The cane soon shone so brightly; his whole room seemed to be glowing. Then, as sudden as the light came, it disappeared. The light went out, and the room was empty. Soon, his few cleaners came to the room and knocked on it, worried about what might have happened to him.
The news soon spread towards all the wealthy man of the world – the middleman and genius trader, Lien Shire. For such a man to die, there was naturally much suspicion among all people. His disappearance was even more worrisome.
Sure, all of them trusted him with a part of their wealth… but only because they knew he wasn't interested. Now that they couldn't find him, how could they reassure themselves? So, with that, a wave of bounties landed on his head – but he was nowhere to be seen.
…
In a ghastly world, where black was predominantly present, there, Lien stood with his crane. His own body disappeared, making him only a white blur next to the crane. He looked like his surroundings, where he found many similarities with the universe he had seen through observatories, but he knew for a fact, that he wasn't in space.
No, that would be too much of an understatement of the vastness he was seeing. Nearly everything was black, but in the distances, he could see circular formations shining brighter than any star. They were all far and few between, but he could see that they were something far beyond planets or stars.
A white blur was spat out from the horse head and the wheel started spinning, gathering and forming the blur into a small white screen in front of Lien. He knew what that was, and he was ecstatic. As someone that liked to read and check out everything, he knew it was something similar to a system panel. Of course, it wasn't a real system but the manifestation of the spirit in the form of a panel to make it easier to communicate, but it was still a good thing.
The panel started giving out sounds to Lien's "I have some abilities, and with this system, you shall be able to use them all. With the power of Trade I amassed through you family, I gained the ability to form a material manifestation of the power of Trade.
I will henceforth serve the head of the Shire family, Lien Shire. So, tell me, what should the manifestation be like?" This was a kind of test the Spirit wanted to give Lien, seeing how adaptable and creative he was.
Lien thought for a bit and said aloud his thoughts "From our position, my guess would be that we are traveling worlds, aren't we?"
The system panel which was blank till now showed a few words.
[System Starting]
Seeing this, Lien continued "Since you are manifesting the power of Trade… in our world, that would probably be a corporation, but that's just a stationary branch, as the real trade was always online and in form of numbers. The only trade that was done manually was Weapon Trade.
The transport of such was always with ships or in cars, which drove through long roads. Cars would work, I think… but since I don't know which world we will be traveling to, it might be a bad choice. For a more versatile option… maybe a carriage?
No… a carriage alone is not enough." Lien looked at the crane and suddenly had an idea "The Horse and Wheel… they stand for carriages, right? Since we were a trading family, maybe a caravan?"
The system responded with another message.
[Wandering Caravan System Started]
Lien smiled in his blurry self. He liked this; he liked it a lot. Now with the general idea, he didn't want to wait too long. Normally, he would spend hours upon hours of preparation for a large operation… but here, he would have to throw random guesses about anything and all.
So, he just asked a few simple questions "How does the caravan look like?"
The system answered with a simple light on the panel, where a new tab [Caravan Desing] shined.
Lien clicked on it, and he saw three simple wooden carriages that had nothing to take note of. He thought that this was probably because the start wasn't too creative, but he wasn't discouraged. He looked at the other side panels of the [Caravan Design] tab.
[Caravan Design]
> Carriage Quantity (3/3)
> Carriage Quality (1/1)
> Carriage Type (Heavy Transport Wagon)
> Storage Capacity (No weight could be loaded, assign transport animals)
> Transport Animal (Unassigned)
> Carriage Level (1/?)
Lien didn't hesitate long and clicked on the 'Transport Animal' panel. Then, he smiled. What he saw was a variety of animals, or to be specific, horses. It seemed to Lien that he could only draw horses at the beginning, but he was very happy with that.
He looked for a specific horse type – the Shire Horse. It was the largest to date, so it could pull a lot of weight, but more importantly, it was his family that created the shire horses just about two centuries before his current life, its origin was at the beginning of the 11th century, and that was also when it became the main logistical animal of the family.
The family later on completed their development in the late 18th century and fully used it in the mid-19th century, where it became known worldwide as the horse of the shire family – the shire horse. Even nowadays, it was still the tallest one, a pride of the whole family.
Lien didn't hesitate and clicked that, as with the height came also weight, and a horse could pull 1.5 of their body weight, meaning the shire horse was also the best logistical animal. Unfortunately, just a few decades later, the cars were fully in use, and barely anyone used horses to ride, except the nobles and those that made it a sport.
The horse was never bred to be used for sport, so seeing them used as such, disturbed him greatly. Now, he couldn't use a car, for he was sure, in many worlds they'd be far too advanced, while the carriage could just be explained as an attraction or antique in the modern world, so he could finally use the shire horse like they were intended to be used in the first place.
Lien might be a cruel and cold businessman, and he also knew when to attack or just be quiet, but he had immense pride over the history of his family. Although he was sure that if his family still existed, they'd hate him for how he was, as he was the last remaining of the main lineage, and the branch lineages weren't given the same last name, one could say that he was the last living member of his family. So, it wasn't too hard for him to be prideful of such a long history.
There were several shire horses with different fur, but Lien decided for the tallest, which was around 2.2meters high and weighted around 1.000kg. It was grey-ish white with some black colour spots, it's mane and feathers, or more commonly known as hoof hair, which were protecting the hoofs and legs of the horse and enabling it to run through difficult terrain, was a tad bit darker.
All in all, the horse looked very majestic in its appearance. The horses slowly materialised in front of the carriages. Two horses per carriage, and Lien could already calculate the total amount of weight that could be pulled, but he still looked.
> Storage Capacity (0/5.000kg)
°System Note: One carriage has to be used as living space of the head and can't be used for storage.
Lien was shortly surprised, for he had missed this part. He laughed it off, it seemed that his old age had brought him a lack in the view of everything, or maybe he was too excited about everything.