Arcane Journey

Chapter 141 The Calm Before the Storm

In the study of the castle.

"Please come in." Brian put down the magic book in his hand and responded to the request outside the door.

He looked up and saw the bloated Graal walking in easily through the door.

Seeing the merchant, he immediately realized that 15 days had passed since the day the purple dragon knight and the battle mage were stationed in the rock bunker.

In other words, he has occupied Mokou Town for nearly 20 days.

Because after he wrote out his plan for the town, he handed it over to Graal, who was solely responsible for the reconstruction of the town.

The other party will also report to him every 5 days on the development and governance of the town, as well as some problems that he encounters that are difficult to solve.

During this time, he has been in the study reading books and practicing new metamagic feats.

It wasn't that he didn't want to go out to gain experience, but it was mainly because he was worried about what would happen if the shadow guard assassins in the city of ghosts didn't play their cards according to common sense and attacked him.

After all, he directly offended a future legendary assassin, and he is still a woman who likes to hold grudges.

Therefore, before the wizard tower is established, it is best for him to keep a low profile.

"My lord." Graal bowed slightly, and under Brian's gesture, he sat down on an oak armchair big enough to accommodate two people, and began to seriously report on his work.

"According to your instructions, I have arranged for people to establish five simple small villages in some areas that are conducive to farming and planting in the east of Mokou Town, and arranged more than 1500 freed slaves to work there."

After finishing speaking, he took out a simple map and put it on the table in front of Brian, "This is the approximate location of the five newly established small villages. Due to limited time, these small villages can only be tents for the time being. Fence it to keep out wild beasts or small bands of goblin kobolds."

Brian nodded slightly, and glanced at the map on the table.

He unexpectedly discovered that Graal had already named five small villages.

The three small villages located in several oak forests near the Horn of the Storm Mountains are Ancient Oak Village, Golden Tree Village and Hedge Village. On a flat land on the road leading to Tivanton in the east, the village established is called Travel Rest. village.

The last village is located in a mining area near the Mokou Mountains, called Shenshi Village.

After a quick glance, he could see that the locations of these five villages were very reasonable.

If it continues to develop, it can gradually develop into a small town that can accommodate thousands of people.

It was his idea to establish a village around the territory, which still had a great impact on the native resident Graal.

This place is no different from the real world. In this highly magical world, civilians in the wilderness are not only on guard against wild beasts and evil humanoid creatures from the outside world, they may even encounter robbers and robbers.

So most commoners like to live in towns or castles with high walls and deep walls for shelter.

Not only did he not choose to concentrate all the population in the town, but he did the opposite and scattered them around the periphery of the territory. This undoubtedly forced many civilians who had no power to restrain them to a dead end.

Brian can naturally think of such a problem that even ordinary people can think about.

However, he had his own plans in mind.

In the early stage of land reclamation, he sent people from the Purple Dragon Legion to act as guards to clean up the monsters and evil humanoid colonies around them.

After all, all the slaves were liberated by him as lower-class civilians. Although they gained personal freedom and property freedom, as slaves, they had almost no wealth of their own.

Therefore, the purpose of establishing villages is to allocate land to them.

The territory of Mokou Town is very large, and the most indispensable thing is uncultivated wasteland.

Of course, even if these lands are being abandoned, they all belong to the property of Mokou Town, so it is naturally impossible to give these lower-level civilians free of charge.

He distributed them farming tools and daily necessities in a unified way in the form of lease, allowing them to open up wasteland by themselves.

Brian knew in his heart that too many gifts could easily lead to counterproductive effects, and what he gave these people was the opportunity to strive for the future.

Only by allowing them to personally experience the land they cultivated and the houses and villages they built can they truly have a sense of belonging to the territory.

The land allocated to them in Mokou Town only charges about [-]% of the rent, that is to say, [-]% of the income from farming in a year can be used as their personal property.

Next, they can rely on themselves to earn and accumulate wealth.

