Chapter 426 Magic Airship
Soon after Richard and his companions returned, Sylph brought the elves from the East Coast Province to Viscount Sutton's territory. After five years of construction, many wooden and stone buildings have appeared in Viscount Sutton's territory. (っ◔◡◔)っ
The architectural style of these houses is very special, mainly made of natural materials such as trees and stones. The architectural style is simple and elegant, taller than houses inhabited by humans, and the roofs are mainly round and oval.
In the past five years, although Sutton was often not in the territory, he was responsible for the construction of two to three thousand contract slaves in the territory.
Under the command of the elves, the contract slaves have built elf houses that are enough for hundreds of people to live in after a long period of labor.
In Sutton's territory, a huge garden was built, a magic plantation was opened, and many magic plants were planted.
When Sutton surrendered to Richard, he discussed with Richard very clearly that the territory he was granted would not accept long-term settlement by humans, and the territory would be left for the elves to live in.
The lifestyle of the elf tribe is very primitive, mainly gathering, fishing and hunting. The elves of the East Continent plant a very strong breadfruit tree as their main food.
A medium-sized elf tribe has a very large range of activities, which can reach about 100,000 square kilometers. On the contrary, large elf tribes often choose to settle down in order to protect the Tree of Life, and their range of activities is relatively small. A large elf tribe with a population of several thousand may have an activity range of about one-tenth of a medium-sized tribe.
Although the area of the East Continent is not as vast as that of the Central Continent, the number of elves adds up to millions, but the power of this extraordinary race is relatively scattered, and the Elf King's Court has a population of more than 30,000. Several particularly famous elf tribes have a population of more than 10,000.
The elf slave-hunting group in the Central Continent generally does not provoke large elf tribes, and their slave-hunting targets are mainly small and medium-sized elf tribes.
In the current situation of the East Continent, as long as the Tree of Life is found, the elves will choose to settle down. If the Tree of Life is not found, they will choose fishing, hunting, and nomadism, and will not stay in one place for too long.
The elves under Sylph's command are all people from tribes that have lost their homes. The cruel reality has made them very clear about 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. So they will not oppose settling down and are willing to serve and fight for Richard, the lord.
Unless they suffer major losses, the elves will not oppose Richard, the human lord.
Now the territory of the Sutton family has 28,000 square kilometers of territory, which is roughly enough for hundreds of elves.
Sylph settled the elves, and the annual commodity fair in Harland Territory began again.
Now the Harland Territory Commodity Fair lasts for twelve days. The first nine days sell regular goods, and the last three days hold auctions, where a large number of extraordinary materials are sold.
From magic plants, monster furs, super magic metal materials, to alchemical bombs, enchanted weapons, enchanted armor, to various potions, in recent years, even Styx potions, magic hot air balloons, and high-level alchemical props have these high-end goods.
Nowadays, the Harland Territory Commodity Fair not only attracts caravan nobles from the Grant Kingdom, but also magicians and knights from several nearby countries, who flock to Harland Territory to trade various extraordinary things.
In fact, there are a lot of insider transactions before the auction every year, especially Richard's vassals, the great nobles of the Grant Kingdom, who basically focus on internal transactions.
Last year's commodity fair, because it happened to be during the war, Harland Territory hardly sold many extraordinary resources. This year, the demand for various transactions has almost exploded.
In particular, the great nobles of the Grant Kingdom have asked Richard to trade magic hot air balloons.
Now the main opponent of the Grant Kingdom has changed from orcs to the Delong Kingdom and the East Coast United Kingdom, and the orcs have become the main opponent of the Duke of Harland.
The Delong Kingdom and the East Coast United Kingdom have not developed flying troops and cannot restrain magic hot air balloons at all.
With the magic balloon troops conducting aerial reconnaissance, the enemy's movements are completely one-way transparent. Two years ago, Richard sold the magic balloon to Duke Duran for the first time. In last year's battle, this unit played a very critical role.
