This young master truly has the ambition of a hero.

"This guy is too hard to catch. He's a high-level warrior who runs incredibly fast and silently. It took us four action teams, more than fifty people, to barely catch him. Luckily, we were on our own turf, or he would have gotten away!"

"It's a pity that three of them slipped through the net, otherwise we could have gotten a perfect score this time."

At the Forget-Me-Not's internal debriefing meeting, all participants gathered to review the operation. This was a rule established by Dick and Tia for the intelligence department, serving two purposes: to summarize experiences, identify shortcomings, and improve themselves while providing a model for future generations to learn from.

The sudden arrest operation was prepared too hastily in advance, which led to some oversights. However, Dick was still satisfied overall because the agents involved in the operation were all talents they had trained themselves. None of his summoned agents participated in the entire process, and the agents still demonstrated a devastating advantage over old-style spies.

This suppressive power is not only reflected in individual military strength, but also in intelligence gathering and analysis, and the organization and deployment of personnel. Once the entire intelligence agency is in motion, it is a unified whole. The various groups cooperate closely with each other according to the rigorous training they have received, and can obtain authorization from the lord's mansion at any time to request assistance from private troops and local police forces.

Therefore, in reality, what Aeolia and the others were facing was a nearly modern government organization with a preliminary structure and a violent apparatus with high operational efficiency, which was indeed a bit of overestimating their own strength.

It is worth mentioning that the "reformists" who are currently making the most noise in the capital's political arena advocate a reform plan that they hope will allow the empire to emulate modern countries on the other side of the world and carry out sweeping reforms of the court system that has lasted for nearly a thousand years.

They demanded a cabinet reshuffle, with truly capable individuals in charge.

They wanted to centralize power and significantly weaken the power held by local lords.

They also wanted to implement a constitutional monarchy, allowing more shrewd and capable bureaucrats to manage the entire empire on behalf of the emperor.

The result was that the resistance to reform was unprecedented, and the reformists faced enemies from all sides!

In contrast, the local noble fiefdoms were smaller and more agile, and many measures would not encounter much resistance as long as Dick, the lord who had the final say, made the decision.

After reading the action report submitted by his subordinates, Dick felt that this matter could be used to his advantage and to conduct counter-espionage propaganda within the territory.

Moreover, clear external threats can also help to strengthen internal unity.

Feeling he'd soaked long enough, Dick got up to leave the bathroom. As he dressed and opened the door, he was met with seven or eight annoyed-looking pretty faces.

All the tentacles pointed at Dick.

The Golden Deer, furious, was the first to launch an attack.

"Commander, you've gone too far! It's just a bath, why put up a barrier around the entire bathroom?"

"

"I just wanted to give Dick a back rub, what bad intentions could I possibly have?"

"Exactly! Even ladies should be wary!"

Listening to the self-proclaimed "lady"

Sisters

Dick, who could sense how many attacks the barrier had suffered throughout his bath, rolled his eyes as they blamed themselves one after another.

Dick can also be considered "

Victim experience

"With all that extravagance, he just wanted to relax in a hot spring in peace and quiet. If there were no protective barrier and these guys were to force their way in, Dick probably wouldn't be able to leave the bathroom before sunset, and might even have to seamlessly transition to an even more intense nighttime session."

He also deeply realized the drawbacks of the year-end holiday, which caused people who were originally scattered to gather together all at once. The dire situation is no longer simply a matter of saying "

Too many wolves and too little meat

That's enough to summarize it.

Sisters! I finally get a year-end holiday, why do you all want me to work overtime?

Chapter 218: Big Government and Industrialization

This year's holiday was a bittersweet experience for Dick. He felt like a fresh sausage thrown into a pack of hungry wolves; everyone who saw it wanted to take a bite. He'd never been this exhausted, not even leading troops into battle. So much so that when the holiday ended and he returned to the city, Dick couldn't help but sigh, realizing that working was much easier.

"Young master, you seem to be in a good mood."

Joel, the secretary who was making tea, saw Dick humming a cheerful tune while reviewing documents. Although she didn't know what was going on, she felt happy to see her young master happy.

Dick smiled without denying it, and handed several documents he had just reviewed to Joel, instructing her to immediately forward them to the confidential office next door, and to have them executed as soon as possible according to their hierarchical classification.

After two years of hard work, Dick had successfully built a reliable and efficient administrative team and a large group of grassroots civil servants. This ensured that every instruction he issued could be quickly transmitted to every corner of his territory and executed resolutely and thoroughly.

