Lord Harland

After the golem was successfully refined, Richard began to test the golem's power. He took action personally, without using the power of magic, and fought against the steel golem with the ability of a sixth-level warrior. As a result, the melee ability was easily crushed by the golem. Even seventh-level Roman, Jennings, and Driffin were no match for the steel golem.

Only Silver Knights like Wilde, using the power of magic, have a chance of winning against the Iron Golem.

Through various scientific tests, Richard found that the strength of a standard steel golem is about 28 points. If a ninth-level magic core is used as the core, the strength will be increased to 32 points.

An ordinary seventh-level warrior's strength is roughly between 22 and 24 points.

The ninth-level warrior has more than 30 points of strength and has awakened his second physical attribute talent. His strength should be stronger than that of the steel golem.

The strength of the steel golem is almost the same as that of a ninth-level warrior, and its defensive power is even more outstanding. Its ability to attack difficult situations and close combat can be as good as that of a ninth-level warrior.

However, the Steel Golem also has several weaknesses. The first is its slow movement speed. According to Richard's test, the agility is only about 2.3 points. Even fourth-level warriors are faster than the Steel Golem.

The second is that it is not flexible enough, because when the magician controls the golem, he needs to use a special magical possession technique to allocate part of his spiritual power to possess the golem. When distracted, all movements are naturally slowed down, and the flexibility during combat is naturally a bit less.

The third weakness is the fear of spiritual strike spells. The steel golem is very resistant to elemental magic, but it is afraid of charm and spiritual strike spells. Therefore, when controlling the golem, your own magician must be nearby to protect you.

Generally speaking, only when one's own mage group is stronger than the opponent, can the golem troops exert their full strength to crush the opponent.

In fact, any army has weaknesses. On the battlefield, it is necessary to integrate the strength of various arms, give full play to one's own advantages, reduce the opponent's advantages, and then find opportunities to defeat the opponent.

Although the weaknesses of the Golem troops are obvious, they are very suitable for the Harland Territory, because in the nearby area, the Harland Territory mage group has almost no opponents.

Although the Grant Royal Mage Group is stronger than the Harland Mage Group, because of the Star Necklace in hand, Richard is sure to defeat his opponent.

Moreover, the Grant Kingdom Mage Group is still a friendly force. Lord Harland's main enemy is the orcs. Their magic power is not outstanding. Close combat is the advantage of the orc army.

The golem weighs eighteen tons and is very difficult to move. The first level of possession can only last for six minutes. Even if it runs at full speed, it can only move about one or two kilometers.

A first-level magician can only release four first-level spells a day, and can control the golem to move up to seven or eight kilometers. But if the steel golem is used in this way, the wear and tear of the golem itself will be extremely serious, and normally it will not be used for too long.

Generally speaking, golem troops need to be transported on the battlefield in advance and hidden in dark places to achieve unexpected effects.

The steel golem weighs more than eighteen tons, and even a strong man like a ninth-level warrior would need four people to lift it.

Harland does not yet have a ninth-level warrior, and there is only one eighth-level warrior, Soros. Although there are many seventh-level warriors, they are all important figures in the territory, and it is impossible to allocate them all to undertake transportation tasks.

Moreover, transporting the steel golem requires making a special carriage and using sixteen iron horned horses to pull it away. To allow such a heavy carriage to pass, tens of thousands of indentured servants would need to be mobilized to rebuild the road.

Harland has no plans to build roads this year. If you want to build roads, you need to mobilize a large amount of materials. It is already September, and the mountains will be closed due to heavy snow in early November. Even if the orcs invade next year, they may not be able to build the roads to the front line. .

In fact, the only reliable way is to use large space equipment for transportation.

The internal space of the Star Bottle is five meters high and has a volume of 450 cubic meters. It can hold a hundred steel golems at one time. The legendary first-order space bag in Undine's hand also has an internal space of 120 cubic meters, which can also hold a dozen steel golems.

With two large pieces of space equipment in hand, Harland Leader does not need to worry about the transportation mission at all.

After making the first golem, the golem making team came to help. Although the level of alchemists trained by Richard is not high, there are two intermediate alchemists among the elves, and their level is enough to give Undine a leg up.

With two more helpers and more experience, it only took nine days to make the second steel golem.

The third golem was made even faster, taking only seven days to make.

By the time the third golem was created, it was already late September and the autumn harvest had begun in the territory.

