Chapter 52: Redemption Army, Oak Factory, Metal Golem, and Allies (part 2) Volume 2.5

Caparia, in the suburbs of Fingal, near the Sky Garden.

Yang Hao and Fen inspected the establishment of the fourth oak factory together.

In the past, if the self-growth of the Elf Forest was followed, it would take several months to complete the initial establishment of an oak factory.

To build the factory as soon as possible and to start the production of consumables and firearms earlier, Fen ordered the Elf Mage Corps to work with the ancient trees. Using magic, they matured the oak trees needed for the factory within ten days.

The results were impressive. The construction of four oak factories was completed in less than ten days.

But this came at a cost. The magic in the Elf Forest became slightly disordered, and the Elf Mage Corps, responsible for operating the magic, was exhausted.

They would not be able to work for Caparia for the next one or two months. However, they understood the importance of the oak factory and claimed that with the factory, they only needed to recover their health and be ready for the decisive battle in a few months.

“Then we will be gone now.”

The exhausted elven mages left with the help of their servants.

Yang Hao and Fen looked at each other and then walked into the oak factory in front of them for inspection.

There were four oak factories. Two of them were used to produce urgently needed arrows for the front line. Since Fen accepted the demon folk and asked the rangers to chase humans outside the forest, the consumption rate of arrows had far exceeded the speed of manual production by the arrow makers.

Yang Hao had no choice but to set up the first two factories to produce arrowheads.

This was the right decision. In the Elf Forest, you could pray to the ancient trees to get primitive wooden sticks from the old oak trees, and then process them yourself in the wild.

But for arrowheads, unless you wanted to use stone or simply sharpen sticks, metal arrowheads had to be produced by hand or in factories.

Moreover, the standardized arrow shafts used in the entire Elf Kingdom were modular in design, so any arrowhead could be attached to any arrow shaft.

In this case, it was better for the factory to focus on producing arrowheads since everyone could use them.

The arrowheads produced by the two factories were uniformly armor-piercing and lethal. The current output was large enough to meet the needs of the longbowmen.

The third and fourth oak factories were built in the same area. They were specifically used to produce the barrels and trigger mechanisms of the Capa 1404 rifles.

“After all, the most critical parts of the entire rifle are the barrel and the trigger mechanism. For the unimproved model of the Capa 1404, if everything goes as planned, based on the initial output of the oak factory, we can produce 10 standard barrels per day. In two months, this output will increase to 50, and eventually, it will stabilize at 100 per day.”

“Ten?” Fen frowned. “Including the trigger?”

“Yes. The biggest difference between the oak factory and the human factory is that the oak trees are very fragile in the early stages.”

Yang Hao shrugged. After entering the factory, he pointed to the place deep inside where metal ingots were extracted.

“Just like a newborn human baby cannot enjoy spicy food made from peppercorns, the newly born oak factory also needs time to adapt. The elven mages need to enchant and strengthen some of the easily damaged parts inside them. And the oak trees have self-awareness, which means their work efficiency varies with their proficiency.”

Oak trees were living beings. This meant that the oak factories built by oak trees had different working efficiencies based on their age.

They slowly accumulate proficiency with the number of products they produce. Just like a human’s efficiency in screwing bolts on the first day in a factory versus after ten years of experience, the older the oak tree, the higher its working efficiency. Consequently, they also need more rewards.

However, The greatest wish of the oak trees was to continuously expand the boundaries of the Elven Forest and grow the oak tree population.

These rewards were not really rewards. So, the elves give them extra fertilizer and clear spring water from afar as additional supplies.

And these were only the two most critical parts of the gun. Since other parts still needed to be made by hand by the bow makers who had changed their profession, the bullets of the Capa 1404 rifle also needed to be made by hand for the time being.

The caliber of the Capa 1404 rifle was adjusted to 12.7×108 mm to match the physical strength of the elves. In comparison, the caliber of the M2 heavy machine gun on Earth was 12.7×99 mm.

The bullets fired by large-caliber weapons on Earth, which had to be mounted on the ground to be used, were considered ordinary weapons that only needed to be used with both hands by the elves.

Not only that, but to further match the physical strength of the elves, the primer made from explosive ore produced in the Oak Mine in the Forest of Elves made the power of the Capa 1404 rifle even greater.

Explosive ore was an extremely special mineral once regarded as garbage by the elves.

It had an explosive nature. If not properly handled, it could easily cause a strong explosion in the Oak Mine or elsewhere.

After being processed into orange-red explosive gunpowder, its burning speed and explosive power were 2-3 times stronger than the gunpowder produced in Isugard under the same standard unit.

