Published: February 12, 2025
“Hey, Jack, your big reindeer has become as ordinary as your name,” a voice called out, causing Jack, who was feeding his battle beast, to turn his head and look over with some annoyance.
He saw Adelon strutting over, swinging his dirty braids, accompanied by a tall, snow-white mutated reindeer that strutted around the camp just like its owner.
“You shameless guy, get lost!” Jack cursed as he continued to feed his mount.
As one of the few herbivorous creatures in the apocalypse, reindeer had high demands for their feed. Only mutated plants with an evolution level of four or higher could satisfy them.
What Jack held in his hand was a mutated plant called Black Fern Reed, classified as a level four. The magic crystal had already been harvested, leaving about five pounds of leaves and stems.
It seemed like a decent amount, but compared to the reindeer, which weighed over a ton, it felt insufficient.
Yes, Jack's mutated reindeer was still hungry.
In North America, particularly in Alaska, this wasn’t considered unusual.
This place was somewhat different from another continent; there were many large organizations here, rigorous and powerful, but a culture was also prevalent—mercenary culture.
Within this culture, mercenary groups and individual mercenaries further divided into two parts.
Perhaps due to the deeply-rooted character of freedom here, people were reluctant to be managed or commanded.
In their minds, freedom was indeed valued above love or even life.
The popularity of the mercenary culture created a habitual employment relationship between the people and organizations.
Some organizations would hire mercenaries to help complete tasks, or they would list rewards for mercenaries to undertake them independently.
Once habits formed, they would continue forward until they became unadaptable and were eliminated.
In North America, it was clear that the mercenary system hadn't reached a dead end; despite its various flaws, it remained a mainstream behavior. The survival of the fittest principle applied here as well.
Jack was one who felt this deeply.
He had originally been a soldier in a mercenary group, and because he hated finding clients and bargaining, he felt no shame in getting a salary each month without those troubles.
However, in this era, where strength held paramount importance, he found his salary slow to contribute to his evolution.
After noticing that someone was using him as cannon fodder during a few missions, he left the mercenary group in anger and became a free mercenary.
To take on more tasks, he used his savings to buy a level three mutated reindeer battle beast, becoming a well-known reindeer cavalryman in Alaska.
However, as a free mercenary, he had to find his own tasks and negotiate with employers, which weren't Jack's strong suits. Often, his pay for similarly dangerous tasks was lower than others, and over time, his income was even less than when he was in the mercenary group.
If it were just him, it wouldn’t be a problem, but now he had to support a mutated reindeer. As a five-star evolver, Jack often went hungry himself just to buy good feed for his battle beast.
But first, the number of mutated plants in the northern region was relatively low, and the reindeer's diet was even more limited, leading to high feed prices. Second, the mutated reindeer had a huge appetite, putting heavy pressure on Jack. Not only was it difficult to earn enough for a six-star evolution potion, but even their daily meal costs became a challenge.
One characteristic of mutated reindeer was that when their nutrition fell short, they wouldn't weaken to the point of losing their combat ability but would instead downgrade, resulting in a decline in strength without becoming entirely useless.
Originally, Jack's reindeer had been nurtured and upgraded to a level four mutated reindeer, but due to insufficient nutrition and hunger, it had now downgraded back to level three.
Thus, Adelon mocked the reindeer, comparing it to Jack.