Does the mechanical girl dream of the Messiah?

In a season like this, will there still be any small creatures passing through?

This is something that no one knows, but at least this isolation zone can keep the howling cold wind out, leaving behind a short and narrow piece of peace.

The rustling windshield and the fixing points made of natural objects are all that is needed to allow the strong wind to bypass for a short period of time.

It was certainly not an easy task for Lunicia alone to carry so many gifts, but after Ashetherin and Ella Hepper joined this small adventure group, this became a lot easier: the existing gifts could be handed over to Ella for safekeeping, and the parts that were not in the bags could be "made" by Ashetherin.

After all, there are so many things that adventurers need but don't need, and it is impossible to carry everything with them all the time. For adventurers, knowing what to bring and what to leave behind is a compulsory course in their career.

"Six hundred years."

Ashatherin simply repeated Lunicia's words without any ups and downs. Her tone was so flat that one couldn't tell what she was sighing about or what she was thinking about.

“——It’s amazing.”

"?"

Tilting her head, Ashetherin stared quietly at Lunicia who was approaching her, watching her move her face closer to hers, her brown pupils meeting her golden pupils.

"Not just a few hundred years... thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, maybe even longer? Ashe is a being from such a distant past, yet she looks so similar to me. In the end, we met by chance and traveled together."

Clearly, at the beginning, he wanted to deny this reality and attributed that creature that was neither a living being nor any known thing to a fellow citizen of the dark clan. Just because he was suspicious, he wanted to rule out any similarities between himself and the other party. He was like a caged bird that had stepped out of a greenhouse, and even his heart could not adapt to the overly vast sky.

Now, I can say so calmly, "I am so similar to you."

Looking at the smile at the corner of her mouth, Ashlee's expression did not change. On that exquisite yet calm face, there seemed to be confusion, joy, and it seemed that all of that was just an illusion created by the interweaving of light and shadow.

Perhaps there are still sun and moon behind the clouds, and the alternation of sun and moon constitutes the cycle of day and night over and over again, but these things cannot be confirmed. People living on this land can only rely on the clocks that have been made and have a unified time to determine where they are in the long river of time. The day becomes less bright, and the night becomes deeper, as if even the pace of time has slowed down, giving the girls time to gaze at each other and solidify that familiar yet unfamiliar face.

"Mrs. Luna - what are you doing?"

A somewhat surprised voice came from behind me. I knew who it was without turning around.

"Just a quick break. What's up, Ella?"

"The tent is ready. Lady Luna, would you like to take a look?"

"Oh, so fast."

This was the original arrangement. Ashlee was responsible for picking up branches and chopping wood, Lunicia was responsible for hunting, and Ella was responsible for packing up the tent. Things that were originally expected to be fully prepared after dinner had now been completed. This surprised Lunicia, who was not good at "setting up a tent".

The tent itself was not a finished product brought by Lunicia, although she did bring the tent with her and kept it safely stored among her luggage on the way to the waterwheel canal. Unfortunately, when she resolved the zombie crisis and returned to the deserted village, her tent had been crushed by the rubble and could no longer be used.

So, what the group was using now was actually Ella Hepper's tent.

Following the pink-haired girl's footsteps, they opened the tent that looked like a decent place, and the scene inside was indeed completely different from what Lunicia had imagined.

Although both are made of a combination of cloth, pillars and mats, the tent put up by Ella looks more spacious and beautiful than the one put up by Lunicia. This is not due to the difference in quality of the tent itself - how could the tents distributed by the Glorious Temple be defective? The Holy Relics Bureau will receive complaints - it is simply because Lunicia's skills in putting up the tent are too poor.

In order to make the trip a little more fun, the three of them decided to take over the responsibility of setting up the tent every other round. So after the three of them had been squeezed in a small and messy tent for six days, it was finally Ella's turn to set up the tent.

The spacious interior space has neatly arranged sleeping bags. For comfort reasons, haystacks are placed under the mats on the ground before the tent is set up, and then a blanket is added on top of the mats for warmth. The whole tent is under the warm orange light of the oil lamp, looking quiet and comfortable, with a faint warmth.

"I'm very sorry, Lady Luna, but it turns out that it's impossible to light a fire in a tent."

"Why would you apologize for something like this...?"

Lunicia couldn't help but tilt her head like Ashlee did.

After all, it’s common sense not to light a fire in a tent, right?

"Since the tent has been set up, I will also help Lady Luna cook--"

"That's not okay."

Lunicia smiled and shook her finger.

"After all, we can't push everything onto Ella."

"So, is there anything I need you to do, Ash?"

