The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

"Hey! Master Leo, do you think we're going to die?" In the cage, a navy soldier swallowed the last mouthful of beans in his basin, then looked at the unfinished lunch in Leo's hands with greedy eyes, swallowed He drooled and asked.

"No," Leo swallowed the unpalatable beans calmly, and replied calmly, "If they wanted to kill us, they wouldn't have dragged us onto the boat in the first place and let us die in the sea to feed the fish. That’s enough, not to mention providing us with food every day to keep us alive.”

Another navy soldier also came over and asked in a low voice, "Are we going to become slaves?"

"No." Leo put the wooden basin and spoon outside the cage, waiting for the guards to collect it, and said affirmatively: "If they want to sell us as slaves, they don't need to provide us with two meals a day. , and we don’t need to give us fresh beans,” he said, motioning to the cages where the slave soldiers were held not far away, and said, “They can treat us like those slave soldiers, but they don’t, so Surely we will not be sold into slavery."

"Will we be redeemed?" A naval officer with obviously different clothes couldn't help asking with concern.

Leo looked at the officer, sighed, shook his head slightly, and said, "In the eyes of those guys, do you think the money in their hands is more important, or the free soldiers you can recruit at any time are more important?"

"Lord Leo, what do you think they will do with us in the end?" the naval officer asked.

Leo was silent for a while, as if he was thinking about a question, and finally replied: "We should be incorporated into the pioneering group of the New World, and we will get rid of the territory of the New World for them."

Hearing Leo's words, everyone fell silent, their faces became a little ugly, and they lost interest in talking.

Counting from the day I woke up, more than 20 days have passed. In the past 20 days, except for a stop on a certain island and the transfer of a group of slave soldiers, the ship has never stopped. However, it has been drifting at sea.

By listening to the conversations of these naval soldiers and slave soldiers, Leo quickly mastered their language and several dialects, and later, collected a lot of information about this world through methods such as insinuation and even hypnotic induction. A general understanding.

This world is called Novat, which is named after the Novat continent, because in the past, people in this world thought that there was only one continent in the whole world. It was not until recently that a nautical adventurer discovered a new continent more than ten years ago. Only then did they realize that there was a new continent in this world.

The reason why the traces of the New World were discovered so late was not because the world's navigation skills were poor. In fact, a few decades ago, the ships in this world were only able to sail inland, and the number of ships sailing at sea was almost zero. The reason It is because the oceans of this world were shrouded in gray fog decades ago, and any ship that broke into the gray fog would be swallowed without exception.

When Leo heard about the gray fog at sea from a naval navigator, the shadow of Velen's world immediately appeared in his mind, and he thought of the gray fog that enveloped Velen's world.

In fact, not only the gray fog reminded Leo of the world of Velen, but even the country on the continent of Novat gave Leo a sense of déjà vu of the world of Velen.

For example, there used to be a knight empire in the Novat continent, and this empire was also the most powerful country at that time. It once unified the entire Novat continent, but it is slightly different from the Faran Empire that lasted for thousands of years. With the death of the King of Knights, it fell apart and became countless small kingdoms. Afterwards, these small kingdoms all regarded themselves as imperial orthodoxy, conquered each other, annexed each other, and finally formed the 173 large and small kingdoms on the Novat continent.

When Leo heard that there were more than 170 kingdoms in the Novat continent, he was very surprised, and subconsciously thought that most of these kingdoms were the so-called kingdoms with only one village or one castle. But after a follow-up conversation, he realized that his cognition was wrong. The kingdom here is a real kingdom. Even the land owned by the smallest kingdom needs to be ridden for several months. The area of ​​the Novat continent may be the largest among all the worlds he has ever experienced.

