Ride and Cut

In the last few days before Annie left, the centaur blacksmiths set off a forging boom in Alpine Fort.

The slaves and the two giant monsters acted as coolies, and it took three days to build several blast furnaces on the banks of the Raging River.

In the previous battles, Alpine Fort captured weapons and armor weighing tens of thousands of pounds. The quality was generally poor, but they were still qualified as raw materials for smelting, and finally got a chance to use waste.

The most prestigious among the centaur Busmi was named Rooney. He selected hundreds of pounds of pig iron and wrought iron according to the weight ratio and sent them to the blast furnace. It is said that after re-smelting, it can be turned into high-quality fine steel.

When the caravan first arrived, they presented Gaoshanbao with a cart of flour and a cart of coal, and now those coals are being quickly shoveled into the combustion chamber of the blast furnace.

Gunther looked at the gradually cooling steel ingot like a curious bear, unable to understand why two low-quality irons melted together and turned into refined steel.

Rooney is very warm-hearted and patiently explained that this is the principle of the compatibility of physical properties. The problem is that he himself is obviously a double-handed swordsman, repeating two sentences over and over again, making Gunther dizzy.

Li Cha couldn't stand the babbling like chanting sutras, "Do you understand the carbon content, if it's high and low, it's steel."

I can't understand changing Rooney this time, carbon content? Carbon in iron? Won't it catch fire?

Not long after the steel ingots were released, a group of mercenaries came to Gaoshan Fort with a white flag and picked up the caravan that had been stranded for many days. Before leaving, Annie left all the coal loaded in the convoy to Li Cha, and the mercenary captain also gave him a very delicate ruby ​​gold badge, which was extremely polite.

Although Gaoshanbao reveals poverty everywhere, its military strength is really too strong. For a firm mainly engaged in wilderness trade, it was a tiger that could not afford to offend.

Li Cha was relieved to see them leave, and he didn't want others to see what he was going to do next.

Several experienced centaur Busmi led the apprentices to lay out a row of anvils and began to forge steel ingots into weapons.

Generally speaking, it is the best choice to forge a large number of ordnance of the same shape at the same time, which has many advantages in terms of saving man-hours and maintaining quality control. Pompeii has established several large arsenals in recent years, precisely out of this consideration.

But Li Cha's request was completely contrary to this idea. He asked the blacksmiths to make nearly a hundred weapons and armors, and no two of them were the same.

He is doing an experiment, a very simple experiment.

Richard knew a long time ago that system soldiers are equipped with standard templates. For example, the rated equipment of the Barbarian Greataxe Warrior includes a long-handled heavy battle axe, a piece of iron armor, a horn helmet, and some scattered accessories.

The shape of these equipment is fixed, and there are even sets for sale in shops.

However, due to the long-term embarrassment of military expenditures, Li Cha has never equipped his soldiers with standard equipment. The barbarian giant ax fighters are still using the three treasures of the militia bought in Cologne - long spears, throwing spears and leather armor.

The effect of doing this seems to be not bad, and their combat effectiveness has improved significantly every time they advance, so Li Cha can't help but wonder whether the system's equipment standards are meaningful.

Some of the ordnance he asked the centaur to build were completely imitation system standards, some were common styles in Pompeii, and the rest were in between.

Heating, forging, quenching, and grinding, Centaur Busmi has rich experience and is methodical in doing these things.

Li Cha distributed all the ordnance to the Alpine Fort fighters, and asked them to try it out and evaluate it by themselves.

The feedback given by the gang of big-bellied men who ate the poor lord was astonishingly consistent.

Everyone loves the template standard equipment and thinks it feels good in the hand, and dismisses or even feels awkward about the Pompeii.

It is also an axe. The long-handled battle ax that comes standard with the barbarian giant ax warrior template can stably split into the one-finger-wide gap between two pieces of wood. And once the Pompeii Tomahawk is replaced, the terrifying control power suddenly disappears without a trace.

This gap cannot be explained by the so-called feel, but can only be attributed to the influence of the system.

Li Cha guessed that the martial arts bestowed on the barbarians during the advanced stage might not be how to use an axe, but how to use that "template-style long-handled battle axe".

After all, the barbarians are living people whose brains can turn a little bit, so they can also play with other axes by analogy, but of course the level cannot be compared.

This discovery made Li Cha both happy and depressed. There is much room for improvement in overall combat effectiveness, but equipment updates have also become a matter that needs to be resolved.

Another major event in the Alpine Fort is that the lord suddenly issued a mobilization order recently, requesting to capture as many giant monsters as possible, and they must be alive.

What are the dirty and stupid trolls to catch, isn't there already two enough? No one knows, anyway, Gao Shanbao does not intend to engage in democracy.

All the citizens have recently lost their legs because of this matter, but the troll's bottomless appetite and clumsy body determined that there would not be many of them, and it took a lot of effort to get a dozen of them.

These guys were kept in captivity by the river, eating and drinking with peace of mind as if they were in heaven, but the leaders in charge of the livestock were very sad.

The troll's appetite was so good that even though they were fed with horse feed mixed with mud, the feed stock in the territory was still plummeting.

Only Nehru, who is a shaman, has a vague premonition.

"Did you say that shamans are easy to appear among giant monsters, and their spells are very powerful." Richard smiled kindly when he came to find Nehru, but Gunther, who was following behind, had a three-finger-thick cowhide whip wrapped under his arm.

Gunther was known to never take part in the daily chores, so this whip must not have been used for herding.

Nehru nodded vigorously.

"There are nearly twenty giant monsters in Gaoshanbao, you go teach them spells."

"My lord." Nehru plopped on the ground and hugged Li Cha's boots, "It's impossible for a troll with such a stupid brain to learn witchcraft."

Nehru, who knew two kinds of witchcraft, was definitely a qualified shaman, so he couldn't understand why the lord valued giant monsters so much - with the intelligence of these stupid things, it was impossible to adapt to the complex battlefield environment.

"Then you still dare to say that there will be shamans in the giant monster?" Li Cha put his arms around his chest.

Gunther straightened the coiled whip, raised his hand and flicked the whip. The tip of the iron-embedded whip fell on the wall with a loud bang, and a piece of pine wood the size of a thumb exploded into flying wood strands.

"They are different from us." Nehru trembled all over his body, his mouth was quicker than pouring beans, "We have to learn from our predecessors to master the power of shamanism, but giants rely on awakening, and sometimes they can understand the power of shamanism as soon as they wake up."

Gunther turned his head to look at his lord, clutching his whip and eager to try, he felt that this guy must be talking nonsense again.

Li Cha waved his hand to stop him. In fact, Li Cha tended to believe this statement—it was impossible for the troll to put anything into it, let alone spells.