Warlord: King of All Clans

The mighty griffin flew across the northern sky, its eagle-like golden wings reflecting the golden color.

The Royal Griffin is the symbol of the Orlantis Empire. Before the establishment of the empire, the predecessor, King Griffin I of Orlantiri, relied on it to establish the Southern Kingdom.

Without the griffins of Orlantiri, there would be no Orlantis human empire that has occupied the Morning Light Continent for thousands of years.

After Knight Norin was promoted to vice-captain of the Order of the Rose, his title of Griffin Knight was not stripped away, and at the princess's request, he still retained the power to requisition the royal griffins.

Emperor Charles VII agreed to the request, and Noreen became the only person who did not serve in the Order of the Griffin but had the power to continue using the Royal Griffin.

Even if all the griffin armor was taken off, the griffin's flying speed would not be fast.

After all, it is a large carnivorous beast that lives on coastal cliffs and is better at diving for prey than flying long distances.

Even when flying at the slowest speed, Norin needed to get off the ground and rest at least twice a day to allow the griffin's physical strength and magic power to slowly recover.

If you are in the wilderness, you will need to take a griffin with you to hunt for meat.

Every time at this time, she would think of the Pegasus of the River Bay, which was a top-grade flying cavalry that could fly all day without landing and its flying speed was much faster than that of a griffin.

And it’s vegetarian!

After crossing the Fabados Mountains and entering the north, the weather suddenly became cold, the ground was covered in white, and snow flew in the sky from time to time.

Norin had to lower her flying altitude to avoid being wrapped into an ice shell by the frosty wind.

She entered many towns along the way and found that there had been great changes here.

Due to repeated harassment from Count MacDonald's army in the south and the Tarhan musketeers in the west, the people's livelihood in Earl Gustav's territory has been in decline.

But the people here did not focus on restoring production, but instead launched a wave of boycotting firearms.

The musketeers of the Tarhan tribe and the various firearms of the foreign legions in the north caused great fear among the people of Count Gustav's territory.

The entire Earldom of Gustav was swept by an anti-firearms movement, and many alchemists who studied gunpowder-related knowledge were burned to death by the people under the leadership of the Holy Light Monks.

Noreen alone witnessed three burnings at the stake.

Many witch doctors, shamans, and alchemists who had nothing to do with gunpowder were diagnosed as being possessed by demons and were captured for "purification" simply because the smell of sulfur or gunpowder came from their laboratories.

This is extremely rare in the North, comparable only to the anti-necromancy movement hundreds of years ago.

Under normal circumstances, the people of the North, who have complex beliefs, don't mind the great witches and shamans doing anything weird. When they summon a hellfire or a demon from another world during a war, the earls can accept it.

But the Earldom of Gustav is different. It borders the southern border and has long been baptized by the Holy Light.

The Cardinal of Holy Light in the North lives in the Cathedral of Holy Light in the main city of Count Gustav and rules the entire Holy Light Diocese in the North on behalf of the Pope of Holy Light.

This is the place where the belief in Holy Light is the strongest in the entire North. Count Fonteyne Gustave and the Cardinal of Holy Light can easily suppress the voices of opposition in the territory by working together.

With the intervention of the Church of Holy Light, Fontena's anti-firearms campaign spread rapidly and soon spread to the surrounding territories. A large number of alchemists were warned or arrested.

But unlike what Count Fonteyne had imagined, the surrounding counts did not execute the alchemist after capturing him.

Instead, while issuing a stern statement, he allowed these alchemists to continue their research in secret bases in the various earl's palaces.

The situation in the Earldom of River Bay in the north was even more outrageous. The Holy Light monks mobilized their followers to hunt down all alchemists with relevant skills, and then sent them to the atrium for "confinement".

After all, the Battle of Clemens was witnessed by all, and everyone knew the power of firearms, and no one would ignore this weapon of war.

As Count Fonteyne continued to curse, more and more people openly agreed with him. Even Count Hewan expressed his intention to control the number of firearms and reduce the firearms force.

Secretly, one family had a few more primitive shotguns, and that family had dozens more matchlock guns.

Count Kurolov, which had invested the most in firearms, was already preparing to equip its new fleet with large-caliber bronze stone-throwing cannons.

They were originally a coastal territory, with developed commerce and handicrafts in their port cities. With the support of goblin technology, they soon independently developed primitive gunpowder and early stone-throwing cannons.

Although this primitive bronze stone-throwing cannon is also expensive, it not only costs half as much as the more expensive alchemical weapons, but is also easier to operate.

A warship equipped with six to twelve bronze stone-throwing cannons can effectively destroy enemy warships and gain an absolute advantage in naval battles.

However, some earls' gunpowder research went astray. For example, Earl Beowulf's gunpowder formula was difficult to improve in power, so he began to use the traditional skills of wild hunters to add all kinds of strange materials to it, creating poison fire bombs, poison smoke bombs, poison gas bombs, flash bombs and other hunting props.

In a small-scale armed conflict with Count Kurolov's territory, Count Beowulf's wild folk army threw a large number of poisonous smoke bombs, poisoning thousands of enemy soldiers and cattle and horses.

The Beowulf Legion now has a new nickname, "Poisonous Legion", following the "Wildfolk Legion" and "Poor Ghost Legion".

In addition to firearms, the Hewan industry also attracted the attention of interested parties and began to spread to the surrounding areas.

The major earl cities in the north began to study new river bend technologies such as potato flour, cement, blast furnaces, looms, etc.

Once these technologies emerge and a model is created, it is inevitable that they will be copied by others.

But industrial development has never been the rise of a single industry, but an overall rise.

Without large quantities of cheap coal or charcoal to burn lime, and without large quantities of almost free iron ore slag to grind into ash in steam mills, early cement was expensive and of poor quality.

Without up-to-standard refractory brick technology and coal coking technology, the blast furnace can only be a small charcoal blast furnace, and the output and quality cannot be increased.

As for the relatively simple textile machines, the prerequisite for establishing a textile workshop is a large amount of cotton and linen raw materials, as well as an increasing demand for labor.

All of the above requires us to first consider how to increase food production capacity and liberate manpower.

With these foundations, the earldom achieved breakthrough development in a short period of time and began its own Renaissance.

The earldom that did not have these prerequisites could only carry on with business as usual after a bit of fiddling and began to seek other ways to curb the development of its neighbors.

Norin traveled all the way north and was exhausted and haggard when she arrived at the river bend.

But her eyes shone with a brighter light than in the imperial capital.

The first thing she said when she arrived at the big house was: "Where are the Rio people?"

Savinting, who was sitting in the Riverbend House, had a strange expression on her face. She pointed in the direction of the courtyard and said, "He went to the courtyard, but you should be able to find him on the gravel road."

After the atrium was reopened, Norin had not visited it yet. Upon hearing this, she immediately said, "Please tell Madam Olivia that I'm going to the atrium first."

"Yes, Knight Noreen."

He sat on the griffin again. The griffin under his feet whined in resistance. He just wanted to lie down in the warm stable and sleep.

Norin had no choice but to ask the groom of the big house to change her horse for a northern warhorse, then rode out of the river bend peninsula and galloped along the gravel road towards Gravel Castle.