Warlord: King of All Clans

After returning to the river bend, Leo was immediately called over by Valeri, the supervisor of the forge workshop.

The current Valeri is no longer the craftsman apprentice who learned a little bit of everything to make a living.

He was already the supervisor of 300 people in the forging workshop, and the overall person in charge of 2,000 craftsmen in River Bend.

Not to mention ordinary senior craftsmen, even the alchemist in the Mage Tower had to speak in a low voice in front of him.

Although he is not yet forty years old, he is of the same generation as Uliyan, and Leo has to call him uncle. Among the leaders of the entire River Bay, there are less than ten people whose status and position are higher than his.

In order to honor the original shareholder of the River Bay Territory, Uliyan rewarded him with two farms and a manor, all of which were high-quality assets with the best locations and the highest output.

Because he had good food and clothes and no longer needed to work hard, his tall and strong body lost its muscles and gained fat, causing him to become a little obese.

He looked like a two-meter-tall fat man, and the villagers called him "little ogre" behind his back.

But two years of a life of luxury did not make this man, who was used to hardship and had enough foresight, lose his fighting spirit.

When all the tribesmen were still digging for food in the fields, he had already gone to the town to make a living and learned a lot of craftsmanship.

Nowadays, when most of the tribesmen have become arrogant and extravagant and have no ambition to make progress because of their collective wealth, he still maintains his original intention except that he married two young wives and became a fat man.

Now he has mastered literacy, arithmetic and management knowledge, and has dabbled in the entire craftsman system of Hewan. He can arrange the two thousand craftsmen of Hewan clearly.

Although his iron forging skills are not as good as those of senior blacksmiths, his carpentry skills are not as good as those of senior carpenters, and his construction skills are not as good as those of senior architects, the other new coppersmiths, tinsmiths, bricklayers, and tilers are only apprentices, but at least he will not be fooled by the people under his command.

This is the difference between people. Some villagers can't even be the team leader of a ten-man team. When they have power, they only think about making money. When they have money, they only think about spending money. Then they lose both power and money, and they are still low-level villagers.

If Wuliyang had not distributed enough land to his people, and the rewards from the past had not been enough for them to hire a few farmhands, some villagers would not even be able to survive in Hewan Town.

After receiving Valeri's notification, Leo immediately left the River Bay town and walked towards the workshop area beside the small lake in the middle of the River Bay Peninsula.

As winter came, heavy snow fell, and the River Bend Territory was covered with snow. Most land-related industries began to come to a halt.

However, the workshop area in the river bend is busier than before. Many villagers with apprenticeship skills or some strength come here to do temporary jobs.

There are no longer only forging workshops here. With the rapid increase in the population of River Bay Town, Leo moved a large number of workshops from the town to the side of the lake, forming a workshop area.

There is a wide canal connecting to the Anzeno River, which is more convenient than within the town.

With the protection of the surrounding satellite towns, the industries of the River Bay Peninsula no longer need to be confined within the city walls.

When Leo arrived at the forge and found Valeri, what appeared before him was a simple long-barreled musket.

Flintlock!

This was the first batch of muskets for which Leo was responsible for drawing up the design drawings, Master Morse was responsible for making the models, and Valeri was responsible for imitating them.

When Fraser's pressure cooker took off, the development of the flintlock rifle had already started.

This means that the steel quality and technology in Hewan are already capable of producing muskets.

Before this, Hewan didn't even have the technology to process iron pipes, let alone gun barrels with higher requirements.

Leo once thought that the difficulty in making a flintlock rifle lay in the two words "flintlock", but now he realizes that the barrel is the most difficult part.

As long as there are materials and drawings, an ordinary craftsman can make a flintlock.

But a qualified gun barrel requires more than just hands.

In order to meet Leo's basic requirements, Master Morse used the high-precision alchemy table in the Mage Tower to hand-roll six flintlock models.

