On the evening of February 8th, there will be a grand square ball.

February 8 was the day when the first slaves arrived in Harland's territory, when the area was still a primeval forest and there was no one in the area.

It was these slaves who used their industrious hands to build Fort William and usher in a good life. In addition to being grateful to Richard for changing their fate, the first generation of indentured slaves almost spontaneously gathered on February 8 to celebrate their new birth.

The 8th of February was also named New Life Day by the freedmen of Fort William.

Richard also asked Fort William City Hall to make Freshmen's Day a statutory holiday, so that people can relax and relax for a day off.

Through the reports, Richard knew that the largest cash income of Haaland's territory this year turned into wool spinning and garment business, and the territory earned 16,000 gold coins by relying on wool spinning.

Of course, the output value of agricultural cultivation is the largest, but this year Haaland's territory has poured into 76,000 people, and this group of indentured slaves came to the territory and ate all the grain accumulated this year.

Since this year, wool weaving has spread in northern Xinjiang, although the original loom cannot compete with the new loom in the Harland territory because of the production efficiency.

In second place is steel products, and the annual profit of steel products is 14,000 gold coins.

The income of steel has been very stable, and even if the price is slowly reduced, the income is still increasing.

The third-ranked territory tax has a total of 9,000 gold coins this year.

Last year's top-ranked Warcraft hunting income has decreased a lot because of the war, and this year's income is only 3,000 gold coins.

In fourth place was the liquor business, which made a profit of 5,500 gold coins in a year.

The income from brown sugar, coal, and hemostatic ointment is around 3,000 gold coins, adding up to 10,000 gold coins.

In addition, honey, glass, masonry, flame spider silk, cement, alloy parts, carriage making, plus the proceeds from the carriage and horse shops, made a total of 12,000 gold coins.

Last year, the cash income of Haaland's territory has exceeded 70,000 gold coins. However, because of the outbreak of war, the pressure on the territory's military spending was also very heavy, and more than 10,000 tons of grain were sold to pay off.

With the completion of the expansion of the reconnaissance brigade, there are already four infantry brigades, two cavalry brigades, plus headquarters personnel, for a total strength of more than 5,000 people in the Haaland territory.

In addition, the territory also has a reserve auxiliary, the number of auxiliaries is not large, each castle has a squadron of auxiliaries, and the number of personnel is not fixed. Now there are eight squadrons, which add up to fifteen hundred people.

The cost of raising the auxiliaries was very low, only two months of intensive training per year, even though Richard increased the annual allowance for the auxiliaries, and the training fee was raised to six silver coins, catching up with the average salary. The annual cost of raising 1,500 auxiliaries does not exceed 2,000 gold coins.

However, the 5,000 regular army, even if the cost of raising the army is not as good as that of the main army, will consume 80,000 gold coins a year.

The soldiers of Haaland's territory, as long as they have made meritorious achievements and become freemen, will have a salary of eight silver coins per month, and the salary of professional officers is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of the officers of the main army.

On average, a veteran's salary is eight gold coins a year, and indentured slave recruits do not have a salary and do not need to be paid by Richard.

The number of veterans in the territory is more than 4,000, and their salaries are as high as 34,000 gold coins.

In addition, the salaries of hundreds of officers add up to more than 10,000 gold coins.

In addition to soldiers' salaries, raising the army also requires material inputs

Fortunately, food, meat, clothing, weapons and equipment, nutritional supplies, etc., the cash that really needs to be taken out, including the messy expenses such as buying the iron wildebeest, 50,000 gold coins is enough.

The salary of the grassroots bureaucrats in the territory is the same as that of soldiers, but the number is only more than 500 people, and the investment in medical care and education only consumes 10,000 gold coins.

This year's treasury has a cash surplus of more than 9,000 gold coins.

Richard's coffers were always empty, and every time he had a surplus of gold coins, he would immediately spend them to buy land to increase the population.

But as a lord, it is a dangerous thing to break the chain of funds. This money Richard was going to put in the vault and serve as a reserve.

The Goddess's Birthday is approaching, and Richard brings his family to the Black River Fort to celebrate the Goddess's Birthday with his family.

On this year's Goddess's Birthday Day, the third uncle Bernie specially took a leave of absence and returned to Heihe Fort.

After the Goddess's Birthday and the year 3262 of the Dawn Calendar, William was nearly sixty years old.

During these seven years, William has contributed a lot to the Haaland family's run of the territory. But he also accumulated three great achievements, after the end of the war last year, William exchanged for the eighth-order professional breathing method, and successfully advanced in the winter.

At the age of fifty-six, promoted to an eighth-order professional, William was already a person with excellent talent.

