84. Katrina (above)
The explanation I had been given by old Kulu was that he was looking for a way to save the orc tribes from poverty and that he was learning the ways of business by following the human caravans, but it always seemed a little far-fetched that there must be some of this reason, but not all. As I looked through the parchment books on herbalism that old Kuru had with him, I found that the magical herbs described in those books were not to be found in books like the "Complete Book of Herbology" that Kiger had on his bookshelf, and that the beginner's textbook at Kiger's magic academy only gave a general description of the herbs' uses and properties, not as comprehensive as I had seen in the parchment books, and that the various There were also different opinions on various herbs. For a wizard like Kiger, who specialises in magical potions, her best area of expertise must be her knowledge of magical herbs, and most of her books are about herbalism.
But as I flipped through them, I always felt that some of the statements in the books differed greatly from those in the parchment given to me by old Kulu, which is why I was so determined to follow Kurtz into the Northern Foothills Wilderness this time. I wanted to find a few of the most elementary magical herbs to confirm that exactly what was written in that book was correct.
"Kurtz is Sensei's own grandson, so it's not too much to ask to take Aziz all over the world!" I tried to defend Kurtz.
Kiger, looking adorably puffed up, sat in the leather saddle seat beside Katrina and pointed at Kuz, "Ask your werewolf brother how many siblings he has, and just how many grandchildren your teacher, old Kulu, will have?"
This was something I had never thought about, I had somewhat brought memories from my previous life into this one and had never thought about what a family inside an orc tribe would really be like. I turned my attention to Kurtz, who scratched his hair with a little embarrassment and said with a big grin, "My grandfather had twenty-three sons and eighteen daughters, and my aunts had married off to other tribes long ago, so I don't know how many children they had. father's seventh son. Actually ... well! I can't count exactly how many grandchildren Master Ah had, I was taken out to be raised individually at a very young age and there are many brothers and sisters I may not have even met."
"So, you were brought out to travel the world by your teacher because you too have ... a rare bloodline talent?" I looked at Kurtz with some surprise.
Kuzzy showed me the strong muscles on his arms with some pride and said unabashedly, "Of course! When I was three years old, I was predicted to have the 'survival instinct' by the tribal divination priest, Elder Kulanoman, and after completing my first wilderness hunt when I was seven, I was taken out of the Gurudin tribe by my grandfather to travel through the wilderness. We picked you up at the edge of the Burning Forest, and the next time you and we crossed the New Ciachis again, we were about to arrive at my home."
"How come you never told me you had the survival instinct gift?" I asked.
"But Ja you never asked me! In fact, Ka I told you so! I can make sure I get you out of this wasteland safely, not only is this my home, but this gift of mine allows me to take you into the safest place in the wasteland when it's most dangerous. There is nothing special about this gift I have, the knight, except that I can sense the scent of wild beasts in the wilderness, which is important for hunters, but not powerful. The reason this gift is in the top five legendary gifts is that orcs with 'survival instinct' become very powerful hunter kings. A Hunter King who can take other orcs into the wilderness and organise hunts, Ja, you know how short of food we are now, and every tribe leader who is a Hunter King will take his tribe to survive even in the most bitter conditions. That's what makes a Hunter King the strongest." Kuz turned his head away again and continued to drive the subjugated beast forward.
"So you have an amazing talent in you too!" I realized with a start.
Kurtz was looking up at this starry sky above his head carefully at this point, not and gesturing with his fingers between the night star and his eyes as if looking for a reference point. I could never understand how Kurtz could tell where we were. All I knew was that he was using the night sky as a reference point to determine his approximate position in the wilderness. So again, I asked curiously, "Using a star map to locate a place, is that a survival instinct?"
"That's not really true, it's the secret of the star charts of the Pai plateau, it's not really a secret, it's the experience of stargazing that we orcs have slowly gathered over the centuries of living on this plateau. If you want to learn it, you have to look at the stars on the plateau for three years honestly, then I can teach you this technique, otherwise you won't understand it even if I tell you now." Kurtz said as he continued to look at the starry sky overhead.