This meant that the barrel and bolt of the Capa 1404 needed to be stronger and more durable. It also caused the bullets containing explosive gunpowder to have great recoil when fired.

Only elves could withstand the recoil of the Capa 1404, and considering the technology on the Elusia continent, only the Elven Kingdom had the ability to produce this kind of bullet.

This was a weapon completely tailored for the elves, so the Capa 1404 was impossible for the Roman Empire to seize and use.

But considering the current production, Yang Hao and Fen still decided that shooters using rifles should take their guns with them when they had to evacuate, instead of throwing them away like they did with longbows before.

“That’s how those elven longbows were left behind.”

“When it comes to saving their lives, the rangers will give up the weapons that hinder their actions. Who makes our population so sparse?”

“I see.”

“So, do you have any way to increase the total population of our elves, Your Majesty the Regent?”

Fen’s hint made Yang Hao’s scalp tingle.

He shook his head to indicate that he had no idea for the time being, and then changed the subject. “I don’t know what’s going on with the golems.”

Narujia and Arthur had been studying improvements to the golems recently. Teresa was worried about the situation of the Ling people, so she went to check with them today.

Fen just said, “If you’re worried, why don’t you go now?”

“It’s half a day’s journey from here to th–”

Before Yang Hao could widen his eyes and finish his words, Fen snapped her fingers, leaving Kenna to explain the situation to the elves outside.

Elves had teleportation magic similar to that of human mages.

But the difference was that this was a special magic only Fen and the Archmage could use. It allowed Fen to appear anywhere in the Elven Forest while carrying one person.

Just like now. With Fen holding his wrist tightly, Yang Hao was in the Oak Factory one moment, and the next moment, he appeared in the Golem test site with leaves falling around him.

There were no side effects like those humans experienced when teleporting. He looked around blankly until the petite elf queen poked his cheek in front of a nun with a dark expression not far away. 

Then, His Majesty suddenly realized, ‘This is damn convenient! The elf-specific teleportation that’s limited to use within the Elven Forest.’

“I say! Fen! Don’t touch my man!”

The nun came over with her teeth bared and pulled Yang Hao, who looked stunned, aside like a cat with its fur standing on end.

In response, Fen just smiled and tilted her head. 

“Although our teleportation technique is convenient, it cannot be used for large-scale teleportation like humans. So, I had to grab his hand and come here like this.”

“Uh…” 

The nun was speechless for a moment. Considering that they came here only for official business, she had to shut up.

But secretly, she gritted her teeth and decided to give Yang Hao a hard time tonight.

***

After a bit of excitement, Yang Hao and the others reached Arthur and Narujia. Before Yang Hao could ask anything, Arthur, whose hair had fallen out, spoke first,

“Your Majesty, what kind of monster is this golem?”

“Oh?”

“The Ling tribe is a bunch of fucking monsters! If we had these things in our court back then, would that bastard Garson have dared to attack?!”

Arthur reached out and slapped the golem that had changed from stone and soil to a metal structure, then screamed from the burning metal on it.

Narujia showed a shy smile, walked up to Yang Hao, and proudly introduced her latest creation.

These metal golems, reflecting sunlight, were made of slag left after smelting ore.

Originally, the Oak Mine dealt with slag by burying it deep in the ground. But since the Ling people joined, these hard slags found a new use.

Not only that, Arthur had a sudden idea to install some metal shields with extremely low magic adaptability on the golems.

This way, the Light Spears of the Church of Light would not be able to threaten the new golems from a long distance.

Although a master could still be beaten to death with random punches at close range, the lower the loss of the golems before close combat, the greater the impact they would have after joining the battlefield.

But then again…

“Why did the limbs of these golems become like this?”

If they had just changed the material and put on armor, Yang Hao could still recognize that they were golems.

But when he saw that the golems’ hands had changed from human-like shapes to strange spears, hammers, awls, or scissors and clips, his face became puzzled.

Arthur’s explanation was simple. Since the Ling people had cooperated with the elf mages and prepared autonomous operation logic for the golems, he thought it was better to weaponize their hands instead of maintaining human-like joints.

After changing all the palms into the shapes of weapons, the golems did not disappoint and achieved excellent results in previous combat tests.

In the words of the elves, if the human army did not have siege equipment or mages who specialized in penetrating magic, a single golem would be enough to defeat an entire hundred-man human team.

But the price of this enhanced combat power was a significant reduction in the golems’ overall flexibility.

“Although it may not be visible on the battlefield, our tests clearly showed that golems can no longer make dancing movements,” Narujia muttered in frustration. 

After all, controlling golems to dance was her specialty. But now, it couldn’t be done, which made the simple demon woman very disappointed.

