Chapter 31: Traveling Merchant

After the long-unseen lord suddenly appeared and carried away the troublemaking snail, the players present practically exploded—

“What was that just now, a talking snail? Has the game official finally shown mercy and added another NPC!”

“Speaking of which, I’ve complained about this many times. Even if it’s crowdfunding, can’t they just make a few more NPCs?”

“The official has made the game so realistic, it doesn’t look like they’re short on funds.”

“I think so too. It’s probably the game’s background setting, right? Maybe there will be more maps when it’s open beta.”

“So no one cares about our lost vegetable patch?” Hua Yibing touched the vegetable patch at his feet with a pained heart.
“The next time I see that NPC, I’ll definitely demand compensation!”

The vegetable patch that had just been crushed by the snail was now completely flat, as if it had been run over by a steamroller many times, as hard as a rock.
No matter how much strength the seeds inside had, they couldn’t sprout.

“Are snails in Sea Realm really that heavy?” Old Li marveled and patted the ground with his tail.
“But the lord seemed to have just carried it away directly? I didn’t see wrong, did I?”

“A giant snail that lives underwater?” Yan Shuangwen touched his chin, lost in thought.

And there were a few players with a more unique style, whose reactions were completely different from others—

“Our darling Sai is so handsome!!” A slender male fish held his face, looking entranced.
“As expected of mommy’s good big boy!”

Regardless of whether the players were heartbroken, surprised, or infatuated (?), it was extremely lively.
But Tom’s side had already begun to feel the atmosphere of winter.

“Hey, hey, hey! Sykes, how can you be so rough with your old friend!”
Tom was being carried by the merman.
Because of the excessive speed, his eyes couldn’t help but squint, and his two antennae couldn’t help but shrink.

“Shut up.”
Cold air was radiating from Sykes’s body.
He wished he could throw this stupid big thing in his hand directly into the abyss.

Tom sensed Sykes’s terrible mood, and his danger-sensing antennae stood up with a ‘ding’.
He obediently retracted his head again.

‘Forget it. Old Tom has always been a magnanimous snail. I won’t bicker with this stinky fish.’

He comforted himself this way.

After he retracted his head into his shell, he saw a newly born little snail peeking at it, trying to stick its head out to see the scenery outside the shell.

Tom immediately cheered up.
“Hey! You little brat are as brave as I was back then!”

Although he said that, he still pushed the other back in.

“It’s not okay to go out now. That stinky fish outside is angry for some reason, as if Tom I said something wrong.”

“Heaven knows, I’ve only said those two sentences since I entered his domain, and they were all compliments! He’s clearly a fish who has just left his cub stage, yet his temper is even more eccentric than those old men who are tens of millions of years old.”

He rambled on, complaining to the little snail.

Of course, the little snail couldn’t understand such complicated words.
It just cried ‘ang, ang’, and stubbornly continued to try to crawl out.

Tom sighed and patted its head comfortingly with his antennae.
“Don’t be anxious, child. When this merman has calmed down, Uncle Tom will take you out to have a look.”

Then, he shouted at the top of his lungs for his older sister, “Sister Lisa! Don’t sleep, hurry up and take this little thing away. I feel like I’m about to get busy!”

Sykes had already returned to his merman tower.
He threw the snail onto the ground.
The snail shell made contact with the ground, making a dull ‘thud’.

Then came a ‘guruguru’ rolling sound.

“Come out,” Sykes took a deep breath and rubbed his throbbing temples.

Hearing this, a person slowly crawled out from the bottom of the light golden snail shell.

Tom placed his shell in the corner of the wall, stretched his body first, then turned to his old friend.

“Hey, what’s wrong, Sykes? I don’t know where I offended you.”
He swam over without any unfamiliarity and patted the merman’s shoulder.

“Let me have a look. Where is that lovely lady hiding?”

As he spoke, Tom even poked his head into the merman’s laboratory, but didn’t find the third person he had imagined.

“It’s not what you think,” Sykes didn’t know how his brain circuit got stuck on that question and couldn’t get it off.
“Those are not my cubs.”

“I told you I really envy you. If only I could be as capable as you…”
He muttered halfway, then suddenly reacted and looked back in disbelief.

“Hmm? Those are not your cubs? Could it be you’ve found your clan… uh, sorry.”

…Tom realized he had misspoken, and stood at attention with his head down, apologizing sincerely.

The merman’s tail… was only in contact for a short time, but he should have been able to see that something was wrong, right?”

