Chapter 384, Hemgart: The Plague

The dwarves' goods were very popular, and they were sold out quickly. The group of dwarves put away the gold and silver coins, left the market, and left directly outside Hemgard.

"Isn't that the rangers of the Anglund clan? It seems that Bellegar is also there." Ryan said to Suria with interest: "I didn't expect Bellegar to bring the clan here."

"His Majesty King Belegar may be a little... value face, but he is not stupid. He came to investigate the market price and surrounding forces. In fact, he has helped us a lot since he came to your territory to reunite with his clansmen. Dugan doesn't know how to make iron dragon cannons, it was His Majesty Bellegar who asked Halhaver, the chief engineer of the Angrund clan, to teach him." The female knight whispered.

"It's not that I don't know. The dwarves originally planned to give you a set of meteorite armor. Later, seeing that my father sent the armor, I asked them to make a set for my brother." Ryan said in a low voice.

"Brother? Angron?" Surya was a little surprised.

"Yuli, isn't your brother my brother? We are a family." Ryan muttered, "It's a waste to give brother Angron a set of meteorite armor. I don't think it's very useful, brother Angron. The best way to fight is to chop and hack, it doesn't make any difference whether it's rune mithril plate armor or meteorite iron plate armor."

"Pfft~" The female knight couldn't help giggling, but at the same time she was very happy in her heart. Although the words "your brother" and "brother" both refer to Julius, the meanings contained in them are quite different.

She looked curiously at the dwarves who were leaving the city, and then said: "By the way, why do these dwarves come here to sell? We also need dwarf equipment in Britannia."

"Because the equipment is inferior or defective." Ryan continued to complain: "My relationship with Bellegar is still good, he sold us first-class goods, but even if it is a dwarf, they are in production It is still inevitable to make some defective products. These defective products are never used by dwarves, and they are sold to humans at high prices. Anyway, in dwarf language, human means "people who make defective products", but having said that , Even if it is a dwarf's defective product, it is much better than the things made by many human craftsmen."

Ryan and his party did not go up to say hello to Bellegar and his group. They strolled around the town for a while, and soon checked into the Oliver Hotel in the city.

This is a large three-story hotel, located in the downtown area, in a deep alley near the market, due to the wrong time (just after Winter Veil Festival), the hotel is relatively deserted, Ryan and others greeted the hotel owner, the hotel The boss immediately opened the most luxurious suite on the third floor for Ryan and others to live in.

A group of people put their things away. Rudolph and Wagner went to the count of the border to approve the customs clearance documents. Ryan and his party put the things away. The count looked at the wooden floor and animal skins of the hotel and nodded: "Oliver's business has been getting better and better over the years. Make it bigger."

The Oliver Hotel is part of the Oliver Chamber of Commerce. With the support of Ryan, Oliver has opened many hotels in Britannia and some parts of the Empire.

Opening a hotel has many uses, the biggest of which is not profit, but the collection of intelligence and the internalization of transactions. Hemgat is a border town where the ax bites the pass, and the diplomatic relations and trade tariffs between the Empire and the Kingdom of Britannia Hemgart will always be the first to know about the changes.

For businessmen, getting information is the most important thing, so Oliver opened hotels in both Monteverl Castle and Hemgard in the Axe Pass, which is the most important trade between the Empire and Britannia. As a land trade route, Ryan felt a headache for the astonishingly high tariffs at the ax-bite pass, but he also had to admit that with the joint efforts of the empire and Britannia, the safety of the ax-bite pass could be guaranteed.

Business is like this, high risk, high return, low risk, low return, people always want investment with low risk and high return.

Is there any transaction with low risk and high return?

There are only two types, one is a scam, and the other is a high-threshold transaction for the superior.

Just like the trade contract signed by Ryan and Teclis, this trade contract has low risks and high returns in the true sense, but this kind of transaction is impossible for ordinary businessmen to complete. Human businessmen go to high-precision trade in private, maybe What came oncoming was a stinky face and even a fireball.

"Oliver's business has grown bigger and bigger in the past few years." Ryan looked down at Hemgart's buildings in the sea of ​​clouds. It's winter, the mountains are covered with clouds and fog, and the distance can't be seen clearly.