Arthur kept rolling his eyes. An elf woman, who had appeared behind him at some point, smiled and handed him a cup of tea. She looked at him affectionately as he drank it without thinking.

Yang Hao blinked, and Narujia whispered that it was one of Arthur’s girlfriends.

Because of Arthur’s heavy workload and the threats faced by the Elven Kingdom, Arthur’s girlfriends finally got together to discuss a solution.

They finally recognized Ms. Viya’s status as the first wife and vowed that they would never secretly confront each other and cause trouble for the man they loved. But the price was that they had to clearly arrange the dates each of them would spend with Arthur in a month.

This was indeed a good thing for Arthur, so Yang Hao didn’t worry about whether there was something strange in the tea.

He just asked the question that mattered most to him, “What about the large artillery design for the golems?”

“I plan to integrate it directly into the golems, and then have the Ling people build it according to the standardized design drawings while installing the parts. The advantage is that it will be very simple to fire and load. The disadvantage is that one golem can make twenty Ling people rest for a week.”

“Narujia, is that okay?”

“Yes! No problem… if I can help…”

Yang Hao planned to divide the golems into two categories. One was the cheap melee golems, and the other was the expensive artillery golems.

The former were cannon fodder and could be made of any material. The latter had to be made with tough minerals. Otherwise, they couldn’t withstand the impact of the artillery firing.

After thinking about it, he decided to let everyone test all the minerals during the design stage. After all, the diocese hadn’t fully invaded yet, and they still had a lot of time to prepare.

After leaving the golem test site, Yang Hao was joined by the angry Sister Teresa.

She looked at Fen with hostility, and Fen responded with a calm and gentle smile.

To avoid worsening the atmosphere, Yang Hao coughed twice and said that according to the schedule, he had to go to the junction of the forest plain in the west under the protection of the elves. There, the Isugard people hoped to meet him.

“We must have an ally,” he explained. “The Isugardians are a powerful ally. They have a navy, maritime trade, and can provide us with all kinds of supplies urgently needed in emergencies. More importantly, they will attack the Roman Empire sooner or later. Instead of our Elven Kingdom fighting alone, it is better to fight side by side with the Isugardians.”

“Then when the war breaks out, Isugard attacks the coastal military district, and we hold the diocese back?” Sister Teresa blinked. “The elves have too few people, and they can’t support a large-scale attack at all.”

Fen agreed with Teresa’s statement, but she still said that if necessary, she could ask the ancient trees to rise from the ground and become the vanguard of the attack.

“But the advance of the ancient trees means the shrinkage of the Elven Forest. Unless it is necessary, I don’t want you to let the ancient trees advance.”

This would be a huge price to pay. So Fen actually preferred to defend on the spot.

But Yang Hao didn’t think so.

He mentioned something very important.

“What about the tens of thousands of demon folk we accepted? They can’t eat, drink, defecate, and urinate in the Elven Forest forever. Even if you accept them completely, Fen, it’s fine. Their hometown is in the Monster Forest, not the Elven Forest. Their people were captured by the diocese, and we don’t know what happened to them. They are full of hatred for the diocese. Even if we don’t do anything, they’ll take the initiative to fight the diocese. Instead of letting them make useless sacrifices, it’s better for us to command them to achieve the greatest results, right?”

In less than ten days, the Elf Forest accepted more than 60,000 displaced demo folks. 

Almost half of the demons in the Monster Forest gathered in the Elf Forest to seek the protection of elves and ancient trees. They lost their homes and relatives because of humans, and their eyes were filled with blood and tears when they looked at the diocese.

They couldn’t live in the Elve Forest forever because their captured tribesmen were still waiting to be rescued. 

Yang Hao also needed to use them to help him save the little empress.

For this reason, Yang Hao thought it was necessary to take advantage of the demons’ low mood, give them bread and candy, and offer them sticks and promises.

The elves promised to save their tribesmen, but in return, the demon folk needed to swear allegiance to the elves.

This way, the elves, who had a small population, would gain more people to support the development of their country. The demon folk could also provide good cover for the elves on the front line.

Although it might take a long time to educate the demons and teach them to read, the benefits of supporting them were greater than the disadvantages.

After all, they were not like the Roman barbarians, who were almost impossible to educate. 

And then again, what was the Roman Empire doing now during the famine?

Yang Hao fell into deep thought. After riding on the eagle with the help of the nun, he left under the protection of the elves and flew towards the scheduled meeting place.

After they left, the nun turned around and looked at Fen expressionlessly.

“We need to talk.”

“I think so too,” Fen replied with a perfect smile. She would never let go of His Majesty the Regent.