Chapter 233 – Tower of Lightning

Chapter 233 – Tower of Lightning
Because the Venus family had built artificial magic wells and constructed magic energy channels to feed the mage tower, the defense of this mage tower was quite good, and it could release a flame storm ten times a day.

The half-finished mage tower constructed by the Tower of Death used the magic cores of legendary magical beasts as the core of the energy chamber, and even with the Legendary grade magic equipment Thunder Staff to conserve magical energy, it was only able to release ten streaks of lightning.

The defense power of the two mage towers, in fact, the difference is not very much, one magic energy is stronger, one has a legendary magical equipment to enhance, even if there are only low-ranked mages in the magic tower, it is enough to resist the sneak attack of the high-ranked mages, even in the Markholm Magic Kingdom, are considered high-level mage towers.

After Richard occupied this mage tower, the first time he destroyed the teleportation altar and took down the teleportation portal.

The teleportation altar was the coordinates for spatial teleportation, destroying the teleportation altar was equivalent to erasing the teleportation coordinates. But this mage tower was built by the Venus family, I wonder if the Venus family had left any hidden doors?
If one was unprepared and was attacked by the Venus family, one might suffer heavy casualties.

Nowadays, the number of magicians in the Harland Territory was small and weak, it was not suitable to be scattered in two strange mage towers, besides, there were still quite a few magic research laboratories in Fort William, and there was also a need to leave some of them behind.

Greedy and chewy, the Venus family’s mage tower, Richard was not prepared to leave magicians in for the time being.

This mage tower, which was mainly used for magic research, focused on magic wells and magic energy supply.

Richard was prepared to first focus his operations on the half-finished mage tower built by the Tower of Death.

This mage tower was named the Tower of Lightning because Richard had inscribed a chain lightning defense spell.

The Tower of Lightning would take another two months to complete. After this mage tower was completed, Richard decided to move most of the mage power of the Harland Territory into the Tower of Lightning.

Richard relocated the magical organizations to the Swamp Basin, and with the garrison protecting the mage tower, the population of the Swamp Basin had exceeded ten thousand people.

Even though the Swamp Basin had been developed for more than a year, because of the small amount of power invested, only more than 10,000 acres of paddy fields had been reclaimed, a ditch had been built, and only a few floors of the Mage Tower had been constructed.

For this achievement, the number of strong slaves who died of illness before and after exceeded a few dozen.

Even though Harland’s territory belonged to the mid-temperate zone, the mosquito population was relatively low, and there was no serious malaria disease, developing the swamp still cost a lot of lives.

With a magician and an army stationed in the area, Harland Territory’s investment in the swamp basin would increase dramatically. At least when it comes to infrastructure, magicians can be of great help, and when repairing drainage ditches, a Turn Mud into Stone spell can play a key role.

After the Goddess Birthday Festival, the Riverbank Elementary School opened once again, and this year, because the tuition fee was lowered by half, the number of new students reached three hundred.

Now the Harland territory has more than a thousand students, waiting for a few years for all of these people to graduate will bring a great boost to the development of the territory.

Among the three hundred or so new students, there were seven of them with magician qualifications, and Berica had the best magical talent, with an earth element affinity that reached medium. These seven children with magical talent could not be counted on for the time being. Before learning how to meditate, one still needed to learn the basics, at the very least, after a few months of recognizing a portion of the words and understanding a portion of the magical terminology, only then could one begin the practice of meditating.

Counting these seven new students with magical qualifications, the members of the Harland Territory Mage Association would exceed forty.

A forty-member mage organization was already larger than the four eastern marquis’ territories. Today’s Harland Territory Mage Association was already a top ten ranked magic organization in Grant Kingdom.

The countries in the northern part of the mid-continent were economically backward and socially impoverished, and one counted as a magical desert, and a forty-member magical organization could only be considered a small magical organization when placed in the Markhorn Magical Kingdom, and could not be ranked at all.

Markholm Magic Kingdom had more than three thousand mage towers, and there were more than a thousand magic organizations of all sizes. Even the Sacred Halo Empire, seeing the thousands of mage towers on the map, felt a million headaches.

Even though the magic kingdom on the southwest coast was very disrespectful and often challenged the authority of the Holy Halo Empire, the Holy Halo Empire had no intention of sending troops to crusade and fight a war that didn’t have much chance of winning.

According to Sophia’s narration, placing the Harland Territory Mage Association in the Markholm Magic Kingdom would roughly rank it in the three hundredth place.

