After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

"So using it to claim credit is definitely fine, right?"

"I just wonder when the clan leader will finally achieve enlightenment..."

The Xiaoling tribespeople chattered away, and Naruja's antlers turned yellow and then green again, her complexion sometimes rosy and sometimes pale.

But soon, the Ling clan chief abandoned his thoughts and chose to devote himself entirely to this new golem, and began his own improvements.

Using her experience, she identified some flaws in the golem's design. After clarifying the purpose of those areas, the chieftain improved them into more suitable shapes.

For example, if it were truly to be operated in a "human" manner, then Golem's current bulky size would clearly be unsuitable. To make Golem as agile as possible, while maintaining its strength, would inevitably require reducing its size.

At the same time, the fingers became longer and easier to grasp, and the toes on the soles of the feet were meaningless, so they were replaced with a flatter structure... When Naruja finished her transformation, the golem in front of her had been completely renewed, becoming more beautiful and practical.

If Golem was a bloated fat man before, he is now a strong and fit young man. Naruja is very satisfied with this, but just then, the children suddenly spoke up:

"In that case... the clan leader can really go and claim credit..."

"Saying no with your mouth, but your body tells a different story..."

"That's right, that's right..."

Children speak without restraint.

After blushing deeply, Naruja chose to forgive the children's outrageous remarks—but indeed, it would be a real waste not to explain and show Yang Hao such a good thing...

so...

"...What do the children want?"

Faced with Naruja's question, the Ling children looked at each other, and finally, without prior agreement, said the same thing:

"I want something delicious!!"

I'm just as easily satisfied as before.

The chieftain nodded, and before leaving with Golem, she made a promise that she could go out for a good meal with the children today—after all, she wouldn't be paying for it.

She was in a good mood.

Meanwhile, after being taken down from the wooden tower, Dr. Joseph lamented the fickle nature of life, lamenting that no one seemed willing to understand his art. He also touched his increasingly unhealthy belly, thinking it was time to let His Majesty know about his efforts over the past few months!

............

Instead of the "surprise of the Listening Clan" that Arthur had promised, Yang Hao was greeted by Mr. Joseph, who had just been freed from his upside-down position.

Mr. Joseph had virtually no need for surgery in the Elf Kingdom—or rather, his surgical skills were constantly improving [after all, to test the lethality of weapons with different constructions, he naturally had to dissect the carcasses of livestock used specifically for lethality testing every day], and now he could even peel grape skins and sew them back on...

But these superb surgical skills, compared to the elves' magic of regenerating severed limbs, well... let's just forget about it.

"So now I'm focusing on weapons research—after all, to be honest, if we can beat the enemy badly, the number of wounded soldiers we need to treat will be greatly reduced. If we can ensure that the enemy has more dead than wounded, then we won't need to waste too much effort treating prisoners... Although I admit this contradicts my initial Red Cross education, I think it makes perfect sense in the current situation."

Dr. Joseph sat casually in his seat, while the elf who had come with him could only stand outside the door, his resentment emanating even through the door.

So, is that the reason you became like this?

Yang Hao felt a pang of heartache, as if he were watching a promising young doctor become an arms dealer, or a pure and innocent idol turn into a hot girl in an alley—in short, Yang Hao was disappointed by Joseph's transformation, yet also felt unable to refuse him.

"So, Joseph, what results have you achieved?"

Yang Hao reached out and touched the hair of the little nun beside him, whose stomach was growling from being hungry for too long. He decided that after dealing with Joseph and Naruja, he would go and have a proper meal.

When asked by Yang Hao, Dr. Joseph simply glanced at Mother Teresa and the proud Finn, noticing their starkly different states, then nodded and took out a pre-prepared list from his pocket, saying that all the results were in there.

Yang Hao took the list. Then, the same strange expression that appeared on his face as a history teacher when he saw a student write "Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan's Oath of the Peach Garden" on an exam paper—a mixture of amusement and bewilderment, simply because what Dr. Joseph had come up with was indeed just too damn bizarre.

