Chapter 231 Ancient Relics
On the night of February 8th, there was actually a grand square dance.
February 8th was the day when the first batch of slaves came to Harland Territory. At that time, this area was still a primeval forest and there was no one.
It was these slaves who built Fort William with their hard-working hands and ushered in a better life. In addition to being grateful to Richard who changed their fate, the first generation of indentured servants almost spontaneously gathered on February 8th to celebrate the new life.
February 8th was also named the New Life Festival by the free people of Fort William.
Richard also asked the Fort William City Hall to make the New Life Festival a legal holiday, giving people a day off to relax.
Through the reports, Richard knew that the largest cash income of Harland Territory this year turned out to be wool spinning and garment business. Relying on wool spinning, the territory earned 16,000 gold coins.
Of course, the output value of agricultural planting is the largest, but this year Harland Territory has poured into 76,000 people. This batch of indentured servants came to the territory and ate up all the food accumulated this year.
Since this year, wool weaving has spread in the northern border, although the primitive textile machines cannot compete with the new textile machines in Harland Territory due to production efficiency.
The second place is steel products, which have an annual profit of 14,000 gold coins.
The income from steel has been very stable, and even if the price has been slowly reduced, the income is still increasing.
The third place is the territory tax, and the total tax this year has reached 9,000 gold coins.
The income from hunting monsters, which ranked high last year, has dropped a lot due to the war, and this year it has only 3,000 gold coins.
The fourth place is the wine business, which has made a profit of 5,500 gold coins in a year.
The income from brown sugar, coal, and hemostatic ointment is around 3,000 gold coins, adding up to 10,000 gold coins.
In addition, honey, glass, bricks and stones, flame spider silk, cement, alloy parts, carriage manufacturing, plus the income from opening a carriage and horse business for transportation, a total of 12,000 gold coins.
Last year, the cash income of Harland Territory exceeded 70,000 gold coins. However, due to the outbreak of war, the territory was under great pressure to pay off its military expenses, and it had to sell more than 10,000 tons of grain to pay it off.
With the expansion of the reconnaissance brigade, the Haland territory already has four infantry battalions, two cavalry battalions, and the total strength of the headquarters personnel exceeds 5,000 people.
In addition, the territory also has auxiliary soldiers of a reserve nature. The number of auxiliary soldiers is not large. Each castle has an auxiliary squadron, and the number of personnel is not fixed. There are now eight squadrons, adding up to 1,500 people.
The cost of supporting auxiliary soldiers is very low. They only train for two months each year. Even if Richard increases the annual subsidy for auxiliary soldiers and the training fee is increased to six silver coins, it catches up with the average salary. The annual cost of supporting 1,500 auxiliary soldiers does not exceed 2,000 gold coins.
However, even if the cost of supporting 5,000 regular troops is not as high as that of the main legion, it will consume 80,000 gold coins a year.
As long as the soldiers of the Haland territory become free citizens after making military achievements, they will receive a salary of eight silver coins per month, and the salary of professional officers is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of that of officers in the main legion.
On average, the annual salary of an old soldier is eight gold coins. The new indentured soldiers do not have any salary, so Richard does not need to pay for them.
There are more than 4,000 old soldiers in the territory, and their salary is as high as 34,000 gold coins.
In addition, the salaries of hundreds of officers add up to more than 10,000 gold coins.
In addition to the soldiers' salaries, the army also needs to invest in materials.
Fortunately, the actual cash required for food, meat, clothes, weapons and equipment, nutritional supplements, etc., including the purchase of iron-horned horses and other miscellaneous expenses, is 50,000 gold coins.
The salary of the grassroots bureaucrats in the territory is the same as that of the soldiers, but there are only more than 500 people. With the investment in medical care and education, it only consumes 10,000 gold coins.
This year's fiscal surplus is actually more than 9,000 gold coins in cash.
Richard's treasury has always been relatively empty. Every time he has a surplus of gold coins, he will spend it immediately to buy population to increase the development of the territory.
But as a lord, a broken capital chain is a dangerous thing. Richard plans to put this money in the treasury as a reserve fund.
The Goddess's Birthday is approaching, Richard brought his family to Black River Fort to celebrate the Goddess's Birthday with his family.
This year's Goddess's Birthday, Uncle Bernie took a special leave and returned to Black River Fort.
After the Goddess's Birthday, it was the 3262nd year of the Dawn Calendar, and William was nearly sixty years old.
In the past seven years, although William had made a lot of contributions to the Harland family's management of the territory. But he also accumulated three great merits. After the war ended last year, William exchanged for the eighth-level professional breathing method and successfully advanced in the winter.
