Chapter 1854 - 1853: The 17th Official Copy World

[Age 0: You were born and named Denos by your parents. You were born in Kovotra, a Free City State in the middle of the continent. The advantageous geographical location has created a thriving trade here.]

[Age 1: Your parents are both nobles of Kovotra. Your grandfather was once a General of the city-state, leading the defense against several invasions of exotic beast waves.]

[Age 2: Your family has operated a trade route for generations, purchasing precious furs and gemstones from the Northern Kingdom of the Northern Borders, selling them to the Julia Kingdom in the South, and then buying food and crafts from the Julia Kingdom to sell to the Northern Kingdom. What is extremely rare for ordinary people is common in your family.]

[Age 3: Your father finally returned with the trade caravan from the Northern Kingdom and met you for the first time. You are his first child, and he is very fond of you.]

[Age 4: The governor of the city-state initiated an expansion of the city-state. Your family donated a large amount of money to assist with the expansion, which caused a significant decline in your family’s living standards. Your father had to follow the trade caravan again to the Julia Kingdom.]

[Age 5: You underwent the family’s blood trial, a rite of passage in your family. Grandfather personally hunted an exotic beast tiger, drained its blood for your medicinal bath. During the trial, your mother was very nervous. Later, you heard from your mother that many children died in the blood trial.]

[Age 6: A cousin went mad during the blood trial and was killed by grandfather. That cousin’s parents often played with you before, joking with you and the cousin, but for several months, you never saw them smile.]

[Age 7: Father returned from the Julia Kingdom. You asked him why children must undergo the blood trial. He told you it’s the family’s mission, only members strong enough can protect family and city-state. You began receiving basic education and some basic martial arts training.]

[Age 8: Inside the city, there’s a place called school where all the noble children of the city-state are sent to study. You were also sent there and found yourself much stronger than some children, easily lifting stones they couldn’t. Many children followed you. You also noticed that there are fewer children from your family in the school compared to other families.]

[Age 9: Family life is not particularly affluent as mother says it is supporting the city-state expansion. You don’t understand what city-state expansion means. You heard from schoolchildren that outside the walls where you live, there’s another city, the outer city, that’s being expanded.]

[Age 10: Your teacher is a renowned scholar in the city-state. He often fainted on the spot due to anger from your homework and cultural understanding. Several times, your grandfather apologized to him in person.]

[Age 11: Father returned again from the North. He told you many legendary stories of the Northern Kingdom. He told you that in the capital of the Northern Kingdom, there’s a vast land without exotic beast attacks, the most prosperous place on the North Continent. An ageless, undying Queen sits on the Frozen Throne, ruling the entire Northern Kingdom. You can sense the envy in your father’s words, but you don’t quite understand what aging, death, and agelessness mean.]

[Age 12: Father left again, leaving you with a younger brother.]

[Age 13: Mother had to care for your brother, so sometimes she couldn’t watch over you. Finally, you found an opportunity to leave the inner city with the supply team and reached the outer city. The outer city’s conditions are much worse than the inner city, mainly simple stone houses or wooden houses. Walking to the outermost side, you could even see simple bamboo houses and dusty construction sites. When you were about to leave the city, your mother caught you with some people.]

[Age 14: You were punished with six months of confinement. Besides school and the training grounds, you couldn’t go anywhere. As your brother grew, the task of caring for him was given to you. You vented your anger in school, and finally, the old scholar could no longer stand you and expelled you from school. Even grandfather’s personal apology couldn’t change the result. Grandfather severely scolded you; it was the first time he hit you.]

[Age 15: Your physique grew more towering. After leaving school, you could only go to the training ground, learning how to fight, kill, and deal with exotic beasts with soldiers and warriors. You loved this life, feeling it was right for you. You first accompanied soldiers to the wilderness, killing a mutant black wolf.]

[Age 16: The outer city expansion finally concluded, and family life became more comfortable. Father returned home, aware of your expulsion but didn’t blame you. He trained you personally, teaching you to become a warrior. You increasingly participated in combating exotic beasts and always emerged victorious. Your prestige in the military grew, and even grandfather often praised you.]

[Age 17: Your brother died in the blood trial, less fortunate than you. Parents were very sad, and you suddenly felt very lost, feeling your achievements meaningless. In the following half year, though you still participated in hunting, you weren’t as enthusiastic.]

[Age 18: Eighteen is the legal age in the city-state. You’ve become a qualified warrior. The governor personally presented you and your peers with garlands. By the city’s rules, you could decide your life freely, but this time, you returned home, asking grandfather how to reduce the death toll. Even wise, dignified grandfather couldn’t answer you; he told you to visit the old scholar.]

[Age 19: The old scholar was unwilling to see you. You visited several times, but his servants claimed he wasn’t home. So you waited at his door for three months without moving, and finally, he opened the door and invited you in.

You asked him how to reduce the death toll. He said he couldn’t give you an answer either. He gave you a bowl of black liquid that looked like poison, telling you to drink it, suggesting you might find the answer yourself. You drank the potion, pain enveloping you sharply. When you awoke, you had become a Transcendent ’Reader’.]

[Age 20: The old scholar opened his library to you for free reading. Reading wasn’t easy for you, even with the help of Reader’s power.

Many times, you thought of giving up and escaping to the battlefield to continue as a pure warrior, but ultimately you sat down. Servants brought food daily to ensure you were alive. You read book after book, going from boredom to habituation, then deriving pleasure from reading.]

