Several months later, at an adventurers' camp called "Pig Bay."
Battered tents adorned with patchwork and crudely constructed wooden cabins were haphazardly scattered throughout the camp; feces and strange animal intestines from both humans and livestock littered the ground; disputes between adventurers, haggling between merchants and adventurers, punctuated by the earsplitting clang of the blacksmith's hammer and the laughter of loose women; the cacophony of noises blended together, showcasing the wisdom of the person who named the camp.
Winter had passed, and early spring had arrived, ushering in the bustle of Pig Bay as usual.
Next to a tent covered in a light gray cloth painted with tung oil, several adventurers wearing leather armor were using one-handed axes to chop down a withered chestnut tree. They set up a bonfire with the dry branches and roasted an enormous fierce rabbit, half a circle larger than a domestic dog.
The orange-yellow flames licked at the rabbit meat, seasoned with a mix of ground rosemary, sage, roasted chili, and salt. The person sprinkling the seasoning was cautious, as the cost of these spices far outweighed that of the rabbit itself. Soon, the rich aroma of meat accompanied by the spicy seasoning began to permeate the slightly foul-smelling air.
As they drank rye beer from oak cups, the adventurers began singing ballads:
"My old man bequeathed the family fortune to my elder brother;
Your fields have weeds more abundant than crops;
His storefront hangs heavy with cobwebs;
Our family fell to decline generations ago;
Why squander years of our lives when we can wield longswords and strive;
We are adventurers, there's nothing we cannot do;
To hunt and gather is the best we can ask for;
Killing and arson are not wrong either;
Why, you ask?
All for the sake of survival!"
...
A slim girl with a face full of freckles passed by the group of adventurers. One of them got up and shouted, "Hey, beautiful, it's too cold outside. Come sit with us. I guarantee to warm you up!"
But the girl didn't even turn her head as if she hadn't heard him. She simply continued to walk. The exuberant adventurer is embarrassed and sits back down among his fellow adventurers' laughter.
The girl leaped over a puddle in her path, greeted a middle-aged woman mending clothes with a smile, and finally stopped by a stall selling rye bread.
She wore a slightly worn light blue open-fronted dress, her tangled burgundy hair cascading down her neck and covering her semi-exposed fair skin. The girl seemed to want to buy a pound of dark rye bread but appeared unable to agree on the price with the seller.
"Ten copper coins, not a penny less," the lame seller declared. "There is no mill or bakery here. I've painstakingly transported these loaves of bread all the way from Taren Town."
The girl pointed at the burnt parts of the rye bread with her pale fingers, stiff from the chill of early spring, and voiced her objections loudly, but the seller just shook his head, unmoved by her pleas.
Determined to win the seller over, the girl skillfully lifted her hair and slowly pulled down the deep V-cut neckline of her long dress. Her full, porcelain skin was nearly spilling out with her gradual motions.
Then, as the seller stared at her expectantly, the girl covered up her neckline, picked up a loaf of bread, dropped two copper coins, and left gracefully.
Her firm, fair skin—like her age—was in full bloom, but that didn't stop her from knowing how to use it to her advantage.
"If you don't have money, you should use 'them' to make more!"
The seller grumbled a complaint but didn't pursue her. Perhaps his sluggish leg accounted for it, or maybe the two copper coins, though less than ideal, were just barely acceptable when combined with a glimpse of her alabaster skin.
The girl walked along the narrow, winding path inside the camp clutching her bread. She stopped next to an open-air blacksmith's shop, warming her hands by the fiery furnace. The sparks that flew off the blacksmith's hammer fell onto her pale skin and tattered blue dress. While the slight burning sensation on her skin didn't bother her, the charred marks left by the sparks saddened her.
After absorbing enough warmth from the blacksmith's shop and kicking away two stray dogs by her feet that were begging for food, the girl continued forward. She moved gracefully like a lunar butterfly, darting through the burly adventurers and skillfully avoiding their grasping hands.
