools like hoes and wooden shovels, in preparation for next year’s farming season.

At the same time, they must preemptively fell down some trees in nearby wooded areas, so that after the cold winter, the dried fallen trees can be set alight, creating clearing land ready for the cultivation of various wild grains.