Dick has always been a strong advocate of authoritarianism, so he established a veritable "grand government" in his territory. Nearly five thousand officials at all levels work for the lord's mansion, more than the standing army in the territory. Meanwhile, the total population of Lagug has just exceeded four hundred thousand. This "official-to-citizen ratio" is extremely exaggerated in the entire empire.

But the advantage of a big government is its strong control.

In the past, the decrees of lords and governors were difficult to extend beyond the city. The management of villages and towns was in the hands of so-called "local gentry." Lords indirectly ruled the localities through these wealthy landowners. They could ask them to do things for them, but they could hardly interfere with how the landowners carried them out.

For example, when it comes to taxation, some lords are quite capable and will choose to appoint their trusted confidants or personally lead troops to the countryside to collect taxes.

However, some people find it troublesome and do not want to leave their comfortable castles, so they appoint local merchants or estate owners as their tax collectors, specify a amount for them to collect, and do not care what methods they use, as long as the amount of money is handed over.

The lords almost tacitly allowed the agents to treat the extra taxes as their own commissions, completely disregarding the lives of the lower classes.

A bunch of peasants who know neither martial arts nor magic, how could they possibly turn the world upside down?

Dick, of course, would not tolerate a group of bloated nouveau riche ruining his reputation and stealing his money. Therefore, taking advantage of the threat brought by the orc invasion, he forcibly promoted the consolidation of villages and land, and while establishing standard villages, he also took the opportunity to extend his regime to the countryside.

Because there were no middlemen taking a cut, even though Lagug's tax rate was lower than other territories in the north, its total tax revenue was still very substantial. The infrastructure projects that were undertaken early on, even at the cost of a fiscal deficit, were already showing results and bringing Dick a rich return.

After finishing processing official documents in the morning, Dick went to the industrial park in the afternoon. After more than two months of hard work, the first batch of two "magic tractors" produced on a trial basis finally rolled off the production line successfully.

One of them was a pure "assembled product". The blueprints were obtained by Dick from his mentor Grandor, and most of the core components, including the power source, were purchased from the capital. The Laguge Industrial Zone mainly built the main frame and shell, and then assembled them.

But during the assembly process, the local craftsmen weren't just blindly screwing things in. Dick purchased two sets of parts, one for practice assembly and the other for reverse engineering. The craftsmen now confidently assured Dick that they were fully capable of replicating it.

It is worth mentioning that when analyzing the magic furnace, which is the core power source, the elf craftsmen who participated in the dismantling work changed their attitude from disdain at the beginning to surprise, and finally to a deafening silence.

The elves have always arrogantly believed that humans are barbaric and stupid. Although they have seized the position of world hegemon through their high birth rate, their level of civilization is still far inferior to that of the elves. No matter how hard they try, they can never reach the level of the elves at their peak.

However, when they disassembled that rough and uneven "iron box" piece by piece, revealing its complex and ingenious yet perfectly functioning mechanical structure, even the most skilled "forging immortal" present couldn't immediately understand how it worked.

In contrast, the dwarves, having always maintained deep cooperation with humans and unlike the elves of the Emerald Crown Duchy, who were confined to reserves watching the murlocs bar their teeth, kept up with the era of magical civilization that combined machinery and magic, and immediately launched a face-to-face taunt at the bewildered elves.

"You bunch of arrogant bean sprouts, do you even understand?"

The magical technology had a tremendous impact on these elves. For a long time, they had been in a state of information blockade. Humans did not want them to know, and they were not willing to learn about it. They had woven an information cocoon for themselves.

However, this kind of ignorance is not incomprehensible. For example, people on the other side of the world have been in the information age for many years, and there are still people asking questions like "Does xx have cars?" online!

Fortunately, after receiving a shocking lesson, the elves quickly adjusted their mindset, put aside their initial arrogance and disdain, and began to humbly learn the human race's technology.

At this point, the forging skills honed over hundreds of years by the elven craftsmen began to play a positive role. With an average skill level of "level 80 fitter," the precision of the hand-crafted parts was even better than the original. Through the concerted efforts of the technicians from the human, elven, and dwarven factions, a replica machine with 100% Ragug-made parts rolled off the production line alongside the original, and was jointly inspected by Dick.

From an appearance standpoint alone, the fully self-produced version is even more refined than the assembled original.

The elves have a severe obsession with aesthetics. They originally did not want to show the results to the lord so quickly, and planned to spend ten years "slightly" polishing the product in order to make it perfect.

However, the humans and dwarves, who value practicality and durability more, could not stand the elves doing this, and the two sides argued endlessly about it until it finally came to Dick's attention and was finally resolved.

Even after being verbally reprimanded by Dick and finally understanding the difference between industrial products and works of art, the elves still did their best to achieve the highest level of excellence.