Dr. Joseph devised a lower limb system that allowed the heavy golems to move effortlessly across 60° walls and swamps when fully loaded, but the fact that as many as 60 joints required maintenance every hour of travel broke down the defenses of the logistics elves who considered themselves well-informed.

The elves left behind tearful lamentations on Dr. Joseph's list.

Among them are concerns such as "even from the elf's perspective, disassembly and assembly is a form of hellish torture," "sometimes when you assemble something, you find that you've missed a few screws, and then you see the machine still running and you're afraid it might break down at any moment," and even reasonable requests like "I just want Dr. Joseph to experience our logistics work!"

In short, Dr. Joseph single-handedly earned the resentment of all the logistics elves in the workplace. This resentment even reached the point where, if someone went to the toilet without toilet paper, the elves would hand them sandpaper.

But that wasn't enough for Dr. Joseph!

He developed a magical enchanted shell that could explode within a 100-meter radius, completely drying out the air and creating an oxygen-free space for up to 5 minutes in another area. However, the production time for just one 120mm shell exceeded 100 hours. Before it could be loaded and fired, logistics personnel had to perform a final 15-step safety procedure to remove the safety device, and the golem had to be cleared immediately after firing.

He developed a rifle bullet specifically designed for large creatures; runes attached to the bullet ensured its stability and penetration before it hit flesh.

Upon impact, the bullet's front structure blooms like a flower, allowing sixteen iron spikes to roam freely within the flesh, creating wounds that cannot heal under normal circumstances. However, the problem is that these bullets can currently only be handcrafted. Each logistics elf needs approximately one hour of meticulous crafting to produce a single bullet as envisioned by Dr. Joseph...

Furthermore, Dr. Joseph also developed a mounted cannon that could be towed around by a carriage—if you ignore the fact that it was fixed directly to the carriage and destroyed a carriage every time it was fired, it was actually quite impressive.

Overall, all of Dr. Joseph's designs were of practical value.

The cost... is just terrifying.

To put it simply, Yang Hao is now like a customer visiting a brothel. He doesn't need any fancy girls to satisfy him; as long as a woman's genitals are normal, that's good enough for him right now.

But at this moment, Dr. Joseph was acting like a broker out of control—he wasn't introducing Yang Hao to ordinary girls from the red-light district, but rather to socialites and celebrities in Tokyo's Ginza rooftop cafes who charged hundreds of yen for a night's stay... While they were all women and it was normal for them to have sex, did Yang Hao seem like someone who could afford that kind of money? Impossible!

If the United Nations' finances were to continue down Dr. Joseph's path, they would go bankrupt in no more than three years... So this isn't Yang Hao trying to deny Dr. Joseph's efforts, it's just that...

"How about reducing costs while maintaining practicality? I mean... reducing costs from top to bottom, from front to back, whether it's production or maintenance?"

Faced with Yang Hao's tactful inquiry, Dr. Joseph nodded and said that it seemed possible—complex structures could be simplified with more powerful runes, but the problem was where they could find so much magic right now.

"Unless Your Majesty only requires the Elf Forest to produce weapons, otherwise... based on your standards, which would inevitably increase the magic cost, there's simply no other place capable of producing them, is there?"

Dr. Joseph's questions made Yang Hao fall into deep thought, while also stimulating Mother Teresa and Finn's interest.

After all, Joseph and Arthur were so engrossed in gun making that they probably didn't have time to know anything about what was happening outside—but Yang Hao and the other two were different! They knew very well that the floating continent called Eden was a place where Zheng Haoyong possessed powerful magic-producing technology.

If the Kingdom of Eden is willing to build the artificial magic reactor in Bayern and Gaparia within the next few months... then in a sense, Dr. Joseph's concern about the "limitation of production location" will no longer be a problem.

I wonder when the Kingdom of Eden will have the resources to do these things for them? And speaking of which, the black dragon in Isgard seems to be eyeing this as well... In order to prevent Isgard from becoming a magic-poor country and affecting the harmonious trade between the two sides, should we find a time to have Miss Nia temporarily shift her focus elsewhere?