As the lord of the Duchy of Harland, Richard doesn't like complicated government affairs very much, and he doesn't like to make excuses with others. He wastes time on socializing and entertainment, and he can't spend all his time on it all day long. Create the golem above.

After the autumn harvest began in the territory, Richard came out of the mage tower, entrusted the task of making the golem to Undine, and then began to inspect the territory to welcome the autumn harvest.

Undine can obtain 3,000 magic academic contribution points by refining a golem. According to the rules of the Harland Mage Association, learning new knowledge needs to be exchanged for academic contributions.

Harland's new magic knowledge is extremely complicated, and learning a lot of precious magic knowledge requires a lot of contributions. For example, the ancient wizard text that Richard mastered requires a contribution of 80,000 yuan to learn. The language of the Offland region in ancient times also required a contribution of nine thousand before Richard could teach it personally.

Among the entire Mage Association, only Richard and the other three have mastered the ancient wizard texts, and the contributions of other magicians are far from enough.

To learn this new knowledge, you must sign an anti-leakage contract and cannot teach it privately.

In order to learn new knowledge, Undine has always been very interested even if the process of refining the steel golem is very boring.

The Harland Territory encountered a large-scale heavy rain in autumn this year, and low-lying areas suffered relatively serious flooding. According to rough sampling statistics, the autumn harvest yield per mu decreased by 16% compared with last year.

Fortunately, the summer harvest yield was good and it was considered a bumper year. Even if a large number of new fields were cultivated, the yield per mu would only decrease by 5%.

According to comprehensive sampling statistics, grain yield per mu has decreased by 9%. However, 2 million acres of cultivated land have been added this year, and the total grain output is much higher than last year. After the statistics are completed in mid-October, this year's grain output will increase to about 910,000 tons.

Of the 910,000 tons of grain, 390,000 tons belong to free people, and about 520,000 tons can actually enter the territorial grain storage.

There is no war this year, and we cannot rob people from the outside. We can only attract free people from the northern Xinjiang region to move in. However, the fertility rate in Harland is relatively high. The population growth rate of free people is close to 5%. The conditions of indentured servants are worse, and the population growth rate is about 2.3%.

As of October, according to data from the territory's statistics department, there were approximately 46,000 newborns in the territory this year, and the household registration department had more than 42,000 people with new household registrations.

Including the new freedmen, the population is estimated to increase by about 60,000 this year.

A war last year increased the population of Harland Territory by 400,000. Sure enough, only by relying on war can the territory accelerate its development.

After the autumn harvest, before heavy snow closed the mountains, Richard came to the Im River area again and met his acquaintance Gulov.

Compared with when he arrived in June, Gulov's living conditions have improved a lot. He has moved out of his underground house and moved into a large wooden house.

With the continuous input of materials from the territory, prices in the Im River Basin have dropped a lot, especially building materials such as bricks and cement, which have dropped to the average price.

Because the cement plant will be put into operation in August, as the supply and demand relationship changes, it is estimated that there will be a considerable price reduction.

Richard walked around the village and found that there were still a small number of free people living in the caves.

It's not easy to heat the ground, which makes it very uncomfortable in winter. And these free people living in Diwozi are almost all old, weak, sick and disabled, and disadvantaged population.

After Richard returned from Imburg, he immediately issued an edict, ordering each village to gather together old, weak, sick and disabled families and transfer them to village halls with better conditions for central heating. This should be able to save a group of people.

After returning from the Im River, it was already mid-October.

In nearly a month, Undine refined the steel golem four times, but unfortunately she only succeeded three times. The only failure was also due to the mistake of the auxiliary alchemist.

Seeing that winter was about to enter, there were no major events except for the commodity expo. Richard was just about to join the golem production team when suddenly news came that the royal envoy was about to enter the Harland Territory.

After receiving this news, Richard had to stop and deal with the envoy from the royal capital first.

Although Haaland's political influence in Nolan is not very great, he has a lot of business income. Since the time when Hayden was in charge of the intelligence department, the territory has placed intelligence personnel in the Chamber of Commerce.

Now, Haaland's intelligence network in Nolan has more than a hundred people and has access to a large amount of public information.

Before the envoy entered Halland Territory, the news had reached Fort William.

In the afternoon after receiving the intelligence, Richard summoned Noel, Vitas and other officials responsible for intelligence to the city lord's palace.

Today, in the Harland Territory, Noel is the Minister of Intelligence and the highest official in charge of intelligence in the Territory.