Generally speaking, when a professional reaches the age of 60, his or her physical functions begin to decline, and the difficulty of advancing will increase a lot. Even a man of exceptional talent like William can maintain his best form until the age of seventy at most.

If you can't advance to a legend at the age of seventy, it's even less likely to succeed if your physical condition declines.

According to the speed of William's advancement, coupled with the difficulty of advancing to the legend, it is a very difficult thing.

William is the most talented person in the previous generation of the Haaland family, even he is like this, and the third uncle Bernie is even more unlikely to be promoted to legend.

On the contrary, it is the next generation of the Haaland family, Richard, Sophia, and Wendy have more potential, are younger, and have the opportunity to break through the bottleneck of the legend.

After the goddess's birthday, Richard had just returned to Fort William, and the soldiers who had developed the swamp basin hurried to the lord's mansion and reported an accident to Richard.

In the swamp basin, lizardmen were found. Hearing the news, Richard was taken aback.

According to what Richard had learned, lizardfolk preferred hot and humid environments, and generally lived in the jungles of the south.

Lizardmen are very widely distributed in the Dawn plane, not only in the south of the Central Continent, but also in the Eastern Continent where the elves are located, and in the Western Continent where the dwarves are located, and there are traces of the lizard people in the humid and hot jungle.

Lizardfolk are said to be alien creatures who followed a lizardfolk deity into the Dawn plane.

In the end, the lizardmen deities were hunted by the ancient wizards, and even the godhead became a collector's item for the wizards.

The wizard captured a large number of lizardmen for experiments, and even used creatures from the Dawn Continent to cross with lizardmen, creating a lot of messy varieties.

According to the records on the data, the lizardmen live in the swamps and jungles in the south, and the discovery of lizardmen in the northern Xinjiang region is not a small news.

But it is impossible for the soldiers in Haaland's territory to deceive people, especially the soldiers in charge of reconnaissance, who are basically veterans, and the backbone is still an elite cavalry riding a Warcraft war horse.

The elite Warcraft cavalry, the reconnaissance information has not been leaked.

Hearing the news, Richard took the Warcraft Cavalry Brigade, the Scout Cavalry Brigade, the First Brigade, the Harland Mage Association and other backbone forces to the vicinity of the Mage Tower in the swamp basin.

After obtaining the fiefdom of the Swamp Basin, Richard took out a sum of gold coins and spent it on the construction of the Mage Tower.

From last fall to the present, the Mage Tower has been raised by two floors.

Wendy took the magic apprentice and used the spell of turning mud into stone, built the mage tower into an integrated building, and also set some magic traps inside the mage tower.

This mage tower has a legendary magic core as an energy source, and also arranges a magic circle to gather magic power, and inside the magic tower, a small artificial magic well is built.

The mages of the Tower of Death have already built half of the Mage Tower.

The core of the mage tower energy room has been completed.

Richard only needs to spend a small amount of money and modify some runes that concentrate magic to obtain a complete mage tower.

Richard prepares to build seven layers of space on the surface.

The first floor is the offices of the Haaland Mage Society. The second floor is the magic conference room. Portals are installed on the third floor. The fourth floor is the Magical Plant Plantation. The fifth floor is Richard, Sophia, and Wendy's private magic labs. The sixth floor is the bedroom of Richard with Sophia, Wendy and other high-level people.

On the seventh floor, a defensive magic array is arranged.

Richard is going to set up a large attack magic array that releases a chain of lightning, and the energy channel of the magic array is directly connected to the energy room.

Normally, the use of magic towers is restricted.

At a critical time, use the magic energy stored in the legendary magic core to release a powerful magic chain of lightning, plus the bonus of the lightning staff, the power can be compared to the legendary magic.

The basement floors are used as energy rooms, warehouses, public magic laboratories, magic libraries, and magic training grounds.

The only trouble with building a magic tower right now is the portal.

Back then, Richard used wizarding words to exchange a batch of magical knowledge with the Dawn Church, including methods for building space altars and portals.

But in order to build these magical buildings, precious materials are needed, and these precious materials must contain spatial properties. For example, the dragon crystal of the space-time dragon, the stomach pouch of the ancient monitor lizard, the magic crystal containing space attributes, and so on.

Now there is no such material containing spatial attributes in the Harland territory, so it is not possible to build space altars and portals yet.

A magic tower without a portal can only be considered a half-finished product.

The swamp basin covers an area of just over 300 square kilometers, and Richard constantly sent people to search for it, and soon found clues that these lizardmen were hiding in a ruin.

This ruin is less than ten kilometers from the Mage Tower.

After coming to the vicinity of the ruins, Richard and the others carefully surveyed the ruins and found that the coordinates of the ruins corresponded to special astrological signs.