Yang Hao and the others fell into deep thought. Just then, Arthur, who was sitting on his sister-in-law's lap, glanced at his wife beside him and asked Yang Hao a question:

"Actually, besides these matters, Your Majesty, we still have some questions we'd like to ask you... namely, the issue of the army's rations. I've been wanting to discuss this with you for a while now."

"Military rations... Ah, I see... You mean the issues of portability, convenience, and nutritional value, right?" Yang Hao blinked. "I've been thinking about this too, especially after the war on the floating continent ended... So, what are your thoughts?"

"Yes, there are. But I need some doctors who understand nutritional balance to assist me—Joseph is not good enough; he only knows how to make incisions on a person and then sew up the flesh. What I need are doctors who understand nutritional balance. Once I have these doctors, I'll probably know what to do."

"Leaving aside the doctor's questions for now, what's your principle?"

“Lime, heating bags, and pre-cooked and processed dishes packed in small bags, as well as biscuits.” Arthur shrugged. “We can handle the heating with lime, and the heating bags can be reused from readily available demonic materials with excellent conductivity. But how to process the food is another good question.”

Arthur wasn't a frontline soldier, nor strictly speaking an officer, but as the head of the weapons research department, he must have heard the elves complain every day about the pain of not being able to get hot food on the battlefield.

Although he had never been on the battlefield, Arthur knew very well that hot food and cold food were completely different things for a hungry soldier.

If a bowl of cold food can only fill their stomachs but cannot boost their morale, then a bowl of hot food is enough to give them peak morale after they have eaten and drunk their fill! This is the greatest appeal of hot food to soldiers!

Moreover, hot food is less likely to cause stomach problems for the soldiers compared to cold food. Although the elves have thick skin and their flesh can pinch Arthur's brothers painfully, they probably don't need to worry about stomach ailments.

But are the stomachs of Bayer Zans still considered normal? Eating too much raw or cold food might cause an upset stomach, but that's a minor issue. If someone starts vomiting and having diarrhea during battle, resulting in non-combat casualties, that would be a major, unacceptable situation for anyone on the front lines...

After all, even the strongest man needs to lean against a wall to walk after three bouts of diarrhea, let alone have the strength to fight after vomiting and diarrhea. Not to mention, the army also needs to consider the possibility that not all Bayern's troops will have elves accompanying them for treatment in extreme situations...

So, after much thought, improving the army's diet became another important task for Arthur, besides his research on firearms.

To solve this problem, Arthur consulted with many elven chefs. After discussing with them, Arthur finally concluded that heating was the easiest part to solve. After all, quicklime mixed with water and heated would generate a temperature exceeding 100°C, which would definitely heat the food to the standard of "hot food".

Furthermore, the heat-resistant bags used to hold the food are made from cheap materials that are now readily available everywhere in Constantinople; after all, these things are essentially products made from the processed stomach of the devil...

The only thing that's causing everyone a headache is dealing with the nutritional aspects of food...

"After all, considering that the quicklime packed into the permeable bag already takes up a large proportion of the weight, we can't fit much food into each of our portable food containers."

How to balance staple foods, vegetables, meat, and side dishes has become a science—I wonder if Your Majesty's wives know about diseases like beriberi, night blindness, or septicemia? These diseases can severely damage the soldiers' health and even take their lives.

According to research by the Red Cross and His Majesty Yang Hao, these symptoms could actually be alleviated or prevented through diet... However, the problem is that we don't know how to provide a balanced diet to minimize the risk of illness while ensuring the soldiers are happy with their meals...

So we really need nutritionists to help us! But, surely the United Nations doesn't have anyone like that right now?

Arthur shrugged, not forgetting to stab Dr. Joseph and His Majesty Yang Hao in the heart; after all, those doctors were also Red Cross personnel, and those who stayed on the continent of Elusia were mostly doomed, while those who went to Isgard probably wouldn't be able to come back anytime soon.

So... what is Yang Hao's solution to this problem of a lack of professional personnel?

The answer is very simple—that is to put it on hold for now and determine the basic version first.

