Pillar of Yita

”That official has already left Golande, heading south to Fanric, seemingly to avoid trouble, or perhaps for some other reason.”

”Isn’t that right in the Long Lake District, on the southern side of the Kudi Mountain Range?”

Upon hearing this, Fang Hong looked at the others, particularly Atira and Hilveld. After seeing the two of them nod slightly, he then said, ”We can go to Fanric, but there’s no need to disrupt our original plans. Enhancing our strength is still the top priority for the Seven Seas Travel Group right now.”

The Elf Girl didn’t object. Reed, sitting on the sofa beside them, was cutting tobacco. The bright afternoon sunlight streamed through the window onto his mane. The silver scissors in his hands clicked crisply. The Big Catfolk, looking like he was enjoying his leisure time, had no intention of speaking up either.

Miss Ship’s Officer naturally sided with Fang Hong, and with no objections from the others, the plan was thus set.

Only Tianlan commented, ”In any case, Lady Papamo deserves a lot of credit for this time.”

However, Parker was quick to understand the Witch’s hidden jibe and loudly retorted, ”It’s Parker, not some Lady Papamo.”

Everyone laughed upon hearing this.

This was mainly because of an incident that occurred during that time. The poor Mr. Dwarf’s story with Lady Papamo had come to an end, but unexpectedly, in the last confirmation process, the other party actually took out a gemstone and proposed to Lady Papamo in front of everyone.

According to Tianlan, who almost died laughing at the time, Lady Papamo seemed very moved at first. After accepting the gemstone from the poor Mr. Dwarf, she rejected his marriage proposal.

This grand gesture quickly became a humorous anecdote among the Adventure Group, and the esteemed name of ’the charming Lady Papamo’ spread far and wide.

The pity was that Parker ultimately couldn’t keep the gemstone that he barely managed to swindle. Miss Atira confiscated it in the name of ”all expenses and income during the mission being team assets.”

It was an emerald, said to be very valuable—of course, probably stolen by that loyal and reliable Mr. Dwarf.

Thus, the last remaining mission for the Adventure Group was only to find the recipient that Mazak had asked them to seek. But this seemingly simple task had been making no progress, for no other reason than the fact that the Upper City District, Bino District, and Port District were just too large to cover.

Without any shortcuts, everyone could only proceed with the check one by one.

Seeing another week go by, the group’s stay in Golande was approaching half a month. To save time, they continued to comb the streets by day, searching for clues left over from the past.

Meanwhile, by night, the work on Mr. Greyrock’s platform modification in the beast pens had also begun in an orderly fashion.

Although the materials for the platform were still unresolved, the ordered airbags had arrived. Fang Hong and Luo Yu planned to first construct a framework, or at least to come up with a design. After all, the journey from Golande to the Kudi Mountain Range was not a short one, and the Seven Seas Travel Group was not the previous nine-person squad. They couldn’t keep Elisa, Bakins, and Xiangzi sleeping in the hammocks on the platform forever, could they?

Admittedly, Bakins used to be a sailor and had seen worse conditions, and Xiangzi had no complaints, but Elisa was still a girl after all, and since everyone in the team was equal, the previous arrangement for Xiangzi was only temporary and not a long-term solution.

In addition, Fang Hong also took into consideration that the facilities in Golande were better overall. The necessary tools and parts could be sourced locally, saving him the time of having to make them himself—which might not meet the quality standards due to his level.

Since they were not the first to create a Beast of Burden Platform, there were also factories in the pens that could be rented for platform modification, so doing the work here was far better than working in the wild.

Therefore, the modification became part of the early plan.

The modification work naturally started from the team’s actual needs. It was to be a mobile camp that provided some of the basic functions of a campsite, such as shelter from wind and rain. Mr. Greyrock’s original platform had four compartments that offered these functions, but they were clearly not enough for a team of twelve people.

However, with the additional buoyancy provided by the airbags, the platform could be further enlarged. With the help of the original Guy Generator—at most a sevenfold increase in bearing capacity—it wasn’t impossible to expand and improve the original living space. But on this matter, there was a significant disagreement among the group.

To be precise, Fang Hong wanted to design the modified platform as similar as possible to an Airship for practice purposes. The original compartments were not to be crudely placed on the platform’s frame but transformed into cabin structures.

However, his idea was more straightforward: to expand from four to eight cabins, keeping a uniform size, with two people per cabin, accommodating up to sixteen people in total.

Certainly, with only twelve members currently, they were far from having enough hands to operate an airship. For an adventure group, many critical positions were still missing, and they would eventually need to recruit more people—professional Sailmakers, a Chief Mage, a Ship’s Doctor, and a Priest.

So leaving some cabins empty was also for the future need to expand the team—