It is precisely because of these drawbacks of the jaw knife that some male ants are not very satisfied with this weapon, and its advantages and disadvantages are equally obvious.

The big-headed ant relics did not inform the protagonist of these disadvantages of the jaw knife before, of course, it may be that the big-headed ant relics think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

In the previous battles against the main nest "Qingqiu City", this kind of problem rarely occurred, because the battle time was not very long.

And this operation in the northeast lasted for more than a week, and it is normal for a large number of jawblades to be damaged in frequent battles. Many warriors who lost their jaws had to continue fighting with chitinous jaws.

The reason for this is, on the one hand, there are congenital defects in the strength of the jaw knife itself, and on the other hand, there is no spare jaw knife to replace on the battlefield.

The protagonist plans to carry some spare jaw knives with the army in the future, but the mixed glue needed is not easy to carry, among these glues, ant glue can be produced by ants themselves, and it is available at any time, but vegetable glue can not be found at any time.

If only ant glue is used, the quality of the glue will be slightly worse, and it can only be used as an emergency measure.

In addition, it is now more difficult for the soldiers of the Ant Legion to carry three slings by themselves, and if they bring a spare set of jaw knives, it will greatly consume the physical strength of the soldiers during the march and also affect mobility.

The protagonist attaches great importance to this experience found in actual combat. In the past, the combat radius of the Divine Envoy King Legion was not far, and they often relied on the lair to fight, and the lair had sufficient material reserves.

However, in the future, there will be more and more battles like the expedition to "Hunting Ground City", and only "Dongyang City" in his own territory can currently mass-produce slings and jawknives, and the main nest "Qingqiu City" is currently only produced on a small scale.

If the Divine Envoy King's legion stays away from these two military bases in the future, it will be difficult to get armament replenishment in time.

The solution is for the troops to carry sufficient supplies on their own and constantly replenish them from the rear according to the needs of the war.

It is very uneconomical for the soldiers of the field regiment to transport these supplies on their own, and the protagonist intends to recruit a group of baggage troops.

Unlike field troops, baggage troops do not need to recruit soldier ants, and worker ants are also competent, and they are more hard-working.

The baggage unit does not need to be subordinate to the field corps, and can be regarded as an independent formation, under the direct control of high-level commanders. Just like the migrant workers who supported the front during the Liberation War, they were all directly under the command of the war zone.

With this in mind, the protagonist consults with the other males and decides to start working on it.

- I'm the dividing line -

As for the strength of the stone jaw knife, even if there are spare parts, if the jaw knife suddenly breaks during the fierce battle, the fighters cannot replace it immediately.

The best way to do this is to significantly reduce the damage rate of the jaw knife and improve its quality.

It is not possible to improve the strength of the jaw knife purely from a technical point of view, it depends on the texture of the stone, and the ants obviously cannot detect in advance whether there are cracks and other hidden dangers inside the stone knife.

The protagonist wants to upgrade the material of the jaw knife to a metal texture, such as copper.

Last winter, the protagonist had plans to smelt copper. After recently conquering the main nest, he also sent troops to take the "Malachite City", which produces copper ore.

Previously, an underground blast furnace had been dug in the "Dongyang Castle" for copper smelting.

The underground blast furnace is about half a metre high and about a centimeter in diameter, and is located at a depth of more than one metre, and uses the surrounding soil as an insulation layer to raise the furnace temperature as high as possible when fuel is limited.

Smelting metals, simply put, is the process of reducing the oxides of metals to metals at high temperatures and precipitating them.

The melting point of copper is only about 1,000 degrees, which is not high in metals, and if you add tin and other alloys to make it, you can lower the melting point even more.

And copper ore is not uncommon in nature, so copper is one of the earliest metals used by humans.

As early as prehistoric times, people began to mine open-pit copper and use the obtained copper to make weapons, tools and other utensils, which shows that the difficulty of copper smelting technology is not high, no more than the technical capabilities of the ancient people of the Stone Age.

For example, the method of copper smelting in some ancient civilizations can be called rude, that is, to build a large fuel pile on the ground, and the fuel is still mainly firewood, in which copper ore is piled up, and after ignition, wait for the copper water to precipitate and solidify, and then process the copper after obtaining it.

This method is almost identical to primitive pottery, so some studies suggest that the origin of copper smelting may have been inspired by the ancient people's inadvertent roasting of copper ore in pottery.

Iron has a melting point of 1,500 degrees, which is 50% higher than that of copper. Iron cannot be melted by the temperature generated by an open fire alone, so it is necessary to have a stove that can increase the smelting temperature.

Due to the ant's tiny size, the scale of copper ore smelted is bound to be small, and the fuel is also small. The protagonist is worried that the smelting temperature will not be enough, so he will build an iron-making standard blast furnace underground to smelt copper.

The blast furnace has already done an experiment: a batch of specially prepared charcoal and finely crushed malachite are stacked into the blast furnace, the walls of the blast furnace are smeared with wet yellow mud and dried, and there are pottery grates directly below to drain the copper juice and block impurities. Underneath the grate is a channel that directs the copper juice into the mold.

After the blast furnace is ignited, it is simmered for a long time, and the heavy black smoke is discharged from the ground through the exhaust outlet, which looks spectacular from a distance, which is the smoke of technology and civilization.

But the end result was not a success. Although a large amount of copper was smelted, the pottery grate blocked the flow of copper juice while blocking impurities.

Except for a small amount of copper that is smoothly exported to the mold and condensed into copper blocks. Most of the copper juice was clogged in the grate, which eventually melted the grate, and then a large amount of copper juice and impurities blocked the trough.

In the end, the large worker ants who participated in the experiment harvested only a blast furnace with pipes blocked by impurities-filled copper lumps and a pitiful little copper.

With the construction ability of the ants, it was impossible to stop this large lump of copper blocking the copper outlet, and this blast furnace had to be abandoned after only one use.

And the copper blocks obtained are asked by the protagonist to go to the main nest "Qingqiu City" and decorate them in his bedroom as a souvenir.

At the very least, this experiment proved that in an underground blast furnace, a small amount of fuel can be used to obtain sufficient furnace temperature to smelt copper. The protagonist asked the scientific research team to study the improvement method of the copper mouth, and he also made some suggestions.

According to the most optimistic estimates, the protagonist thinks that he will be able to obtain this important metal resource this year.

However, copper itself is soft, and it needs to be made into bronze to have better mechanical properties, and the protagonist has not yet found tin ore.

Far water can't quench the thirst of the near, and at present, the Divine Envoy King Legion can only use gravel to make stone tools, as tools and weapons, and they are still some distance away from the age of metal tools.