It is precisely because of the huge area of ​​the Novat continent that the civilization levels of the various kingdoms on the continent vary greatly. For example, most of the kingdoms in the deep inland are feudal civilizations, slave civilizations, and even primitive tribal civilizations, but those in the coastal areas of the mainland However, the kingdom has reached the level of primary industrial civilization. For example, the kingdom of Belent, where the naval soldiers in the cage are now, is an industrial kingdom that already has basic mechanical technology and a large number of factories in the country.

According to the normal situation, the kingdom that has entered the preliminary industry and developed gunpowder weapons has the advantage of military crushing over the cold weapon kingdoms that are still in the feudal state, and a war of civilization erosion and territorial expansion is inevitable, but in reality The situation is completely different. Those coastal primary industrial civilization kingdoms only had some border conflicts with neighboring kingdoms, and did not invade these kingdoms on a large scale, and then put all their experiences on ocean exploration.

The main reason for this is that the gray fog covering the entire ocean has dissipated, and the ocean containing endless resources has become an unowned thing that can be explored at will. Compared with breaking out wars with other kingdoms and consuming a lot of financial and manpower, exploring It is obviously more cost-effective to obtain resources from the ocean.

Secondly, the inland kingdoms have a much deeper foundation than the coastal kingdoms, and the royal families have been married to each other for countless years, and they have already established a very stable offensive and defensive alliance. Small-scale border conflicts will not trigger the allied kingdoms to join in, but once A large-scale invasion will inevitably trigger the alliance agreement of the inland kingdoms. At that time, a coastal kingdom will have to face the siege of several or even a dozen inland kingdoms. In this case, even if the weapons are more advanced Some, but absolutely unable to resist such a deep offensive and defensive forces.

Finally, although the coastal kingdom invented gunpowder weapons, this kind of gunpowder weapon is still at a very low level. The trigger device is similar to a flintlock gun. Once the military strength ratio between the enemy and us exceeds a certain level, the advantages of gunpowder weapons will disappear. .

Therefore, under the influence of various factors, even if the coastal kingdom surpasses the inland kingdom in terms of civilization, it still has no way to conquer the inland kingdom and can only shift its attention to the sea.

Just because all the coastal kingdoms focus on the sea, there are more conflicts and wars between the coastal kingdoms. For example, the naval battle where Leo was mistaken as a prisoner was between the Kingdom of Belent and Root. Part of everyday warfare between kingdoms.

In the beginning of Belent and Rut was a kingdom, the people who formed this kingdom were scholars who were persecuted by religion in some inland kingdoms, and then they settled down in the coastal area, established colleges, cultivated talents, through marriage, business and fraud By means of other means, the ownership of the land along the coast was obtained from another kingdom, and a unified kingdom was established afterwards.

However, within a few years after the establishment of this kingdom, due to conflicts of ideas among scholars, the kingdom split into the current two kingdoms of Belent and Root, until now.

Before the fog on the sea disappeared, the two kingdoms had already reached the level of primary industrial civilization. After the fog disappeared, the two kingdoms also focused on the sea and began to systematically rob marine resources. Because of the same goal, sea friction between the two countries has gradually increased, and eventually evolved into the frequent naval battles that occur today, and the reasons for naval battles have also become diverse. At first, it was to maintain fishing grounds, and later it became a struggle for islands. Now it is purely to interfere with the opponent's route.

According to the account of the Berent naval soldiers, their fleet consists of a total of seven warships, which are dedicated to the cruise maintenance of the New World route, assisting the smooth sailing of cargo ships full of wealth in the New World. Thinking of being ambushed by the Navy of the Root Kingdom halfway, and then the entire army was wiped out. Thinking about it now, the goal of the Root Navy may be for the wealth of the New World loaded on those cargo ships.

Since the discovery of the New World more than ten years ago, the Kingdom of Belent, like other coastal kingdoms with conditions for ocean-going, has set its sights on the New World, but the geographical location of the Kingdom of Belent is not dominant, and its navigation technology and shipbuilding capabilities It is also much worse than some coastal kingdoms, so the income of the Kingdom of Belent from the New World has been very low for a long time in the past, and it can be said that it cannot make ends meet. And established contact with the indigenous tribes of the New World, so that various cheap daily necessities were exchanged for precious resources such as gold and gems, making a fortune, and the national strength increased a lot in a short period of time.