From the hidden base of the Venus family, Richard had gotten weapons that could equip two thousand elite soldiers.

This equipment was very refined, no less than the Nolan Praetorian Guard. Enchanted armor, enchanted bows and crossbows were all available, and now all of them were cheap for Richard to equip the Harland Territory infantry.

Weapons and equipment appeared rich, Richard immediately decided to massively expand the army, the formation of two brigades of new recruits, expanding the army of 1,600 people.

Recruit brigade temporarily organized four squadrons of recruits, after completing the training of recruits, will be mixed with the veterans of the third and fourth infantry brigade.

After completing the expansion of the army, Harland’s territory will have six infantry brigades, two cavalry brigades, plus the guard squadrons, headquarters personnel, the total strength of more than six thousand five hundred people.

The new recruits will be drawn primarily from indentured servants to save costs.

Last year, Harland’s territory added more than seventy-six thousand indentured servants, so it was easy to select sixteen hundred soldiers.

As long as the bottom serfs are given a chance, they will enthusiastically join the army in order to change their destiny and turn their lives around, and they are not afraid of death and sacrifice at all.

As we entered the second half of February, the conscription was all but complete. Now that the territorial army has been formalized, the training of new recruits has been taken care of by special people, and does not need Richard to worry about it.

Because of last year’s influx of a large number of people, this year’s spring plowing task is a bit heavy.

In order to complete this year’s spring plowing task, Richard also let the army participate in the spring plowing.

The vicinity of Graveson Castle was the key area for this year’s spring plowing, from last year to this year, 65,000 people would be arranged here to reclaim 300,000 acres of farmland.

This area has a flat terrain, easy access to water on both sides of the Black River, and a very large agricultural potential, but unfortunately it is in the front line of the orc invasion, so it has not been effectively developed.

Now the Harland family is building Flourish Castle in the northern part of Greyfusen, if they can block the orc army in Flourish Castle, Greyfusen Castle can become the rear, with the feasibility of large-scale development.

But developing the neighborhood of Greyfusen Castle still has a great risk.

Once Flourish Castle was lost, or the orcs bypassed Flourish Castle, Grays Forsen Castle would be vulnerable to orc attacks, and the population living in this area would be captured by the orcs.

To develop the land near Greyfusen Castle, the strength must be strong.

After analyzing the situation, Richard thought that as long as the main force of the orcs was not invading from the direction of Gerda Province, with the strength of the Harland family, it could already hold up against half of the orc legions attacking.

Although the Harland family fiefdom was large, the area suitable for agricultural development was relatively small.

The two territories of Dilam and Stopa were basically developed successfully. The only way to get more farmland was to build terraces and develop the hills.

Constructing terraces requires a lot of labor, according to the manpower of Harland’s territory nowadays, the construction of terraces is somewhat twice as hard as it is half as hard as it is now that the territory is underpopulated, and there is a lot of arable land per capita.

It is not yet time to build terraces and reclaim hillside farmland.

Although the river valley near Fort William and Fort Sophia can still develop some farmland, there are a lot of factories and mines here, which is the core of Harland’s territory, so in order to prevent the technology from leaking, it is not suitable for arranging too many people. The only area suitable for agricultural cultivation was the vicinity of Greyfusen Castle, with the swamp basin in it.

The farmland near Greyfusen Castle is less difficult to develop, and last fall started cutting down trees and digging up roots.

After this spring first digging the isolation zone, then put a fire to burn the barren land, burned the dead grass, vines, bushes are clean, pick out the stones in the land, and use the iron horned horse to deep plowing.

As for the water conservancy project, a part of it was built last year, and the rest of the canals can be repaired after plowing.

A large portion of Graveson’s farmland is on both sides of the Black River, and by using waterwheels the water from the Black River can be lifted into the aqueducts.

This area can be reclaimed for a million acres of good land, enough to feed 500,000 to 600,000 people.

In addition to focusing on the development of Greyfusen, Richard also arranged more than ten thousand people in the prosperous castle, the Fortress of Hyrule, nearby.

A large number of roses grew near the Prosperous Castle, and Richard was going to use these wild roses to make rose perfume and sell it to the noble ladies of Nolan.

According to Richard’s observation, there was no perfume maker in Nolan yet, and making rose perfume did not require competition with vested interests. When the rose perfume was manufactured, Harland territory would add a monopoly commodity that would earn profits for the territory.

