Bold Assumptions

In the final days before Annie left, a Centaur smithing frenzy swept through High Mountain Keep.

Slaves and two Ogres acted as laborers, spending three days building several earthen blast furnaces on the banks of the Raging Waves River.

High Mountain Keep had captured tens of thousands of pounds of weapons and armor in previous battles. Their quality was generally poor, but they were suitable as smelting material, finally getting a chance at recycling.

The most esteemed among the Centaur Busmi was Rooney. He selected several hundred pounds of pig iron and wrought iron, based on their weight ratio, and fed them into the blast furnace. It was said that after remelting, they could be transformed into fine steel of excellent quality.

When the caravan first arrived, it had gifted High Mountain Keep a cart of flour and a cart of coal. Now, that coal was being rapidly shoveled into the blast furnace's combustion chamber.

Gunther watched the gradually cooling steel ingots like a curious bear, unable to understand why two inferior types of iron, melted together, would turn into fine steel.

Rooney, being very warm-hearted, patiently explained that it was a principle of material compatibility. The problem was that he himself was clearly half-baked, repeating the same two sentences over and over, making Gunther dizzy.

Richard couldn't stand the droning, "Do you understand carbon content? Balance high and low, and it becomes steel."

This time, it was Rooney who couldn't understand. Carbon content? There's carbon in iron? Won't it catch fire?

Soon after the steel ingots were produced, a troop of mercenaries arrived at High Mountain Keep under a white flag, picking up the caravan that had been stranded for several days. Before leaving, Annie left all the coal loaded on her wagons for Richard. The mercenary captain even gave him a quite exquisite ruby gold emblem, showing extreme courtesy.

Although High Mountain Keep exuded poverty everywhere, its military strength was truly formidable. For a trading company primarily engaged in wilderness trade, it was a sitting tiger they absolutely could not afford to offend.

Richard watched them leave and breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't want others to see what he was going to do next.

Several experienced Centaur Busmi led their apprentices, setting up a row of anvils, and began to forge the steel ingots into weapons.

Generally, forging a large number of military armaments of the same type simultaneously was the optimal choice, offering many benefits in terms of saving labor and maintaining quality control. Pompeii had recently established several large armories precisely for this reason.

However, Richard's requirements were completely contrary to this idea. He demanded that the blacksmiths produce nearly a hundred weapons and pieces of armor, with not even two of them being identical.

He was conducting a very simple experiment.

Richard had known for a long time that system soldiers had template standard equipment. For example, the Barbarian Great Axe Warrior's rated equipment included a long-handled heavy battle axe, lamellar iron armor, a horned helmet, and various scattered accessories.

The forms of these pieces of equipment were fixed, and even complete sets were sold in shops.

But due to persistent financial difficulties, Richard had never fully equipped his warriors with standard gear. The Barbarian Great Axe Warriors were still using the "militia three treasures" bought in Corun City—spears, javelins, and leather armor.

This didn't seem to have a bad effect; their combat power significantly improved with each advancement. So, Richard couldn't help but wonder if the system's equipment standards truly held any meaning.

The armaments he had the Centaurs forge were sometimes complete replicas of the system standard, sometimes common Pompeii styles, and the rest were in between.

Heating, forging, quenching, grinding—the Centaur Busmi were experienced and carried out these tasks in an orderly manner.

Richard distributed all the armaments to the High Mountain Keep warriors, letting them try them out and provide feedback.

The feedback from these big-bellied men, who were eating their poor lord out of house and home, was astonishingly consistent.

Everyone adored the template standard equipment, finding it felt excellent, and they dismissed the Pompeii-style equipment, even finding it awkward.

Taking axes as an example, the Barbarian Great Axe Warrior could steadily cleave into a finger-width gap formed by two pieces of wood using the template-standard long-handled battle axe. But once they switched to a Pompeii battle axe, that terrifying control vanished without a trace.

This disparity couldn't be explained by mere "feel"; it could only be attributed to the system's influence.

Richard guessed that the martial arts bestowed upon the barbarians during advancement might not be how to use an axe in general, but specifically how to use that "template-standard long-handled battle axe."

The barbarians, being living beings, could at least think a bit, so by analogy, they could wield other axes too, but their skill naturally couldn't compare.

This discovery left Richard both pleased and frustrated. The potential for overall combat power improvement was much greater, but equipment upgrades also became an issue that needed to be resolved.

Another major event at High Mountain Keep was the lord's recent sudden mobilization order, requesting the capture of as many Ogres as possible, and they had to be alive.

What for? What good were dirty, stupid Ogres? Weren't two of them enough already? Nobody knew, but then again, High Mountain Keep wasn't exactly a democracy.

All the residents had been running themselves ragged over this lately, but the Ogres' bottomless appetites and clumsy bodies meant they weren't widely distributed. Even with great effort, only a dozen or so were brought in.

These creatures were penned by the river, eating and drinking contentedly as if they were in paradise, but the residents in charge of livestock were tearing their hair out.

The Ogres' appetites were simply too good; even feeding them horse feed mixed with mud, the territory's feed reserves were plummeting.

Only Nehru, the Shaman Wizard, had a vague, uneasy premonition.

"Didn't you say that shamans often appear among Ogres, and that their magic is very powerful?" Richard smiled kindly when he came to find Nehru, though Gunther, who followed behind him, had a leather whip as thick as three fingers tucked under his arm.

It was well known that Gunther never participated in daily chores, so this whip was certainly not for herding.

Nehru quickly nodded vigorously.

"High Mountain Keep now has nearly twenty Ogres. Go teach them magic."

"My Lord." Nehru plopped to the ground, grabbing Richard's boots. "Ogres have such stupid brains; it's impossible for them to learn witchcraft!"

Nehru, who knew two types of witchcraft, was definitely a qualified shaman, so he was even more bewildered as to why the lord valued Ogres so much—with the intelligence of these stupid creatures, it was impossible for them to adapt to complex battlefield environments.

"Then how dare you say shamans will appear among Ogres?" Richard crossed his arms.

Gunther straightened the coiled whip, raised his hand, and cracked it. The iron-tipped whip landed on the wall with a loud bang, exploding a thumb-sized piece of pine into flying wood fibers.

"They're not like us," Nehru shivered all over, his words tumbling out faster than beans spilling from a sack. "We have to learn from our predecessors to master Shamanic Power, but Ogres awaken it. Sometimes, they can comprehend Shamanic Power as soon as they awaken."

Gunther turned to look at his lord, gripping the whip eagerly, feeling that this guy was definitely spouting nonsense again.

Richard waved his hand to stop him. In fact, Richard himself was inclined to believe this statement—there was no way anything could be crammed into an Ogre's simple mind, let alone magic.