A bald adventurer squatted by the roadside where a girl was passing by, dipping roasted chilis in a dark sauce and devouring them greedily from a wooden bowl. Sweat beaded on the adventurer's bald head and eyebrows, mixing with the sauce at the corners of his mouth, dripping constantly onto the ground.
As the girl passed by, the bald man attempted to sneakily attack her with his sauce-covered hand. Although the girl noticed and deftly dodged to the side, his hand was too fast, and with a crisp 'smack', a large sauce-blackened handprint imprinted itself on the rounded hem of her skirt.
"Ah!" The girl couldn't help but cry out as she stopped, turning to look at the handprint formed by the sauce on the back of her long skirt, her face showing anger. She kicked the lewdly grinning bald man's face with her foot, as if to kick away two annoying stray dogs.
The girl was wearing an old pair of gray, half-sole, short boots with traces of the years. These short boots seemed a bit large for the girl, implying that she was not the original owner of the boots.
However, at least for now, they were on the girl's feet and served as her weapons.
The bald man laughed heartily as he effortlessly blocked the girl's kick without even getting up, even casually removing her gray short boot and holding it up triumphantly. Before she could react, he tossed it back to her.
The girl caught the boot and knew she couldn't do anything to the annoying adventurer. After cursing him as a show of force, she left in a huff. After taking a few steps, she seemed somewhat unwilling and twisted her body to face the bald man, baring her teeth and crossing her arms into an 'X' shape over her chest.
In this continent, crossing arms over the chest is an offensive gesture, somewhat similar to flipping the middle finger.
On the road, the girl paused to watch the bustle: a muscular blacksmith was setting the bones of a skinny adventurer, whose screams of pain and resulting 'crack' of bones being reset filled the girl with amusement. Her eyes curved into crescent moons, scattering the faint freckles on her cheeks to make her look utterly adorable.
In a place like Pig Bay, you couldn't expect every profession to be present; hence, some people had multiple jobs, such as tailor or cook, and blacksmiths might also double as bone-setting physicians - at least their grip was strong enough.
As long as there was money to be earned, many people here could be "talented" in multiple fields.
It was evident that seeing the adventurer's bones cracked and reset had lifted the girl's spirits. She even began humming a ballad softly:
"I want a pair of beautiful red dancing shoes,
With gorgeous golden-edged butterflies on them,
But the shoemaker says I don't have enough gold coins,
For the sake of my dancing shoes,
I can only let him take his frustrations out on me.
The shoemaker says he lost the red dye,
For the sake of my dancing shoes,
I can only offer him my dark red blood;
..."
By a shabby wooden house, the girl stopped and used her 'weapon' to kick open the half-ajar door. After humming the ballad and striding into the house, she closed the door with the same motion, not concerned with how the entire house shuddered under her actions, seemingly on the verge of collapsing at any moment.
Inside the house sat a male adventurer with distinct Northern Barbarian traits. Boasting an imposing stature, there was a black tattoo composed of unique patterns on his forehead, a trademark of the Northern Barbarian Tribe.
However, this male adventurer was not a pure-blooded Northern Barbarian but rather a mixed-blood, with his other lineage not manifesting prominently on his face or body.
Signs of stubble on the barbarian adventurer's head hinted that he was once bald, and extending downwards from his newly grown hair, there was an ugly scar on his throat that looked like a grotesque centipede lying there.
In his hands, he cradled a two-handed longsword infused with Demon Iron. He looked solemnly at the longsword, not blinking an eye, even as the girl entered.
The girl was not happy to see the Barbarian adventurer ignoring her and furrowed her brow. She put the rye bread on a makeshift dining table made of tree stumps and then walked straight to the Barbarian adventurer.
"Am I not better looking than that broken sword?" the girl said angrily to the adventurer. Seeing that he still didn't respond to her, she raised her voice again: "I'm talking to you, Bartlett!"
...