After all, under the slave system, they hardly had any freedom of life and property rights, and their labor was more driven by the whip.

Now, they have property rights, and the income from farming will be their private property, which can greatly stimulate their enthusiasm.

For Bryan right now, the most difficult defensive problem has also been solved by him.

Of course, the solution to the problem is not to let more than 500 Zilong guards overkill to guard these small villages.

But among the more than 2000 slaves, through the policy of converting the land into private property and upgrading them to citizens of Mokou Town, many humanoid creatures and some good gladiators who used to be in the arena voluntarily joined the defense team to form Form a militia to protect the village.

Although the strength of most of these slaves is not strong, it is no problem at all to resist the goblin kobolds after they are distributed with weapons.

Next, he only needs to let the army in charge of patrolling outside the town regularly clean up the wild monsters in several villages, which is enough for these small villages to stand the test of time and develop steadily.

"Have you encountered any problems?" Brian looked at Graal and asked.

He found that the fat assistant had not only lost a lot of weight, but also had a healthy tan.

In this regard, Brian, who is the lord of Mokou Town, just smiled and gave him a few words of encouragement.

Seriously speaking, he is not a good lord who likes to do everything himself and take the lead.

In fact, Brian had never learned how to be a good and beloved lord.

However, although he is not good at doing these things, at least he knows that as a lord or superior, there is no need to do everything by himself and focus on the overall situation.

He only needs to make a good plan for the future, allocate incentives reasonably, and be fair and just to his subordinates.

This is the so-called 'those who do not seek the overall situation, do not seek a domain'.

In his current power distribution, the construction of the town, all internal affairs, and logistics work are all in charge of Graal alone.

This is also something that can't be helped, mainly because he really can't find a second suitable person to help him share the pressure.

In fact, Brian could still feel the painful and happy expression on Graal, who managed so many affairs, on his chubby face.

Seeing this, after careful consideration, he suppressed his plan to recruit people again, and simply let him manage alone.

Doing so seems to allow Graal to have too much power, but Brian always believes that in this high-magic world, where personal power is all in one body, any fancy tricks and methods are just clouds in the face of absolute strength.

Obviously, the businessman in front of him, who looks like the chief executive of Mokou Town, is completely within his control.

Among other forces, Salo, the head of the Dragon Skeleton Mercenary Corps, is responsible for managing and recruiting soldiers, forming a garrison team, maintaining law and order within the town, and assisting in the defense of Mokou Town.

Purple Dragon Knight Obert led his own Purple Dragon Guards, responsible for dealing with threats from outside the town, and training new recruits with the old Sword Saint Ballerius.

The spellcasters of the battle mage team are on standby and ready to respond to emergencies that are too late to support.

And the dozen or so casters of the Silver Scholars Association, headed by the moon elf mage Ru Yin, are still in the city of Aldus in the Underdark.

In addition to supervising the quality of the stone bricks, they also added an additional job of enchanting protective runes for each stone brick, which was the most workload.

"My lord, when we were burning forests to open up wasteland, we found five druids living in seclusion in an oak forest near Hedge Village." Graal said truthfully, "These druids have come forward to warn us of destroying nature. Balancing act, and also strictly limited the scope of our land reclamation."

Hearing this, Brian glanced at the map subconsciously. Graal had carefully marked the location of the grove where the druids lived.

As expected, he found that these people were indeed druids from Emerald Garden.

In his impression, they are mainly responsible for the natural balance of the rocky wasteland.

Emerald Garden belongs to an organization established by a group of druids and rangers who believe in the god of nature, Sivanus, and their main purpose is to maintain the balance of nature.

However, these hangers did nothing but chat and fart in the grove all day long, and they didn't even let them get close to the grove.

Because there are a full range of and very rich herbs growing in it.

There was once a player who wanted to die arrogantly threatened: I am afraid that they are wool, these guys don’t protect nature, they fish here every day, I will burn this small forest for him today, and let them catch fish. Healed!
As a result, the cheap problem of fishing was not cured, and he himself became the fertilizer of the grove.

