This young master truly has the ambition of a hero.

The female knight glanced at Azwara, a disdainful sneer playing on her lips. She clearly didn't take Azwara, who possessed the skills of a high-ranking warrior, seriously at all. As for the guy next to her who boasted about being a "dual master of magic and martial arts," she didn't even bother to look at him.

Azwara felt he was being looked down upon, but the woman in front of him, who was quite famous in Lagug, certainly had the right to look down on them.

The cavalry's deputy commander, "Black," is a powerful female knight rumored to possess a level "above the high rank." The lord's mansion has never publicly acknowledged that she and Commander White are Saint-rank, but the two have indeed demonstrated the strength to easily defeat high-rank warriors. Azwara is definitely no match for her!

Chapter 181: Our Alliance

When Azwara awoke again, he found himself in a dimly lit prison. He discovered that his limbs were firmly chained to a sturdy metal frame, and a gag was stuffed in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue. He felt sore all over and couldn't even lift a finger. He knew he had been drugged and couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding.

"Oh no! They've been captured alive."

For Azwara, being captured alive was undoubtedly the worst possible outcome, because whether he was tortured to death during interrogation or broke free and spoke out, causing the curse within him to flare up and resulting in the pain of his soul being torn apart and the price of eternal damnation, none of these were easy or quick ways to die.

At that moment, someone walked up to Azwara and lifted his bowed head. Azwara saw the man sitting opposite him, who was his assassination target—Dick Best.

“You’re awake! Azwara. I specifically looked up this word in the ancient Elvish dictionary. It means a wise person or someone who knows how to read the situation. It seems your parents, who named you, really hope you’ll be discerning and shrewd.”

Wielding a dictionary so thick it could be used as a blunt weapon, Dick, beaming, looked Azwara up and down with keen interest. On the wooden table to his right, many knives were neatly arranged, their cold gleam unsettling under the light of the magic lamp.

Just seeing these knives made Azwara unconsciously start imagining himself being "cooked" in various bloody ways.

As one of the few remaining veteran elite agents of the Dead Tree Party, Azwara is different from the temporary workers recruited later. He has undergone a century of rigorous training, which naturally includes torture and forced confessions. He himself is a master of dissection, but he never expected to become a salted fish on someone else's chopping board.

It would be a lie to say he wasn't afraid, but his past training allowed him to barely keep a straight face. However, the beads of sweat on his forehead completely betrayed his inner tension.

Azwara was filled with panic and inner turmoil, but Dick seemed to read his mind and spoke slowly and deliberately.

“I know what you’re worried about. You members of the Dead Tree Party are all cursed with oaths of betrayal. If you reveal the organization’s secrets to outsiders, you’ll be cursed to death on the spot, and your souls will be destroyed after death, not even given the chance to become a ghost. But if I told you that I have a way to lift this curse, so that you won’t die even if you reveal the organization’s secrets, would you be willing to speak?”

As soon as Dick finished speaking, Azwara's previously dull pupils suddenly lit up again, indicating that he still wanted to live and was not the kind of die-hard who was completely loyal to the organization.

So Dick nodded to Kigan, who was grabbing Azwara's hair, and Kigan immediately absorbed the resentment from Azwara, transferring the curse to Kigan.

Azwara felt a sudden lightness in his body, as if something had been pulled out of him. Then he saw the tall, pink-haired nun walk up to Dick and start kissing him as if no one else was around.

"???"

The two kissed for a good ten minutes, with Dick, being shorter, almost completely covered by Chigante in a "crushing" manner. When their lips finally parted again, Dick, panting heavily, wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth, thinking to himself that this curse was quite "powerful"!

"I believe you can sense that the curse within you has been transferred out. Now you can speak freely. If the information you provide is valuable enough, I will not only spare your life, but also give you a sum of money and a new identity to start over. What do you say?"

Seeing that Azwara seemed to be deep in thought, Dick didn't rush to have the gag removed. Only after Azwara had thought for a while and nodded to Dick as if he had made up his mind did Dick let Chigant help him remove the gag.