Tom: “It seems, uh, a little? I remember those cubs seemed to have ample magic elements on them…”

“!!!”

“Sikes! It’s not what I think, right! You’ve actually touched the forbidden realm of bio-alchemy!”

The snail was startled, his face…

“Are you crazy!”

“Although I have thought about that aspect, what you see now…” Sykes tried to dispel the other’s doubts…guess.

But the snail seemed even more frightened—

“You mean, ‘domain citizens’ born naturally in the domain? My old heavens, my old buddy, you really surprise me! When I first came in and saw your—so big—domain, it scared me once already. I didn’t expect there to be another surprise!”

Tom paced back and forth in the study.
“My god, naturally born ‘domain citizens’! Your strength has actually reached this level. How many lords can do this now?”

“Tell me, is this transaction related to these domain citizens?”

Sykes nodded.
“They need to eat, and they have a strong desire to cook. You have to bring me some vegetables or other edible herbs.”

“Likes to cook? That’s a pretty good characteristic.” Tom’s eyes were shining.
“Please let me have a taste then!”

Then, he stuck half his body into the shell in the corner, rummaged inside for a few moments, then poked his head out and replied, “I still have that many boxes of vegetables in my cargo, which perfectly meets your request. But it’s a bit difficult to find things of this quality again. I have to go deal with those arrogant sea elves again.”

Tom held a list in his hand, cleared his throat, and looked like a shrewd merchant for a moment.

“A request from the sea elves: [Hope to exchange for a potion that can quickly increase magic power, requiring high quality with no side effects. It needs to be inspected by the clan’s potion officer. Inferior, defective products can be forgotten.]”

“That’s it. Those guys with their eyes on the top of their heads are always so infuriating. When they talk business, they only accept barter, and they despise the stench of gold and silver,” he pouted.

“Okay,” Sykes agreed.
“You can help me talk to them. It would be even better if you can supply them long-term.”

“Only your potions can shut those picky guys’ mouths,” Tom sullenly stuffed the list back into his shell, then dragged out a few small boxes and slapped his palm on them.

As magic power surged, the few boxes went ‘thump’ and suddenly grew larger, actually filling the study to the brim.

Sykes: “…”

As an agility-max merman, he had flashed to the safer spot behind the desk in the first instant, perfectly dodging the boxes that filled the room.

“Sorry, sorry, I forgot this room of yours isn’t big enough,” Tom on the other side was also squeezed against the wall by the suddenly enlarged boxes, his face deformed from the pressure.

He struggled to extend a few more fingers, tapped on the boxes, and returned them to their previous state.

“Anyway,” Tom panted, pushing the few boxes in front of Sykes.
“You can use these for now. I’ll go to the sea elves’ side in a few days.”

Sykes lowered his eyes and put the boxes into his space.

“In a few days?” he asked calmly.

Tom’s eyes widened, and he said indignantly, “No way! You heartless fish! I came all this way to see you, can’t you keep your old friend here and entertain him for a few days?”

The merman hesitated.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to keep him, but with the players’ personalities…

“Alright, if you insist,” he finally agreed.

Tom, who was allowed to stay, hummed a song and returned to his original form, slowly crawled on the flat street—it wasn’t that he couldn’t walk fast, but that he enjoyed the feeling of strolling like this, which made him feel the leisure of life.

It was different from before.

Tom deeply realized this.

Whether it was his old friend or the land under his feet, a lot had changed compared to the last time he came.

The expression on Sykes the merman’s face had become much richer, and he didn’t look as gloomy as before.
And this old clan land of the merfolk…

The snail’s eyes slowly looked around.
Although the houses on the side were colorful, they were in a completely repaired state.
The road under his feet had also become much flatter than the original pitted one, and there were also those domain citizens—

Oh, these cute little merfolk look so lively!

He was genuinely happy for his old friend.
He felt very sorry about the matter of the merfolk clan.
He had been asking around for news about it while traveling outside all these years, but he had found nothing at all and couldn’t help in any way.
He could only watch the other remain silent for a hundred years after another hundred years.

Now, everything was better.

Tom turned his head, about to continue walking forward, but found that a pink-haired merman cub was standing in front of him at some point.

The snail looked at the other in surprise.

Speaking of which, since these cubs weren’t Sykes’s children, what should he call them?

Before Tom could figure out the answer, he saw the cub with his hands on his hips angrily, shouting at him—

“It was you, this snail, right! You crushed the land I worked so hard to plant before!”
The other was so angry he was about to jump.

Tom: “…Hmm?”