…
On the other side, on the coast outside the western part of the Roman Empire.
Ishgard spent the past few months to complete the construction of the secret port. Thanks to Black Dragonia's efforts, a steady stream of supplies were secretly transported here via Ishgard's merchant ships.
The port has begun to take shape and is large enough to serve as a material transit and supply point for an army of a thousand people, and is also capable of handling the burden of medium-scale trade.
Having completed his mission of building the port, the Knight of Black Dragonia is ready to go to Caparia to fulfill his duties as a "diplomat".
Even before leaving, she still had to confirm the list of officials she was bringing with her, and also ask the president's wife about the situation in the country...
In response to Nia's question, the president lady on the other side of the mirror just said seriously that Isurgard was already prepared for war, and as long as Nia confirmed the results of the "public opinion war", Isurgard could immediately send a fleet to invade the Roman Empire in early spring next year.
"We will advance in three groups, and the three groups will land respectively from your secret port, Drake Harbor, and the fishing village south of Drake Harbor.
We have completed the deployment of new rifles for the landing force, and have even produced the third "Schmidt" class ironclad ship - if nothing unexpected happens, the initial stage of our invasion of the Roman Empire will be very smooth. "
"My personal judgment is not to be too complacent, Margarita. Never be complacent."
"I know. But if what you said is true, then the Roman Empire is now a house that will collapse as soon as we see it - we can't let the Ares get ahead of us, not to mention that our factories are already experiencing a serious "lack of raw materials" problem."
During the time that Black Dragonia was busy, Isgarde was also developing steadily.
The core design of the steam factory has brought new vitality to Ishgard, but the new factory means a bigger appetite.
In order to obtain more minerals, some goblin scientists in Ishgard even developed a large mining machine called "digger".
As a result, when this machine was actually used, it was discovered that the underground mine had actually been almost mined out.
If they dig further, they would either have to risk suffocating even dragons by going hundreds of meters underground to search for minerals, or continue digging for stones in the shallow area.
But the problem is, the continent of Orros where Ishugard is located is a continent with extremely scarce mineral resources!
If you say that stones are everywhere, but if you say that valuable iron ore, silver ore, gold ore...they are almost all mined out;
Margarita said that the domestic mineral resources can be mined for another ten years at most. If Isgard cannot find a new source of minerals after ten years, then they may have to return to the era of wooden sailing ships.
Therefore, their invasion of the Roman Empire was imperative. They had to obtain the Roman Empire's mineral areas, and those mineral areas were destined to go deep inland...
After confirming that Ishgard was determined to take over the Roman Empire, the president's daughter talked about commodity trade with the Elf Kingdom.
She also noticed the regent's protection of the Elf Kingdom's local industries, and she felt even more admiration for him.
But admiration aside, as a ruler, unless the regent becomes her husband and unless the two countries form an eternal alliance, Isgard will still have to do everything she can to gain benefits from Caparia.
Since ordinary industrial products cannot generate profits, Miss Margarita simply clapped her hands and said: Let's export our culture to the Elf Kingdom!
"Black and white projection TVs, light bulbs, generators, and our plays and movies - although I have no idea why some people like to watch female paladins being turned into depraved prostitutes by male vampires, I think they should be able to impact the elves' cultural industry... and allow us to complete our cultural infiltration of Japaria."
"Do you want the elves to mistakenly think that we in our country like to play with pornographic tunes?"
"That's just a normal movie - never mind, the product should have been delivered. Please, Nia. Please bring him back when you have the chance, no matter what method you use. Use your invincible wisdom among the black dragons to think of a solution!"
"Please don't force me."
The dragon girl with horns, black hair and black red eyes sighed. After the magic mirror turned off the image output, she knew it was time for her to leave.
I wonder whether the regent likes the products from the motherland across the sea
The black dragon pondered.
And everything she was thinking about had nothing to do with Yang Hao for the time being.
Because he is now convening an elf meeting of the old elves.
At the meeting, he reflected on the mistakes of his previous reforms, and took advantage of the opportunity of the elves mourning the victims to propose the plans of "industrial enchantment of the Oak Factory" and "accepting the demons" to make Caparia stronger!
