System: Build My Own Territory Chapter 1: Heavenly Artifacts
The Karedi Empire.
New Era, Year 521, beginning of March.
Lynn rose onto his tiptoes, peering around cautiously. The sun blazed fiercely, forcing him to lift a hand over his eyes.
To the north stretched thick forests, south lay desolate hills, west flowed turbulent rivers, and east rose majestic mountains.
Confusion flickered across Lynn’s features.
Did he... transmigrate here?
Just moments earlier, he’d been immersed in a brand-new online game blending manor management with Mount & Blade elements flawlessly.
The visuals were breathtaking, every scene worthy of desktop wallpaper.
No mods available, no instant builds, no quick crafting—pure hard work was required for everything.
For seven straight days and nights, he’d grinded relentlessly, desperate not to fall behind others.
Then darkness swallowed his sight, and when his eyes opened again, he was in this place...
Damn!
This game really could devour a person’s life!
He steadied his breathing a bit, then a flood of foreign memories rushed into his head, fusing rapidly.
Lynn’s face turned intricate with emotions.
He was now Lynn Blake, bastard offspring of Marquis Duca from the Karedi Empire.
Though fully grown into adulthood.
As a bastard, he didn’t even qualify for the Duca family name.
This patch of ground under his boots served as Marquis Duca’s gift for his coming-of-age ceremony.
Framed as a gift, it was merely discarding worthless barren land to shove him aside.
The trek from the Marquis’s Castle took three full months.
That road was remote, crawling with bandits, wild beasts prowling everywhere...
A mere fifteen-year-old boy could easily meet his end along the path.
Marquis Duca couldn’t care less about his survival.
Just a bastard son, after all!
Yet the eldest son, eager to secure the inheritance, dispatched henchmen to finish Lynn off right here, all to safeguard the marquis’s honor and the purity of the bloodline.
His beloved big brother was exceptionally eager about it.
Under this world’s rules of primogeniture.
The marquis title could never pass to Lynn, who’d barely spent a day in the Marquis’s Castle.
Lynn now found himself at the southern tip of the Marquisate.
The very edge of the Karedi Empire too.
This spot didn’t even appear on the Empire’s official maps.
Makes sense, naturally.
Given the Karedi Empire’s immense size, countless regions remained uncharted.
He’d already surveyed the area.
No villages or towns in sight for tens of kilometers.
Yet swift shadows darted at the forest fringe!
Lynn carried nothing but the bloodied fief grant deed, utterly empty-handed.
Forget vengeance for now—the urgent matter was sheer survival!
Lynn pondered deeply.
Head back to a town?
Out of the question.
This territory lay distant from the Marquis’s Castle, but still firmly under Marquis Duca’s domain.
Should manor overseers, town folk, or passing merchants spot him and word reach his dear elder brother, that brother would gladly arrange another demise.
Flee to another noble’s domain?
The idea got scrapped instantly.
With his frail build, he’d likely get nabbed by some other lord before leaving the Marquis’s lands, turned into a slave.
Remain right here?
Barren wastes, isolated, teeming with savage beasts and venomous bugs, perils lurking everywhere.
Lynn switched his mindset; as the Karedi Empire’s frontier, visitors were rare here.
For him, it might actually offer a shot at living on?
Still, how could he carve out survival in this forsaken wilderness?
The season hadn’t warmed to true spring yet.
Nights plunged the temperature close to freezing.
Lynn figured that if forest beasts didn’t devour him, the cold would claim him by dawn!
Amid his racing thoughts.
Lynn’s sight hazed over briefly; a panel of text materialized before him.
[Imperial Myth System loading]
[1%...10%...50%...]
[Heavenly Artifacts mode loading complete]
[Other modes pending unlock]
...
Lynn felt a jolt of shock, but quickly regained his poise.
Imperial Myth—the very game he’d been grinding before transmigrating!
Featuring RPG growth, sim management, RTS battles, conquest campaigns, and beyond.
Begin as a humble Free Person, toil upward to forge your own Imperial Myth!
[Heavenly Artifacts] represented the management sim mode.
In essence, endless grinding of Life Skills: farming, logging, hunting, gathering, smithing, construction, commerce.
Lynn crouched down a touch, seized a weed with his right hand, tugged gently, yanking it free from the earth.
A translucent interface popped up in his vision.
[Successfully uprooted weed, Collection Experience +1]
[Obtained weed*1]
Astonished?
Not at all!
Lynn felt utterly desensitized.
Even after transmigrating, grinding remained his fate?
Well, since he was here, better make the best of it.
Pushing down his tangled emotions, Lynn swept his gaze over the landscape once more.
Armed with [Heavenly Artifacts], farming was his inescapable path.
No!
He was a natural-born farming genius.
...
Lynn pushed through the weed-choked ground, arriving at the Crescent Bay river’s edge; on the raised bank grew dozens of lofty pine trees.
To the left of Crescent Bay, some four to five hundred meters away, loomed a thick woodland perfect for timber harvesting.
Straight ahead stood soaring peaks, ideal for mining stone.
To the right sprawled low-lying barren hills.
An ideal spot!
Less than a hundred meters from the water, perfect for drawing water or angling from the shore.
Open sightlines everywhere, spotting threats from afar.
Once he fashioned a hatchet, chopping those riverside pines would yield wood for a shelter or cabin.
As a veteran manor-building gamer, Lynn knew these steps inside out.
He stooped low, starting to yank away the weeds at his feet.
Grasping a dry grass stem, he pulled with moderate strength, extracting it fully.
[Weed removal successful, Collection Experience +1]
[Obtained linen*1]
[Obtained linen seeds*1]
Glancing at the system prompts, Lynn showed no surprise.
Weeds could yield linen upon removal, processable into fibers, then spun into cloth.
He flung the linen aside carelessly and kept clearing the overgrowth.
After tidying about ten square meters, Lynn paused.
He slumped onto the pile of weeds, breathing raggedly.
Red, itchy blotches covered his neck, irritated by the weeds’ tiny barbs.
His body burned hot; were it not for the mild dozen-degree air, sweat would soak him through.
This untilled soil was rock-hard; removing a single weed seemed trivial.
Yet with each successive pull, exhaustion mounted relentlessly.
With a mental command, Lynn summoned the Heavenly Artifacts interface.
[Construction: Level 0 (0/100)]
[Planting: Level 0 (0/100)]
[Collection: Level 0 (13/100)]
[Production: Level 0 (0/100)]
[Breeding: Level 0 (0/100)]
...
Seeing the thirteen Collection EXP and the cleared patch, Lynn sensed a strange satisfaction.
Fresh insights on Collection flooded his thoughts.
True enough, persistent grinding led to endless growth!
Still, he noticed yields dropping; single weeds no longer granted full EXP.
Hand-pulling alone made progress torturously sluggish...
He required proper tools!
After a thirty-minute break, Lynn stood and scoured the newly cleared zone.
He’d just collected some twigs when, a few meters off, shell-like stone shards drew his attention.
[Flint: Siliceous rock, can be used to craft stone tools or start a fire.]
Lynn’s eyes lit up at once.