Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

  It was freezing cold in the winter in the Four Northwest Towns. Although it was nothing serious for the barbarians from Iceland, it was tough for average people there. Every winter, it was common to see weak people die from the cold.

  In fact, if it wasn’t for the cold winter here, perhaps there would have been more people coming from the Commonwealth of Gold Coins to settle there. It was the cold winter here that provided newcomers who had fled famine a living space.

  “Although it sounds reasonable, I don’t like the cold winter at all.” Haman pushed a trolley, walking on the empty street. In the trolley were corpses of people who had died from hyperthermia. “I should have been a small retailer, owning a booth or selling something on the street. Now I have to clear up the corpses……” he murmured unhappily, but he was not so unsatisfied with his job.

  After all, thanks to this job, he was able to earn money to make a living at least.

  In this cold winter, he had food to eat every day, though it was usually not enough. That could still be taken as happiness.

  Well…… It would be better if he could get some warmer clothes!

  The road in town was uneven. It was hard to walk with his roughly made trolley. The corpses in the trolley were bumped and jostled by the uneven road, making dull sounds when the frozen bodies collided.

  “Come on, Haman. You don’t want to be one of these corpses!” Haman said to himself, “The coldest days of winter have gone. After this month, you can head to the north, to the legendary Void Mask Land! It’s said that if one manages to get there alive, even if he or she wasn’t good at anything before, he or she still can learn some skills and live a peaceful life there……”

  Encouraged by such comforting words, and working to generate some heat, he survived the day smoothly. More importantly, he earned money to buy some food.

  Night was much better than day. There was no Hill Lord in the Four Towns in the Northwest, nor laws prohibiting deforestation. He had already stocked a lot of firewood in his home. With a traditional heatable brick bed, the cold at night was nothing to be feared.

  But the next day, a great difficulty lay ahead of him.

  “There’s no need to clear up the corpses today.” The mighty guard captain waved his hand and said carelessly, “It’s no big deal that there are one or two dead people on the roadside. Let’s only clear them up every few days.”

  Haman wisely gave up the intention of pleading, knowing that it would be useless.

  Which of the people who had frozen and starved to death by the roadside hadn’t pleaded bitterly? But had that worked?

  Forget it. Go and pick up some firewood and come back home. It’s no big deal to be hungry for a day or something, just bear it.

  It proved that hunger was unbearable in winter.

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  Before noon, he was already dizzy with hunger, sitting in the middle of the firewood that he had collected with great effort. He had no energy to stand up again.

  “It is said that all creatures that die in the Ash Forest will turn into skeletons, becoming skeleton soldiers that only come out at night.” In his exhausted dizziness, he grinned bitterly and said to himself, “What will I look like if I become a skeleton soldier?”

  “Aren’t skeleton soldiers all the same?” a little girl’s voice said.

  Haman reluctantly moved his head and looked in the direction of the voice. He saw a little girl in a thick robe looking at him curiously. Not far behind her were several young boys and girls wrapped up in warm clothes like dumplings, and a woman in a waistcoat that was definitely not enough for the cold winter.

  The little girl came over and asked with a smile, “What are you doing on the ground, uncle?”

  Haman laughed bitterly and answered, “Nothing. I’m dying of starvation or cold. No difference.”

  The woman in the blouse waved her hand and a red light fell on him, warming up his body, which had almost been unable to move from the cold. Then she asked a teenager carrying a large backpack to take out some bread. Haman suddenly ran over at a speed he had never seen in his life and grabbed the bread, wolfing it down.

  How delicious the bread was! It was soft and sweet with a lot of oil in it. It tasted delicious and could be swallowed easily.

  Haman finished the whole loaf at a fast speed, like the autumn wind sweeping the fallen leaves, but when he was ready to have a second one, the woman in the blouse grabbed it back.

  “If you eat anymore, you’ll be too full to die.” Her voice was full of vitality, like the feeling of burning fire. “I’m Felix, the Magic Bomber. I’m going to build a magic school here to promote urban development. Would you like to work for me?”

  Without hesitation, Haman lowered his head profoundly, “There is nothing I can do to pay back the graciousness of you saving my life. I’ll do whatever you say!”