"Neither do I—well, then Ashley will go and help light the fire."

For Ashetherin, making a fire is a completely hassle-free task - like some kind of alchemical trick, she can transform her cold fingertips into other substances, for example, into magnesium blocks, and then use another finger to grind the transformed part into powder and sprinkle it on the hay and dead branches used to start the fire. Then she can restore her fingers and ignite them by rubbing her fingertips to create sparks, making the center of the fire pit burn fiercely.

Although due to various difficulties in obtaining fuel, most factories around the world no longer produce disposable lighters, and adventurers have returned to the era of using flint to start fires after countless years, for Ashlee, these are "non-existent troubles" - she clearly has many ways to directly burn firewood, but in the end she chose this retro and complicated way.

Maybe it's just like using a pneumatic crossbow as a weapon even though you can make a gun. It's a personal hobby.

But surely one has to ask, can a “machine” have such a thing as a hobby?

But it doesn't matter. It's not a big problem. After all, neither Lunicia nor Ella Hepper would regard her as a mere machine. The only difference is that the former is gentle, while the latter has more or less some hostile elements. Of course, the emergence of such hostility is itself a proof of facing it squarely.

It seems that there are always some things that are hard to forget. I don’t know how distant the past is from. After so long, the memory is still imprinted on this artificial body. Perhaps that is the proof of "life".

After a brief period of noise, it returned to a longer period of silence. No one spoke, but just did what they wanted to do.

Some were stirring the charcoal fire, some were collecting game, and some were sitting on large flat rocks, writing in their books.

Chapter 3: Over the Mountains and Sea of ​​Trees (Part 3)

The gray clouds in the sky do not change at all. In this case, it becomes extremely difficult to judge the time. After all, even the position of the sun cannot be distinguished. The only way is probably to determine the approximate time based on the changes in brightness and darkness.

This gray cloud that can never be dispelled has brought many changes to the earth. One is the weather, and the other is the temperature.

Due to the heavy pollution and cold climate, snowfall has become quite common, and other than that, normal rain seems to have completely disappeared from the world. There is not much such worry in winter, but it seems that in summer, toxic and harmful acid rain will fall from the sky, coupled with the continuous rainy season, and the wilderness at that time will only be a sad landscape.

The temperature of the whole world has dropped a lot due to the disappearance of sunlight. Coupled with the existence of the Hyperborean cold current, the climate in the east of Mu Continent has become different from before. It is said that Muland was originally a mountain city with spring-like weather, green mountain scenery and vast lakes, but now it is covered by ice and snow all year round, and the clothing and customs of the residents there have changed greatly.

Lunicia, who had not yet arrived in Muirand, naturally could not imagine what the scenery was like there, but she had already felt the chill. After all, this place was also hilly and not far from Muirand.

No matter how much I cover my body with the cloak, my cheeks are still exposed to the cold. This small open space is separated from the winter wind, but I still can't escape the cold.

The work at her hands did not slow down because of the cold. Instead, she worked even harder under the urge of hunger.

On the stone were placed the ingredients for today's dinner: three black-feathered pheasants, a sturdy small python, and a bunch of white mushrooms.

No monsters were encountered during today's gathering work, otherwise just one monster would have been enough to solve the food problem for several days. The heavy snow and cold weather made it even more difficult to obtain food, but Lunicia did not encounter even a single hungry large monster. This could only be considered a matter of luck. Of course, under this premise, three pheasants and a snake were still caught, which could be considered a proof of good luck.

The ingredients were tested with toxicity-detecting powder in advance to ensure that they were indeed edible. Adventurers in different regions had different tools available to them. For example, the powder used by Lunisia was a product developed by the Holy Relics Bureau of the Glorious Temple, and it could detect the most toxins of its kind. On the other hand, the powder made by local pharmacists in border and backward areas was undoubtedly less versatile, but it could detect some local toxins.

The mushrooms are ordinary mushrooms. Although they grow in the snow and are even whiter than the dirty snow around them, they are at least not poisonous. Mushrooms with dull colors are not necessarily non-toxic. Mushrooms such as the cypripedium and the white ghost mushroom are not good-looking but are also inedible. Fortunately, the mushrooms I picked up this time are probably relatives of some kind of Agaricus stolonifera. Of course, even if they are not poisonous, these fungi growing in the dark cannot be completely trusted. Another principle can also be adhered to, that is, mushrooms that bite people are just mushrooms when they are roasted.

Although I have heard that there are fungi that can parasitize with only spores, if it were that kind of fungus, this forest would probably be covered with mushroom caps by now.

Lunicia didn't dare to be too careless about the three chickens and one snake.