The moment her mouth could speak, Azwara loudly recited several names, then launched into a tirade of words as if her lips were coated with honey. Dick was taken aback for a moment, then quickly realized what she was doing.

This guy is quite cautious; he knows to test whether the curse has really been lifted first.

The people Azwara was furiously berating were all high-ranking leaders of the Dead Tree Party, the very leaders who had assigned him, a high-ranking warrior, to lead a few weaklings to assassinate a Saint-ranked mage.

Insulting your boss will also trigger a curse, but the punishment will be less severe than that for leaking information; you will only experience a splitting headache, not die on the spot.

Azwara cursed a few times before quickly stopping, then closed his eyes and silently felt it. After a while, he didn't feel any particular discomfort, and only then did he believe that the curse on him had truly been lifted.

"I wasn't lying to you, was I? You can tell me now?"

"Wait a minute, let me curse those old bastards a little longer."

"..."

Meanwhile, Paul, having received the notification, rushed to the castle and saw Ferrina, who had been rescued unharmed. His heart, which had been hanging in suspense, was finally at ease.

"Miss, it's so good to see you safe and sound."

"I'm sorry, I promise I won't run around like that again."

Although she wasn't subjected to any abuse or harm, Felina had still been held captive for a day and a night, and the shock she experienced was just as unpleasant. Fortunately, the basement where she was held had a ventilation shaft, and there happened to be a little girl feeding stray cats nearby; otherwise, she wouldn't have been rescued so quickly.

After being rescued, Ferrina was temporarily placed at the castle. Dick was busy interrogating the captured prisoners, so he asked Belfast to comfort the two-hundred-year-old girl first.

Upon learning that the kidnappers were indeed members of the Dead Tree Gang, Paul was furious, but his anger was brief before he couldn't help but let out a long sigh.

Of the three elven duchies, the Emerald Crown Duchy has the deepest grudge against the Deadwood Party because the second Grand Duke's rebellion back then caused them the most trouble.

Unfortunately, the duchy was under the complete control of the empire, and they didn't even have an army. They only had a small number of guards directly under the Grand Duke. Even if they wanted to take revenge on the Dry Tree Party, they didn't have the ability. They could only be harassed by the other side, which was really frustrating.

Fortunately, the kidnapping was resolved relatively smoothly, and Miss Ferrina was not injured, which was a stroke of good luck amidst misfortune.

Just then, Dick came in from outside. Paul immediately expressed his gratitude, and Dick politely comforted Ferrina for a few words, then gestured for Paul to speak to him privately.

Paul immediately understood and followed Dick to the next meeting room, where Dick asked the question directly.

"Are you interested in taking revenge on the Dead Tree Gang? If so, how about we cooperate?"

Chapter 182: The Idea of ​​Infernal Affairs

Based on the information provided by Azwara, Dick confirmed his previous suspicions: the elves of the Dead Tree Party had indeed colluded with the Wasteland Orcs, and the extent of their cooperation was far deeper than he had anticipated.

The Dead Tree Party appears to be intentionally supporting the orcs, providing them with various technologies, primarily military-related, to strengthen the orc tribes and thus pose a greater threat to the humans.

The most important aspect of the aid was to improve the orc army's weaponry and enhance their siege capabilities.

Last year's winter war saw the orcs' army, though fierce, manage to overwhelm the humans mainly due to their local numerical superiority and strategic surprise. Their weaponry was actually far inferior to that of the humans; only a small number of elite troops directly under Ramon had decent equipment, but even that was of inconsistent quality. Some mid- to high-ranking officers could use smuggled goods, while the rest of the soldiers could only use crudely made, homemade equipment.

Dick had seen the captured orc weapons; the forging of the swords and armor was so poor that they could be easily cut by the standard steel swords of the Imperial Guard.

Therefore, as the war progressed into its later stages, the northern lords recovered from their initial panic and stabilized their positions by relying on their strong fortifications, making it difficult for the orcs to advance as rapidly as they had in the early stages.

