Chương 5: Building Fish Traps

Li Qinwu saw that it was still early. Returning to the tribe would mean nothing but lying on the ground eating grass, so he decided to head out and "grind" for a bit to develop his strength. He picked a direction, told Gob-Spear to follow, and took the lead. If he remembered correctly, there was a river this way. During his half-month of eating grass, Li Qinwu had carefully observed the movements of the goblin hunting parties. He noticed that the teams returning from the north brought back mostly fish.

From this, he deduced there was a river to the north; catching fish was much simpler than trapping other small animals. His judgment was correct. After trekking about seven or eight kilometers north, a massive river came into view. Li Qinwu was stunned. Standing on the bank, he could only faintly see the opposite shore; the width of this great river was at least five kilometers!

What truly terrified him was seeing a giant fish leap high out of the water, crashing back down with a splash that sent up a massive plume of water, looking like an artillery shell exploding in the river.

"Holy hell, this is a different world indeed!" Li Qinwu estimated the creature was over a hundred meters long. Even from this distance, it made his skin crawl. He immediately led Gob-Spear away from the main bank, terrified the leviathan might come ashore and snack on them like sunflower seeds. He didn't turn back, however. Instead, he led Gob-Spear along the bank to find smaller tributaries. If the main river had monsters, they would try the creeks to see if they could find smaller fish. Hard work paid off.

They soon found a small tributary with crystal-clear water. He could see many fish swimming inside; the resources were incredibly abundant. Seeing this, Gob-Spear let out an excited shout and jumped directly into the stream, trying to catch the fish with his bare hands. Li Qinwu rolled his eyes. If catching fish were that easy, the goblin tribe wouldn't have to resort to cannibalism. Sure enough, Gob-Spear busied himself for a long time but caught nothing.

He only managed to soak himself, though he did manage to wash off his foul stench in the process. Gob-Spear climbed back onto the bank dejectedly. Suddenly, he saw snails crawling along the shore. To him, if it was an animal, it was food. He grabbed a snail and moved to throw it into his mouth.

"Dammit!" Seeing the idiot about to eat anything he found, Li Qinwu delivered a slap to his face. The force was so great it sent Gob-Spear spinning three and a half times on the spot, and the snail flew out of his mouth. Li Qinwu grabbed Gob-Spear by the neck and shook him violently.

"Are you trying to die?! These things are crawling with parasites! They'll eat you alive from the inside out!" Gob-Spear held his swollen face in a daze, looking at Li Qinwu with a pitiful expression, clearly not understanding why he had been hit. Li Qinwu knew the truth. He had seen adult goblins howling in pain while clutching their stomachs, only to die a few days later. Some would even smash their heads against trees until they died.

These were all symptoms caused by eating raw food; parasites would enter the intestines, liver, or even the brain. In the later stages, the body would be so infested that the host would literally die from the pain. Gob-Spear didn't know what a parasite was and looked aggrieved. Li Qinwu didn't bother explaining; he simply ordered that nothing was to be eaten without his command. Li Qinwu pointed toward the forest.

"Go find some straight branches and vines. The more, the better!" Gob-Spear grunted an affirmation and ran into the woods. A short while later, he returned with a pile of sticks and vines.

"Boss, what do you want these for? You can't eat them."

"You can't eat them, but they can catch things that you can eat. Watch closely and learn!" Li Qinwu took the materials and began to work. Before long, a simple fish trap was completed. Gob-Spear didn't know what it was for, but his learning ability was top-tier. By mimicking Li Qinwu's movements, he managed to produce a trap of his own. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Li Qinwu marveled at the goblin's learning speed once again.

He took the two traps, lashed them with hemp rope, and picked up several large snails from the bank. He smashed them with a stone and threw the meat into the traps. He tied the rope to a branch driven into the ground and tossed the traps into the stream. Then, the two of them retreated a short distance and waited quietly. As they waited, both of their stomachs began to roar. Gob-Spear, in particular, hadn't eaten a thing all day while running through the mountains.

Seeing his wilted state, Li Qinwu feared he might faint from low blood sugar again, so he pulled a sack of grain from his inventory and placed a handful in the pup's hand.

"Eat!" Gob-Spear was amazed by Li Qinwu's ability to conjure items out of thin air. He wondered how it was possible. He looked at the unknown grain in his hand, stuffed a mouthful into his mouth, and his ugly face immediately twisted into a grimace. The grain dropped by the system was unhulled wheat. Although goblins were omnivores, they leaned toward meat. Biting into something tasteless and abrasive made him want to spit it out. Seeing him about to waste food, Li Qinwu raised his hand high.

