In the past two years, because of the large number of precious resources obtained, the Haaland Leader Mage Association has developed very rapidly, and this year the number of formal magicians has increased to more than 150, and the number of mage apprentices is close to 450.

At the current rate of development of Haaland, there are about 10,000 new students enrolled every year, and tens of thousands of new students can select nearly a hundred apprentices with magical qualifications, and this spring for the first time found an apprentice named Dean, who has a superior talent.

Since Haaland established Riverside Primary School to test the talents of new students, this is the first apprentice with a high-class talent found in the territory.

Over a decade, the Haaland Mage Guild tested more than 80,000 people before finding an apprentice with the highest talent.

From this, it can be seen that the rarity of apprentices with high-class magical talents. According to the statistics available to Haaland, the proportion of owners of high-grade magical talents is about 1 in 80,000.

The Haaland Mage Association has not only found a top-level talented apprentice this year, but its own strength has also improved greatly in the last two years.

Last summer, the old mage Hiss, who had stayed in the three-ring mage class for eight years, successfully advanced and became a mid-level mage.

Hiss is inferior in talent, although he is very hardworking, but at the age of nearly fifty, he has only been promoted to the four-ring mage, and his potential is estimated to be almost exhausted, and it is difficult to go further in this life.

Once the human race has passed the age of sixty, not only physical strength, but also energy will also go downhill, whether it is a magician, a warrior, a knight, except for people with different talents, energy and physical strength, it is basically impossible to break through the bottleneck and continue to progress.

Shortly after the Hiss breakthrough, Roentgen was also promoted. Röntgen has been a member of the Harland Mage Guild for seven years, and she is an upper-middle-class talent, spending four years at the stage of the Three-Ring Magi. Roentgen was three years older than Richard, and it was estimated that it would be difficult for him to be promoted to the high rank before the age of sixty, and although his future was better than that of Hiss, he would be able to be promoted to the level of the Sixth Ring at most.

This spring, Capesson and Bella have successfully advanced to become the Four-Ring Magician.

Capezon was born as a wild mage, invited by Röntgen to enter the Harland Territory, he is a superior magical talent, but unfortunately he was not lucky enough, and he was lucky to find a complete meditation method, but unfortunately the meditation method and the magic element intimacy did not match, and learning magic took a detour at the beginning.

He was a few years older than Roentgen, he only started to learn magic in his twenties, and he only broke through the fourth order at the age of forty-three, although his innate talent was very good, without a good environment for discovering geniuses, his talent could not be realized. The probability of being promoted to a high-level mage in this life is already very slim.

Bella, who progressed along the ranks with Capeson, was favored by Lady Luck, and although he was not as gifted as Capezon and was only moderately gifted, Bella was a native of Haaland's leadership, and his father was one of the first indentured slaves purchased by Richard.

By the time Haaland opened Riverside Primary School, Bella was in the third batch of new students. When she entered the school, she was tested for magical talent, and she was considered the most talented person in the group of apprentices. In order to train her, Richard wrote the Fire Attribute Meditation Book of Flames. There are a variety of high-level meditation methods for reference, and the deduction of the Book of Flames is very smooth, and after Wendini and other elven mages joined, it has been written to the tenth level, and you can meditate on the level of the seven rings.

With a meditation method tailored for herself, it took only three years and eight months for Bella to pass the apprenticeship stage and become a professional at the age of seventeen. Then it took another eight years, and he was successfully promoted three times, and at the age of twenty-five, he was promoted to the four-ring magician. Even if the talent is not as good as Capeson, because he has laid a good foundation in Haaland, and even has the opportunity to touch the bottleneck of the legend, the future is far beyond Capezon.

Now the Haaland Mage Association already has three high-level magicians Richard, Sophia, and Wendyni, Wendy, Annie, Butler, Hiss, Roentgen, Capezon, Bella, plus four middle-level elven mages, and the number of middle-level mages within the Mages Association has exceeded ten.

The total number of backbone mages of the three-ring level has reached sixteen.

After more than ten years of development, as a mage organization, the structure of the Haaland Mage Guild has finally stabilized, presenting a standard pyramid structure.

The number and quality of mages have increased, and various research groups have been easily expanded.

Today, Sophia manages the largest research group, with about sixty people including mage apprentices.

The Sophia Research Group has a very diverse project and manages as many as five large projects. The production of standard magic crystals is only one of the key projects, and one of the most important projects is the in-depth study of magic energy particles, but this research is very difficult, and it has lasted for seven or eight years without much progress.

