"Ah, I think you are mistaken. I came from the other island!"

Considering how weak those people were, I believed that there was no reason for me to hide where my stronghold was, but since I didn"t know whether someone else wouldn"t try to ask them out about my whereabouts, I decided to keep things ambiguous.

"To be fair though, you should actually call me a traveller. My real homeland is too far for me to even know which direction it is right now!"

That ruse was the best to go with. No matter what did they believe and know about the world on this island, as someone completely foreign to not only this place but the overall culture of the region, a lot of my potentially strange quirks would have their explanation in my background while giving me a lot more s.p.a.ce to research the locals!

"Traveller? That"s actually quite something! We only have out Overlord entourage strong enough to challenge the seas, forcing us to rely on his abilities to sustain our lives here. Ah, I don"t mean to make it sound bad, compared to how we used to live back before his coming, most of our people can"t see his presence as anything else but a blessing!"

I didn"t expect this guy to share such important information with me right away! While the fact that this overlord of his could travel through the seas made the threat bar next to his name in my mind skyrocket, he was probably the one I could negotiate with to both settles here and conduct some research!

The only worry, for now, was how much strength this person wielded, or rather, how proficient he was in using it!

As my small talk with the officer continued, I didn"t refrain from using my energy vision to scan every last cell of his body, hoping to find the secret behind their peculiar situation. It was unnatural for someone who could garner so much energy inside their bodies, to be unable to use it almost at all!

What actually surprised me the most, was the way in which the mana reformed their bodies. In the case with the cultivators, it started gathering in the core, then a person could drive it through their meridians and later on, acupoints. As soon as the flow turned strong enough, one could push it away in order to add the energy to his own punches, while just driving the energy around the body made the body more resilient as more and more energy continued to build up in every muscle, bone and joint.

Compared to cultivators, the local people or at least the officer I was talking with, had achieved perfection in nouris.h.i.+ng their bodies with the energy!

Thinking about it, I could only imagine how wasteful this approach of growing stronger was since, despite all the energy-rich resources growing everywhere on the island, they could only reach such a measly stage of growth!

But I had to admit, that the way in which every last cell of their bodies was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with evenly spread out energy, was something to be jealous of by itself. While it made them unable to drive their energy around their bodies as there were no changes to the density anywhere, I could only imagine how insane effects could this kind of reinforcement have on their lives!

"Speaking of which, the boat I was using to move around sadly got crushed by local currents. Do you think it would be possible if you could help me create a new raft? I"m quite curious about that barren island nearby!"

Realising that there was much more I could understand just from stealthily observing his const.i.tution, I posed a rather important question to the officer. If I had the boat, my current greatest logistical problem would be gone!

"I"m worried we don"t really know much about s.h.i.+pbuilding… It was the first Overlord that came on the s.h.i.+p, and the knowledge of how to build one is tightly kept to his closest retainers only!"

So their Overlord didn"t want them to leave this place by themselves? Considering how I was able to move to this place from my island without encountering any aquatic enemies, I could only guess that this kind of situation was the same all over the sea! 

As long as one could build boats, there were bound to be some people eager to try their luck and venture outside the world. I wonder what kind of secrets were hidden on the other islands for this Overlord to do so much for the sake of isolating the locals!

"I don"t think that will be a problem. All I need is just a simple raft, and even if I"m not a s.h.i.+pbuilder myself, I know this and that about this craft… It"s just that my crafting skills are far from enough to make an even plank, so crafting anything beyond a bunch of logs piled together is outside of my level of expertise!"

If the knowledge about s.h.i.+ps was so spa.r.s.e here, there was no reason to not try to play this card. No matter the world and the culture, most of the people were eager to gain new knowledge, especially if it was something only a small group was privy to!

"If you put this matter in this way… Just tell me what you need!"

Just like I thought, flaunting my fake knowledge about s.h.i.+pbuilding while verting all the images of s.h.i.+ps I acquired from the games and movies alike. But while the entire craft could be insanely deep and complicated, all I wanted was a simple boat to move around, not a yacht or wars.h.i.+p! With using the sails being already far past my current abilities, I didn"t dare to count that Bonger would activate in due time to let me acquire the necessary ability!

"Let"s start with just a bunch of about two meters long planks. It would be for the best if they could be thin and made out of resilient wood so that I could go with clinker cover. As for the skeleton of the boat… I think it would be the beast to get some thick but slightly curved branches, as long as they are really tough to bend. If that will be problematic, we can just carve the correct shape out of the planks."

Flaunting the only professional world I knew from the world of s.h.i.+ps, I described everything that came to my mind. As long as I could guide them to make it properly big, I was sure I could derive some simple battle technique that could allow them to grow in strength quickly for the sake of trading for some resources or maybe the prisoners they took after the battle!

For the soldiers, it didn"t matter how many prisoners did they got.  They would be all either killed off as to not waste food on them, sold into slavery or just used as free workforce for the overlord. No matter which option was the right one, as long as I could push them to use the prisoners to make the boat for me, I could use this opportunity to ask for a favourable trade!