"Oliver, when we first met him in Nord, he was a small businessman." Teresa was wearing a Brunswick graceful gray dress with shoulders and frosted shoulders, and her long black hair shimmering in the shadows hung down. Behind her head, the sorceress tightened her white bear fur coat, holding a black crocodile leather bag in her hand: "Do you remember, Ryan?"

Both Suria and Veronica were very interested in this matter and kept asking.

"Of course I remember, I still remember Oliver's attire at that time, it was really strange." Ryan touched his chin: "I still remember his incomparably strange attire, wearing both gold and silver, and forcibly wearing armor , said to me 'time is money' when we were marching up Scarville Hill."

"Mr. Oliver? I rarely see him wearing gold and silver." Suria also said.

"That's because Oliver is rich now, Mrs. Suria, you know, businessmen are not like nobles, they come in the opposite way." Veronica was wearing a classic layered corduroy skirt, There was a slight smile on her sweet face: "Is it in your impression that merchants in Wenford's court are all plainly dressed and submissive?"

"Indeed, there are a few merchants who do business with my father. Every time I meet them in the court, they wear simple and clean clothes." Suria nodded thoughtfully. grew up in court.

"The smaller the capital and the smaller the businessman, the more he has to wear gold and silver to show that he has financial resources and capabilities. Conversely, the more the businessman has a large trading network and sufficient size, the more low-key he has to be." Veronica laughed coquettishly, and Witch Jialan explained to Suria: "Otherwise, once the nobles are upset, even if they are not killed, they will be easily replaced. How can merchants fight against the nobles?"

"I see. No wonder when my father saw those merchants, they were all trembling and whispering." Suria nodded again and again: "I remember the first time I saw Mr. Oliver, he was still dressed luxuriously. Now he wears no jewellery, except a gold ring and a silk dress, like an ordinary courtier."

"The knight is different, Veronica. I heard that when Ryan met you for the first time, he was just a little soldier of the elite class?" Teresa asked in turn with interest.

"That's right, Ryan was just a knight-errant at the time, with a breastplate on his outside, with a disheveled face. I still remember that I was in a bad mood at that time. I raised my hand to shoot a fireball, and Ryan was only in his early twenties. The surgery made her face scorched black, revealing a mouthful of white teeth." Veronica said casually: "The face that was a little handsome at first burned like a dog."

"Hahahahaha~" The room was filled with coquettish laughter, only Ryan blushed.

"Me too. Back then, my mother and I went to Nord Court to participate in the ceremony for Ryan to be promoted to a knight of the kingdom. At the banquet, Ryan pretended to drop something under the table and peeped secretly..." Teresa blushed a little, but In the black history of Dajiu Lane.

"That's right! Ryan, he likes it very much..." Su Liya also joined the topic.

Ryan was blushing at the words, so he hurriedly said that you should talk first, and I'll go down and have a look.

The count hurried downstairs, even so he could still hear laughter upstairs from time to time.

Three women in one drama.

The hotel owner was settling accounts, and when he saw Ryan coming down, he immediately bowed and signaled: "Your Excellency, what are your orders? Is there a problem with the room?"

"There is no problem with the room, I just want to ask you something." Ryan stood in front of the bar and whispered.

"Your Excellency, please give orders." Of course, the hotel owner knew who was behind the big boss Oliver. He looked around and saw that this time was not the peak season for business, and there were not many guests.

"Don't be so nervous, I'm just asking, how is Hemgart doing?" Ryan waved his hand to indicate that he didn't want to inquire about any secrets: "Trade, law and order?"

"It's not very good. Since Hemgard was invaded by the Duke of Casvann, even though the empire and Britannia have not affected the covenant, more merchants are still on the sidelines, or take the sea route from For the Marienburg trade, Count Reinhard von Mackensen felt uneasy about the slow decline in trade volume, and he recently tried to negotiate with the Duke of Montfort, Forkad, to drop a little tariff to encourage trade." Hotel The boss said: "Of course, my count, there are still many caravans trading through the axe pass."

"What about law and order?" Ryan asked without any surprise after hearing the news.