Richard had carefully studied the Book of Astrological Signs, and when he saw this scene, his expression became a little solemn. Because Richard found that this ruins turned out to be a city ruins, and in the center of the ruins, there was a huge energy supply center, such a huge energy supply device, only the legendary floating city would use.

There is no longer a floating city on the Dawn plane, and the floating city is a product of the ancient wizard civilization.

After the Church of the Seven defeated the ancient wizards, the gods fell into a deep sleep, the floating city crashed, and some of the legendary wizards who survived left the Dawn plane with the last few interstellar magic ships, and the magical civilization fell into a serious decline.

In the past three thousand years, although many relics of the wizard era and the age of the seven gods have been excavated, and the level of magical civilization has developed somewhat, it is not comparable with the magical knowledge mastered by ancient wizards.

Sophia and Wendy also read the book of astrology and quickly discovered the anomaly. The two glanced at each other, walked up to Richard's side and whispered: "It looks like a building left by an astrological magician, but it doesn't look like a magic tower, but it is somewhat similar to the legendary floating city." ”

"It's indeed a fallen floating city ruins, but it's not very safe inside, and the danger should not only come from the lizardmen."

Richard awakened his talent for danger perception and came to the ruins of the Floating City, and suddenly had a danger warning in his heart.

The internal area of the floating city is generally divided into a comprehensive defense area, an energy core area, a comprehensive management area, a residential living area, a commercial and entertainment area, a material production area, and an education and training area.

According to the strength of energy, the small floating city has an area of only tens of thousands of square meters, and no more than one or two thousand people.

The large floating city covers an area of more than several hundred square kilometers and can accommodate millions of people.

In the swamp basin, this floating city is not too large or small, four or five square kilometers in size, and should be inhabited by twenty or thirty thousand people.

Richard circled around the ruins of the Floating City and decided to dig up the ruins of the Floating City to see if he could find some precious magical materials and magical knowledge.

Because of the unknown dangers hidden inside the floating city, Richard was very cautious, and he decided to start the search from the residential areas, commercial and entertainment areas, and education and training areas.

These three areas are relatively less dangerous, and it should be relatively smooth to start excavating from here.

Richard put the strongest combat squadron, the Warcraft Cavalry, on guard, and the rest slowly walked into the ruins of the Floating City.

As soon as the soldiers of Haland's territory entered the Floating City, a powerful magical aura suddenly came out from inside the Floating City, and several magicians actually launched a teleportation array and left the ruins of the Floating City.

Seeing this scene, Richard was taken aback, he never expected that there were still people hiding in the ruins of this floating city.

It's just that the people hiding in the Floating City should not be strong and can't beat the army in Haaland's territory, so they decisively chose to teleport away.

In order to fear the enemy's rescue troops, Richard had to quickly destroy the teleportation array.

Unbeknownst to Richard, it was none other than Yelena, the legendary magician of the Venus family, who was hiding in the ruins of the Floating City.

If Yelena is intact, of course, she is not afraid of the army of Haaland's territory.

As a legendary magician, even if he can't defeat a few thousand regular troops head-on, he can withdraw from the battle at any time and seize the initiative on the battlefield.

However, Elena was severely injured by the Duke of Breener, and although she survived with the Book of Artifact Contracts, she could not use the power of magic to fight for three years, and it took twenty years to recuperate if she wanted to restore the strength of the legendary mage.

Therefore, after discovering that the army of Haaland's territory had entered, Elena estimated the strength of the two sides, and felt that it would be difficult to defeat the two thousand elite soldiers of Haaland's territory with a few high-level magicians of the Venus family and more than a dozen middle-to-high-level knights, even if they occupied the advantageous location, with the help of the mage tower built underground, and the lizardman soldiers under their control.

Although there was some reluctance in their hearts, abandoning this secret base, the Venus family suffered heavy losses.

This secret base has been run by the Venus family for more than a thousand years. There are not only a large number of materials inside, but also a lot of precious materials, and the most important thing is that in the ruins of the floating city, there are also many magic techniques of ancient wizards, which have extremely high research value. Without this ruin, much of the research that followed would not have been possible.

Unless the Venus family is reborn, overthrows the rule of the Grant family, and wields absolute authority, it will be possible to reclaim this hidden stronghold from the Haraland family.

Otherwise, this site would have to belong to the Haaland family.

Even if this battle is won, the soldiers of the Harland family are repelled, and after the hidden base is exposed, the Harland family suffers a loss, and it will inevitably report to the royal capital, and when Nolan sends a large army, the hidden base will still not be able to hold it, and it will also consume the lives of the members of the Venus family.

Elena is a resolute person, and once she realizes that she can't do anything, she immediately decides to save her vitality and leaves the floating city with the Venus family.

(End of chapter)