Those few delicate carvings on the tractor's hood were probably their last act of defiance.

Chapter 219: Productivity Solely

After observing the operation of two tractors on site, Dick set a small goal for the factory: to assemble at least one hundred tractors and matching farming implements before the start of spring plowing in mid-April.

These machines will be prioritized for government farms, and then gradually rolled out to local villages and towns, with the goal of ensuring that all 63 standard villages in the territory have more than five agricultural machines before the autumn harvest at the end of the year.

Laguge has excellent agricultural conditions, especially the fertile eastern plains, which are very suitable for intensive mechanized farming, which can improve efficiency and save human resources.

Currently, about 90% of the workforce in Laguge is engaged in agriculture, but the per capita productivity is not very high, with each farmer cultivating less than six mu of land on average.

This is not because Laguge lacks arable land. In fact, since the local climate warmed, much of the permafrost that was previously impossible to dig up has melted. After conducting on-site investigations, Hongyu Zhitong estimated that Laguge, with a total area of ​​15,000 square kilometers (about a quarter of Tongliao), has more than 5,000 square kilometers of arable land, while the arable land that has been cultivated so far is less than one-fifth of that.

The root cause of this phenomenon is insufficient productivity due to outdated agricultural technology. They cannot cultivate enough land, yet a large population is confined to the fields. Dick hopes to free up some of the labor force, allowing these able-bodied young men to enter factories and the military.

Thanks to Tolucia, they now have high-yield, superior breeds, and Ruby Eyes has even invented fertilizer. The primary mission of Lagug's first self-built fleet is to dig for guano on the outer islands, while the escorting ship girls must physically fight alongside the bird monsters that inhabit these islands.

Belfast once joked that it was already outrageous for her to use anti-aircraft guns to shoot birds, but what was even more outrageous was that sometimes she couldn't even win.

A seagull over three meters tall that can fly at supersonic speeds, making a strange cry as it dives!

We have good seeds, fertilizers, and relevant agricultural technologies. Hongyuzhitong also arranges for specialized agricultural technicians to go to the countryside to teach. What we lack now is more efficient and modern agricultural tools.

Hongyu Zhitong estimates that for every additional tractor they have, they can replace about 100 to 150 workers. These workers can then enter the factory and produce even more tractors and other production machines.

Ultimately, they will reduce the agricultural population from the current 280,000 to around 120,000 through adjustments, but the cultivated land area will be four to five times the current size, achieving a food self-sufficiency rate of 700%.

There are also about 80,000 industrial workers, and the entire system involves light and heavy industries and dozens of categories.

The standing army can also be expanded to 15,000 people, with soldiers who are completely off-the-job and highly professionalized.

Even if such an army still used cold weapons, or was only equipped with wooden sticks, it would be an absolute crushing force against the militia conscripted by traditional feudal lords.

However, considering that the time is not yet ripe and that his ambitions cannot be revealed too obviously, Dick plans to keep the standing army below five thousand, but increase the size and training intensity of the militia (reserve force) so that it can be quickly armed into a regular army when needed.

Besides his nominal territory, Dick has also brought the lands of several minor nobles under his actual control. These "vassal territories" together have a population of nearly 200,000. Dick only needs them to write a letter and send it over; it's no different from a superior ordering subordinates.

In fact, these small lords with no power had no aversion to becoming vassals of the big boss. In fact, they were very happy to be able to latch onto a powerful figure. They all said that being Lord Dick's dog was their greatest honor.

After all, dogs with owners are usually quite unruly!

Dick knew that some of the minor lords who had defected to him were originally Marquis Richard's lackeys. During the Winter War, the Marquis had become a figurehead for his extraordinary wisdom in the town of Ideide, which led to the loss of 50,000 men in one battle. He was a man who had gained immense influence and influence.

So after the war ended, many lords who had been badly wronged by him turned against him, cursing Richard for having no connections while joining the newly rising Northern Alliance.

The losses in the war, coupled with the defection of these minor lords, severely weakened the marquisate.

Richard was arrogant before, not only because of his high title and the mines in his fief, but also because he collected protection money from the surrounding minor lords. For some minor lords, half of their fief's income would be taken away. If anyone dared not to pay, the marquis would find an excuse to send troops to attack them.

The emperor of the empire did not care about such regional conflicts at all, and was even happy to see conflicts between the feudal nobles below. Even if things got out of hand, the royal family would at most send a special envoy to mediate.

After the war, Richard also considered exploiting his surrounding vassals to recoup his losses, but these minor nobles defected to the Northern Alliance for protection. In order to further weaken Marquis Richard's influence in the North, Dick was also willing to stand up for these vassals and directly sent troops to confront the Marquis's army.