Seeing that the magic balloon troops are so useful, whether it is the seven earls in the south, the four marquises in the east, or the other dukes of the Grant Kingdom, they all hope to buy a large number of magic balloons from Harland.
The market is in short supply, and Richard immediately chose to barter, asking to exchange a set of magic balloons for a thousand serfs.
In last year's war, the Grant Kingdom swallowed a large number of people, and the nobles had at least hundreds of thousands and at most millions of serfs.
Richard proposed to exchange population, which was not too high a request.
According to the organization of Harland, a squadron is composed of six magic balloon groups, equipped with eight magic balloons, two of which are spare parts. Once damaged or crashed during training or combat, spare parts can quickly perform tasks.
A magic balloon brigade is composed of ten squadrons, requiring eighty magic balloons.
Now Harland has trained three magic balloon battalions, which are more than enough for regular battles.
Two years ago, Duke Duran bought thirty magic balloons. Six of them crashed in last year's battle. This year, Richard sold him fourteen of them, expanding Duke Duran's magic balloon troop to half a battalion and forty groups.
Richard's family sold 24 sets of magic balloons to the four southern dukes, Edward, York, Gies, and Fox, just enough to form three magic balloon squadrons. Duke Loran had no combat mission, so he only bought eight sets from Harland and formed a magic balloon squadron.
Duke Jonathan formed six magic balloon squadrons at one time because of the northern border, and bought 50 magic balloons from Richard. Grand Duke Stannic even placed an order for 120 sets of magic balloons with Richard.
Of course, the Jonathan family did not have so many people, so they were willing to give Richard the agency rights of the Elf Black Tea in the Kingdom of Grant, and provide 500,000 gold coins of Elf Black Tea in five years in installments according to the market price.
Elf Black Tea is a very important export commodity of the Grand Duchy of Stannic, and its market share in the Kingdom of Grant is about 120,000 to 130,000 gold coins each year. With the monopoly trade rights of Elf Black Tea, even if Richard increases the price by one-third, he can still make an extra 40,000 gold coins a year.
Besides, strengthening the strength of the Grand Duchy of Stannic will also be of great help to Harland in resisting the invasion of orcs.
Based on this consideration, Richard decided to agree to the request of the Jonathan family.
After agreeing to the request of the Jonathan family, the production capacity of magic hot air balloons in Harland Territory was somewhat insufficient. Richard could only agree to trade one squadron of magic hot air balloons for the four marquises in the east and seven earls in the south.
The only exception was William. Richard directly mobilized three magic hot air balloon squadrons from the active troops of Harland to join the Earldom of William.
Through various internal transactions, Richard negotiated 368 sets of magic hot air balloon orders, traded the exclusive agency rights of elf black tea for 15 years with the Jonathan family, and traded about 500,000 gold coins for five consecutive years. In addition, he traded 198,000 people from other nobles.
The remaining 32 sets of magic hot air balloons, Richard is going to sell at the auction.
According to the plan, Harland Territory will sell 400 sets of magic hot air balloons this year.
A set of magic hot air balloons includes an alchemical prop magic flame jet furnace, a set of large binoculars, a set of large silk balloons, and a set of light wood hanging baskets.
A very thin layer of rubber coating needs to be applied on the silk balloon, which is very time-consuming to make. It requires cooperation from many units such as magic alchemy factories, silk textile factories, wood processing factories, lens grinding laboratories, rubber processing factories, etc. Things like copycats require magic civilization, and the industrial level has developed to a certain level, which actually implies very high difficulty.
Whether it is a magic flame jet furnace, a large binoculars, or a waterproof and breathable rubber silk cloth, the threshold for copycats and imitations is very high. Even a kingdom with strong strength may need a long time of effort.
Moreover, Harland Territory already has flying arms 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 ready 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 fair was held, only 260 sets were produced in an expedited manner. Compared with the order of 400 sets this year, it is far from enough.
Richard had no choice but to take out all the spare goods of Harland's army and directly transferred out 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 a more expensive magic airship for them to replace the magic hot air balloon.