Chapter 14: Intensified progress and... Cool points 9/5
At noon on November 30, when Sister Teresa and Finn had "important things to discuss" for some unknown reason, Yang Hao had no choice but to represent both himself and Finn at the meeting of the old elves.
The theme of this Elf Council is "reflection" and the core is "reform". The beginning of everything is naturally related to the war between the Elf Kingdom and the Diocese.
According to the elves' statistics, about 47 elves died in this battle.
The casualties among the demons exceeded 4,000. If it weren't for Golem leading the charge, the death toll would have been even higher.
The death of 4,000 people was a huge shock to the entire demon tribe, and the death of 47 people on the elf side plunged the entire country into mourning.
Because according to the elves' birth rate, it would take at least several hundred years to give birth to 47 newborns.
Although the elves' reproduction cycle is actually similar to that of humans, the elves themselves, as immortals, don't really want to have children, let alone replenish the lost population in a short period of time.
What’s more, these 47 elves who died in the battle had their own interpersonal relationships… Although Yang Hao did not learn in detail how many friends the dead elves had, judging from the fact that half of the elves in the elven kingdom showed hostility towards the Roman Empire… Well, perhaps the Roman Empire will always be the blood feud of the elves.
Yang Hao shook his head. According to the traditional understanding of the elves, he first let the meeting mourn for the victims for three minutes, and then he got straight to the point:
"Through the previous war, we must reflect on the various problems in our country... The problems we found during the war are as follows:
1. The production of enchanted bullets and regular bullets is insufficient. Because not all of our soldiers can use enchanted ammunition, this battle is particularly difficult for us. We even have to wait for the enemy's priests to relax their vigilance before we can find an opportunity to kill them...
If all of us could use enchanted bullets with high penetration or other effects, we could avoid at least half of the casualties in this battle: because this would mean that we could free up our shooters to shoot at the enemy's Griffin Knights instead of just continuing to aim at the priests we haven't dealt with yet.
So we must let the Oak Factory also have the ability to enchant bullets! Masters, think about it, we can't wait for the soldiers to continue to sacrifice before we wake up!
We must let the Oak Factory replace all our low-end handicrafts and let our elite craftsmen go to more useful places to display their brilliance!"
The elves looked at each other, and then all agreed without any suspense - after all, to be honest, after the war broke out, all the elves reviewed the war.
One problem that was clearly pointed out in the review was that the riflemen had too little ammunition. Whether it was regular bullets or enchanted bullets, their ammunition was too little.
Currently, enchanting bullets or enchanting arrows is still done manually by the elves.
But the efficiency of manual enchanting of consumables is obvious to all. And the cruel reality on the battlefield tells the old elves that times have changed too much.
If the riflemen had an endless supply of enchanted bullets, they would have been able to deal with the priests and their zombies at a much faster rate, and then launch precise point-kill attacks on the griffin knights who were attacking from high altitudes.
But the problem is that there is no if, but the old elves can at least allow future wars to have this "if".
Therefore, even the arrow maker whose social status was most threatened chose to agree with Yang Hao's plan.
After all, their social status was damaged, and at most they were laughed at a few times when drinking and eating - but the elf warriors' lives were actually at stake.
However, they still expressed their concerns: since even the enchanting process can be handed over to the Oak Factory, where should the newcomers who are now specializing in the skills of arrow makers and these old guys go to make use of their remaining energy
Yang Hao's explanation and solution were very simple: Oak Factory could only batch enchantments with "simple processes". If you wanted to enchant multiple types of enchantments on a gun, or perform two or three enchantment processes on bullets at the same time, you still had to rely on the hands of more precise arrow makers.
Therefore, at this stage, arrow makers can abandon the tedious single enchanting process and instead customize more powerful enchanted bullets for archers.
In addition, Yang Hao also needs arrow makers with enchantment abilities to research new things.
"That's the type of bullet itself, masters. Bullets can have iron heads, copper heads, and silver heads. They also have various penetration and killing effects depending on the material. They can even have various power changes depending on the amount of gunpowder in the shell.