Dick concluded that Marquis Richard wouldn't dare to fight, and the morale of the two sides' private armies was also not on the same level. The Marquis's soldiers quickly backed down, and once they backed down, no one in the north took them seriously anymore. Dick's influence and penetration into other northern territories also faced fewer obstacles.

On my way back to the main city after inspecting the industrial zone, snowflakes began to fall again.

Dick reached out and caught a snowflake, watching the ice crystal melt instantly in his palm. The touch was slightly cool but not cold, and he couldn't help but think of the saying, "A timely snow promises a bumper harvest."

"May the God of Winter bless us, and may this year bring another bountiful harvest."

With his hands clasped together, Dick bowed towards the resting place of the winter god Ajax. Just as he was about to continue his journey, Dongfeng Wuxi suddenly reached out and stopped him. With her other hand, she conjured a cross-shaped spear and cautiously observed her surroundings.

"Enemies?"

"He has murderous intent."

Dongfeng Wuxi's words were concise and to the point, and Ayane, who was on the other side of Dick, and the rest of the accompanying guards behind her also entered battle mode.

The guards present were all handpicked, the finest warriors, not only highly skilled but also incredibly loyal, always ready to sacrifice themselves for the Earl.

Dick also released his mental energy to sense the changes in the surrounding magic. Although it was very slight and the other party was indeed well hidden, with his Saint-level strength, it was not difficult for him to detect the anomaly with a little concentration.

The opponent didn't try to completely conceal their aura, but instead adjusted their magical fluctuations to disguise themselves as a small, fearless monster. Unfortunately, their killing intent was exposed too early, allowing Dongfeng Wuxi's keen sixth sense to detect it.

Dick couldn't help but sigh. After he became a Saint, the number of assassins targeting him did not decrease at all. On the contrary, their skill levels increased, and each of them had their own unique skills.

"It seems they really want to fight me!"

Chapter 220: Overestimating One's Abilities

Almost at the same time Dick took out his staff from his spatial bracelet, several bursts of magical energy suddenly erupted from the woods on both sides of the road. Then, as if they were growing out of the ground, more than a dozen monsters swelled up and burst out of the soil, heading straight for Dick and his companions.

Dick immediately recognized it as a "monster egg," a specialty of the Duchy of Rodia. It was a dark magical artifact crafted from monster embryos. By injecting a certain amount of magic into it, the monster embryo could rapidly grow into an adult form within an extremely short time and fight according to the user's commands.

However, the drawback of this method of creating monsters is that their lifespan is extremely short, basically measured in seconds. Once the time is up, they will immediately die on the spot.

Because the creation of the alien beast eggs involved forbidden black magic, these things are, at least openly, contraband. But their usefulness is undeniable; whether for self-defense or assassination, they are practically essential items for home, travel, and silencing witnesses.

The attackers were quite generous; they ambushed Dick on his way back to the city, burying more than a dozen monster eggs on both sides of the road, only activating them when Dick and his party entered the ambush zone.

When inactive, the monster egg looks like an ordinary piece of amber. The monster embryo inside has no consciousness and does not emit any magic, making it very useful for ambushes.

In other words, the attackers showed hostility towards Dick and his group when they activated the alien beast egg, which is why Dongfeng Wuxi, who is able to sense killing intent, noticed it in advance.

The dozen or so monsters that were activated were all ape-like creatures, which swelled up to three or four meters tall, with no hair on their bodies and their skin a sickly purplish-black color.

Upon seeing this, Dongfeng Wuxi couldn't help but think of the "ugly ghost" from her own world. The ghost had a similar appearance, but its aura was quite strong.

Dongfeng Wuxi, who was more skilled in foot combat, immediately dismounted, and Dick quickly reminded her.

"Beware of these monsters' bodily fluids; they're highly acidic and poisonous!"

"clear."

Dongfeng Wuxi's ability is "Spear that Pierces the Corona". The spear can extend and retract at will. This ability may seem ordinary at first glance, but according to the setting, the longer the cross-shaped spear extends, the greater the enhancement of all attributes Dongfeng Wuxi will receive. Dongfeng Wuxi herself is a master of spearmanship with unparalleled martial arts skills, so her combat power should not be underestimated.

Dick had experienced this firsthand in a simulated battle involving only internal personnel. When Dong Ma's spear reached forty meters in length, the impact force of the spear tip was so strong that it could break through his magic barrier with physical output. Even though only three of the five layers of the barrier were broken, it still gave Dick a big fright.