The Kingdom of Root was much less lucky. Although it opened up a territory in the New World earlier than the Kingdom of Belent, the geographical location of this territory is not very good, and there are no resources around it. On the contrary, there are several powerful and powerful In the several confrontations with the indigenous tribes, the Root Kingdom suffered a lot, and the property was also beyond their means. Therefore, when they saw that the Kingdom of Belent had obtained a lot of wealth from the New World, they couldn't help breaking their minds. In the Kingdom of Belent, it was directly plundered from the ocean-going ships of the Kingdom of Belent, and it is not difficult to find from the narratives of naval officers that it seems that not only the navy of the Kingdom of Root participated in the plundering, but also ships from other countries, It seems that the wealth gained by the Kingdom of Belent has aroused the jealousy of many kingdoms.

In addition to knowing the social situation in this world and other things, Leo also knows that there are no supernatural beings or gods in this world, but there is a religion, but this religion does not believe in any gods, but the belief is suspended in the holy world. A suspended land at an altitude of 10,000 meters on the top of the mountain.

According to the records of this ancient book called Origin Religion, the people on the Novat continent originally lived on that floating land, but they were expelled from the floating land because they violated a taboo, and all they have to do is to return to the floating land. It is also the wish of all human beings on the continent of Novat, but there are different ways to realize their wishes. The religious method is to pray or repent to the original land suspended in the air, so as to be forgiven and taken back to the original land, while the scholar’s ​​method is Directly manufacture a tool that can fly and fly back to the land of origin, so the world's navigation technology is not developed, but the flight technology is extremely strong. It is said that a hang glider that can stay in the air for a long time has been created. On ocean-going ships Equipped with this kind of hang glider, the main function is to help the fleet find land on the endless ocean.

Hearing this, Leo naturally understood that the so-called land of origin floating in the air should be a colonial spaceship. As for why the spaceship did not land on the ground, he felt that it might have something to do with the special environment of this world. Perhaps this world The power of law that greatly weakens the effect of extraordinary power is not only used for extraordinary power, but may also be used for special energy, so if the spaceship falls to the ground, it is very likely that it will not be able to fly.

Leo also induced these sailors to talk about the National Academy of the Kingdom of Berente. He did this mainly to know the level of knowledge in this world, but it is a pity that these sailors alone All of them were fishermen, and writing their own names was hard enough, not to mention the knowledge of scholars.

However, in the content of their conversation, Leo got a useful piece of information, that is, when they set off from the kingdom, a ship full of scholars from the National Academy went to the New World with their cruising fleet. They wanted to use the deterrence of the kingdom's ocean-going fleet to avoid encountering pirates and the like, but they were involved in a well-planned naval battle, and were sunk by the artillery of the enemy warship after the battle started. , None of the people on board survived.

Leo, who got this information, just pretended to be an oceanographer on that ship, because the scholar on that ship had only contacted the fleet commander, and the bottom sailors and officers had never seen the people on board, and the fleet commander and commander None of the layers surrendered, and they sank into the bottom of the sea together with the flagship, so no one could reveal his identity. In addition, he deliberately revealed some profound ocean knowledge during the conversation, which made his identity disguise more real.

According to the system of the Kingdom of Belent, all those who become scholars will automatically obtain the lowest title of knighthood among the nobles of the kingdom, so Leo has become the highest among the prisoners in the cabin, and under his conscious guidance, He gradually became the backbone of these people.

The people in the Kingdom of Root also seemed to know about Leo's existence, maybe because they felt that Leo could be useful, so they gave him some extra treatment in terms of captive treatment, such as transferring him from the cage at the bottom to the prisoner. Higher-level cages, for example, have an extra piece of white bread and exclusive tableware in terms of diet.