Struggle in the Steam Age

Huck Conglomerate, a dwarf who served three generations of Viscount Surrey.

The grandfather of Robert Surrey, the Viscount of Surrey, rescued the dwarf who was almost killed in an accident, and then the two sides established a deep friendship in the process of opening up new territories.

In the next two generations, the Surrey family and the dwarf got along very well, and the dwarf naturally became an important partner of the Surrey family.

As a member of the conglomerate family of dwarves who specializes in various buildings, Huck Conglomerate has also participated in the construction of this aristocratic territory after becoming a retainer of the Viscount Surrey’s house, so the construction of this city Naturally, it also brings a lot of unique architectural styles of dwarves.

To give the simplest example, after entering the building of the Viscount’s mansion, the interior space of the mansion that appeared in front of Lawrence looked much larger than the outside.

After careful observation, he discovered that this was not using some rare space magic, but directly digging a lot of space on the mountain behind the building.

“This Viscount’s mansion, including the entire city outside, was built by three generations of talents.” Viscount Surrey introduced proudly.

"It's not just the Viscount Mansion. In fact, most of the space in the entire city is hidden in the mountains. The area of ​​the stone buildings outside is only a small part of the entire building. "

"This should be in the style of a dwarf." Seifer looked at some of the sculptures in the room that looked a little rough but revealed some special aesthetics and commented in a low voice.

"I used to visit a dungeon built by dwarves when I was studying abroad in Briton. The buildings you built here look very similar to the architectural style of that dungeon."

"The construction of the entire city is indeed based on a lot of our dwarf construction techniques." Huck Conglomerate, who was sitting aside smoking a hookah, showed a proud look on his face.

"After all, the temperature in this place is too low. It is obviously more reasonable to dig holes in the local rocks than to build buildings with heavy walls to keep them warm."

"More importantly, there are some natural spaces before the mountain where we are now. As long as we manually open some passages, we can easily get some solid usable space inside the mountain. "

Having said that, this dwarf showed a very proud expression on his face.

"You know, for us dwarves, these rocks are like our homes. We can easily use the characteristics of these different rocks to take advantage of the trend, and finally achieve our goals easily."

"The whole city can be regarded as a fortress buried deep in the mountain, but from another perspective, the space of the mountain far exceeds our needs." Isabella sitting on the soft sofa said .

"I was really taken aback when I first came here, because at least 30,000 to 50,000 people can live in the entire dungeon, and now there is still most of the space empty."

"Are you completely empty of such a space?" After hearing Isabella's words, Lawrence turned to look at Viscount Surrey and asked in a puzzled way.

"You see that your place is so cold in the wild, and there are not many areas that can be kept above freezing. Then why is there such a large free space in the city that is not used?"

"This is mainly because the area of ​​my territory is too large, and not all of us live near this city." Viscount Surrey shook his head and said.

"As the coal mine was discovered, almost all the fishermen in the past in our territory chose to work in the coal mine out of safety considerations, instead of continuing to engage in dangerous and hard fishing work, but the herders are still engaged in their own work. Have engaged in simple work for generations."

"Compared to fishermen or coal miners, the work of traditional reindeer herders is obviously more attractive." Isabella quickly added.

"Therefore, there are at least more than two thousand herders engaged in reindeer domestication and almost the same number of venison and deer skin handlers on the territory."

"But you know, the number of animals that can be raised on this land is much smaller than in other places. So these herders are naturally scattered across the entire territory.

"For them, even if they knew that this place had a warm space to live in, they wouldn't have to run more than 20 kilometers back and forth a day just to live in the city." "

"On the one hand, those herders don’t have the energy to waste time on the road. On the other hand, if the reindeer herds run such a long distance every day, various problems will occur, which will seriously affect the reindeer’s output."

"But I think it's safer here." Saifier looked at the heavy stones that make up the ceiling and walls of this room and said, "It is difficult for the settlements in the wild to resist most of the wild races' attacks—"

"But there are not many wild races here." Huck the dwarf shrugged and said, "At least I have been in this place for so many years and haven't seen a few large-scale wild race attacks. The worst one was just one. A white dragon in his prime attacked here once."

"What's going on?" Syfiel subconsciously turned to look at Lawrence and asked.

"Whether it's the wilderness race or the beasts basically eat." After being said that, Lawrence reacted at once.

"It's not like we can find food everywhere on our island, which naturally limits the number of monsters."

"Yes, that's it." The dwarf Huck slapped his thigh fiercely, then pointed to Lawrence. "The main threats in this place are the population of jackals and the pack of wolves led by winter wolves."

"However, the number of these existing clusters often does not exceed 30, because the large number of ethnic groups is not suitable for survival in this cold and barren land."

"It's really different from ours." Saifeier said with a smile. "The goblins on our island are in groups, and they can even organize a charge of tens of thousands of goblins towards us."

"In fact, this place was not so safe before." Viscount Surrey said, scratching his hair. "Although wolves headed by winter wolves are more accustomed to moving farther north, those jackals are not a problem that ordinary people can solve."

"However, with the popularization of various gunpowder weapons and the construction of a large number of bunkers in the wild, the jackals have gradually ceased to be the enemies of the shepherds."

What Viscount Surrey said is indeed a fact, although in the Cold Weapon Era, those wolves were stronger than ordinary humans in war, and they also destroyed many human settlements in the early years.

But after entering the industrial age, human beings with a large number of cheap gunpowder weapons quickly closed the physical gap between themselves and this group of jackals.

According to custom, gnolls often choose to dispatch at night to attack that group of intelligent races. However, when faced with those specially fortified rooms and rooms guarded by seven or eight gunmen who have received simple training, these wolves are basically unlikely to succeed in conquering those double-storey temporary shelters built with stones.

Especially in this era when various industrial products have become cheap due to industrial development, those temporary settlements not only have solid stone and steel walls with a thickness of more than 70 cm, but also installed the same in the only entrances and exits. The doors and windows are made of steel.

For those wolves who rely on their feet and claws to dig beyond the torch, this fortified settlement is basically impossible for them to break. Especially in this place where there is no big tree, the wolves cannot find the raw material if they want to be a hammer.