Wendy's research team also has more than 30 people, and this research group is mainly responsible for the research of magic crystal charging.

This year, they have increased the conversion efficiency of the magic crystal charge to eight percent, and the efficiency has increased by three percent, and the number of magic crystal charges that can be charged has increased by about sixty percent.

Now the three mage towers of Haaland have installed magic crystal charging arrays, which can charge 6,000 empty magic crystals a year, which can already fill the consumption of magic crystals in Haaland's territory.

More than 2,000 standard magic crystals mined every year can be accumulated and stored inside the energy room of the Mage Tower.

Now that Haaland has received the magic crystal charge, the discarded magic crystal remodeling technology, the reserve of the magic crystal is very sufficient, plus the capture of the war, Haaland's territory has 28,000 standard magic crystals, and about 120,000 discarded magic crystals.

Seeing that Sophia, Wendy and other magicians continue to produce results, even Wendini, who has joined the Harland Collar in recent years, has set up a research group headed by herself.

Wendini's research group has not been established for a long time, mainly elven magicians, and in the past two years, more than a dozen newcomers have been recruited, and they have a very great goal and decided to do soul particle research.

Because Richard was busy commanding the army and managing the army, the research team belonging to him has not expanded its staff, and it is still sixteen people, including ten magicians and six apprentices.

Richard's research group is now mainly engaged in the research of magical weapons. After the formation of this group, the magic cannon was the focus of the research project.

Ever since Harland Master Master of the Explosive Rune, he has been researching the Magic Cannon. At first, Richard wanted to launch an alchemy bomb with flames, but this was an obvious detour.

The core of the alchemy bomb is the explosion rune, which is very unstable and will explode immediately once it is hit hard.

A small gunpowder device made of gunpowder and explosive runes will inevitably explode with each shot. It took two years to spend a lot of resources, and in the end, it was left with chicken feathers.

The research could not succeed, negating the path of gunpowder launch.

After that, Richard personally made arrangements and decided to use magic crystals to provide energy and activate the flying rune route. The route is a new one and there are few references to the physical object.

The magicians of Haland's territory, referring to the magic of flight, windwalking, earthwalking, and levitation, spent more than ten years to create a new launch rune from scratch.

The new rune is inscribed on the Alloy Cannon, which uses the Crystal as an energy source that can be used to drop alchemy bombs up to five kilometers away. In order to match the magic cannon, the Harland Leader Mage also improved the explosive rune, increased the charge, and changed the weight and shape of the alchemy bomb.

Now, after years of testing, this new weapon has finally matured.

Hearing the news of the successful manufacture of the magic cannon, Richard went directly to the magic energy cannon research group.

Richard's magic research group, in addition to Richard, who leads the research direction, is specifically done by Bella and Greta's two deputies.

Seeing Richard, Bella introduced the performance of the magic cannon.

Despite her youth, Bella is very average-looking, neither beautiful nor too ugly, she wears thick crystal glasses, her hair is unkempt, somewhat messy, and looks unkempt.

But her eyes were full of shine, deep in their sockets, with a strong sense of confidence. There was a special brilliance in her demeanor, her temperament was completely different from that of people from the outside world, and she did not have much respect for lords and nobles in her voice.

Only the ivory tower of the Haaland Research Institute can cultivate such a special temperament.

Richard exchanged a few words with Bella and Greta, and personally observed the test firing of the magic cannon, where the cannon was fired, and the cannonball flew over a distance of five kilometers, accurately hitting the target area, and blowing up a puff of dust.

When Richard saw this, he was very satisfied with the power of the cannon, and asked the experimental team to remove a cannonball, he picked it up and weighed it, and found that the weight was estimated to be about fifteen kilograms.

"How much does it cost us to make a magic crystal cannon?"

Hearing Richard's inquiry, Bella calculated a little and replied: "Judging from the experimental records, this research has lasted for fifteen years, not counting the salaries of the R&D personnel, and more than 96,000 gold coins have been invested in the cost of materials for more than ten years, which is also a major investment project in various research projects in the territory.

Counting the salaries of R&D personnel, the total investment has been about 110,000 gold coins.

In addition to R&D investment, to make a magic crystal cannon, it is necessary to smelt 3,600 kilograms of bronze, and 280 kilograms of mountain copper to make super magic alloy, and the cost of super magic alloy is 1,900 gold coins. In addition, craftsmen are required to cast cannon barrels and drill rifling, and magicians also need to configure potions and inscribe firing runes, and the comprehensive cost is about 2,600 gold coins. ”

Hearing the cost of 2,600 gold coins to cast a magic cannon, Richard shook his head in his heart.