"The law and order are not bad. There have been relatively few activities of green-skinned orcs and beastmen recently." The hotel owner took a long breath and continued: "However, it is rumored that the sewers and deep mines in Hemgard are very unsettled. There are traces of rats, and they are rats the size of people! These rats often appear from sewers and mines, attack livestock and kidnap humans."

"A mouse as big as a human... Skaven?!" Ryan's face changed slightly, and he frowned: "Didn't Earl Hermgart send troops to clean it up?"

"Shh~ my count." The hotel owner hurriedly looked around and confirmed that no one was paying attention, and then whispered: "Your Excellency Ryan, the empire knows that there are not many Skavens, and they are only limited to the upper nobles. .”

Ryan's brow furrowed even tighter.

In Britannia, everyone knew about the dangers of the Skaven Ratmen. Since the founding of the Kingdom of Knights for thousands of years, it has been fighting intermittently with the Ratmen, especially the southernmost Principality of Carcassonne.

The Ratmen have never been able to invade on a large scale, thanks to the Wood Elves. The Wood Elves in Athel Loren Forest are the nemesis of the Ratmen. Every time the Ratman came, the Wood Elves beat them to the ground.

The Empire is different. The last time the Empire and the Ratmen fought was hundreds of years ago. Under the intentional low-key of the Ratmen, the commoners have already forgotten the existence of the Skaven Ratmen. Only the records of the great nobles Written by the Skaven, and much of it is vague.

"What can Earl Reinhardt do?" Doing as the Romans did, Ryan knew that it was inconvenient for him to publicize the threat of the Ratman. After all, he was not a nobleman of the empire.

"The count attaches great importance to this matter. He not only used part of his family's wealth to recruit a group of sewer cleaners, but also sent an army into the depths of the mine to check the situation, but this army has not returned yet." The hotel owner continued. .

"Understood." Ryan thought that the Skaven might be infiltrating the city, and he planned to discuss with the two Rick Guard recruits when they returned.

After waiting for a while, Rick Guard recruits Rudolf and Wagner came back. They entered the hotel and sat down directly in the lobby with a look of misfortune on their faces: "Boss, have two glasses of high-quality dark malt beer, hurry up."

"Hey! Yes, Your Excellencies." The innkeeper hurriedly took two glasses of dark beer from the beer barrel, brought them in front of them, and asked cautiously, "Excuse me, what happened?"

"Has the customs clearance document been approved?" Ryan also asked curiously.

"No, Earl Reinhardt is not in the Earl's Castle." Rudolf took a few gulps of dark beer and said rather dissatisfied: "Those attendants stopped us for a long time and only told us after we asked, Reinhardt Earl Hart is not here, and they don’t know where he went, and the customs clearance document can only be stamped after the earl returns, and the earl can’t come back until night, which means that the seal can only be stamped tomorrow, and then apply, and you can leave the day after tomorrow.”

"Then it's okay, we'll just stay here for one more day." Ryan shrugged, everyone has troubles, and staying one more day is not a problem.

"It can only be like this." Wagner is very open-minded. This Rick Guard recruit regards this journey as a trip. A gnawed cow riddled with holes in the center of the city..."

Ryan chatted with Rudolph and Wagner in the lobby for a few minutes. Suddenly, there was a strong vibration of the ground and the sound of the house shaking, and the beer in Rick's guard's hand was directly sprinkled on his face.

The Oliver Hotel was shaking violently, and dust was falling from the ceiling.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" There was an earth-shattering explosion in the distance outside the hotel.

"What's going on? What happened?" Ryan and the others were shaken and fell to the ground, but these people were all professional soldiers. They got up immediately, and Rudolph and Wagner's knights immediately began to fight for the two Ricks. Guards wear equipment.

Ryan got up from the ground with hands and feet. He ran to the door of the hotel and opened the door. Then, the oncoming scene made him open his mouth in surprise.

In the distance, smoke billowed from where Hemgart's barracks stood.

On the street, a large group of Ratmen approaching the size of a human is pouring out from the sewers, gutters, and corners of buildings, slaughtering the civilians of Hemgart!

"Skaven~ yes yes!"