[Age 21: You finished reading all the old scholar’s collection. The books didn’t contain what you wanted, but your thoughts had changed. You bid farewell to the scholar and returned to the family. Previously supporting the outer city expansion gained the family a jurisdiction in the outer city. Grandfather saw you and sent you to manage this jurisdiction.]

[Age 22: The jurisdiction was the outermost area of the outer city, filled with new immigrants and the poor, lacking even adequate housing, with theft and robbery rampant.

On the first day in the jurisdiction, you recruited a group of strong men in the family name. You led them to set up a crude low wall on the area’s edge, then a small square in the center of the jurisdiction.

Then you took your men and rounded up all the known thieves and robbers in your jurisdiction. The thieves had their fingers cut off according to their crimes, and the robbers who killed were executed.

You carried out executions for three consecutive days until all the habitual offenders you could find were dealt with. Then you placed a large stone by the low wall, declaring that whoever could move the stone to the square would receive a piece of nugget gold. After several days of commotion, a strong man moved the stone to the square, and in front of the gathered crowd, you gave him a piece of nugget gold on the spot.

Subsequently, you organized all the adult men in the jurisdiction to start building houses in the area.

At 23: You spent a year building neat stone houses throughout your jurisdiction. Each person who worked with you had a stone house to live in. Then you dismantled the low wall, transformed the former laborers into a security team, and rented out the stone houses at favorable rates to attract merchants.

At 24: Your jurisdiction quickly became a well-known market area in the outer city. You provided basic security services and took responsibility for the merchants. Any thief committing crimes in the area would be captured and executed in the square. Even though you raised the shop rental considerably, far above the ordinary level of the city-state, a large number of merchants still came to rent, and the entire area rapidly thrived.

At 25: The governor summoned you personally to discuss your experiences in managing the jurisdiction, then appointed you as the sheriff of the city-state.

At 26: The governor had grown old and no longer had much energy to deal with the security issues of the inner and outer cities. As soon as you took office, bandits composed of arrogant nobles and restless citizens pervaded the inner and outer cities.

You first built a wooden platform at the border between the outer and inner cities, which was slightly higher than the inner city walls, allowing people inside the city to also see what happened on this platform.

Then you captured several nobles who were committing murders in the outer city, one of whom was even your classmate. According to city-state law, you cut off their noses and ears and executed their servants.

From this point on, you captured many law-breaking nobles and thieves, bringing them to the platform for execution. Many nobles protested to the governor, but the governor protected you.

The entire city-state was subdued by your activities. You then vigorously arrested vagrants, taking them to the newly expanded outer city to start building the city, providing basic food and accommodation.

You persuaded your grandfather and the military to expand recruitment, enlisting many idle young nobles to protect the farmlands outside the city and battle with exotic beasts.

At 27: Through your governance, the city-state regained stability in a very short time. After discussing with the governor, you decided to open the gates of the newly expanded area to increase the number of passing caravans and have them settle in the newly built houses. The entire area quickly prospered, and the new vagrants also found livelihoods in this prosperity.

At 28: Several families dissatisfied with the governor united to assassinate him. They attempted to purge you, and you were forced to leave the city-state.

At 29: After enduring many hardships, you traversed the winds and snow of the Northern Borders to reach Xiqilelan, witnessing the splendor of the greatest northern city. Here commerce thrived and people were prosperous. You found a job as a Hunter and settled into seclusion. A Northern Country girl pursued you relentlessly, and ultimately, you succumbed and married her.

At 30: You had a child. Your wife was not beautiful, but she loved you dearly. You lived a good life. During the snow festival, you even saw the Queen of the North greeting people from the palace. You admitted she was the most beautiful person you had ever seen, but she was not as special as your wife.

At 31: Your child grew gradually, and you began to appreciate this life. You saw merchant caravans from the East in Xiqilelan, realizing this continent was bigger than you had imagined.

At 32: While hunting, a caravan stopped you. They were from Kovotra, including a noble once punished by you who later joined the army. They had been looking for you for a long time.

They told you that the new governor was abnormally cruel and lost the people’s support. Your grandfather and an old scholar were pressured to death by the new governor, and your father was forced into exile. Now, they were organizing a rebellion against the new governor and needed someone with prestige to support them. They had chosen you.

At 33: You were reluctant to get involved with Kovotra’s affairs again, but the deaths of your grandfather and teacher made you feel that you should do something. Ultimately, you confessed to your wife, and with her support, you set out on your return journey.

At 34: Upon returning to the army, you found many who had been sent to the army by you were surprisingly grateful. You conspired to launch a coup, but it was accidentally leaked. Finally, you had to act before the governor could respond. You succeeded in killing the governor and taking control of the government.

At 35: You and that military noble who sought you out became joint co-governors. You handled internal affairs while he managed military matters. You first reinforced the legal and security systems, restoring the trust and legal framework destroyed by your predecessor, which was made easier by your previous prestige.

Then you launched large-scale recruitment of the poor to develop the city, and together with the military, began farming and building trade routes to the city.

At 36: The city-state’s trade route node status was once again solidified, and the entire city-state thrived visibly. You also received a new "elixir," a subsequent Extraordinary Power for Readers, and became an "Antique Merchant."

At 37: Just as you were about to bring your wife and child from Xiqilelan, your ally, the co-governor working with you, launched an attack against you. He did not want to share power with you. You narrowly survived the attack and went into exile once more.