Even if someone was jealous and researched a perfume formula, without a large amount of rose resources, they would be powerless to compete with Harland Territory.

In April, Richard and Sophia’s second child, Philip, was born. Philip was born smoothly, and Margaret would not be Richard’s only heir.

Because it was the second child, Philip was born very smoothly.

In the last one or two years, Harland Territory’s Surgery was still developing, the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department was separated from the Surgery Department, and now the hospital had formed four major departments of internal and external pediatrics and women.

However, except for surgery, the other three departments still only rely on the experience of the doctors to cure the patients.

After Richard’s guidance, the hospital invented forceps, and with the help of magicians, it can also perform cesarean sections, and the mortality rate of pregnant women and newborns in the territory has been reduced significantly.

Because of the development of medicine, the per capita life expectancy of Harland’s territory has far exceeded that of Nolan, according to the statistics, it has increased to forty-six years old, reaching the leading level of the Morning Glory Realm.

Five years ago to take advantage of the Scarlet Horn rebellion, Richard from the Brenner County snatched eighteen thousand stragglers, to the fall of this year on these people will be full, plus a number of slaves purchased from the Grand Duchy of Starnick.

By this fall, Harland’s territory will have more than 20,000 free people.

By the end of the year, the number of free people in the territory might exceed 60,000 people.

With a population of sixty thousand wealthy freeholders, the annual fixed field tax is fifteen thousand gold coins, and it also forms a small-scale consumer market.

With a consumer market, the Harland family’s ability to create blood will increase greatly.

Right now, the economic income of Harland’s territory mainly relied on various monopolized commodities, and most of the market was under the control of others.

Once the trade channel was cut off and the market was lost, the primary industry that was established because of the information difference would be in a situation of doom and gloom.

With the territory without funds, the only thing Richard could do besides oppressing the territorials was to disarm.

The Harland family has today’s influence, relying on a few thousand elite soldiers.

After the disarmament, the influence is bound to decrease, and it may not be able to withstand the continuous attacks of the orcs.

Only when the territory’s market is cultivated, internal strength is practiced, and the domestic demand market is expanded, will the foundation of the economy be stable. With a stable economic foundation, Harland territory can maintain the size of the army and even use it to expand the army. With an increased army and more territories gained from battle successes, only then can the titles be raised to increase influence, forming a positive cycle.

For every additional free citizen in Harland’s territory, the foundation of the territory would be one point more solid.

After getting the Venus family magic energy technology, Richard was immediately attracted to this technology.

The Venus family had researched the Floating City Elemental Furnace for many years, and had also constructed a successful artificial magic well, and were also very knowledgeable about magic energy operation, creating new magic runes.

Richard’s understanding of magical energy was added another layer by studying these magical runes.

His mind was very active and thought of the rechargeable batteries of his previous life, and immediately wanted to research the magic energy batteries of this world based on the knowledge of magic energy he had acquired.

The materials were also readily available, the magic crystals that had depleted their magic energy.

Magic crystals were a special kind of crystal in the Morning Glory Plane, a standard magic crystal was worth ten gold coins, and the magic energy contained within it could release a second-ring spell approximately once.

Generally, magic crystals that had exhausted their magic energy would be ground into powder and minted into gold coins together with gold.

Magic crystals that have run out of magic power are also considered to be a low-ranked magical material, and have a variety of uses. Generally speaking, the price of this kind of discarded magic crystal that has run out of magic power is about four silver coins a piece.

If one could research the technology to energize the discarded magic crystals, one would earn thirty times the profit.

If one wanted to research this technology, one needed to first know what was the difference in structure between magic crystals filled with magic power and magic crystals depleted of magic power.

To study the enclosing structure of the two types of crystals, it was necessary to use an advanced microscope.

The Harland Territory had established an optical research department early on, training mirror grinding masters and wanting to manufacture microscopes.

But Richard underestimated the difficulty of this technology, even after a few years of research, the project has not made much progress, although the technology of the mirror grinding masters has continued to improve, only two years ago barely made a monocular telescope.

More than twenty mirror grinding masters trained successively, a few years time to now only two have a certain level of technology, know some optical knowledge, can steadily grind a higher precision telescope.

The rest of the mirror grinding masters could only be trained to be ordinary craftsmen for making ordinary telescopes with lower precision.

In the last two years, the Harland army had been equipped with a large number of monoculars, and the officers at the squadron level, plus the backbone scouts, all had monoculars in their hands.

(End of chapter)