Poor equipment also resulted in the orc army's inadequate ability to conduct offensive operations.

During the war, the orcs performed well in open field battles, easily attacking villages and small towns without strong walls and fortifications. However, they were somewhat helpless when faced with military fortresses and large towns.

The only large castle to be captured during the war was Ideide, the place of Marquis Richard's sorrow.

However, the reason why this important town in the north-central region fell was twofold. First, the city lord was incompetent and fled with his main private army before the battle even started, which led to the collapse of public morale and triggered a large-scale exodus. Second, the orcs deployed 8,000 troops and two Saint-level experts when they attacked the town.

In light of this, after the war, the surviving northern lords followed the example of Earl Hoffmann and strengthened the city defenses in their territories. Dick's side was also promoting the consolidation of villages and relocation, increasing the population of standard villages from the original two thousand to more than five thousand by allocating immigrants.

However, the problem now is that after the Dead Tree Party and the Orcs form an alliance, the two sides can complement each other's strengths and weaknesses.

The elves suffer from a severe population shortage due to low fertility, but they are not lacking in technology. The orcs, while still primitive and backward, have an extremely high birth rate. If it weren't for the harsh living conditions of the wastelands, their population would certainly be much larger than it is now.

Therefore, theoretically speaking, if these two countries could truly put aside their past grievances and work together, the threat to the northern region of the empire would increase exponentially.

In order to anticipate the enemy's moves, Dick needs to be able to keep track of their movements in real time.

But this is precisely the awkward situation: in the current intelligence war, Dick's side is in a very passive defensive posture. Tia's "Forget-Me-Not" mainly focuses on capturing spies on home soil and preventing various terrorist attacks by the enemy, but it has been unable to infiltrate the enemy camp.

So Dick came up with a plan: since the orcs could unite with the Deadwood Party, he could also cooperate with the Emerald Crown Duchy.

Dick learned from Azwara that the Dead Tree Party had been busy recruiting due to heavy losses. However, since the population of their offshore settlements was not very large to begin with, the number of people recruited internally was far from enough to make up for the previous losses, so they had to expand the scale of external recruitment.

The so-called "external recruitment" involved exploiting the oppression of the elves by humans to lure hot-blooded young people from the three small principalities who were dissatisfied with the status quo into joining the organization. Azwara had four subordinates of this background, three of whom were captured with him.

So Dick thought, could he take this opportunity to play a double agent game, recruit elves from the Emerald Crown Duchy, train them as spies, and then infiltrate the Deadwood Party?

There are two main requirements for the spies: first, they must be pure-blooded elves; second, they must have a grudge against the Dryads and not agree with their restoration ideology.

Although such elves are not numerous, they are not entirely absent in the Emerald Crown Duchy.

This is all thanks to the betrayal of the Dead Tree Party back then. Many of those who experienced the events firsthand hate them even more than the humans who oppressed them.

Dick spoke with Paul about this very matter. Ostensibly, he would sign a "labor dispatch" contract with the Duchy, bringing in three thousand elves from the Duchy at once. These elven laborers would come to Ragug as "employees" and be subject to the lord's arrangements.

Dick offered them very good salaries and benefits, especially in terms of rights protection. Dick put all his promises into written contracts. As long as these elves worked diligently and abided by the local laws and regulations of Lagug, Dick would treat them as well as he would his own people, and would not allow anyone to discriminate against or oppress these elves.

Treat everyone who creates wealth for you with kindness—that's Dick's principle.

Beneath this explicit contract lies a clandestine collaboration between intelligence agencies.

Dick hoped Paul could find ten to twenty qualified elves from the duchy to work as laborers in Lagug. Tia's intelligence agency would be responsible for providing these elves with the necessary special training, turning them into excellent spies.

Forget-me-nots currently have their own secret training facility, located in the western mountains.

This training institution not only has Tia and Lily teaching them various spy school knowledge they brought from their original world, but also Momiji and Kasumi from the ninja group teaching ninjutsu.