At the age of fifty-six, William was promoted to the eighth-level professional. He was already a person with excellent talent.
Generally speaking, when a professional reaches the age of sixty, his physical functions begin to decline, and the difficulty of advancement will increase a lot. Even a person with extraordinary talent like William can only maintain his best condition until the age of seventy.
If he cannot advance to the legend at the age of seventy, it will be even more impossible to succeed if his physical condition declines.
According to William's advancement speed, plus the difficulty of advancing to the legend, it is a very difficult thing.
William is the most talented person in the previous generation of the Harland family. Even if he is like this, it is even more impossible for Uncle Bernie to be promoted to Legend.
On the contrary, the next generation of the Harland family, Richard, Sophia, and Wendy have greater potential and are younger, and have the opportunity to break through the bottleneck of legend.
After the Goddess' Birthday, Richard had just returned to Fort William, and the soldiers who were developing the swamp basin came to the lord's mansion at full speed and reported an unexpected situation to Richard.
Lizardmen were found in the swamp basin. Richard was shocked when he heard the news.
According to what Richard knew, lizardmen like hot and humid environments and generally live in the jungles in the south.
Lizardmen are widely distributed in the Dawn Plane. Not only are there lizardmen in the south of the Central Continent, but there are also traces of lizardmen in the East Continent where the elves are located and the West Continent where the dwarves are located.
It is said that lizardmen are all alien species, and they followed a lizardman god to invade the Dawn Plane.
In the end, the lizardman god was hunted by the ancient wizard, and even the godhood became a collection of wizards.
The wizard captured a large number of lizardmen for experiments, and even used the creatures of the Dawn Continent to cross with lizardmen, creating a lot of messy varieties.
According to the records, lizardmen live in the southern swamps and jungles. The discovery of lizardmen in the northern border area is a big news.
However, the soldiers of Harland Territory cannot lie, especially the soldiers responsible for reconnaissance, who are basically veterans, and the backbone is still the elite cavalry riding Warcraft warhorses.
The elite Warcraft cavalry has never made any mistakes in reconnaissance intelligence.
Upon hearing this news, Richard led the Warcraft Cavalry Battalion, the Scouting Cavalry Battalion, the First Battalion, the Harland Mage Association and other backbone forces to move into the vicinity of the Mage Tower in the Swamp Basin.
After obtaining the swamp basin fiefdom, Richard took out a sum of gold coins to build the Mage Tower.
From last autumn to now, the Mage Tower has been raised by two floors.
Wendy brought the magic apprentice and used the magic of turning mud into stone to build the Mage Tower into an integrated building, and also set up some magic traps inside the Mage Tower.
This magic tower has a legendary magic core as energy, and a magic array that gathers magic power is arranged. Inside the magic tower, a small artificial magic well is built.
The magician of the Death Tower has built half of the magic tower.
The core of the magic tower energy room has been completed.
Richard only needs to spend a small half of the funds to modify some runes that gather magic power to get a complete magic tower.
Richard is going to build a seven-story space on the surface.
The first floor is the office of the Harland Mage Association. The second floor is the magic conference room. The third floor is installed with a portal. The fourth floor is a magic plant plantation. The fifth floor is the private magic laboratory of Richard, Sofia, and Wendy. The sixth floor is the bedroom of Richard, Sofia, Wendy and other senior executives.
A defensive magic array is arranged on the seventh floor.
Richard is going to arrange a large-scale attack magic array that releases chain lightning, and the energy channel of the magic array is directly connected to the energy room.
The magic power of the magic tower is usually restricted.
At the critical moment, the magic energy stored in the legendary magic core can be used to release a powerful magic chain lightning. With the addition of the lightning staff, the power can be compared with the legendary magic.
The underground floors are used as energy rooms, warehouses, public magic laboratories, magic libraries, and magic training grounds.
The only trouble with building a magic tower now is the portal.
Richard used wizard text to exchange a batch of magic knowledge with the Dawn Church, which included methods for building space altars and portals.
However, to build these magic buildings, precious materials are needed, and this precious material must contain space attributes. For example, the dragon crystal of the space-time dragon, the stomach of the ancient giant lizard, magic crystals containing space attributes, and so on.
Today, the Harland territory does not have such materials containing space attributes, so space altars and portals cannot be built.
A magic tower without a portal can only be regarded as a semi-finished product.
The area of the swamp basin is only more than 300 square kilometers. Richard kept sending people to search the net and soon found clues. It turned out that these lizardmen were hiding in a ruins.
This relic is less than ten kilometers away from the Mage Tower.
