Lord Harland

Shortly after Richard and others returned, Sylph brought the elves from the east coast province to Sutton Viscounty. After five years of construction, many wooden and stone buildings had appeared in Sutton Viscounty. (っ◔◡◔)っ

The architectural style of these houses is very special. They are mainly made of natural materials such as trees and stones. The architectural style is simple and elegant. They are taller than the houses inhabited by humans. The roofs are mainly round or oval.

In the past five years, although Sutton was often away from the territory, he was responsible for the creation of two to three thousand indentured slaves in the territory.

Under the command of the elves, the indentured slaves worked for a long time and built an elven house large enough for hundreds of people to live in.

In Sutton's territory, a huge garden was also built, a magic plantation was opened, and many magic plants were planted.

When Sutton surrendered to Richard, he made it clear that the territory he was entrusted with would not allow humans to settle for a long time, and that the territory would be left to the elves.

The lifestyle of the elven tribe is very primitive, mainly gathering, fishing and hunting. The elves of the Eastern Continent will plant a very strong bread tree as their main food.

A medium-sized elf tribe has a very large range of activities, reaching approximately hundreds of thousands square kilometers. On the contrary, large elven tribes often choose to settle down in order to protect the Tree of Life, and their activity range is relatively small. A large elf tribe with a population of several thousand may have only about one-tenth of the activity range of a medium-sized tribe.

Although the area of ​​the Eastern Continent is not as vast as the Central Continent, and the total number of elves has a population of millions, the power of this extraordinary race is relatively scattered, and the Elf Royal Court only has a population of more than 30,000. Several particularly famous elven tribes have a population of more than 10,000.

The elf slave-catching groups in the Central Continent generally do not provoke large-scale elf tribes. Their slave-hunting targets are mainly small and medium-sized elf tribes.

The current situation in the Eastern Continent is that as long as the Tree of Life is found, the elves will choose to settle down. If they don't find the Tree of Life, they will choose fishing, hunting, and nomadic life, and will not stay in one place for too long.

The elves under Sylph's command are all members of tribes that have lost their homeland. The cruel reality makes them very aware of the current situation. Except for Richard, who is related to the elves by marriage, it is difficult for them to find shelter in the upper echelons of human countries. Therefore, they are not opposed to settled life, and are willing to serve and fight for the lord Richard.

Unless they suffer heavy losses, the elves will not oppose Richard, the human lord.

The Sutton family's territory now covers 28,000 square kilometers, which is roughly enough for hundreds of elves.

Sylph settled down her elf subordinates, and Harland led the annual merchandise fair to begin again.

Now Harland leads the commodity fair, which lasts for twelve days. Regular commodities are sold in the first nine days, and an auction is held in the last three days, where a large number of extraordinary materials are sold.

From magic plants, Warcraft furs, super-magic metal materials, to alchemy bombs, enchanted weapons, enchanted armor, to all kinds of potions, in recent years, even high-end products such as Styx potions, magic hot air balloons, and high-end alchemy props have have.

Nowadays, the Harland Territory Product Expo can not only attract the caravan nobles of the Grant Kingdom, but also magicians and knights from several nearby countries. They have poured into Harland Territory in large numbers to trade all kinds of extraordinary things.

In fact, before the auction every year, there will be a large number of insider transactions, especially among Richard's vassals and the great nobles of the Grant Kingdom, who basically focus on insider transactions.

Last year's commodity expo, because it happened to be during the war, Harland Territory did not sell many extraordinary resources. This year, the demand for various transactions has almost exploded.

In particular, the great nobles of the Grant Kingdom made requests to Richard to trade magic hot air balloons.

Nowadays, the main opponents of the Grant Kingdom have shifted from the orcs to the Kingdom of Delon and the United Kingdom of the East Coast. The orcs have become the main opponents of the Duchy of Harland.

The Kingdom of Delon and the United Kingdom of the East Coast have not developed flying units and cannot restrain the magic hot air balloon at all.

There is a magic hot air balloon unit conducting reconnaissance in the air. The enemy's movements are completely one-way and transparent. Two years ago, Richard sold magic hot air balloons to Duke Duran for the first time. In last year's battle, this unit played a very crucial role. .

Seeing how useful the magic hot air balloon force is, whether it is the Seventh Earl of the South, the Fourth Marquis of the East, or several other Dukes of the Grant Kingdom, they all hope to purchase a large number of magic hot air balloons from the Harland Territory.

