Lord: Stripped of My Inheritance from the Start

Chapter 77: Chapter 76: Ridder’s Intelligence

Ever since sending off Rogner and Krami, Ronin had paid no more mind to Wiggin’s affairs. Not that he could have, even if he wanted to—Mountain Forest Town had no Message Birds to contact the outside world.

From that day on, Mountain Forest Town began its intensive autumn harvest. The main crop was barley, covering a total of over 9,300 acres.

With such a vast area, even with Wilson calling upon everyone in Mountain Forest Town aged fifteen and older, each person was still responsible for an average of six acres. The workload was immense.

Fortunately, there was enough time. With the coordination of the village chiefs and team leaders, the overall progress was managed well, and it seemed unlikely any of the barley would be left to rot in the fields.

The Guards’ training continued. After eighty militiamen were successively assigned to join them, the training grounds west of the castle grew especially lively, with shouts and slogans echoing constantly.

During this time, the various teams formed from the hundred-odd slaves were also put to work.

On the hilly land sectioned off next to the eastern farm, not only were two simple wooden cabins built, but a few slaves had already moved in.

The Ironwood Workshop, the blacksmith shop, and others all slowly began operating smoothly. Even the manure collection team’s work over the past few days had noticeably reduced the amount of waste in town.

During this process, Wilson and a few village chiefs had reported slaves slacking off. Ronin showed no mercy to those who ate his food yet still tried to shirk their duties. A sound beating and withholding a meal or two was enough to make them much more obedient.

They came to understand that the Lord’s mercy was conditional; if they didn’t work hard, they didn’t deserve to enjoy it.

As for Ronin himself, he spent this time busy learning Magic, crafting Scrolls, and sparring with Macken to gain combat experience. Beyond that, he dedicated most of his time to improving their iron-smelting technology.

To mass-produce farming tools, they needed to raise the temperature high enough to smelt liquid iron.

Generally, iron’s melting point is over 1500 degrees Celsius. Melting it under the current conditions would be quite difficult.

But it wasn’t impossible to obtain liquid iron.

In a high-temperature furnace, as iron is reduced, it absorbs carbon. The resulting iron-carbon alloy has a lower melting point, and the more carbon it absorbs, the lower the melting point becomes.

When the absorbed carbon reaches around 4%, iron only needs a temperature of 1200 degrees to melt. With the combined help of bellows, high-grade charcoal, and a blast furnace, this temperature was achievable.

Therefore, Ronin focused on three main tasks during this period: designing piston-style bellows, developing a rudimentary coking process, and building a blast furnace.

Piston-style bellows were easier to operate and required less effort than the small leather-pouch bellows Carlos used. They also supplied a much larger volume of air, significantly increasing the furnace’s internal temperature.

The rudimentary coking process was simply a way to turn wood into high-quality coke, concentrating the wood’s energy.

As for the blast furnace, it was actually a simple furnace made from earth. It wasn’t very tall and was only intended for initial tests.

Ronin had always given the castle servants the impression of being fastidious. They never would have imagined that their master had not only been associating with the manure collection team lately but was even getting his hands dirty with coke and mud!

Ronin paid them no mind. Once he had prepared the coke and connected the bellows to the furnace, he began his experiments.

After a few experiments, the bellows did indeed raise the temperature inside the furnace. By repeatedly adding charcoal to maintain the high temperature, it seemed possible to melt the iron.

But a new problem arose. Ronin didn’t have a container to hold the scorching molten iron. He tried heating the iron chunks directly in a ceramic cup, but found that the cup couldn’t withstand the furnace’s temperature and cracked.

Thus, the problem of smelting iron turned into the problem of creating a fire-resistant ceramic cup.

Fortunately, Mountain Forest Town had no shortage of clay. After trying several different types of clay, Ronin finally managed to fire a ceramic cup that could withstand the high temperatures—in modern terms, a crucible.

When the blacksmiths Carlos and Baal watched Ronin pour the molten iron from the ceramic cup into a pre-made mold, quickly forming a small dagger, they stared in utter disbelief.

’Carlos never imagined that what the Lord had said that day—”a way for ordinary people to master the temperatures needed to melt iron”—wasn’t a joke. He was actually doing it!’

