After the Golem was successfully refined, Richard began to test the Golem's power. He took action himself, did not use the power of magic, and fought the Iron Golem with the ability of a sixth-order warrior. As a result, the melee ability was easily crushed by the Golem, and even the seventh-order Roman, Jennings, and Derrif were not opponents of the Iron Golem.

Only silver knights such as Wilde can use the power of magic to fight the Iron Golem.

Through various scientific tests, Richard found that the standard steel golem strength is about twenty-eight points, and if the ninth-order demon core is used as the core, the strength will increase to thirty-two points.

An ordinary seventh-order warrior with a strength roughly between twenty-two and twenty-four points.

The strength of the ninth-order warrior exceeds thirty points, and he has awakened the second physical attribute talent, and his strength should be stronger than that of the Iron Golem.

The strength of the Iron Golem is almost not much different from that of a ninth-order warrior, and its defense power is even more prominent, and its ability to attack fortifications and melee combat can be comparable to that of ninth-order warriors.

However, the Steel Golem also has several weaknesses, the first is that it moves slowly, according to Richard's test, the agility is only about 2.3 points, and even the fourth-order warriors are faster than the Iron Golem.

The second is that it is not flexible enough, because when the magician manipulates the golem, he needs to use a special magic possession technique, and depart a part of the spiritual power to possess the golem. Under the dual use of distraction, all kinds of movements are naturally slowed down, and the flexibility is naturally a little less when fighting.

The third weakness is the fear of psychic strike spells, the Iron Golem is very resistant to elemental magic, but it is afraid of charm and spirit strike spells. Therefore, when manipulating the golem, you must have your own mage nearby to protect you.

Generally speaking, only if the strength of one's own mage group is stronger than the opponent, the Golem troops can exert all their strength and crush the opponent.

In fact, any army has weaknesses, and it is necessary to integrate the forces of various arms on the battlefield, give full play to their own strengths, reduce the opponent's advantages, and then find opportunities to defeat the opponent.

Although the weakness of the Golem troops is obvious, it is very suitable for the Harland Leader, because in the nearby area, the Harland Leader Mage Regiment has almost no opponents.

Although the Grant Royal Mage Corps is stronger than Harland's Mage Corps, Richard is also sure to defeat his opponent because of the Starlight Necklace in his hand.

Moreover, the Grant Kingdom Mage Regiment is still an ally, and the main enemy of the Harland Leader is the Orcs, and their magic power is not outstanding, and melee combat is the advantage of the Orc Army.

The golem weighs eighteen tons, and it is very difficult to move, and the possession technique of the first ring can only last for six minutes, and even if it runs at full speed, it can only move about one or two kilometers.

A one-ring mage can only cast four one-ring spells in a day, and can manipulate the golem to move up to seven or eight kilometers. However, if the Steel Golem is used in this way, the wear and tear of the Golem itself will be extremely serious, and normally it will not be used for too long.

Generally speaking, Golem troops need to be transported on the battlefield in advance, and need to be hidden in the shadows in order to exert their unexpected effect.

The Steel Golem weighed more than eighteen tons, and even a strong man like a ninth-order warrior would need four people to carry it away.

Haaland doesn't have a ninth-order warrior yet, and there is only one eighth-order warrior called Soros, although there are many seventh-order warriors, they are all important figures in the territory, and it is impossible for them all to be drawn out to undertake transportation tasks.

In addition, transporting the Iron Golem requires a special carriage to be crafted, and sixteen iron wildebeest horses can be used to pull it away. To allow such a heavy carriage to pass, tens of thousands of indentured slaves would need to be mobilized to rebuild the road.

Haaland has no plans to build roads this year, and if you want to build roads, you need to draw a large amount of materials, and it is already September, and the heavy snow will close the mountains in early November, even if you wait until the orc invasion next year, you may not be able to build the road to the front line.

In fact, the only reliable way is to use large space equipment for transportation.

The internal space of the Starlight Bottle is five meters high, with a volume of four hundred and fifty cubic meters, which can hold a hundred steel golems at a time. The legendary first-order space bag in Wendini's hand also has an internal space of one hundred and twenty cubic meters, which can also hold more than a dozen steel golems.

With two large pieces of space equipment in hand, Haaland doesn't have to worry about transporting them.

After the first golem was made, the golem-making team came in to help. Although the level of alchemists trained by Richard is not high, there are two mid-level alchemists among the elves, and their level is enough to give Wendini a hand.

With two more helpers and more experience, it only took nine days to make the second Steel Golem.

The third golem was made even faster, taking only seven days to make.