The market was in short supply, so Richard immediately chose to barter, asking for a set of magic hot air balloons in exchange for a thousand serfs.

During last year's war, the Grant Kingdom swallowed up a large number of people. The number of the great nobles increased by at least hundreds of thousands and as many as a million serfs.

Richard's request for population exchange was not too high.

According to the organization of Leader Harland, a squadron is organized into six magic hot air balloon teams and equipped with eight magic hot air balloons. Two of the magic hot air balloons are spare parts. Once they are damaged or fall during training or combat, there will be spare parts. You can perform tasks quickly.

A magic hot air balloon brigade is organized into ten squadrons and requires eighty magic hot air balloons.

Now Harland has led the army to organize a total of three magic hot air balloon brigades, which is completely sufficient in regular battles.

Two years ago, Duke Duran purchased thirty magic hot air balloons. Six groups fell during last year's battle. This year, Richard sold fourteen groups to him, expanding Duke Duran's magic hot air balloon force to half a brigade of four. Ten groups.

The Richard family sold twenty-four groups to the four southern Dukes of Edward, York, Guise, and Fox, which was enough to form three squadrons of magic hot air balloons. The Duke of Lorraine had no combat mission and only purchased eight groups from Harland. , forming a squadron of magical hot air balloons.

Because he was in northern Xinjiang, Duke Jonathan organized six magic hot-air balloon squadrons at one time and purchased fifty magic hot-air balloons from Richard. Grand Duke Stanik even ordered one hundred and twenty sets of magic hot-air balloons from Richard. Hot air balloon orders.

Of course, the Jonathan family does not have that large population, so they are willing to hand over the agency rights of Elf Black Tea in Grant Kingdom to Richard, and provide Elf Black Tea in installments of 500,000 gold coins in five years according to the market price.

Elf black tea is a very important export commodity of the Grand Duchy of Stanik. Its annual market share in the Grant Kingdom is about 120,000 to 30,000 gold coins. After obtaining the monopoly trading rights for Elf Black Tea, even if Richard increases the selling price by one-third, he will still be able to earn an additional profit of 40,000 gold coins a year.

Moreover, strengthening the strength of the Grand Duchy of Stanik will also be of great help to the Harland Territory in resisting the invasion of the orcs.

Based on this consideration, Richard decided to agree to the Jonathan family's request.

After agreeing to the request of the Jonathan family, Harland's magic hot air balloon production capacity was somewhat insufficient. Richard, the Fourth Marquis in the East and the Seventh Earl in the South, could only agree to trade a squadron of magic hot air balloons.

The only exception was William. Richard directly mobilized three magic hot air balloon squadrons from Harland's active troops to join William's Earldom.

Through various internal transactions, Richard negotiated 368 sets of magic hot air balloon orders, traded the exclusive rights to elf black tea to the Jonathan family for fifteen years, and supplied goods of approximately half a million gold coins for five consecutive years. In addition, he obtained orders from other In the hands of the great nobles, a population of 198,000 was traded.

There are thirty-two sets of magic hot air balloons left, which Richard is preparing to sell at auction.

According to the plan, Harland Leader will sell 400 sets of magic hot air balloons this year.

A set of magic hot air balloons includes a magic flame blast furnace with alchemical props, a set of large binoculars, a set of large balloons made of silk, and a set of hanging baskets made of balsa wood.

Silk balloons also need to be painted with a very thin layer of rubber paint, which is very labor-intensive to make. It requires the cooperation of magic alchemy factory, silk textile factory, wooden processing factory, lens grinding laboratory, rubber processing factory and other units. Things like copycats require magic civilization and industrial development to a certain level, which actually implies a very high degree of difficulty.

Whether it is a magic flame-throwing furnace, a large binoculars, or a waterproof, breathable rubber silk cloth, the threshold for copying or counterfeiting is very high. Even if the kingdom is not weak, it may take a long time.

Moreover, the Harland Territory already has flying units such as lions and wyverns, and Richard is not afraid of large-scale leakage of magic hot air balloon manufacturing technology.

As early as this spring, Richard was preparing to sell a large number of magic hot air balloons. Various factories have been working overtime to produce magic hot air balloons. By November, before the commodity expo was held, they had only rushed to produce 260 magic hot air balloons. Group. Compared with this year's order of 400 sets, it is far from enough.