"If you dare spit that out, I'll slap you so hard you'll meet your ancestors!" Gob-Spear felt miserable. He thought to himself that the "Grass-eater" boss was truly living up to his name, forcing his subordinates to eat grass with him! To avoid the slap, he swallowed the grain with tears in his eyes, feeling it scratch his throat the whole way down. He gave Li Qinwu a pained smile. Li Qinwu handed him another handful, and Gob-Spear miserably continued to eat.

After three handfuls, Gob-Spear indicated he couldn't take any more, and Li Qinwu stopped. What Gob-Spear didn't realize was that while it tasted terrible, the energy provided by the grain was very high. He was no longer hungry! Li Qinwu ate a few handfuls himself. With the bonus from his 'Grass-eater' title, he felt no negative effects; instead, he tasted the fresh aroma of the grain. However, as a modern man, he planned to find time to research de-hulling and milling techniques to improve his diet.

After eating, Li Qinwu had Gob-Spear continue gathering branches and vines. Together, they made over a dozen fish traps. Li Qinwu's Smithing proficiency reached 8 points; once it hit 25, he could choose his first perk. Once the traps were woven, they returned to the stream. Just as Gob-Spear was about to toss them in, Li Qinwu stopped him.

"Don't be in such a hurry. Check the first two we put down to see if there's any loot." Gob-Spear obeyed, pulling the rope to lift the trap. He immediately began to shout and jump with excitement.

"Fish! Fish! We caught fish!" Gob-Spear opened the traps. They had caught two large fish and four or five smaller ones the size of a finger. Gob-Spear grabbed a large fish and moved to bite it, but he suddenly remembered Li Qinwu's order and dejectedly put it down. Li Qinwu had a slap ready but lowered his hand. He was satisfied with Gob-Spear's performance; it seemed his commands, reinforced by the system, were strong enough to make a monster like a goblin suppress its primal hunger.

Li Qinwu sent Gob-Spear to find dry wood and leaves while he used his bow-drill to start a fire. Once the fire was going, he used a boar tusk as a knife to scale and gut the two large fish. He cleaned them, skewered them on branches, and set them to roast by the fire. Soon, the aroma of roasted fish wafted through the air. Gob-Spear salivated heavily, staring at Li Qinwu with longing, praying for a bite. Li Qinwu ignored him. He took a vine and threaded it through the two roasted fish.

The weight was about 5 kilograms, similar to a unit of grain. He thought "Collect" in his mind, and the roasted fish vanished from his hand. A unit of [Roasted Fish] appeared in the Mount & Blade II inventory. Now that the inventory had two types of food, the party's morale rose from 60 to 61. Li Qinwu was pleased; higher morale meant better initiative and combat effectiveness. He planned to fill the warehouse with roasted fish so they could eat whenever they were hungry without ever touching grass again.

Seeing Gob-Spear's disappointment, Li Qinwu threw him the boar tusk and pointed at the smaller fish.

"You saw how I handled the fish. Do exactly as I did. Half of the small fish here are yours!" Gob-Spear was overjoyed and began processing the fish. Li Qinwu took the fish guts and stuffed them into the newly made traps, tossing them back into the stream. The guts had a strong scent that was highly attractive to fish. The traps began to "produce" rapidly; every ten minutes, they would pull up a trap containing at least one fish. The two of them were thrilled, continuously processing and roasting fish by the fire.

Li Qinwu wanted to fill the inventory. Because Gob-Spear had joined the party, the inventory limit had increased from 30 to 40. Each soldier added 10 points to the carry limit. Li Qinwu kept sending fish into the inventory: 10/40, 15/40, 20/40... The production was so fast they were lost in their work. But Li Qinwu forgot one thing: the scent of fish guts attracts more than just fish; it attracts fierce predators. Gob-Spear was about to pull up a trap again.

He had only lifted it halfway when suddenly, the surface of the water exploded. Amidst the splashing, a cavernous maw burst from the water, clamped onto the rising trap, and crashed back into the river. Gob-Spear was paralyzed with fear, falling back onto the bank. Li Qinwu heard the commotion, turned around, and felt his blood run cold. In the river, a creature over three meters long, looking like a crocodile with two horns on its head, had appeared.

Its eyes glowed with a red light as it attacked the traps in the water. With one snap of its jaws, the monster crocodile crushed a trap. That terrifying bite force—if it landed on a goblin, they would be chewed into mincemeat in an instant. Li Qinwu was badly shaken, but the system notification indicating he had entered [Combat State] snapped him back to his senses. These crocodiles were identified by the system as hostile units, meaning killing them would grant experience!

But he looked at the crude spear in his hand, then at the thick, armored hide of the monster crocodile, and immediately abandoned that dangerous thought. He lunged forward, grabbed the paralyzed Gob-Spear, and ran toward the forest like a madman.