The three black-feathered pheasants had almost the same experience. They were shot with arrows as soon as they showed their heads. Even so, Lunicia carefully chopped off their heads with a dagger. The snake was even more unfortunate. It was beheaded for no apparent reason while it was still hibernating. The drastic change in the environment, the disorder of the elements, pollution, and darkness, all of these things will have unpredictable effects on creatures living in the wild. This kind of change is difficult to count, it is random and terrifying, and people can only be more careful to prevent themselves from capsizing in the gutter.

The snake had two heads, but it did not become poisonous from a non-venomous species. First, use a dagger to cut open the snake's belly and take out the internal organs, then peel off the snake's skin, and put the remaining parts aside for later use.

There were three black-feathered pheasants. One of them looked unchanged and was just an ordinary pheasant. The second one had three wings. This deformity prevented it from flying, so it was caught by Lunicia quite easily. Apart from that, there was no difference between them. The third one was more unique. When Lunicia cut open its stomach, she found a group of wriggling dark red tentacles in addition to internal organs and blood.

“What the hell is this…?”

While muttering softly, Lunicia wielded the dagger and dug it out of the pheasant's belly.

Even though it was completely out of its original position, the tentacles still seemed to be wriggling. It didn't have a clear head like an octopus, but was just a collection of tentacles. As for the original position, there was no connection between it and the mass in Lunicia's hand. Perhaps they were originally connected by blood vessels, but this was unknown.

She threw the tentacles to the ground, crushed them with her foot, and continued to process the ingredients.

The head had been cut off long ago and left in the snow. It was unknown when it would be taken away by other wild animals. As a rare food in winter, Lunicia only had to deal with the parts below the head and above the buttocks. The method used to deal with the snake was not much different. The internal organs were emptied and abandoned. However, the next question made Lunicia feel troubled.

At this time of year, underneath the thick feathers that exist for wintering is the pheasant's oily skin. If you use boiling water to remove the feathers, it doesn't seem convenient now and it may take too long. If you use fire to remove the feathers, it will easily cause the surface to turn black and there is a risk of burning.

After thinking for a while, Lunicia used a dagger to peel off the pheasant's fur. Although it was a bit wasteful, it should be in time for dinner.

The sky has completely darkened. Winter nights come early, and with most of the sunlight completely gone, the days seem even shorter. The light cast through the gray clouds is not bright, but rather has an indescribable sense of oppression. Even so, it is a light that can make people feel at ease. If that light disappears because of the coming of night, what remains is the loneliness and fear that fills the surroundings and also fills the heart.

Away from the fire, outside the range of the firelight, there was only suffocating darkness and the woods that looked particularly eerie in the darkness. The north wind whistled through the woods, sounding like some unknown low hum, not the roar of the dead, nor the footsteps of wild beasts, but something more unknown and more frightening.

However, Lunicia didn't care.

Even though she had never traveled alone, she was not alone now.

The slight sound of the gears and the girl's breathing, the faint sounds always revealed their presence. Even if they didn't speak, Lunicea would not feel that they had left her.

The pheasant, which has been plucked, skinned and gutted, is put into a basin of water to wash, and then strung together with pre-cut wooden sticks. The trunk of the small python is also strung together in this way, and the preparations are completed.

Remove the stems of the mushrooms, wash the caps, and throw the removed parts into the garbage pit together with snake skin, internal organs and other waste materials. This way, you are fully prepared.

"What Lady Luna is planning to do is——"

"Barbecue, right? Besides cooking soup, the other thing you should do in the wild is barbecue."

In fact, we can't be so arbitrary. After all, there are also other forms such as slate fried eggs, although they don't seem to be much different.

In the past few days, the group really hadn't had a decent meal - as the saying goes, magic berries are the source of life for adventurers, and magic berries are also the biggest enemy in the adventurer's career. People can survive by eating magic berries all the time, but people who keep eating magic berries can definitely not be called normal people.

Therefore, those who love to eat magic berries are not human beings at all.

After all, it is well known that magic berries can fill the stomach, magic berries can provide nutrition, and magic berries can replenish water.

But the magic berry tastes bad.

Well, that's not quite right. The magic berry is sweet and sour, full of water, and tastes okay. It can basically be considered a high-end version of blueberries. But no matter what, even if you can use magic tricks to change the magic berry into strawberry-flavored magic berry, blueberry-flavored magic berry, mulberry-flavored magic berry, raspberry-flavored magic berry, apple-flavored magic berry, banana-flavored magic berry, durian-flavored magic berry, steak-flavored magic berry, grilled fish-flavored magic berry... it's still a magic berry, and the taste and ingredients won't change at all. Even the most tenacious adventurer will not be able to escape vomiting or diarrhea after eating berries for a week or even a month.

