CHAPTER 59: CHAPTER 57 LIVESTOCK

"These goblin things, really can’t be trusted."

In the forest, a kobold from the hunting team picked up a broken trap loop from the grass and tossed it to the ground, muttering.

This loop was said to be a trap crafted by goblins working in the "Manufacturing Workshop," as guided by His Highness Austin. It was supposed to catch earth gray rabbits effortlessly by placing it along their paths.

However, they set the trap on the path yesterday, and upon checking today, they found the trap loop bitten in half, completely ineffective.

"It’s already passable. I heard the second team caught a boar using goblin-made traps—a boar, something no hunting team could capture before."

Another beastman clicked his tongue in admiration. The boars in this Otherworld seem like mutated versions, weighing nearly a thousand pounds. Running like a tank, they crush trees along the way.

Such fierce creatures could only be handled by Austin. Yet now even the traps caught them, which speaks volumes about their power.

"It’s just thanks to His Highness’s guidance; otherwise, how could these goblins have done it?" The kobold grumbled in discontent.

"Alright, alright, let’s get to work. Today we need to catch ten live earth gray rabbits."

Due to intensive hunting, beasts near the Dragon Nest Territory suffered, and animals within a ten-kilometer range of Dragon Nest Village became scarce. To hunt enough, they had to explore farther.

For sustainable resources and to address Dragon Nest Tribe’s meat issue, Austin began a beast domestication plan.

During hunting, they would bring back young beasts to domesticate within the livestock pens set up in the village.

Especially boar and earth gray rabbit younglings, which are not picky eaters and breed quickly, making them ideal for focused farming.

Just after the harsh winter ended a month ago, food started becoming abundant again. With sufficient food, beasts began breeding their next generation, making it not too hard to bring back younglings. Thus, Vini assigned the hunting teams quotas to bring back enough younglings daily along with their hunting tasks.

This hunting team, led by a few Blood Wolves, soon followed earth gray rabbits’ tracks to a fist-sized hole.

"This is it."

Seeing the Blood Wolves digging at the entrance, the beastmen, after over a month of acclimatization, understood the Blood Wolves’ meaning—the earth gray rabbits were inside this hole.

The Blood Wolves then sniffed out the exits of two other holes from this burrow.

Thus, the earth gray rabbits inside the burrow were trapped inside.

Before, capturing earth gray rabbits inside a burrow required extensive digging, opening the entire hole.

But that’s no longer necessary.

As the leader of Dragon Nest Tribe, Austin didn’t just stand idly by.

Early in the harsh winter, while drilling the ice fishing holes, Austin noticed that the beastmen’s hunting techniques were primitive, lacking developed techniques or traps.

Though not a hunter in his previous life, Austin frequently watched survival shows like Bear Grylls and recalled some basic hunting techniques, gradually teaching them to the beastmen, including some rural tricks he picked up living in the countryside.

Among these was the technique for dealing with earth gray rabbits hiding in burrows.

That technique was smoke.

Austin recalled his childhood in a rural area in his previous life, joining a group of kids to smoke out field mice.

Stuffing a bunch of weeds into the field mouse hole entrance, and then lighting it and blowing smoke inside, the dense smoke followed the burrow’s paths, forcing field mice out of another exit, where friends would wait to catch them.

The same method dealt with earth gray rabbits.

The beastmen stuffed dry weeds into the burrow entrance, ignited them, and blew vigorously from outside, sending smoke rapidly into the burrow.

Soon, smoke began billowing from the other two exits, as beastmen vigilantly watched them.

Moments later, rustling sounds were heard, and two plump earth gray rabbits dashed out from the smoke, followed by a clutch of young earth gray rabbits.

Predictably, the earth gray rabbit family was completely captured by the beastmen.

With the help of the Blood Wolves, finding earth gray rabbit burrows became easier, and combined with the smoking method, this hunting team caught three to four dens of earth gray rabbits by midday, though only the first den yielded younglings.

The hunting team returned triumphant, bringing back a bunch of lively earth gray rabbits in nets woven from vines to the village. The livestock pens in Dragon Nest Village already housed over a hundred earth gray rabbits flitting around, with piles of wild vegetables and grasses in one corner and earth gray rabbits chomping away at the leaves.

"Hmm, not bad, with these we should have enough, so we won’t need to catch more earth gray rabbits."

Kobold leader Vini examined the earth gray rabbits held by the hunting team, tossed them directly into the pen.

Earth gray rabbits have a short growth cycle, maturing in about a month given enough food. Now, with the rabbit population, a pen was already a little overcrowded.

"Help me expand a few pens with wood later, and reinforce the boar pen too."

The earth gray rabbits’ strong breeding ability caused excessive density, complicating hygiene and fostering disease, thus expanding a few pens was imperative.

Of course, this wasn’t Vini suddenly becoming knowledgeable, learning and understanding many things without guidance—it was merely conveying Austin’s instructions.

As for the boar pen, the problem was visibly obvious.

Though the adult boars were all smoked meat hanging near the village, the boar younglings were still naturally aggressive, frequently ramming the pen, rocking it dangerously from their hits, necessitating reinforcement.

For now, Dragon Nest Tribe only planned to domesticate these two types of animal younglings due to their fast breeding speed and high value.

With this start in livestock farming, coupled with the grains from reclaimed farming, it’s foreseeable that the Dragon Nest Tribe’s food supply will reach self-sufficiency in the near future.