"Let's first confirm a basic version... a basic version for field testing, that is easy to carry, self-heating, and at the very least ensures that things like cured meat can be cooked in the heating bag."

As for what ingredients to add later, we can improve upon this basic version... If we can really regain access to nutritionists, there will be a lot of room for improvement...

But that means Arthur, you're really working 18 hours a day! Are you sure your body is okay?

How about I give you a long vacation?

Yang Hao was genuinely worried about Arthur's health, and when faced with Yang Hao's offer, Mr. Arthur trembled as if he were about to burst, only managing a dry laugh as he said that he loved his work and therefore declined.

But the real reason can be seen from the women's expressions: Arthur felt that the probability of dying from exhaustion was not as high as the probability of dying in bed at home, so he chose to work hard and achieve a win-win situation with His Majesty Yang Hao—is there anything wrong with that? Of course not.

Arthur cleverly avoided the chaos at home, Yang Hao was able to make more progress in development, and the United Kingdom would become better and better because of the enthusiasm between the subjects and the emperor—what's wrong with that?

Of course not. Except for Arthur.

Because Arthur's women could also come to the weapons testing grounds to find him. So, it seems Arthur's little scheme has actually failed.

Seeing Hydra gripping Arthur's thigh so tightly, everyone sighed strangely, and finally Naruja arrived.

She was eager to demonstrate the existence of a new type of Golem to Yang Hao, and even made a small request to have dinner with her children.

After calculating that the time was about right, Yang Hao instructed the servants outside the door to inform the chefs at the Green Courtyard to prepare a feast for everyone.

Then, led by Naruja excitedly, they returned to the weapons testing ground. After seeing firsthand the "new type of Golem" that Naruja had mentioned and learning how to operate it, not only Yang Hao but even Theresa realized the importance of this technology...

"If we can expand the control range of these golems to 50 kilometers in the future, and we can increase production... wouldn't we be able to let our soldiers fight the enemy with golems? Using the power of money to exchange for the lives of the enemy? That would be an absolute steal!"

Theresa cheered. She really liked the new technology that Naruja had brought over. After all, the population of the United Nations was extremely valuable, at least several times more valuable than gold at this stage.

The fact that gold, which is less valuable than human life, could be used to send soldiers to the battlefield was naturally something Theresa was happy to celebrate. Her idea also aligned with Yang Hao and Finn's vision, but unlike them, Theresa only grasped the military applications of these [operable golems], while Yang Hao and Finn recognized their potential uses in civilian and industrial applications.

As we all know, construction work is one of the most dangerous jobs in this era. To build magnificent structures, workers have to climb up and down scaffolding, adding bricks and tiles to palaces dozens of meters in the air. Every year, there are bound to be several fatal accidents caused by mistakes, not to mention the accidents that happen on rush days when the wind and snow are blowing.

In this situation, if [Operational Golems] could replace workers in carrying out construction work in dangerous areas, not only would the safety of construction workers be guaranteed, but it could even, in a sense, improve the efficiency of house construction...

It's not just the profession of [construction worker]. Whether it's miners, building lighthouses in dangerous coastal areas, exploring potentially toxic areas in the field, or venturing into perilous underground regions for archaeological research... these [manipulated golems] always find their place.

Operators can directly observe and manipulate dangerous areas through the Golem's eyes. Soldiers can use the Golem to fight directly with the enemy. Even in peacetime, people can use the Golem to play wargames and conduct tactical training.

This would be another revolutionary advancement for Golem—thinking of this, Yang Hao excitedly stepped forward and, together with Theresa, embraced Naruja. The little elf simply clapped and celebrated from the sidelines. Why didn't she join in? Because if she did, she might be picked up by someone else like a child...

This was still too stimulating and humiliating for Fen. So she chose to stand still, but in the end, Yang Hao picked her up and stared at her with dead fish eyes for a long time before patting Yang Hao's head, signaling him to put her down quickly.

"Sigh... So, let's put aside the scientific name for now—Naruja has already come up with yet another technology that will propel the United Nations into a period of great prosperity, you know? Yang Hao, how do you plan to reward her?"