Now, Lunisia's face would probably turn green when she saw the Godberry.

Adventurers have very few cooking methods to choose from in the wild. The environment, time, tools and seasonings all limit their cooking skills. Wild vegetables can be cooked into soup, meat can be grilled or smoked, and fungi can be cooked in both ways. However, adventurers who are not good at distinguishing fungi generally do not gamble with their lives, so most of the time they can be directly excluded.

"The mushrooms have been skewered and grilled. We didn't find any wild vegetables today."

"After Ashe's assessment, she believed that this was a non-toxic strain of bacteria."

"I won't eat poisonous mushrooms!"

"Even if Lady Luna is poisoned, I will find a way to save Lady Luna."

"Don't imagine something ominous..."

Shake off the water, then apply a mixture of salt and pepper, and finally insert the wooden stick into the ground near the fire pit, and you can start grilling.

"A bit boring."

"Boring, huh?"

Ella didn't seem to understand what Lunetia meant.

"I was thinking of trying to process large monsters as food... but I ate a bunch of sacred berries and bread, and in the end, I just dissected a pheasant."

It looks like he's complaining because his curiosity isn't satisfied.

The holy, great, kind, and noble saint and holy warrior is complaining because her cooking skills cannot be verified.

"hehe."

"What, what's so funny?"

"I just feel that Lady Luna sometimes has this side of her."

"What is it——"

While turning over the pheasants, snake meat and mushrooms on the sticks from time to time, she put the washed gloves aside, stretched out her palms, and warmed herself against the flames. The flames dispelled the night and drove away the cold, leaving a space that was not very spacious but comfortable enough. The light illuminated the tent, the snow, the tree trunks, and also the bodies of the three people, allowing them to see each other very clearly, see each other's demeanor, expressions, and every little movement.

Ashlee hugged her knees, sat on the stone, and stared at the barbecue by the fire. She didn't need to eat, this was probably just out of curiosity about "cooking". She should have some knowledge about how to process ingredients and how to turn them into edible things, but it was different from seeing it with her own eyes and doing it with her own hands.

Occasionally looking at the food, and occasionally looking at Lunicia and Ella, then Ashatherin stretched out her iron hands and touched her abdomen.

Flat but slightly undulating, smooth but lacking in warmth, it does look like a beautiful and delicate belly belonging to a young girl, but everyone knows that there are no internal organs inside, just a layer of skin that may have come from someone, or may just be a man-made thing, covering the gears and circuits. If you stroke upward along the lower abdomen, the result will not change at all, there is no stomach, no esophagus, and even no heart. She does not need to do anything to survive, but as a price, she will not know what it feels like to be alive.

Don’t you know, or have you forgotten?

That is something that is too far away, too far away, perhaps even a memory that the world has forgotten.

But what does it matter? Her mind, which lacked emotional ups and downs, would not attribute it to misfortune. It was just a flash of confusion that even she herself did not understand. It was short and subtle, and there was no time to savor it before it was dissipated in the overabundance of information.

"what happened?"

Following Lunicia's words, Ella's gaze once again turned to Ashetherin's position.

Unlike Lunicia's concern, Ella didn't seem to know how to get along with this mechanical girl. When she saw her close contact with Lunicia, she couldn't help but feel blocked in her heart, but if she looked at Lunicia's generous expression, she would feel very ridiculous. What kind of thoughts and feelings should she have towards the girl who had the same face as Lunicia? She didn't know, and she didn't want to know, so except for the occasional tit-for-tat, she kept a nonchalant attitude at other times.

I clearly can't do this, I can't do that, and I can't have such expectations, such feelings. It would be better if it were this way.

A not-so-subtle balance that could be broken by Lunicia at any time.

The pheasant meat sizzled in the firelight, and the fat would occasionally overflow from it as the flames burned, dripping into the fire, making the flames more excited. The snake meat was much quieter, just gradually shrinking under the high temperature, and the color became darker. The aroma of the meat could no longer be covered up. The outdoor cooking lacked seasoning, but just roasting it over the fire could bring out waves of tempting flavors.

"Nothing."

"really?"

"it is true."

Her attention was scattering in both directions, on one hand she was paying attention to the little expressions of Ashatherine and Ella, on the other hand she was strongly looking forward to dinner, which made things that she was already confused about even more confusing. It seemed that it was too difficult for her to understand Ashatherine's little thoughts - what's more, even the person involved herself didn't understand it yet.