Chapter 831: The Indigenous Tribe

After having a beer at the tavern and encouraging the knights to work hard on frontier expansion, Liszt hurried to the mage tower to check on Acheronides' progress with her magic experiments.

The progress was quite good.

Despite staying up all night, Acheronides was still energetic—mages possess boundless energy.

She was designing a magic array capable of tearing the arcane weave. Once the weave was torn, it could rupture the nodes of the material space, creating a spatial tunnel. By then, piercing another junction elsewhere and connecting the spatial tunnel to it would complete a true Magic Teleportation Circle.

"It's like opening a door, isn't it?" Liszt summarized Acheronides' description simply. "In that case, let's call this experiment the 'Arcane Gateway Initiative.' Keep researching, and if you need any assistance, just say so. Bard and I will fully support you."

"Mm, thank you, brother."

...

After a day of rest, the next morning Liszt mounted Bard the Invisible Dragon and began patrolling the Eddying River.

He intended to find the frontier expansion team led by Duert Hongxingguo and identify those prying eyes to determine what unknown creatures dared to covet the frontier expansion team. Whether wolves, tigers, monkeys, snakes, or anything else, anything that dared to obstruct the development of Fire Island would be exterminated.

With Bard the Invisible Dragon now in use, Rio the Fire Drake made fewer appearances.

In the future, Liszt's dragons would have specialized roles: Ethan the Pale Emerald Gemdragon would remain in the dragon lair to produce ores, Leo the Fire Dragon would focus on combat, and Bard the Invisible Dragon would specialize in scouting. The Shimmering White Trace's detection of arcane energy far surpassed any other method.

Its stealth ability while patrolling borders was even more formidable.

Thus, when Liszt and the dragon found the frontier expansion team along the Eddying River, none of the knights, including Duarte, noticed his presence.

Liszt did not reveal himself either.

He continued circling above, occasionally guiding Bard to skim over the forest canopy, carefully observing the feedback of arcane energy. However, after patrolling a large area of the forest around the frontier expansion team, he found no signs of concentrated arcane energy—meaning the prying eyes likely did not belong to magical beasts.

"Then what exactly are these numerous unknown creatures?" Releasing the Shimmering White Trace and restoring his natural sight, Liszt resumed his search.

Since unknown creatures were spying on the frontier expansion team, they couldn't be far away.

After searching for a full hour, Liszt finally discovered what was lurking in the shadows. They hid in the dense forest, monkey-agile, climbing trees and perching on branches to observe the frontier expansion team from above. If not for the disturbance in the upper canopy catching Liszt's attention, they would have remained unnoticed.

But once discovered, these creatures without magic power were hardly worth mentioning.

"Humans? Wearing hide garments and carrying bows and arrows—they must be indigenous tribes living on the Fire Islands!" Liszt narrowed his eyes.

His emotions were a mix of surprise and delight.

The surprise came from the fact that humans could survive on the remote and desolate Fire Islands—perhaps descendants of humans from the legendary continent who had accidentally drifted here and thrived. The delight stemmed from the realization that these indigenous tribes, though seemingly ugly and backward, would make excellent additions to the labor force.

Developing Fire Island required a large number of serfs, and Liszt had been troubled over where to find them. Now, as if providing a solution, indigenous tribes existed right on the island.

According to the hints from the smoke vision, the indigenous tribes were quite numerous.

Gazing at the hide-clad humans in the treetops, Liszt pondered: "It seems I need to rethink my approach—focus on capturing these indigenous tribes to serve me... Capturing serfs is indeed unseemly, but compared to the serf trade, using local natives might be less bloody."

It was said that when Europeans transported African slaves to America, due to voyage conditions, sanitation, and overloading, roughly ten slaves died for every one that reached the Americas.

The serf trade in this world was much better—typically, only two or three out of ten serfs died during transport.

And the serf trade Liszt oversaw prioritized safety above all, with perhaps only one death per hundred serfs. Protecting the lives of serfs meant protecting the lord's interests. Though he knew the serf trade violated humanitarian principles, he couldn't abandon its benefits—he could only strive to treat the serfs as well as possible.

For peace of mind.

Any serf arriving in the Fire Dominion would generally find improved conditions than before.

However, no matter how at ease one feels, it cannot mask the casualties that occur during the slave trade. Never did he expect that Flame Island would have natives. Capturing these natives to serve as serfs would eliminate the risks of maritime trade while also improving their living conditions.

Whether out of hypocrisy or kindness, Liszt quickly made the decision to capture all the natives on the island and force them to be turned into serfs—giving them a better life while contributing to Flame Island's modernization efforts.

At that very moment, the native who had been spying on the scouting party from the treetops climbed down and swiftly ran deep into the forest. Liszt urged Bard to follow closely. After running about ten kilometers, they discovered a large lake in the forest, surrounded by densely packed stilt houses.

These huts, likely built to prevent flooding and dampness, were all stilt houses.

On the open ground by the lake, there were elders and children—the elders dressed in crude, rough linen, while the children ran around naked. A few women, presumably, were also wrapped in short animal hides, covering their private parts, and were cleaning animal pelts by the lake.

Their skin was slightly dark, though nowhere near as black as Africans—more like the tan complexion of Native Americans.

"From the structure of the huts and the linen on the elders, it’s clear this tribe is slightly more advanced than a primitive one... Perhaps their ancestors brought some practical skills when they were stranded on Flame Island, which their descendants inherited."

Knowing how to weave cloth and build stilt houses meant these natives were ideal serf material. With a little training, they could be sent to work in plantations or workshops.

Inside the tallest stilt house in the tribe, the native who had been spying earlier was speaking rapidly to a few elders and warriors. Liszt could only peer through the window, but with just a glance, he noticed something intriguing.

The elder in the central position wore black linen, and the garment’s design faintly resembled a mage’s magic cloak.

"A magic cloak?"

Liszt swiftly activated Magic Eye. Sure enough, the elder emitted a faint, earthy-yellow magic aura.

In other words, he had practiced magic!

The other elders around him also bore faint glows—green, red, and white—though the warriors showed no signs of magic power.

This surprised Liszt. "It seems like a mage training system. Could these natives be descendants of mages? Huh. These tribesmen know magic? No wonder they’ve survived in this forest teeming with monsters."

With that thought, he called up the smoke task.

"Task complete. Reward: a large native tribe."