I think that the arrow makers can consider switching to the development of new bullets, and those who don't want to switch can directly advance from the work of arrow makers to new research - we need to enchant the interior of the Oak Factory, and this work requires the gathering of all the elves who are good at enchanting. "
"What is this for?"
"This is to mass-produce more Golems. Golems have proven their diversity and strength in the war, and have proven their value at a low cost.
We need more golems, but if we can only let the people of Ling produce golems manually, it is still too slow, so we may need to "enchant" some special spells to allow the people of Ling to "mass produce" golems through factories. "
"I see."
Golem also proved his worth in the war replay. If the scarcity of bullets for the Elf Rifleman only affected the death of a few elves in the end, then the existence of Golem directly changed the course of the war.
If you lose the golems or if there are too few golems, the battle is already lost.
At this moment, the old elves had no chance to discuss things in a meeting in neat clothes. Instead, they should have been fighting for their lives with the invaders in the Elf Forest with their longbows.
Therefore, the mass production of golems became a major concern for all the old elves - but before the elves could vote in favor, Yang Hao changed the subject and said that golems not only had potential in war, but more importantly, golems could adapt to some of the elves' low-end jobs.
“For example, simple material transportation, for example, building houses - although at this stage they only know how to pound stones and wood into the ground, the digging of trenches on the battlefield is enough to prove their potential in people’s livelihood.
In the future, our descendants will definitely rely on Golem to run the underlying industries. Naturally, we must increase the production of Golem, and we must also let more people study Golem's new magic circuits to make them more "smart".
This is actually my arrangement for the current situation of the elves. Masters, please use your imagination from the bottom of your heart. Instead of letting the elves, who are destined to learn countless knowledge and have a long life, engage in repetitive labor, such as repetitive cooking and other jobs that cultivate their body and mind, such as moving bricks, transporting, and building, it is better to let the elves engage in higher-end careers. "
"A higher-end career?" The archery master, who should be called the rifle master at this moment, pondered. "Using bow-making as an analogy, you don't want our children to continue to engage in "making longbows" itself, but to choose "designing rifles" instead?"
"Yes. This is the only way to maximize the value of the elves. More importantly, only in this way can the elves' changes become more and more intense, and eventually become the fire of change that will never be extinguished for this kingdom and this race."
If the elves are destined to move towards perfection, and are destined to be blocked by "perfection" again in the future, then Yang Hao's choice is to let the elves get away from jobs that "make it easy to achieve perfection."
To put it simply, 1+1=2 is an easy and perfect task that even the elves can calculate with their eyes closed.
But what if the elves were allowed to engage in programming professions on Earth? What if they were allowed to engage in creative professions that have no upper limit and cannot possibly have an upper limit
It’s like moving bricks. The original repetitive work allows the elves to perfectly deliver 50 bricks from A to B each time. But in order to encourage the elves to embark on high-end careers, what if the elves can be programmed to let countless robots move bricks for them
Although it seems that this will be a roundabout way, the brick-moving work that originally only needs one person to be completed will require several machines.
But in the final analysis, the by-products obtained by the elves in the programming process will also feed back to the entire elf society and cause society to change inadvertently.
Although it may seem strange and troublesome at first.
But in the end, when people see countless robots moving bricks efficiently in all kinds of incredible ways, they should be grateful for the efforts of these creators.
Yang Hao’s idea is to completely liberate the elves from “repetitive labor”.
As long as everyone is a creator, even if Yang Hao and Theresa die a hundred years later, the elves can continue to evolve with full changes.
This is the biggest change Yang Hao has brought to the elves—a path of change that will never stagnate.
The old elves understood what Yang Hao meant. They looked at Yang Hao with burning eyes. What a hard-working person he was.
Even the path after death is clearly planned, and this path will not make the elf feel any "bound".
Finn, great Finn—when will you take a man like this down and put him on your bed
In this way, we can make this regent live as long as an elf and let him continue to lead us to prosperity.
The old elves were filled with emotion in their hearts, and naturally, the proposal was passed unanimously.
