Duke encouraged Nicole as always, which is also the daily character of many witches, after all, in their most important growth process and cognitive development time, they are spent in discrimination and fear, and it is almost a very normal thing to belittle and feel inferior to themselves.

Not everyone has the willpower to be the most outstanding and excellent in the face of the whole world.

It's just that these witches have gradually improved this problem since they came to Storm Castle, and Nicole is relatively young, if Duke remembers correctly, she is only fourteen years old this year, and many things can be cultivated and changed slowly.

And Duke also understands that it is very normal for scientific research to have no results for decades, especially some scientists who conduct basic theoretical research may have been studying one thing all their lives. As long as it is a matter of research on the future development direction, Duke will strongly support and encourage, regardless of whether it can produce results in a fast time.

Therefore, the agricultural laboratory is nothing at all in Duke's eyes, even if the experiment fails in the end, it cannot give birth to magic seeds like elves, but Duke will definitely not regret the investment in agricultural seeds, and this thing will definitely pay off in the end.

"Lord Lord, I will definitely do my best to cultivate excellent seeds for Storm Castle when I plow in the spring next year!"

Nicole replied with a firm face at this time, and she couldn't see her timidity and lack of confidence at all.

"Very well, then you can go down and prepare first. ”

After explaining the matter, the agricultural officer Adela and the others left Duke's study and began to prepare for the agricultural laboratory. At the same time, Duke issued an order that no matter what the cost, enough supplies must be procured from the Andorran Kingdom to ensure that Stormcastle was stockpiled for the entire winter.

Because winter is different from summer, after the Seine River freezes, it can be said that the ice demons in the monster valley are unimpeded, but because of the thick clothes and plate armor of human beings, plus the thick ice and snow outside, it is very difficult to walk, let alone fight.

Therefore, Duke is worried that there is a high possibility that the Ice Demon will besiege the Storm Castle for a war of attrition, so in order to prevent this from happening, it is also necessary to reserve materials until the beginning of spring next year.

As the weather gets colder day by day, the number of people in the storm castle has begun to increase day by day, even though the valley in the fort has now been emptied, but many people still like to follow the habits of previous years, subconsciously moving closer to the fortress. Basically, the natives of Storm Castle before could find some relatives in the castle, and the winter would be over if they managed to squeeze it.

In this case, Duke could not prohibit the entry of the populace, after all, it did not violate any of the rules of Storm Castle. However, with the high concentration of population density, the possibility of epidemic in winter will also increase, so in order to avoid this kind of thing, Duke ordered Copernicus to pay attention to the epidemic prevention and sanitation work of Storm Castle, and any pollution of Storm Castle must be cleaned and disinfected with lime water to minimize the risk of epidemic occurrence.

At the same time, the five hundred soldiers of the Second Regiment of the Storm Army led by Fei Duo escorted the largest and last batch of 50,000 refugees from the Principality of Berry to the territory of Storm Castle. However, they didn't go directly to Stormcastle, they went to Stormtown.

To be honest, even if Storm New City does not have the defensive offensive of building walls and fortresses now, but the neatly planned houses and the streets built of cement are far ahead of most cities on the continent.

Therefore, after seeing the scale of Storm New City, these refugees were full of shock, they did not expect Storm Castle to be so majestic and magnificent, and it also strengthened their determination to stay in Storm Castle in the future.

With the arrival of all the absorbed people, according to the general statistics of Civil Affairs Officer Bashir, the increase in the number of humans in Storm Castle this time is about 100,000 people, which is almost equivalent to a direct doubling of the number of humans in the entire Storm Castle.

At the same time, with so many refugees, Duke also met with them in Stormtown, where they could get to know the future Stormlord and enact some of the rules of Stormcastle. Then shout slogans and future plans to give these refugees some blood.

Duke is very familiar with the means of making speeches, and he also has an affinity that ordinary lords and nobles do not have, such as going down to greet these refugees, asking about their family situation, and promising future living security.

In fact, these things are completely at the primary level of politicians in later generations, but in this world, they are enough to make people cry with gratitude. After experiencing such a speech, it also gave many new refugees from Stormfort a greater sense of belonging.

With the arrival of 100,000 new residents, the first snow of winter has begun to fall, but this time there should still be a few months left before the earth is frozen in exaggeration. By this time, Duke had mobilized 100,000 refugees to make the temporary shelters as thick as possible, and the coal mines had doubled their manpower to ensure that they had fires to keep them warm throughout the winter.

Maybe this is still not as warm as in a thick house, at least the situation of freezing to death will not happen again, you must know that the conditions in the valley of the fort are much more difficult than this, those residents still resist every year, people sometimes have more resistance to nature than many people imagine.

Of course, in addition to these, taking advantage of the winter break, Duke launched a new round of expansion plans for the Storm Force and the production plan of the hydroelectric plant. Because most of the pearl gems of the Sea Clan have been turned into gold coins after this month of sales, and the transportation to the Storm Castle treasury is about half a million gold coins. If you count the ones that have not been sold, the total should be around 700,000 gold coins.

At the beginning, Duke and their prediction that if it was sold slowly, it would not hit the market and lower the price, and this batch of pearl gem million gold coins might be no problem, after all, this is the accumulation of little by little by the wave tribe for more than a hundred years. It's just that Storm Castle is so short of money that Duke can only find a way to cash in as much as possible to alleviate the winter crisis.

Combined with the 150,000 gold coins earned from the sale of other goods in the Storm Firm, this means that in the time of November, the total income of Storm Castle reached a staggering 650,000 gold coins. It may be that the income of the entire Andorran pro-kingdom in two months cannot reach the figure of Duke, that is, with such an income of money, he can start the expansion plan!