Leo's request was simple: the range and power of the flintlock rifle must be greater than that of the wild hunter's yew longbow!

The craftsmanship of a mid-level wizard and alchemist master is far beyond the reach of mortal craftsmen. The first flintlock was just a toy on Leo's blueprint, barely enough to be used as a lighter, but the second one could already be loaded and fired.

After a period of test firing and the collection of a large amount of data for improvement, Morse's sixth flintlock model finally met Leo's requirements.

But this is just a laboratory model, made through Morse's extraordinary alchemy, and it is very expensive.

If a flintlock rifle made by a mid-level wizard is only more powerful than the yew longbow, it would be better to directly recruit wild hunters with a large sum of money, or purchase a large number of military steel crossbows.

It's fine to give it to a few River Bend infantry as a secret weapon, but if it's mass-produced, the cost-effectiveness will be too low.

So Leo gave the adjusted flintlock to Valeri and asked him to imitate it.

The requirements are simpler, the basic data must reach 90% of the model and it can be mass-produced!

Now, the first flintlock rifle in Riverbend, made purely by mortal smiths, has finally been born.

Valeri had obviously gone through the test firing and was very excited. He kept reciting data to Leo, "This musket is five feet and one inch long, weighs fifteen pounds, has a caliber of two-thirds of an inch, and fires one-tenth pound of lead bullets, which is enough to penetrate plate armor!"

In the past, this was considered a heavy flintlock rifle. Both the recoil and the weight of the gun body required a high level of quality from the soldiers.

But the people of the North were naturally tall and strong, and those who could become regular soldiers were even stronger, and flintlock rifles could also be made with larger calibers.

Leo was more excited than him. Valeri was just a craftsman and didn't realize the significance of this weapon in war, but he was different.

Why was the Southern Territory Royal Family able to unify the three territories and establish a glorious empire comparable in size to Europe?

Isn't it just a torrent of steel composed of armored knights?

Except for the extraordinary army, there are almost no individual weapons of the mortal army that can cause serious damage to the armored knights.

The yew bows of the wild hunters could barely penetrate the plate armor of the armored knights only when shot at close range. If they really encountered an armored legion of the same number, they could only turn around and flee.

But this heavy flintlock rifle is enough to make a big hole in the knight's armor from a hundred meters away.

Combined with artillery, it is enough to defeat the knights before they get close.

Of course, this is ordinary knight's armor. The thickness of the plate armor is less than three millimeters. Some of the plate armor is not even steel plates, but wrought iron plates.

If it is the plate armor of the extraordinary knight, which is more than three millimeters thick and has enchantments to enhance defense, even the pointed bullets of the bolt-action rifle may not be able to penetrate it, not to mention the round lead bullets of the muzzle-loading flintlock.

This is also the reason why dwarven muskets are not popular in the empire. In addition to the backward gunpowder technology and scarcity of raw materials, the power is also not as good as the high-pound longbow of the North, not to mention the enchanted military crossbows produced by the alchemy workshops in the South.

But Leo doesn't need to consider these for the time being, because the opponents he faces are still mainly mortal legions.

It won’t be a long time before an extraordinary army comes to attack the small river bend.

Looking at the flintlock in his hand, Leo discovered that its barrel was not the round barrel made by Master Morse, but a square barrel.

Valeri explained to him: "This is the gun barrel made by blacksmiths using wrought iron. We are not able to hammer out the steel pipe made by Master Morse."

"This was hammered out of high-quality wrought iron by Old John. It's pretty good to be able to ensure that the inside is round."

"Don't underestimate this gun barrel. If the blacksmith from the Adonis family hadn't come, we wouldn't have been able to make it until now."

As he spoke, he called over an old blacksmith, "This is Old John, the senior blacksmith."

Leo had seen the new blacksmith, "Are you the chief blacksmith of the Adonis family?"

The old blacksmith was terrified and quickly retorted, "No! I am the senior blacksmith of the River Bend Territory!"