After completing [Adding Enchanting Function to the Oak Factory], [A Way Out for Fletchers], and [Gorems' Mass Production Plan], Yang Hao and the elves reflected on the various mistakes that had been made since the reform of Caparia.
All elves acknowledge the objective fact that "the time for reform is too short", but there are also elves who think that "rather than saying that the time for reform is too short, it is better to say that we are not bold enough".
Naturally, the third group of elves also had this idea: "If we speed up reform endlessly, won't we end up on the same wrong path as humans?"
The two sides discussed very intensely, and in the end Yang Hao shrugged and gave a qualitative conclusion: As a living thing, there will always be a day when mistakes are made. The important thing is not how to permanently "avoid mistakes", but how to [gain experience and knowledge and improve after making mistakes].
He also made a lot of mistakes when he was the regent of the Roman Empire. He even almost ignored the feelings of Naluga and others because of his awkward personality when traveling with Theresa. He just had to admit these mistakes. After all, as long as he admitted them, there would be a chance to correct them.
"Then let's move on to the next topic... the equipment reform of the Hippogriff Knights."
“Next topic…”
"Next… "
The discussion lasted from noon to afternoon, during which Yang Hao successively proposed the weapon plan for "equipment of the Eagle Knights", the plan for "setting up a special expert agency to shoot improved models of the Gappa 1404 rifle", and the proposal for "fully equipping the Gappa 1404 rifle".
There is not much to say at the beginning - the Hippogriff Knights can only use longbows and swords to fight against the Griffin Knights on the Hippogriffs, although the Hippogriff Knights are very flexible and their scimitar skills are also extremely mysterious!
But the problem is that this is like letting an orator have a boxing match with a boxer. The Griffin Knight is covered in plate armor, and the Hippogriff Knight has to choose a nearly mutual destruction method to fight the enemy because of his equipment. To be honest, this is not what the elf and Yang Hao want to see at all.
Therefore, the proposal to miniaturize the Gappa 1404 rifle for use by the Hippogriff Knights was put on the agenda. This plan naturally led to the proposal to improve the Gappa 1404 rifle.
After all, the rifle in Yang Hao's hand is just a "bolt-action rifle". The types of guns such as "semi-automatic rifles", "fully automatic rifles", "assault rifles", "submachine guns", "trench guns" and even "machine guns" have not appeared yet!
It is certainly right to increase efforts in improving firearms. If efforts are being intensified in improving firearms, then how can there be no proposal to equip the entire population with rifles
As a result, it has become a foregone conclusion that all members of the elven army will be equipped with rifles during the rest period.
Ten of the old elves immediately gave up their longbow wives, whom they claimed to love, and devoted themselves to the research of rifles. This confused Yang Hao and made him doubt whether the elves' emotions were stable, but it also made Yang Hao feel relieved.
In the end, Yang Hao finally raised the most important issue that must be resolved.
"The last question is... about the plan for "magic energy storage" - please turn to page... Let's review the previous defense battle outside the Monster Forest."
The issue of "magic power storage" is a major reform issue that Yang Hao proposed carefully after careful consideration.
After all, to be honest, it’s not that the elves’ wizards and ancient trees are not powerful, but that the "magic" in this world is too problematic.
Because the magic power limit of the Monster Forest is not enough for the elves to continuously release magic equivalent to the level of human forbidden spells, Yang Hao can only use the elven wizards at the most critical moment.
Is this reasonable? Compared to the clergy system where believers can cast divine spells at will, is this reasonable
This is really unreasonable! So Yang Hao thinks that he must solve this problem!
Otherwise, if he leads a bunch of mages to attack the royal capital, but ends up with Priscilla using up all the magic power in the area first and leaving his mages helpless, wouldn't that be a joke
"So we have to consider whether it is feasible to "store" the magic power of the Elf Forest and then transport it to other areas for use."
So what Yang Hao was thinking about was whether we could "extract" the overflowing magic power when the regional magic power was fully restored.
Just like when you get your salary, all the money except for living expenses can be put into a piggy bank and saved - magic power, as the wizard's "salary", can naturally be saved as well.