Chapter 46: Petrification

The planning of Fort William was mainly based on Richard's opinion and was agreed by family members. The construction process was mainly supervised by the second uncle Powell.

After the city wall was built, the Baron's Mansion began to be built.

It will take about three years to wait for the completion of the city defense fortifications of the three cities in the east and west.

After receiving the books sent by Richard, Sofia didn't care much at first.

After teaching the breathing method to several literate slave soldiers, Sofia appointed these literate soldiers as officers.

She had no military knowledge. Although she wanted to improve the combat effectiveness of the army, she had no idea where to start.

In the end, she could only find a cousin of the Stopa family and appoint him as the commander.

Then she handed the craft book to the housekeeper in charge of production and started to study magic.

If you want to gain a foothold in the northern border, strength is the foundation.

After leaving the magic kingdom of Markholm, Sofia has found it difficult to communicate with others in magic academics.

But she was born in the Stopa Baron family, and her father and brother had instilled aristocratic education in her since she was a child.

Without the protection of the Stopa family, she would not be able to learn magic in a carefree manner.

Now the Stopa family needs her strength, and her brothers cried and begged.

Sophia had no choice but to leave Markholm, sell her unique magic knowledge, take more than 20,000 gold coins and return to Vickburg to build the territory from scratch.

Suddenly one day, Sophia picked up the advanced algebra written by Richard himself.

Sophia was shocked when she saw it. She had never seen the content inside, and the knowledge points were very in-depth.

After reading only two or three pages and figuring out a knowledge point, many magic doubts were solved by Sophia immediately.

In just two months, she improved three new magic patterns, which was equivalent to creating a new spell.

When creating new magic, the magic factor will give feedback.

During this period, a new magic was successfully created. Sophia's meditation effect was particularly good, and she successfully advanced to a five-ring magician.

After studying magic in Markholm for five years, Sophia only advanced one level.

The more you learn magic, the more difficult it is, especially the accumulation and innovation of knowledge, which is a great test of a magician's talent.

It costs a lot of money to learn any knowledge, especially the magic knowledge unique to some powerful magicians, which costs more. It needs precious materials and knowledge of the same level to exchange.

In the five years in Markholm, Sofia participated in seven adventures and found more than a dozen magic materials before exchanging three relatively precious magic knowledge.

These three precious magic knowledge are far inferior to the advanced algebra sent by Richard.

When Richard was busy on the dam, Sofia came to Harland Territory in person to ask him about advanced algebra.

At the same time, she answered some of Richard's questions about learning magic and asked Richard to copy down many spells he knew.

As the two communicated, they felt that they had gained a lot. After a while, Richard asked his sister Wendy to join the communication.

Wendy advanced to a first-ring magician in April and quickly learned petrification.

Petrification is a first-ring magic that Sofia asked Richard to copy. This magic is generally powerful in war. If you want to turn living creatures into stone, you need very strong mental power.

Sophia has personally calculated that even a fourth-ring magician, with all his mental power, can only turn an ordinary person into stone.

If a sixth-level magician is born with strong magic resistance, he may not be able to kill his opponent with petrification.

But petrification is particularly suitable for building various buildings.

This spell can easily turn sand and soil into stone.

In key load-bearing places, using petrification can make the stones in the building integrated. Especially when building supporting columns, having a magician to help can save a lot of effort.

Richard sent Wendy to Fort William and asked her to help build various buildings. With the addition of Wendy, a magician, the speed of castle construction was accelerated.

Sophia lived in the Harland territory for four months. In July, she had mastered advanced algebra and returned to Fort Vick reluctantly.

Richard and his sister Wendy copied sixteen spells from Sophia one after another.

Including the thirteen spells that have been mastered, the Harland family has accumulated nearly thirty kinds of magic in its collection.

Although most of them are low-level magic below the third ring, it is already very good among wild magicians.

Many nobles do not have magician inheritance, even the powerful Harden Baron family is no exception.

It was also a coincidence that Sofia obtained the magic book. Not every baron has the opportunity to collect magic books.

Seeing that the petrification spell is so effective, Richard also mastered this spell after two months of study.

With the help of their brothers and sisters, the main project of the Baron Castle was completed before winter, and the rest was decoration.

This year, the Harland Territory still had a good harvest, harvesting 1,800 tons of grain.

The yield per acre is slightly higher than last year.

However, the most fertile and easiest to develop land has basically been reclaimed. The remaining paddy fields need to set up water wheels and build canals to complete irrigation.

The water wheels need to be built before October, otherwise it will be delayed until next year when heavy snow falls.

In the early spring of next year, the farmland will not be irrigated, and the reclaimed farmland will also delay the farming time and affect agricultural production.

800 tons of the 1,800 tons of grain were left as food for the slaves, 200 tons were stored in Fort William, and Richard was going to sell the remaining 800 tons to Black River Fort.

Richard didn't want to sell the grain, but the territory was short of gold coins. He could only live on debt, which was not a solution. Grain was already the most suitable wealth for the Harland territory to cash in.

But in order to transport the grain out, it was necessary to build a road of nearly 50 kilometers.

Both the road and the waterwheel had to be built.

The climate in the northern border was cold, and the slaves did not have enough clothes to keep warm, so they could only work for about a month.

In one month, even if all the slaves were asked to build the road, it would be difficult to build a 50-kilometer road.

So Richard planned to store the grain for a year, put it in the warehouse of Fort William, and build the waterwheel with the slaves.

In the second year after obtaining the fief, the Harland family still had no income. Some still had a steady stream of expenses.

Fortunately, this year's investment was much less than last year.

The food was self-sufficient, and bricks, wood, lime, and cement could all be produced by themselves. Occasionally, some prey can be hunted in the forest.

The main items purchased are cloth, salt, metal tools, needles and thread, and some medicines for treating diseases.

This year's expenditures add up to about 4,000 gold coins, which are basically spent on cloth and salt.

The Harland family invested 12,000 gold coins in the first year and 4,000 gold coins in the second year.

With only input and no output, the Harland family's funds are already somewhat unbearable.

There is not much liquidity left, and there are still a lot of debts.

In the past two years, the slaves have given birth to more than 500 people, and the baby boom in the territory has appeared, which has affected the labor efficiency of women.

If there are big projects next year, more slaves will need to be purchased to increase the population.

In order to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, Richard built a glass kiln and prepared to sell glass products to make some money.

The province of Geda already has good glassmaking technology. The glass produced by Viscount Romen's family monopolizes the glass market in the province and earns a lot of gold coins every year.

But without a qualified glassmaker, Richard underestimated the difficulty of glassmaking.

Although burning glass is simple, burning transparent glass without impurities is not easy, and it requires summarizing a lot of process technology.

The glass kiln built by Richard is almost summarizing experience from scratch. I wonder how long it will take to burn qualified glass?