However, Ronin knew that a dagger made by casting like this was too brittle for combat. ’The casting method is, at best, suitable for making farming tools by taking advantage of pig iron’s hardness and wear resistance. And even then, it would be best if it underwent a high-temperature decarburization process.’

Of course, this crucible method had significant drawbacks. ’If I could just replicate the entire blast furnace iron-smelting process, that would be ideal.’

But that would require him to spend much more time on research.

Although this method was currently too crude, it was still a core secret. Ronin had allowed Carlos and Baal to observe, but he also required them to keep this secret for him.

In an era still reliant on rudimentary iron smelting, things like the bellows, and later the blast furnace, were all core technologies.

So Ronin had Carlos and Baal sign a secrecy pact. If they leaked the secret, they would pay with their lives.

In the blink of an eye, it was September 15th. Ridder, who had been gone for nearly ten days, finally returned to Mountain Forest Town.

When he left, he had been a handsome young man. Upon his return, Ridder looked like a haggard, middle-aged man.

Ronin had him return to his room to bathe first, then summoned Macken and the others to the fortress’s great hall for a meeting.

“The Forest Land to the north and east of town is vast. At first, I was just searching aimlessly. It wasn’t until I was about ten li north of town that I discovered signs of human activity.”

Inside Mountain Forest Castle’s fortress, Ridder calmly recounted what he had seen and heard.

After finding traces of human activity, he searched for another day or two and finally discovered a stockaded village in a bamboo forest due north.

The dense bamboo forest concealed Ridder’s figure, and the rustling of the leaves masked his footsteps.

Through careful observation, Ridder found that the stockade had just over a hundred dwellings, so it wasn’t very large. There were cultivated fields to the north of the settlement, but it was unclear if the crops they grew were enough to be self-sufficient.

After marking the location of this stockade, Ridder followed a small path to its northeast and happened upon three Hunters while crossing a mountain.

Without hesitation, Ridder attacked the moment he saw them. He killed two instantly, leaving one alive, and successfully extracted information about all the Wilderness Tribes in the Forest Land from this Hunter.

According to the Hunter, this Forest Land once had as many as eight tribes, but after years of natural decline and annexation, only four remained: the Black-collar Tribe, the Grey Soil Tribe, the Cyan Bamboo Tribe, and the Purple Fruit Tribe.

Among them, the Black-collar Tribe had grown very rapidly in recent years, launching numerous attacks on the other three tribes and absorbing many of their people.

To prevent being swallowed by the Black-collar Tribe, the three remaining Wilderness Tribes formed a Tripartite Alliance, creating a standoff.

Hearing this, Ronin was momentarily stunned.

’No wonder the Wilderness Tribes haven’t been invading Mountain Forest Town. They’re busy with their own civil war.’

“These three Hunters were from the Purple Fruit Tribe. According to them, their tribe has the smallest population, with fewer than three hundred people left.”

“In their Tripartite Alliance, the Grey Soil Tribe is the strongest, but their population is only just over four hundred. As for Transcendents, they have very few, and the strongest among them is merely an Advanced Level Knight.”

After speaking, Ridder picked up a nearby cup and took a drink of water. “After I disposed of their bodies, I followed the route they described for two days. I have now confirmed the locations of these three tribes.”

“The Black-collar Tribe they mentioned is located on a relatively flat plain. They have the most dwellings and the most widespread fields of all the tribes, and they’re also in the middle of their autumn harvest right now.”

When Ridder finished presenting his intelligence, everyone sitting at the long table in the fortress showed expressions of admiration.

Ronin was no exception. He admired Ridder’s courage, decisiveness, patience, and resilience.

Ronin couldn’t help but praise him loudly, “Ridder, you are the bravest man I have ever met! This intelligence will be an immense help to our future operations. You deserve a round of applause!”

At his prompting, the others in the hall also began to applaud, expressing their admiration for Ridder’s spirit and achievements.

Ridder nodded to the crowd with a friendly smile. After the applause died down, he looked at Ronin. “Lord, the Wilderness Tribes are not that strong. I think it’s time we consider making a move against them!”