Unlike the ninjas on Earth, Momiji and Kasumi come from the fantasy world of Ninja Gaiden. The ninjas there truly have the ability to fly and dive into the earth. Therefore, as their intelligence work becomes increasingly demanding, Dick hopes that they can also teach the locals.

Imagine a group of elves who were already skilled in both martial arts and magic, and who also learned espionage techniques and ninjutsu from other worlds. As long as their loyalty and reliability can be ensured, these spies can definitely play a significant role in intelligence warfare.

Paul was very interested in Dick's suggestion. After thinking about it for a moment, he felt that this matter could not be communicated through methods that were easy to leak, such as carrier pigeons or magical communication. He had to return to the duchy in person and discuss it with the Grand Duke in detail.

He asked Dick for a handwritten letter and then eagerly prepared to set off.

However, he also cunningly left Ferrina with Dick and earnestly requested that Dick take care of her for a while, clearly indicating that he had not given up on the idea of ​​a marriage alliance.

Chapter 183: Industrialization of Magic

After the cooperation with the Emerald Crown Duchy was finalized, Dick instructed Ruby Eyes to immediately prioritize the construction of the "Large Alchemy Workshop" in the development plan.

Unlike the traditional small-scale alchemy laboratory, the large workshop that Dick wanted to build was a labor-intensive alchemy factory that combined earth technology with modern assembly line operations.

These large-scale alchemy workshops can be said to be the core of the world's magical industrialization. The first large workshop was built eight years ago, led by the National Academy of Magic. It was later expanded several times, forming an industrial park covering tens of hectares in the eastern suburbs of the capital.

Many groundbreaking magical artifacts, including the magical train that Dick wanted to introduce, from small magical lamps to large magical trains and magical cannons, all came from this (super) large alchemy workshop.

Ironically, there was only one such large-scale alchemy workshop in the entire empire.

The nobles in the southern part of the empire are mostly large-scale plantation owners who are conservative in their stance. Although they are wealthy and genuinely interested in magical technology and its related products, their habitual caution makes them take a wait-and-see attitude towards new things and always worry about unknown risks.

The lords in the north, on the other hand, had their imaginations limited by poverty. Some of the smaller lords, whose territories were located in remote mountainous areas, were even more ignorant, guarding their own small plots of land and indifferent to the development of the outside world.

In Dick's view, he didn't actually need to completely copy the development process on Earth and meticulously replicate the first and second industrial revolutions. The research results of the National Magic Academy over half a century were there for all to see, and many technologies in the civilian field were not subject to too strict restrictions. Dick could simply adopt a pragmatic approach and bring them over for use, instead of being a stubborn person who insisted on developing them from scratch.

However, building a large-scale alchemy workshop requires high standards for the workers on the assembly line.

Because magical technology essentially uses magic to drive machinery instead of conventional power, and because it involves the realm of magic, many parts require enchanting to manufacture. To inscribe enchanted runes, alchemists need to work on an assembly line. Workers need to have at least the mental strength of a low-level mage and a high level of magical perception. Therefore, ordinary people simply cannot do this job.

The National Academy of Magic was able to build a large alchemy workshop because it was located in the capital region, backed by the center of the empire, and had all kinds of talents gathered from all over the country. This allowed them to put hundreds or thousands of alchemists into the factory as assembly line workers, whereas local feudal lords did not have this kind of resources.

Dick vigorously promoted basic education in Lagug, one of his purposes being to build a talent pool for the establishment of a magic industry. However, education takes time, so building a large alchemy workshop was not a high priority in the initial development plan.

But the olive branch extended by the Duchy of Emerald Crown gave Dick an unexpected surprise.

Compared to humans, elves are the chosen ones of magic. Almost every member of the race has the aptitude to become a mage, and their perception of magic is far superior to that of humans.

Magic perception, along with mental strength and magic reserves, constitute the three basic indicators of a mage in this world. Among them, magic perception relies most heavily on innate talent, and the enhancement that can be obtained through training is quite limited.