By the time the third golem was made, it was already late September, and the autumn harvest had begun.

As the lord of the Duke of Haaland, although Richard does not like complicated government affairs, he does not like to make false promises with others, and wastes his time on socializing and entertaining, and it is impossible to spend all his time making golems all day long.

After the autumn harvest begins, Richard emerges from the Mage's Tower, entrusts Wendini with the task of making golems, and then begins to inspect the territory to welcome the autumn harvest.

Wendini refining a golem can earn 3,000 magical academic contributions, and according to the rules of the Harland Mage Guild, learning new knowledge needs to be exchanged for academic contributions.

Haaland is extremely complicated with all kinds of new magical knowledge, and learning a lot of precious magical knowledge requires a lot of contributions, such as the ancient wizard script mastered by Richard, which requires 80,000 contributions to learn. In ancient times, the language of the Ofland region also required 9,000 contributions before Richard would teach it himself.

In the entire mage association, only three Richard have mastered the ancient wizard script, and the contributions of other mages are far from enough.

To learn this new knowledge, you also need to sign a leak-proof contract, and you can't teach it privately.

In order to learn new knowledge, even if the process of refining steel golems is very boring, Wendini has always been very interested.

Haaland's territory has suffered a widespread torrential rain since the beginning of autumn this year, and the low-lying areas have suffered relatively serious flooding, and according to the rough sampling statistics, the yield per mu of the autumn harvest has decreased by 16 percent compared with last year.

Fortunately, the yield of the summer harvest was good, and even if a large amount of new land was cultivated, the yield per mu was reduced by only 5 percent.

According to the comprehensive sampling statistics, the grain yield per mu decreased by 9 percent. However, this year's increase is 2 million mu of cultivated land, and the total grain output is much higher than last year's, and by the end of the statistics in mid-October, this year's grain output has increased to about 910,000 tons.

Of the 910,000 tons of grain, 390,000 tons belonged to the freedmen, and about 520,000 tons could actually enter the grain depot of the territory.

There was no war this year, so it was impossible to plunder the population from the outside, and it could only attract free people from the northern Xinjiang region to move in. However, the fertility rate in Haaland was relatively high, with a population growth rate of nearly 5 percent for freemen and a worse rate for indentured slaves, with a population growth rate of about 2.3 percent.

As of October, according to the data of the territorial statistics department, the number of newborns in the territory this year is roughly about 46,000, and more than 42,000 people in the household registration department have registered with the new hukou.

Including the new freemen, the population is estimated to increase by about 60,000 this year.

In a war last year, Haaland led an increase of 400,000 people. Sure enough, relying on war, the territory can speed up its development.

After the autumn harvest was over, before the snow closed the mountain, Richard once again went to the Im River region and met his acquaintance Gulov.

Gulov's living conditions have improved a lot compared to when he arrived in June, and he has moved out of his nest and into a large wooden house.

With the continuous import of materials from the territory, the prices in the Imu River valley have dropped a lot, especially the average price of building materials such as bricks and cement.

Because the cement plant was put into operation in August, with the change of supply and demand, it is estimated that there will be a lot of price reduction.

Richard walked around the village and found that there were still a small number of freedmen living in the dens.

The nest is not good for heating, and it is very uncomfortable in winter. And these free people who live in Diwo are almost all old, weak, sick, disabled, and disadvantaged.

Immediately after returning from Imburg, Richard issued an edict ordering all villages to gather the old, weak, sick and disabled families and move them to the village offices with better conditions for central heating, which should save the next group of people.

After returning from the Im River, it was already mid-October.

In the space of nearly a month, Wendini refined the Steel Golem four times, but unfortunately only succeeded three times. The only failure was also due to the mistakes of the auxiliary alchemist.

Seeing that it is about to enter winter, there is nothing important except for the commodity fair, Richard was just about to enter the golem making team, and suddenly news came that Wang Du's envoy was about to enter the Haaland territory.

Receiving this news, Richard had to stop and deal with the royal envoy first.

Although Haaland's political influence in Nolan is not very large, he has a large amount of business income. From the time when Hayden was in charge of the intelligence department, the territory had people in charge of intelligence in the Chamber of Commerce.

Up to now, Haaland has more than 100 people in Nolan's intelligence network, and has access to a large amount of public information.

Before the envoy entered the Haaland territory, news had reached Fort William.

In the afternoon after receiving the information, Richard summoned Noll, Vitas and other officials in charge of intelligence to the City Lord's Mansion.

Today's Haaland Domain, Noll is the Minister of Intelligence, the highest official in charge of intelligence in the territory.