It never occurred to me that the people in this small group were all from different backgrounds, for example, Kiger was a fox girl of Etean royal blood with a Celestial Fox bloodline, the women of the Celestial Fox clan were all born magicians and would automatically awaken when they reached a certain age. I had been told about this when Kiger brought me back to the magic caravan. But I hadn't thought about the fact that Aziz was also a child who had been raised in the orc tribes with the 'survival instinct' gift that allowed him to sense and anticipate danger in the wild and made him a natural hunter. And I was also a child with the bloodline talent 'Blue Flame' and the magical talent 'Magic Sense', either of which would be perfect for a wizard to prey on for his talents, which reminded me of a cartoon I saw as a child, 'Ginseng Doll', and now I'm the ginseng doll that gets eaten and can live forever! The former has the noble bloodline of the Celestial Fox clan, while the latter has revealed the 'Killing Heart' bloodline talent, both of them are excellent bloodline inheritors. In the next ten or twenty years, as long as there is an inheritor with such a powerful bloodline in his tribe, he will lead the entire tribe to become powerful in the next hundred years.
The attraction of Kig and Katrina to the beast people was so great that even an honest boy like Kurtz's eyes became incomparably hot after learning of the bloodline talent in the two women, not to mention others. It never occurred to me that Katrina actually possessed a 'killing heart', only it was very poorly sealed. I couldn't quite figure out what the sealing of a 'killing heart' had to do with my own guts and courage, but I guess it had something to do with it!
The cool night breeze blew on everyone's face, making them more awake. In this pre-dawn moment, I thought that the road ahead might not be smooth and that I would need to fight my way through the thorns, but my mind was surprisingly calm as if I were standing outside a painting looking at the scene in the painting. In this pre-dawn moment, we were sitting on the back of a beast of prey, the bumpy road through the wilderness seemed never-ending, but we seemed one step closer to our destination.
The magical pattern on the snow-white skin beneath Katrina's neck slowly lightened and faded as Kiger withdrew his magic and finally disappeared from the surface. Her eyes become lazy, as if she is deep in memory, and she tells us about her childhood.
Fragment one.
"That little girl with the red eyes is a bastard, and so is her mother. Let's not play with her, they're all slave girls who deserve to live in the woodshed and eat ground potatoes, can you stand the fishy smell of ground potatoes?" The blonde haired girl stood on the corner of a street full of sewage and stopped a group of poor children in rags and torn clothes and said loudly.
The little red-eyed girl standing in the corner, holding her two-year-old boy in one hand, looked aggressively at the group of slum children who had gone away, her tears breaking out in two furrows on her aggrieved face. The group had wanted to go to the town's tavern and ask for some slop and leftovers to fill their stomachs, but no one wanted to take this lowly child born of an Orc slave girl, who was born a slave.
The girl had to run home with her brother on an empty stomach and said to the woman lying on her death bed, "Auntie, we are not slaves! I don't want to eat potatoes all day, the other children don't like me and don't want to play with me!"
The woman on the couch stared blankly at the ragged straw walls, wondering if the next heavy rain would bring the hut down completely, but for now the ragged hut would give them some shelter from the elements. She had been a beautiful dancer of the beastly rabbit bloodline, but fate had taken her down to this level, her dry, thin cheeks looking extremely waxy, her withered hair like a heap of grass on her head, her eyes now so thin they jutted out of their sockets, like the lowest skeletons of the undead. The wound at her waist had oozed foul-smelling pus, and she knew her days were numbered, but when she saw her two children, there was still a strong look of longing in her eyes, ah! How she did not want to leave them like this, how the children would live without me!
Looking at her two children, who were as thin as a bone, the woman on her deathbed, who had no strength, switched the girls to her side and said with a weak gasp: "Remember your mother's words, Caterina! Never marry a warrior again, no matter how brave he may be in battle, no matter how skillful and flamboyant he may be, I want you to marry someone ordinary in the future, and I want you to take your brother and live well, and not follow the same path as your mother."
The red-eyed girl nodded in seeming understanding and promised the terminally ill woman on the bed, "I swear! I will take care of my brother!"
That year, when Katarina was eight years old, her mother died in a hayloft in the slums after a boulder rolled down from the mine and broke her back while she was carrying rocks, leaving Katarina with a ramshackle hut that leaked all over the place and a two-year-old brother to feed. Surviving is the most important thing for both of them at the moment.
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