"Ignore them for the time being." Brian said indifferently, "If they try to do something, put all the responsibility on me and let them go to Mokou Town to meet me."

Large-scale land reclamation in the rocky wasteland, and the Druid's intervention to stop it was already within his expectation.

As the saying goes, the wicked need to be tortured by the wicked. He believed that when the priests of the Mother Earth came here, they would be able to perform a wonderful performance with these druids.

It's nothing for him to worry about.

If they went too far, at worst, he would follow the example of the game player from his previous life and cure their problem of fishing.

"I have another good news here, my lord."

Graal went on to say, "After we cleared out a group of kobolds in an abandoned underground mining area near Deep Stone Village, we discovered an adamantine mine."

After listening to Graal's report, Brian's expression fluctuated rarely, and he looked at the map on the desktop.

The mining area near Shenshi Village was all obtained from the Eagle Chamber of Commerce that he eliminated, and it is by far the largest source of income.

The main purpose is to transport these ores to the cities of the gray dwarves in exchange for weapons and equipment.

Fine gold, as one of the hardest metals known in the material world, has high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, resistance to dissociation, and can also burn magic runes and absorb magic energy.

In addition to the shortcomings of being too heavy, not easy to process, and difficult to find, fine gold can be said to be the best magic metal.

It is five times denser than steel, as tough as gold, and extremely resistant to high temperatures.

Most importantly, due to the golden age of the arcane empire Netherese, many important parts of the floating city can only be supported by the performance of adamantine, which led to their over-exploitation of adamantine resources, and now adamantine is rarely found on the surface mineral.

This makes pure gold astonishingly rare and precious in the material world.

"After the reserves are detected, don't mine and export them for the time being. I will keep them for other purposes." Brian thought for a moment and said to the assistant in front of him.

Adamantite is also an important material for building wizard towers, and it is also the main material for making Adamantite Golems, legendary creatures.

For him, the more rare materials, the better.

However, he can't use that much for the time being.

Because in the small world where he was reborn, the reserves of fine gold and mithril were also very rich.

Before he left, he had collected enough materials to make two adamantine golems in advance, and stored them all with his psion companion.

After his wizard tower is built, he can start making the legendary-level construct Adamantine Golem.

This is why he confidently said that after owning the wizard tower, he would not be afraid of most legendary powerhouses.

Next, after discussing with Graal for about half an hour, the other party had a smile on his face and left contentedly.

Because in the report work just now, Brian mentioned Graal's son Lando intentionally or unintentionally.

At this time, this talented young warrior was receiving training from Baleris with Alek, another purple dragon knight.

His intention to do this was mainly to let the two of them learn to use the Qi energy in their bodies.

In this way, they can logically take part-time job as the sword of the sage, one of the three basic professions of the nine swords, to learn the desert wind swordsmanship obtained in his hands.

And after he successfully suppressed the sequelae of Salo, a dragon vein warlock, through the magic potion prepared by the mushroom man, he wanted to try to let these two talented young people practice desert wind swordsmanship mainly based on fire elements. Conduct a dragon blood baptism with the blood of the red dragon to greatly enhance the power of their swordsmanship.

If it is really successful, Graal's son Lando can not only work as a part-time Nine Swordsman, but also use his warrior profession as a basis to advance to a Dragon Vein Warlock.

It can be said that his strength has been greatly improved.

Thinking of this, he gave up his thoughts on reading and prepared to go to the dark forest in the dark region.

noon.

After Brian took away the magic potion that suppressed the blood of the red dragon from the leader of the fungus in the lightless forest, he had just returned to the study when a piece of good news came.

Tysander, the priest of the Temple of Knowledge, came to Mokou Town with a group of missionaries and temple guardians.

He immediately arranged for someone to lead them into the Rock Bunker for a meeting.

After seeing the polymath priest Tysonde again, Brian was surprised to find that the other party brought half of the people from the Temple of Knowledge in Araby City to Mokou Town to establish a foothold.