  “It doesn’t matter. I won’t force you to work for me.” Miss Felix said carelessly, “Forcing others to pay back my favors is not my style. No matter who saw you just now, they would have done the same thing I did.”

  Would they have done the same thing?

  Haman bowed his head and recalled that he had hurried past people who were dying of hunger with food in his arms more than once.

  He felt as small as an ant.

  Half an hour later, they came to the Pyroxene Town. Miss Felix directly went to the meeting place of the big men who ruled the town. She talked with them secretly for a while. By the time she came out, she had already won the title mayor of the Pyroxene Town.

  Why did a great magician who wasn’t afraid of the cold want to be the mayor of a declining town?

  Haman was a little perplexed, especially when he noticed that Miss Felix’s right hand was slightly stained with blood…… This female magician seemed strange, not only in her dress, but also in her style of working.

  Miss Felix saw his expression, smiled, grabbed a handful of snow by the roadside, and wiped off the blood on her hand. “These past few years, I’ve been dealing with super tough guys, so I carelessly forgot to control my power in the negotiation just now, but don’t worry, there was no one who died.”

  Did magicians use their fists to negotiate? Haman felt like something was wrong.

  “Haha, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go and find a place to build a house.”

  Miss Felix and her students—those boys and girls wrapped themselves up in warm clothes like dumplings—came to Haman’s home. It was a place with a open terrain, close to the town wall. It was very convenient.

  The strange magician finally showed her ability as a magician.

  She took out a gray wooden staff and waved it to draw something out on the open ground. Then the ground began to shake. The frozen mud that was as hard as stone moved like it was alive, forming the shape of a house. It solidified again and turned the color of the stone.

  It seemed exhausting for her to do that. The energetic Felix looked a little tired when the house was finished. She complained to Haman about something regarding how Transformation magic was really troublesome. Then she took out some bedding from a small bag and asked her students to decorate their rooms. She stood at the gate herself with fire on her fingers, burning a line of words on the wall beside the gate of the wired box-looking house.

  “Isn’t my handwriting good?” she said proudly.

  “Sorry, I can’t read.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ll learn to read in the future.” Miss Felix was not affected by his words at all. She smiled and said, “It says ‘Isuka School of Magic,’ so you must remember it well. From today on, you work for this school!”

  After building the house, of course, they needed to buy the necessary furniture. Miss Felix sent Haman to buy furniture and other things that might be useful with her students, while she stayed at the school by herself.

  After everyone had left, she looked up into the air, where there seemed to be nothing.

  “Your Majesty Void Mask, do you really think there is hope in the development of this declining town?”

  Sui Xiong’s voice came from the nothing. “Hope originally comes from despair, and the town has not yet reached its time of despair. As long as I spend some time and energy on it, I think we should be able to revive it.”

  “But what is special about this town? It’s necessary to find some goals.”

  “If it’s so easy to find a method for rejuvenation, why would I invite you, a great magician who was a successful business woman before, to help?” Sui Xiong laughed and said, “It’s not difficult to find powerful magicians, but there are few magicians who know how to build a city. You see, the Commonwealth of Mifata is so big that there are a large number of legendary mages, but how many of them can make their territory prosperous? Just le-Peyroux and a few others.”

  Felix laughed for Sui Xiong’s praise. “Well, if anyone can do it, then I didn’t have to come here specially!”

  With a leap, she easily jumped onto the roof, which was significantly higher than the house next to her, looking around at the low, shabby houses around her.

  “Maybe I should find a painter to draw this scene.” She made a frame with her hands and circled the scene in it. She said with interest, “After my magic school is fully developed in the future, this picture can be used as a souvenir to open the eyes of the freshmen and encourage them to work hard.”

  Invisible in the air, Sui Xiong laughed and waved his tentacles. A scroll made of special waterproof and fireproof material appeared in the air and floated in front of her. Pictured in the scroll was the Pyroxene Town at that moment.

  This declining town had a depressing and decadent atmosphere, even the guards seeming powerless. Only the strange-looking square house on the edge of the town showed a different vitality.

  “That’s a good idea.” He said, “Just leave this task to me. I’ll draw a picture of the town every once in a while. I’ll give you enough pictures to use as souvenirs.”