Although Knorr is also a member of the Haaland clan, his relationship with Richard is already relatively distant.

One of the most important aspects of managing an intelligence department is to gain Richard's trust. Compared with George, Noll naturally trusted George relatively well.

But George went south to run the territory, and Richard didn't want Hayden to get his hands dirty, so he had to let Knoll continue to do it.

Today, the intelligence work of the Rand Territory is divided into three aspects: military intelligence, internal intelligence, and external intelligence. Ruiz was in charge of military intelligence, Luciano was in charge of internal intelligence, and Vitas was in charge of external intelligence.

The backbone of these three intelligence services, Vitas is relatively the most capable.

"Have you investigated the background of the envoy?"

Hearing Richard's question, Vitas replied, "Your Excellency, the messenger who has come this time is Count Lawrence. The court count of Lawrence was the half-brother of King Roger, who was said to be of average ability. In the royal capital, he was a court earl in charge of rituals, ceremonies, and ceremonies. ”

"Which family is the mother family of Count Lawrence?"

"The mother of the Earl of Lawrence is the aunt of the Marquis of Allen, but not a concubine, but the daughter of the court lady of the Marquis of Allen. But their branch had a very frequent correspondence with Earl Allen. ”

The Grant Kingdom nobles have a knighthood system, and there is no knighthood if there is no merit.

Even if he is the son of the kingdom of the previous generation, Lawrence is only a court earl, and if he cannot make military achievements in the next generation and cannot gain a foothold in the court, Lawrence's descendants will be reduced to the professional class, and the treatment may be worse than that of the children and grandchildren of hereditary barons.

Lawrence also had a court knighthood, and Richard's brother Hayden, because his merits were far from enough, could not be knighted either. Maybe in a few years, Harland will also set up a palace title to reward the top-level civil officials such as Rogge and Hayden.

Richard pushed open the window, letting the cold wind outside blow in a bit, and suddenly asked, "What is the secret behind Lawrence's mission?" ”

Haaland leads the intelligence network in Nolan, mainly collecting open intelligence, especially commercial intelligence, and their tentacles are still far from probing secret political intelligence.

Moreover, Richard had previously issued a strict ban on infiltrating Grant's court. His question immediately made Noel and the others embarrassed.

Seeing that Noel and the others were submissive and couldn't say any useful news, Richard knew in his heart that he was also a strong man, after all, if he didn't infiltrate the royal court, it was impossible to know the secret news, so he didn't blame him.

Five days later, Lawrence arrived at Fort William.

Although Lawrence's status was far from Richard's, after all, he was the king's envoy, and Richard was still very face-saving and went out of the city to greet him in person.

After more than ten years of development, the population of the vicinity of Fort William has exceeded 100,000. This castle, built between the mountains, has already become very prosperous, and the city is better built than Heihe Fort.

In particular, the city streets are very neat and tidy, not as chaotic as Black River Fort.

Gas lamps were also erected on both sides of the streets of the castle west city, and when the gas lamps were lit at night, the lights were bright in an instant, and they were particularly warm. Many nobles from northern Xinjiang came to Haaland to visit, and they would come to Fort William West to visit.

Looking at this castle, Lawrence suddenly had a strange feeling. "In just over a decade, such a spectacle has been established in the northern Xinjiang region."

Richard saw Lawrence, said a few kind words, and then invited Lawrence to the City Lord's Mansion, and asked straight to the point: "The envoy came to Haaland this time, what is the explanation of the Roger Kingdom?" ”

Seeing that Richard's questioning was very direct, Lorenton was very stunned, and such a direct social interaction made the nobles from the royal capital very unaccustomed.

As a high-ranking nobleman who grew up in Nolan, Lawrence has long been accustomed to being hypocritical, tempting left and right, and accustomed to various political and interest exchanges at balls and dinners.

After coming to Fort William, without even finishing a cup of tea, Richard went straight to the point, directly touching the vital point, like a barbarian.

This kind of behavior made Lawrence despise it very much, but the disparity in status between the two sides was huge, and he directly ridiculed Richard, but Lawrence did not dare.

After all, Richard is a fiefdom duke, and he has 50,000 soldiers under his command, and if he offends this kind of person and makes Lawrence disappear on the road, King Roger may not be willing to pursue it and make trouble for himself.

Although he has the blood of the Marquis Allen family and has a close relationship with King Roger, Lawrence knows that King Roger's perception of himself is actually very ordinary. On the contrary, the previous King Charles valued himself more.

(End of chapter)