Facing the Sea, Spring Blossoms Warm (Third Update, Alliance Leader Bonus Chapter 4/18)

By evening, they arrived at Flower Port.

After confirming that A Ke had returned to the seaside, Liszt went straight back to the castle and began tallying how many gold coins he had. The result was that, without selling off fixed assets, he could probably scrape together only a hundred gold coins—Flower Brew had yet to fully open up its market, so it would be difficult to raise much money in the short term.

"This little money isn't nearly enough to buy a medium-sized seagoing ship. I need to prepare at least five hundred gold coins."

Before Anderson Sapphire, the first Sapphire Grand Duke, founded the Sapphire Grand Duchy, the humans living on the continent had yet to enter the Age of Sail.

Most vessels relied on oars, poles, and sculls for power, traveling through inland lakes and rivers, and rarely venturing even into coastal waters.

No one knew in which era sails had been invented. If one traced it back, it would probably lead once more to the Moon Empire—every cultural origin in this world could somehow be linked to the Moon Empire.

But sailing ships had certainly been carried forward and developed by the Sapphire Grand Duchy, for this was humanity's first nation built upon islands.

The islands lacked serfs, food, and mineral resources.

Everything had to be seized from the continent.

Inland craft like oar-and-scull boats simply could not withstand the assault of wind and waves. Sailing ships thus became the backbone of seafaring, rapidly developing among the islands of the Sapphire Grand Duchy under the spur of war.

Basically, oar-and-scull boats had already been eliminated here.

Only sailing ships were built and sold.

Sailing ships currently came in three grades—small sailing ships with one mast, medium sailing ships with two masts, and large sailing ships with