After arriving near the relic, Richard and others carefully surveyed the relic and found that the coordinates of the relic actually corresponded to special astrological phenomena.
Richard had carefully studied the Book of Astrology. When he saw this scene, his expression became a little solemn. Because Richard discovered that this relic was actually a city site. In the center of the relic, there was actually a huge energy supply center. Such a huge energy supply device was only used by the legendary floating city.
Nowadays, there is no floating city in the Dawn Plane. The floating city is the product of the ancient wizard civilization.
After the Seven Gods Church defeated the ancient wizards, the gods fell into a deep sleep, and all the floating cities crashed. Some legendary wizards who survived by chance left the Dawn Plane with the last few interstellar magic spaceships, and the magic civilization fell into a serious decline.
Although many relics of the Wizard Era and the Seven Gods Era have been excavated in the past three thousand years, and the level of magic civilization has developed to some extent, it is still not comparable to the magic knowledge mastered by the ancient wizards.
Sophia and Wendy had also read the Book of Astrology and soon discovered something unusual. They looked at each other, walked to Richard and whispered, "It looks like a building left by an astrology magician, but it doesn't look like a magic tower. Instead, it's somewhat similar to the legendary floating city."
"It is indeed the ruins of a fallen floating city, but it's not very safe inside. The danger should not only come from the lizardmen."
Richard awakened his talent for danger perception and came to the ruins of the floating city. He immediately had a warning of danger in his heart.
The internal area of the floating city is generally divided into comprehensive defense area, energy core area, comprehensive management area, residential area, commercial and entertainment area, material production area, and education and training area.
According to the strength of energy, a small floating city has an area of only tens of thousands of square meters and no more than one or two thousand people.
A large floating city has an area of more than hundreds of square kilometers and can accommodate millions of people.
The floating city in the swamp basin is not too big or small, with an area of four or five square kilometers, and should be home to two or three thousand people.
Richard circled the floating city ruins for several times and decided to dig the floating city ruins to see if he could find some precious magic materials and magic knowledge.
Because there are unknown dangers hidden inside the floating city, Richard's actions are very careful. He decided to start searching from the residential area, commercial and entertainment area, and education and training area.
These three areas are relatively less dangerous, and it should be smoother to start the excavation work from here.
Richard asked the first squadron with the strongest combat effectiveness, the Warcraft Cavalry, to be on guard, and the rest of the people slowly walked into the floating city ruins.
The soldiers of Harland Territory had just entered the floating city, and suddenly a powerful magic aura came from inside the floating city. Several magicians actually activated the teleportation array and left the floating city ruins.
Seeing this scene, Richard was shocked. He never expected that there were still people hiding in the dark in this floating city ruins.
However, the people hiding in the floating city should not be strong and could not defeat the army of Harland Territory, so they decisively chose to teleport away.
In order to prevent the enemy from calling for reinforcements, Richard had to quickly destroy the teleportation array.
Richard did not know that the legendary magician Elena of the Venus family was hiding in the ruins of the floating city.
If Elena was intact, she would certainly not be afraid of the army of Harland Territory.
As a legendary magician, even if he could not defeat thousands of regular troops head-on, he could withdraw from the battle at any time and take the initiative on the battlefield.
However, Elena was severely injured by Duke Brener. Although she survived with the Book of the Artifact Contract, she could not use magic to fight for three years. It would take twenty years to recover the strength of a legendary wizard.
So after discovering that the army of Harland Territory had entered, Elena estimated the strength of both sides and felt that it would be difficult to defeat the two thousand elite soldiers of Harland Territory with several high-level magicians and more than ten middle and high-level knights of the Venus family, even if they occupied the terrain, had the help of the wizard tower built underground, and the controlled lizard soldiers.
Although they were reluctant to give up this secret base, the Venus family suffered heavy losses.
This secret base has been operated by the Venus family for more than a thousand years. There are not only a large number of supplies, but also a lot of precious information. The most important thing is that there are many magic techniques of ancient wizards hidden in the ruins of the floating city, which have extremely high research value. After leaving this ruins, many subsequent researches cannot be carried out.
Unless the Venus family is reborn, overthrows the rule of the Grant family, and gains absolute authority, it is possible to take back this secret base from the Harland family.
Otherwise, this site can only belong to the Harland family.
Even if this battle is won and the soldiers of the Harland family are repelled, the Harland family will suffer a loss after the secret base is exposed, and will inevitably report to the capital. When Nolan sends a large army, the secret base will still not be able to be defended, and the lives of the Venus family members will be consumed.
Elena is a decisive person. Once she realizes that things are impossible, she immediately decides to preserve the living force and takes the Venus family away from the floating city.