In the hands of these people, in addition to knowledge-related believers in various fields such as scholars, inventors, craftsmen, and artists who spread knowledge, they also brought 50 heavily armed temple knights and more than 40 priests, as well as a few part-time wizards. Clergy.

In the Church of the God of Knowledge, although the real temple knights are mainly fighters, they also work as priests and have the ability to release divine spells.

Their strength is generally above level 10 and level [-]. Brian also saw through the blank scroll emblem on their silver-white armor that the strength of the leader of this group of knights has reached the level [-] model.

As for the more than 40 priests wearing scholarly priest robes, at least 10 priests are around the third level.

It can be seen from this that the "gold-plated laurel crown" of the God of Knowledge Church is an unremitting support for his intention to promote knowledge.

However, he couldn't help feeling a little regretful that the High Priest of Arabe City, whose strength had reached the legendary level, did not come in person.

"My lord, we have arrived as promised." Tysander, who was wearing a scholar's robe, bowed slightly to him, "Oghma, the god of knowledge, favors every soul who is passionate about knowledge, and to Cormyr who possesses wisdom and strength The lord salutes."

The priests, temple knights, and scholars behind Tysander all bowed slightly to Brian to show their respect.

"Praise Oghma, in the name of the Kingdom of Cormyr, I, Brian, welcome you all on behalf of all the citizens of Mokou Town."

Bryan followed suit, "May the sun illuminate the world, knowledge illuminate life, and let the glory of the God of Knowledge shine on every corner of the territory."

After setting up the believers of the God of Knowledge, Brian received news that people from the Church of the Mother Earth had come to Mokou Town when the sun was about to disappear on the horizon.

Hearing this news, his heart was finally completely relieved.

After all, his citizens are in full swing to open up wasteland, using the time of spring plowing to sow grain.

But their poor sowing technology made the progress of land reclamation very slow.

At this time, with the guidance and help of professionals from the Mother Earth Church, their efficiency will be faster and their safety will be guaranteed.

Chauntia's priests are best at teaching gardening, herbalism, plant classification, and plant diseases, and spreading the knowledge of all civilizations about replanting, composting, and irrigation to fertilize the land, and pass the land down from generation to generation.

Just as Brian thought, in the hands of the people brought by the female priest Karina, in addition to the relevant cultivating believers, there is also a watchman force of about a hundred people.

'Watchers' is a special organization of the Church of the Mother Earth, mainly composed of rangers who believe in Chauntia, supplemented by priests.

These watchman rangers are not only proficient in melee combat and archery, but also have the ability to release divine spells.

They are the most professional and most powerful fighters, responsible for guarding the farming and destroying any evil humanoid creatures who try to destroy the land and threaten the civilization of the frontier.

During the simple meeting with the female priest Karina, to Brian's surprise, when the other party learned that there were five fishing druids near Hedge Village, he did not hesitate to lead a team of watchmen rangers until run away.

Seeing this clean and tidy female priest, he didn't stop him, but ordered Graal to arrange the believers of the Mother Earth to the place of residence prepared in advance.

With the entry of the Church of the God of Knowledge and the Church of the Mother of the Earth, Brian clearly felt that the atmosphere of the entire town had changed.

On the originally empty streets, there were gradually more adventurers, and caravans from the Northland Alliance across the Ennook Desert to the Valley and the Kingdom of Cormyr also came in an endless stream.

This harmonious atmosphere lasted until the next morning. When Brian opened his eyes and sat up from the bed, he suddenly found that Silver Wing had sat beside him in the form of a half-elf poet. .

He was about to complain, when out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly noticed the unprecedented solemn expression on the other's handsome face.

Seeing this, even if he didn't open his mouth to ask, he knew that Silver Wing, who had been helping him keep an eye on the desert, definitely sensed the impending counterattack of the City of Shadows.

To make an ancient silver dragon show such a dignified expression, the enemy's power is obviously extraordinary.

(End of this chapter)