Seventy-first Section Half-year Results
Half a year passed in a flurry of activity, and everything went roughly as planned. The winged people who returned brought their tribe leader's kind regards and some gifts as a return favor, but not a word was mentioned about settling down here to open shops. It wasn't until spring arrived that my grandmother and the dwarf tribe leader came to Borazi together, signing a series of joint trade agreements with me, that they slowly began to make contact with me and eventually came to trade. The conditions I gave them were extremely favorable, with tax rates forever at 10%, just like for humans, and they were also permitted to station 1000 troops to protect their expatriates here. Moreover, using my mother's business association, I was the first to establish dozens of shops in this city, supplying goods that they lacked, such as salt, tea leaves, and so on. Under these conditions, various alien species flocked to settle down here, and within a short half year, the population grew from just over 10,000 to nearly 200,000. Among them were over 80,000 dwarves, 30,000 winged people, 30,000 elves, over 50,000 berserkers, as well as some other special species, such as the earth spirits who were extremely friendly with the dwarves, and the demon tribe who had an innate ability to control magical beasts. Dozens of rare sub-human species also appeared in my territory.
Of course, there are also human merchants who come with the wind. It's most troublesome to deal with them, and it's clear that they're here to do business with me, but I can't be rough with them, or my reputation will be ruined, and who will dare to come? Moreover, the forces behind them are very powerful, either the five major families' merchant teams or some dogshit prince lord's procurement team. Offending one or two of them doesn't matter, but if I offend all of them, even the king won't have the guts! Fortunately, I have the advantage of having connections and a lot of gold coins in hand, so I can still monopolize the goods of the three major alien tribes for a short time. However, my profit margin is slowly decreasing! Ah~! It's frustrating! It seems that the three major alien tribes are not stupid either, they know they can't let me monopolize their goods, and they have no choice but to acknowledge it! Anyway, I'll just take the lion's share, and make up for the little less by taxing them!
As the city continues to expand, problems such as sanitation and obstructed roads have also arisen. I specially invited a master architect to design a new overall plan for my city, and slowly renovated it. With my abundant financial resources and large workforce, I estimate that the reconstruction and construction of the new city will only take over a year, provided there is no city wall. That thing makes me uncomfortable just by looking at it - building such high walls around a good place, like living in prison, is truly sick! So I decided to reject the proposal to build a city wall despite opposition from others. After all, this place is located in a remote area with rugged mountain roads. There are no threats from enemy countries nearby, and the nearest Wana Kingdom is hundreds of miles away, but those hundreds of miles are within the territory of the Elf Forest. Occasionally, some adventurers pass by, but it's impossible for an army to pass through - that would be like delivering food to monsters! As for thieves, even tens of thousands of them wouldn't be enough for the 50,000 fierce warriors in the city to cut down.
The city's construction funds were over 5 million, and I didn't even use my own money. Just from those two captured tax officials and security officers, they confessed everything after I used a little spiritual magic to scare them. They initially wanted to pretend to be heroes, but after I told them about the "Ten Great Tortures of the Qing Dynasty", they immediately surrendered and cried. Not only did they transfer the total of nearly 600,000 gold coins from their cards to me, but they also handed over their treasure. However, the things inside were extremely disappointing - a few sets of dwarf armor, totaling only tens of thousands, and there were only a few magic items, all of which were level 2 or 3 trash. There were many magic crystal cores, but not many high-level ones, and only three level 7 and one level 8 could enter my eyes. I left them behind, and the rest were confiscated. Although nominally "public" is also mine, but with mom's eyes watching, once she finds out, it's probably not mine anymore, so I'm hiding it privately!
Actually, the most satisfying thing for me in the past half year is not building a new city or earning a lot of gold coins, but training a super elite soldier that belongs to me! The only one on the continent - the Crazy Warrior Battalion. As the strongest melee soldiers on the continent, Crazy Warriors also have different levels of strength. When a Crazy Warrior feels strong enough, they will challenge a specific Earth Dragon at a certain time. This is a completely fair duel, where defeat means death and victory means taming the Earth Dragon as a mount. The Earth Dragon is a level 6 upper-tier magical beast that eats everything, doesn't use magic, but has physical attack and defense abilities close to those of an 8th-level magical beast. Its specialty is charging, biting, and trampling, with its several-ton body able to stand on two legs or jump up and down before using its massive footpads to brutally trample opponents. If it steps on you, even if you're wearing armor made by a dwarf master, you'll be dead for sure. This is the Crazy Warrior tribe's exclusive patent. For others who want to tame magical beasts as mounts, there are only three ways: one is to raise them from young, but such beasts have low combat strength and take decades or even centuries to grow up, which takes too long. Another way is to use a magician's contract, which requires first capturing the beast alive, beating it half to death, and then signing a contract with the help of a high-level mage. However, high-level magical beasts are too difficult to capture alive, as they will run away if they can't win in battle. Otherwise, 7th-level magical beast cores wouldn't be so valuable, worth tens of thousands of gold coins! If you have a living adult 7th-level magical beast, selling it for tens or hundreds of millions of gold coins is no problem. The third way is to capture young beasts and sign a contract with them, which is the best method, as they grow quickly and are highly compatible.