In fact, Harland has successfully built three magic airships and started to experiment with new tactics.
This time, the magic airship troops and the First Magic Hot Air Balloon Brigade were reorganized into the First Magic Airship Brigade, and the magic force was strengthened. Ten magicians and thirty magic apprentices were included in one brigade.
The biggest difference between magic airships and magic hot air balloons is that they have devices for propulsion and control of flight status. In addition, magic airships use buoyancy gas (helium) to provide buoyancy, while magic hot air balloons need to heat the air and use the physical property of reduced density after heating the air to provide buoyancy.
To build a magic airship, it is necessary not only to manufacture sealed airbags and auxiliary airbags, but also to build pods, propulsion devices, rudders, elevators and other devices, which cost about 6,000 gold coins.
A magic airship brigade is equipped with 30 magic airships, and the equipment cost is also 200,000 gold coins.
After more than ten years of continuous development, the magic steam engine technology of Harland Territory has been fully mature. On the magic airship, a magic steam engine is installed to drive the propeller to provide kinetic energy for the magic airship.
Richard is also going to continue to transform the magic airship, and then arrange defensive and offensive magic arrays on the airship, and improve the magic airship step by step into a magic creation like a copycat floating city.
In fact, as long as a legendary magic core is used as the core, with the current level of magic civilization in Harland Territory, Richard's idea should be realized. It's just that the practicality may be a little worse. Facing the spell attack of high-level magicians, it is difficult to defend, and the cost performance is far less outstanding than the ordinary magic airship that goes in volume.
Although the magic airship is more expensive, its carrying capacity, safety, controllability, and flexibility are far superior to those of the magic hot air balloon, and there is still room for further improvement. If you are willing to make additional investments, you can also add defensive and offensive spells to the magic airship. With the advancement of technology, the magic airship will inevitably replace the magic hot air balloon step by step.
In fact, Harland has already made a plan and decided to build three magic airship brigades in three years to replace the magic hot air balloon.
The magic balloon unit will certainly not be completely disbanded, but the attached artillery will be dismantled and become an affiliated unit of the artillery to perform calibration and observation tasks.
According to the plan of the Harland Legion, three artillery squadrons will be added each year in the past three years, and a magic airship brigade and four infantry battalions will be formed. The investment in new equipment alone is as high as 300,000 gold coins a year. In addition to the investment in equipping magic ships with magic crystal cannons, manufacturing new magic ships, and increasing the number of Warcraft cavalry, if calculated separately for three years, the weapons and equipment alone consume 500,000 gold coins a year, which is undoubtedly a very huge expenditure.
If it had not swallowed up a large number of territories and millions of people, the finances of Harland would not be able to support it at all.
It is precisely because of the tight finances that Richard chose to strengthen arms sales and vigorously promote the influence of the commodity fair. In order to make the auction famous, Harland took out a lot of precious materials for sale at the auction this year, including high-level enchanted armor, high-level Styx potions, and some extraordinary items that are very rare even in the Harland Mage Association.
The most precious item this year is the ninth-level enchanted armor that Richard and Undine jointly made with the thick skin of the legendary ogre.
The ogre has a serious stench. Although this armor has a very outstanding defensive effect, the unbearable stench makes Richard dislike it. Anyway, Richard rarely participates in front-line battles now. He has the eighth-level enchanted armor captured from Pirosa, which is not much different from the ogre armor, and he does not need this item urgently.
This year, Richard successfully made two ninth-level ogre armors. One was given to his uncle Thoros, and the other was sold at this year's auction. As the commander of the Harland Army, Thoros needs to participate in the front-line battles. In addition, he has more endurance than Richard, so he is very happy to accept this precious gift.
Although the ninth-level ogre armor has defects, it is still a very precious extraordinary treasure, estimated at about 300,000 gold coins.
Of course, such precious extraordinary items cannot be purchased with magic crystals. Even if they are put on auction, extraordinary resources will be needed for barter.