It's like the sense of smell; no matter how much humans train, they still can't beat dogs!

Magic perception is one of the most important indicators for alchemists, because the higher your perception, the better the accuracy and stability of inscribing enchanted runes, and the lower the mental energy consumption. With the same level of mental energy, someone with higher perception can make more parts.

Therefore, elves are the ideal alchemists, possessing an innate talent for screw-making.

Incidentally, the National Magic Academy had also considered recruiting elves to work on the factory assembly line, but this was rejected outright by the Imperial Central Committee for political reasons. The higher-ups did not want people of other races entering the Empire's core technological fields, fearing not only sabotage but also theft of their knowledge.

In contrast, Dick had fewer concerns. His location was in the northern border region, far from the reach of the emperor and with no one to manage him. Moreover, the alchemy workshop initially focused on civilian technologies, laying the foundation and expanding production capacity, rather than rushing to develop military capabilities.

Moreover, to be honest, some civilian technologies can certainly be used in the military.

Dick estimated that once the first batch of three thousand elves arrived, he could build the alchemy factory, initially focusing on producing small-scale agricultural machinery.

The prototypes and blueprints for agricultural machinery were readily available at the National Academy of Magic. Dick had seen many of them when he was studying at the magic school. They were products developed under the supervision of his mentor, Grandor, and their working efficiency was no worse than that of similar products on Earth. They could be driven using cheap, inferior magic stones.

Unfortunately, most nobles were not interested in this, feeling that such precious magical items were not as worthwhile as serfs.

However, Dick knew that although the stubborn conservatives still dominated, not everyone was so short-sighted. Change had already begun quietly, but it was still in its initial nascent stage and had not yet progressed to the point of intense conflict. This conflict would either trigger a war or begin with a war.

"I wonder if this empire is using a script from the late Ming Dynasty or the French Revolution?"

Inside the study, Dick flipped through the intelligence summary report sent by Tia, muttering to himself.

According to intelligence from the capital, the empire has decided to take military action against the Maple Dew Kingdom in the south. The two sides have a disputed area of ​​several thousand square kilometers on the border. Both sides claim sovereignty over this land with gold mines and have been fighting intermittently over this area for over a century, with no clear victor yet.

The Maple Dew Kingdom is slightly smaller than the Empire in size, but the gap in strength is not significant. Moreover, because the Empire's traditional enemies would often lend a hand during the chaos of war, the conflict often ended in a stalemate, forcing both sides to cease hostilities.

This time, the imperial high command seems to intend to resolve the disputed region once and for all. Preparatory work for the war has been secretly underway since last year, to the point that they have ignored the orc invasion in the north and are focused on taking down their nemesis in the south.

Dick was delighted with this, and he was even thinking about how to gain some benefits for himself from the war that was about to break out in the South.

Chapter 184: The "Prayer" of Resentment

Before they knew it, Laguge had entered summer, and this summer was unexpectedly hot, with the highest temperature at noon reaching around 30 degrees Celsius. With the blazing sun overhead, it was quite unbearable for the locals who were not tolerant of the heat, and many people experienced heatstroke for the first time in their lives.

In response to the various problems caused by the high temperatures, Dick ordered many preventative measures to be taken, and the newly established Winter God Cult also played a significant role at this time.

The Cathedral of the Winter God, located in the northeast of the main city, is made of ice blocks formed from the solidified ice of a divine artifact. It can effectively cool the area around the main city like a "central air conditioner," bringing a pleasant coolness to the breeze.

Therefore, many people gathered in the square at the foot of the church hill to experience the cool air, which was said to have a divine aura, and to get a free popsicle from the pretty nuns.

Distributing popsicles to people who come to cool off was Yuan Qiu's own idea. The Ice and Snow Cathedral is a natural giant refrigerator. The indoor temperature is so magical that it doesn't make any living thing feel cold, but if you put a glass of water in, it will freeze into a block of ice in less than three minutes.