Now Haaland is led by a long-range strike with a counterweight trebuchet, which has a very low cost and is mainly made of wood.

Although it takes more than a dozen truckloads of logs to make a heavy trebuchet, which adds up to about 40 cubic meters, and the price of raw materials is four gold coins, including leather ropes and iron nails, the cost is not particularly low.

However, Haaland's territory was rich in wood and had plenty of raw materials, and Richard only needed to pay a few food to build heavy trebuchets in large quantities using indentured slaves.

Because the process of making a heavy trebuchet is also very simple, it is mainly carpenter's work.

However, to make a magic cannon, it takes 2,600 gold coins, and training also consumes a large amount of magic crystals, and the annual training consumption also requires a high investment.

Although the economic level of Haaland's territory has improved rapidly, it is difficult for magic cannons to replace trebuchets in a short period of time, and according to Richard's estimates, this process may take more than ten years.

Although the magic energy cannon is expensive to manufacture, there are many advantages of the magic energy cannon, the first is the long range.

The magic cannon has a range of more than five kilometers, and it can hit opponents from a distance of five kilometers.

Taking the orc legion, the main enemy, led by Haland, as an example, the orc marched five kilometers in armor and took about an hour.

In an hour's effort, the magic cannon can fire thirty rounds. Assuming that the enemy charges, a single cannon can crush two orc brigades.

Of course, in reality, the battlefield is very complicated, and orcs are not fools, and they will not advance with shell bombardment. But the advent of the magic cannon has actually changed the tide of war.

In the future, the war will inevitably be dominated by artillery.

Compared with the alchemy bomb thrown by the trebuchet, the cannonball fired by the magic crystal cannon is more powerful, because the explosion rune is improved, the charge is increased, the weight is increased by 7.5 times, the killing area of the magic crystal cannon shrapnel is increased by three times, and the power of the explosion is also increased by about 80%.

A cannonball hits the vital point and can kill a mid-level professional, and the power is slightly more powerful than a fourth-order burst arrow.

After listening to Bella's introduction, Richard weighed it a little, although it was impossible to replace all the trebuchets with magic cannons, but from this year to start building artillery units.

This year was the first year of the establishment of artillery, and Richard decided to create three artillery squadrons and cast eighteen magic crystal cannons. Coupled with the investment of personnel and equipment, the cost is about 60,000 gold coins.

Three newly built artillery squadrons, Richard prepared to be placed on the northern defensive line of the Eagle Mountains, to strengthen the defenses of the 10th, 5th, and 7th military stations.

Compared with the same period last year, this year Haaland led an increase of 9,000 regular troops, 8,000 auxiliaries, and three artillery squadrons.

After making up his mind, Richard immediately gave Rogge an order to throw resources into the Magic Cannon Research Group.

The Magic Cannon Research Team cooperated with the Magic Alloy Manufacturing Team to create seventeen Magic Cannons in just one and a half months.

After the magic cannon was created, Richard had already formed an artillery team.

The artillery units were carefully selected from among the veterans, the officers had a high level of education, the three squadron leaders were all rare middle school students in the army led by Haraland, and some officers at the headquarters were also sent by Richard to serve as artillery staff officers.

The squad leader in the artillery, the non-commissioned officer is also a selected professional officer, and each magic cannon is also specially equipped with four pack-horse gun carts, four pack-drawn shells and baggage, and a gun crew includes horsemen with a total of sixteen people.

An artillery squadron has a total of six artillery groups, and the artillery on the front line has a total of ninety-six people, plus the commanders of the squadron headquarters, the flag bearers, the guards, and the artillery observation hot air balloon group, the total number is about one hundred and twenty people.

Not counting the cost of training soldiers, an artillery crew needs to invest 3,400 gold coins from scratch.

With Haaland's economic level and speed of development, priority will be given to the development of artillery, and a maximum of thirty or forty artillery groups can be set up a year, and five or six magic cannon squadrons can be formed.

Although Haaland has a lot of military expenses, the distribution is still far from enough, the number of infantry needs to be expanded, the cavalry must also increase investment, and the Warcraft cavalry, lion knights, and bipedal dragon knights must give priority to the distribution of military expenses. In addition, it is necessary to increase the number of Warcraft Troopers and Magic Hot Air Balloon groups.

Even if the current military expenditure of more than one million gold coins a year is still far from enough. Besides, the territory can't be developed, and there are no qualified officers and soldiers, even if they have gold coins in their hands, they are still useless.

(End of chapter)