Ben had just managed to take a breather from the countless trivial tasks in the workshop. Guiding these hopelessly inept fellows taxed his patience imnsely. However, just as the old man found a mont to sneak out for a breath of fresh air, he saw Brand and his two companions standing outside.
"Master Ben." Brand smiled upon seeing him. He hadn't co just to stroll around and enjoy the snowy scenery; the news of the Pallas army gathering weighed on his mind. He had to begin implenting his plans step by step.
"What is it?" Ben opened his mouth, "Is my lord here to check on the progress of this old man's work?"
"I wouldn't dare." Brand shook his head. "I just thought of an idea."
"An idea?" Ben was slightly taken aback. Seeing the four standing in the snow, he quickly said, "Anyway, do co inside if you don't mind the noise and dirt of this place—"
Brand nodded, leading disha, Qian, and the young man inside. The first batch of armors and weapons was being forged in the workshop. The young lord glanced inside—blacksmiths and apprentices, bare-chested, worked back and forth, with no one in robes guiding them—Char's people hadn't arrived yet, which ant Ben's first batch of armors weren't the White Lion Armors.
"Haven't started on the magic armor yet?" he asked.
"My lord, you still say you're not here to check the progress," Ben couldn't help but shake his head, smiling bitterly. "After so many years of not doing this, I'm out of practice. The precious Magic Eye Gems you sent are too valuable to waste. I planned to practice with sothing else first."
The old man looked around the workshop, sighed, and said, "Besides, these people need to beco proficient; they're far too behind."
"You have high standards." Brand replied. Ben used to work at the Erune Royal Foundry and was recognized as the number one master. His assistants were now big nas, so it wasn't surprising that he looked down on these people.
The most skilled among them were just rural blacksmiths. Many of them had not even used magic machinery, so lacked even weapon forging experience.
Forging armor was more complex than weapons; it required not just blacksmithing skills but also the craftsmanship of tailors and leatherworkers. Craftsn from these trades were in the workshop to join the forged parts together into completed armors.
The entire process was very slow, often requiring several hours or even a whole day to complete.
Ben looked worriedly at the large piece of magic machinery in the center of the workshop—it was a rather primitive device, almost twenty years old—used to stamp chest and back plates into form and then inscribe magic arrays on them with magic rays.
But these old machines' performance was quite unstable and frequently malfunctioned.
"The machines I used ten years ago were better than these; they're in worse shape than this old man." Ben felt he had never worked on anything so challenging in his life—Tonyger, this backwater place, had almost nothing he needed. He found it hard to imagine such places still existed in Erune, where everything seed a century or more behind the tis he knew.
Without magic power, the town looked like a giant junkyard, while outside, it was a wasteland, and agriculture was still at the most primitive self-sufficient stage.
In Ben's familiar tis—almost ten years ago—in the most prosperous regions of Erune, estates had begun using magic to nurture crop growth, with students from academies stationed in the fields.
These elental master apprentices could adjust the weather on a small scale to suit crop growth by altering the arrangent of elents.
But there was none of that here.
In other regions, large-scale magic machinery had already been implented in agricultural production. This was only a part of the centuries-long transformation—Cruz people learned these techniques from Hazellians, influencing Erune indirectly.
These technologies even changed the November War, leading to the monuntal Second Holy War, yet the substantial advancent of magic technology continued to alter the world.
Of course.
Except for Tonyger.
Not just Tonyger. To Ben, the entire Jandener Region was a barbaric land abandoned by history. It seed to have a master that detested magic, always excluding it from civilization.
But that was rely the old man's personal prejudice. Brand knew the poverty of Erune's southern territories had multiple causes, not just Jandener; even Golan-Elsen and the south of Karasu were largely the sa.
The southern border of the Kingdom was always the edge of civilization due to various factors—developnt sequences, geographical differences, monster incursions, and so forth—so whether it was Buqi, Brags, or Tonyger, these places were like another world compared to the kingdom's heartland.
"Make do with what we have, Master Ben," Brand shook his head. Although these magical devices would be re scrap anywhere else in Erune, they were treasures here. When these two old machines were discovered in Gruding's warehouse, Antitina had initially planned to take one apart to study its magic conduit system, but the forging master had vehently opposed it.
Looking back, that decision seed wise, as these machines had been extrely useful. No matter how decrepit and faulty these old machines were, at least they were better than the original primitive handcraft production in Tonyger.
Brand couldn't imagine how long it would take with the nearly dieval production level in Lengshan Domain to realize his plans.
Ti waits for no one—
...
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