Forced to have no choice, Richard had to take out all the spare supplies of Harland's team, and directly mobilized 80 groups of hot air balloons from the First Magic Hot Air Balloon Brigade to barely complete the order. After taking away the active weapons of the First Magic Hot Air Balloon Brigade, in order to appease the troops, Richard promised to build them a more expensive magic airship to replace the magic hot air balloon.

In fact, Harland has successfully built three magic airships and begun experimenting with new tactics.

This time, the Magic Airship Force and the First Magic Hot Air Balloon Brigade were simply reorganized into the First Magic Airship Brigade, and the investment in magic power was increased. There are ten magicians and thirty magic apprentices in a brigade.

The biggest difference between a magic airship and a magic hot air balloon is that it has a device for propulsion and flight control. In addition, the magic airship uses buoyancy gas (helium) to provide buoyancy, while the magic hot air balloon needs to heat the air and utilizes the physical properties of the reduced density of heated air to provide buoyancy.

To build a magic airship, you not only need to make sealed airbags and auxiliary airbags, but also build pods, propulsion devices, rudders, elevators and other devices, which cost about six thousand gold coins.

A magic airship brigade is equipped with thirty magic airships, and the equipment cost is 200,000 gold coins.

After more than ten years of continuous development, Harland's magic steam engine technology has become fully mature. On top of the magic airship, a magic steam engine is installed to drive the propeller and provide kinetic energy for the magic airship.

Richard is also planning to continue to transform the magic airship, and then arrange defensive and offensive magic arrays on the airship, step by step improving the magic airship into a magical creation like a copycat floating city.

In fact, as long as a legendary magic core is used as the core and Harland leads the current level of magical civilization, Richard's idea should be realized. However, the actual combat performance may be a little worse. It is difficult to defend against the spell attacks of high-level magicians, and the cost-effectiveness is far less outstanding than the ordinary magic airships that are popular in volume.

Although the magic airship is more expensive to build, its load capacity, safety, maneuverability, and flexibility are far greater than those of the magic hot air balloon, and there is room for further improvement. If you are willing to invest more, you can also add defensive and offensive spells to the magic airship. As technology advances, magic airships will inevitably replace magic hot air balloons step by step.

In fact, Harland Leader has already made a plan and decided to build three magic airship brigades three years apart to replace the magic hot air balloons.

Of course, the Magic Hot Air Balloon Force will not be completely dismantled, but will dismantle the attached artillery and become an affiliated unit of the artillery to perform calibration and observation tasks.

According to the plan led by Harland, three artillery squadrons have been added every year in the past three years to form a magic airship brigade and four infantry brigade. The annual investment in new equipment alone is as high as about 300,000 gold coins. In addition to the investment in equipping magic ships with magic crystal cannons, manufacturing new magic ships, increasing the number of Warcraft cavalry, etc., calculated separately in three years, the weapons and equipment alone consume 500,000 gold coins per year, which is undoubtedly a very huge sum. expenditures.

If it hadn't swallowed up a large amount of territory and millions of people, the finances of the Harland Territory would not be able to support it at all.

It is precisely because of financial constraints that Richard chose to strengthen arms sales and vigorously promote the influence of commodity expos. In order to build up the reputation of the auction, Harland led many precious materials to be sold at the auction this year, including high-level Enchanted armor, high-level Styx potions, and some extraordinary items are considered very rare even in the Harland Mage Association.

The most precious thing this year is the ninth-level enchanted armor that Richard and Undine jointly refined using the thick leather of the legendary ogre.

The ogre has a serious stench. Although the defense effect of this armor is very outstanding, the unbearable stench makes Richard not like this thing. Anyway, Richard rarely participates in front-line battles now, and he has captured skins on his body. Lothar's eighth-level enchanted armor is not much different from the ogre armor, so there is no urgent need for this item.

Of the two ninth-level ogre armors that were successfully produced this year, Richard gave one to his uncle Thoros and the other was sold at this year's auction. As the leader of Harland's army, Soros needs to participate in front-line battles. In addition, he has more endurance than Richard, so he happily accepted this precious gift.

Although the ninth-level ogre armor has flaws, it is still a very precious extraordinary treasure, estimated at around 300,000 gold coins.

Of course, such precious extraordinary props cannot be purchased with magic crystals. Even if they go to auction, they still need to use extraordinary resources and barter.