The combat power of the single-fingered earth-traversing dragon is not below that of a golden lower-ranking warrior, which shows just how formidable the Crazy Warrior Dragon Cavalry is. I plan to gather 3000 Crazy Dragon Cavalrymen, but even among all the Crazy Warriors, there are only a few hundred. I specially asked Karlo for the reason, and his answer left me speechless. The earth-traversing dragons eat too much, we can't afford to raise them! That's what Karlo said.
Isn't this easy to handle? I, the poor Taoist, am most unwilling to part with money. So, I formally issued an order: each of the Dragon Warriors would receive a commission of 100 gold coins per year, and their equipment, food, and other expenses would all be borne by me. As for the other Crazy Warrior infantrymen, their annual commission was only 30 gold coins. This fully mobilized their enthusiasm to advance, and now I have more than 1,500 Dragon Warriors and 3,000 Crazy Warrior infantrymen. Because they were too eager, about a dozen people who were not strong enough went to challenge and suffered a crushing defeat and death. My heart ached, and I issued an order: promotion must be passed through the Carlo test, otherwise, it would not be recorded, which reduced many casualties.
With men, I also need equipment, and I've spent a lot of effort on this. Each Dragon Rider is fully armed, with both the man and dragon wearing black iron armor, and their weapons include not only the usual lances but also large knives and ten javelins. The knife is a replica of a cavalry saber, 1.5 meters long, 2 inches wide, and weighing 58 kilograms, which is particularly suitable for close combat chopping. They quickly fell in love with this sharp weapon that can easily cut through ordinary heavy armor, and they all loved it so much that they couldn't bear to put it down. As for the javelins, they are what they usually use when hunting, as their strength cannot handle bows, which are easy to break, so they have to use javelins instead. Although not as accurate as bows and arrows, the range and power of the javelins are much greater. I prepared 8-kilogram iron javelins for them, with a three-edged sharp head that is extremely sharp, and they can all throw it nearly 200 meters and penetrate ordinary heavy armor cavalry. This set of equipment cost me 1,000 gold coins! That's ten times the price of an ordinary heavy cavalryman! Even generals like Li Gang looked at me with envy, saying I was biased towards them. I said if you want to have Dragon Riders, I'll also equip you! They didn't say much more, but they still managed to get a set of magical armor from me worth over 50,000 gold coins, which is usually worn by generals at the division level or above! A division commander has an army of 100,000 soldiers!
Also, training, handing them over to a few generals makes me more at ease. Now with limited time, I reckon after a year they can conduct formal group charges in an orderly manner. By then, heh heh! The Green Dragon Iron Cavalry will have to be careful too!
The last thing to be solved is the problem of going wild, now their sequelae after going wild are too serious, and it takes several years to recover, which is not worth it! I am currently studying a medicine to reduce this cost, unfortunately, time is busy and there is no harvest for the time being!
Here is the translation:
In the past six months, I have made another gain, which is to establish a surveillance network that covers the entire fiefdom. Not only do we monitor those who enter, but we also remain vigilant against magical beasts in the forest. To this end, I have hired a large number of mercenaries to venture into the Elven Forest and create a detailed map for me while gathering valuable intelligence. Based on the importance of their information, I will provide them with special rewards.
This intelligence mainly refers to various precious minerals or other products, such as the location of rare magical cedar forests, gold mines, and places where rare alchemy materials are produced. There is also the habitat of high-level magical beasts. High-level magical beasts generally have their own fixed territories, so once I know this information, I will organize a team led by Carlow to capture them. Every time we can catch one seventh-level beast, it's not bad! However, these seventh-level and above beasts are rarely seen, and some of them live in groups or can fly.
In the past six months, we have launched two expeditions, both of which were successful, and we caught a seventh-level upper-tier three-headed wolf and a seventh-level lower-tier earth python. The three heads of the three-headed wolf can release ice, fire, and electric system magic, its speed is not bad, and its sharp claws and teeth are also very powerful. A single golden warrior cannot defeat it, and even ten golden warriors cannot stop it from escaping.
Fortunately, it encountered a sword saint, and I secretly helped by having Gazi add gravity magic to it. In the end, we successfully captured it alive. Its selling price will definitely not be less than 200W. I generously gave Carlow 20W as a commission, and the rest of the team also received 3W each. Haha, adding up the money given to the mercenaries, we spent less than 60W in total, what a huge profit!
The earth python was easier to deal with. Gazi's aura suppressed it, making it unable to breathe, and soon it was beaten half to death and put into a cage. If someone else had encountered it, they would have been helpless against it, as it can burrow into the ground and escape. But with Gazi by its side, it didn't get away.
Carlow couldn't believe our luck and kept saying that I was lucky! Our team consists of eight golden warriors, Old Ma, Carlow, myself, and Xianya. Xianya is now incredibly powerful, her high-level magic and sacred spells have an astonishing effect, and with her by our side, our combat power has increased exponentially, and we almost never suffer casualties.
Yesterday, I received a letter from my mother asking me to return home for a visit. It suddenly dawned on me that more than half a year has passed. At this moment, homesickness filled my chest, and I couldn't wait to go back home and see my loved ones. No longer staying here, I immediately ordered the preparation of luggage overnight and demanded to bring the best gifts back. This time, I will return home with glory!