Although Noel is also a member of the Harland branch, his relationship with Richard is relatively distant.

The most important thing in managing the intelligence department is to gain Richard's trust. Compared with Noel and George, Richard naturally trusts George more.

But George went to the south to run the territory, and Richard didn't want Hayden to get his hands dirty, so he had to let Noel continue.

Today, the intelligence work in the Rand Territory is divided into three aspects: military intelligence, internal intelligence, and external intelligence. Military intelligence was handled by Ruiz, internal intelligence was managed by Luciano, and external intelligence was managed by Vitas.

Among the three backbones of the intelligence agencies, Vitas is relatively the most capable.

"Have you investigated the messenger's background clearly?"

Hearing Richard's question, Vitas replied: "Your Excellency, the envoy here is Earl Lawrence. Earl Lawrence is the half-brother of King Roger. This person is said to be of average ability. In The king is a court earl who is responsible for sacrifices, etiquette, and celebrations."

"Which family is Earl Lawrence's mother's family?"

"Earl Lawrence's mother is the aunt of Marquis Allen, but she is not the legitimate daughter. She is the daughter of Marquis Allen's court lady. But their group has very frequent contacts with Earl Allen."

Grant Kingdom's aristocratic ennoblement system means that no one will be ennobled without meritorious service.

Even if he is the son of the previous generation of the kingdom, Lawrence is only a court earl. If the next generation cannot make military exploits and cannot gain a foothold in the court, Lawrence's descendants will be reduced to the professional class, and their treatment may be better than The descendants of hereditary barons are worse.

Lawrence also had a palace title, and Richard's brother Hayden also couldn't be knighted because his meritorious service was far from enough. Maybe in a few years, Lord Harland will also establish palace titles to reward top-level civil servants such as Rogge and Hayden.

Richard opened the window to let in some of the cold wind outside, and suddenly asked, "What's the secret behind Lawrence's mission?"

Haaland leads the intelligence network in Nolan, which mainly collects public intelligence, especially commercial intelligence. Their reach is still far from exploring secret political intelligence.

Moreover, Richard had previously issued strict orders prohibiting infiltration into Grant's court. His question immediately made Noel and others look embarrassed.

Seeing Noel and others being obedient and unable to tell any useful information, Richard knew in his heart that he was forcing others to do something difficult. After all, it was impossible to know the secret information without infiltrating the royal court, so he had no blame.

Five days later, Lawrence arrived at Fort William.

Although Lawrence's status was far different from that of Richard, he was the king's special envoy after all. Richard still gave him face and went out of the city to greet him personally.

After more than ten years of development, the population near Fort William has exceeded 100,000. This castle built among the mountains has already become very prosperous, and its city construction is better than that of Black River Castle.

In particular, the city streets are very regular and appear to be extremely clean, unlike Black River Fort, which is as chaotic as it is.

Gas lamps were erected on both sides of the streets in the west city of the castle. When the gas lamps were lit at night, they were instantly brightly lit and particularly warm. Nowadays, the gas lamps in Fort William are Harland's business card. Many nobles from northern Xinjiang came to Harland for travel and would specially come to the west city of Fort William to visit.

Looking at the castle, Lawrence suddenly had a strange feeling. "In just a dozen years, such a wonder has been built in northern Xinjiang."

Richard met Lawrence, said a few polite words, and then invited Lawrence to the city lord's palace. He asked straight to the point: "The special envoy came to Harland this time. What does the Kingdom of Roger have to say?"

Seeing that Richard's questions were very direct, Lawrence was immediately surprised. Such direct social interaction made the nobles from the royal capital very unaccustomed.

As a high-ranking aristocrat who grew up in Nolan, Lawrence was already accustomed to making excuses, testing people, and making various political and interest exchanges at balls and dinners.

After arriving at Fort William, without even finishing a cup of tea, Richard went straight to the point and touched the vital points, like a barbarian.

Such behavior made Lawrence despise him very much, but due to the huge disparity in status between the two parties, Lawrence did not dare to directly ridicule Richard.

After all, Richard is a fiefdom duke with fifty thousand soldiers under his command. If he offends such a person and lets Lawrence disappear on the road, King Roger may not be willing to pursue him and cause trouble for himself.

Although he had blood from the Marquis Allen family and had a close relationship with King Roger, Lawrence knew that King Roger's opinion of him was actually very average. On the contrary, the previous King Charles took himself more seriously.