Badge in Azure

“Mm, you should return.” Saleen told Gurney all his demands and rushed the scrawny pirate out.

Saleen pondered in silence before the alchemy work table then he started drawing alchemy blueprints. There were no immigrants in the city yet and he had less than ten blacksmiths on hand. Luckily, the expeditionary force from the eastern sea presented him quite a number of weapons. He would need to wait until Lex returned to be able to provide his army any decent armor.

Nailisi salvaged the sunken ships and sent all the equipment to the temple. All the mages got very busy. These armors and weapons were soaked in sea water so it they would corrode and rust really soon if they were not taken care of quickly.

The armor from the eastern sea was similar to those from Cloudflow, they were both leaf armor that required leather ropes to hold them in shape. The cost to repair would be reduced by a lot and they would not require professionals to maintain them. The soldiers could disassemble and clean the armors up themselves.

The armors of the generals from the eastern sea were worse, most of the military officers’ armors were garish and there was a lot of unnecessary decoration. From the material, the armor was not any better than a soldier’s. He reckoned that, although there were many nations in the eastern sea, none had mineral resources. Comparatively there were more than a hundred huge iron mines on the Myers Mainland.

Among armors that Nailisi brought back, there were quite a number of them that were made of bronze. The eastern sea probably produced bronze. Bronze was way more expensive than steel, but as an armor, it was not as solid as steel. Bronze was way heavier which was a burden for the soldiers.

More armor parts were made of non-metal, many of them were made of parts of underwater shellfish. Saleen cut them with a normal steel knife and he could split it directly and cut open the leather armor behind.

The defence power of the armor was extremely low! Saleen was upset, he did not expect there to be so much equipment that he had gotten. There were only a few hundred chosen ones that he could use. Most of the armor for the militia was decent, but if it was for the crack troops, it would be a joke.

Saleen gathered all the mages and started making the armor that he designed. The harvest was not useless, at least the armor pattern was better than those Saleen had designed. They were easier to maintain.

He made the shell of the red phosphorous prawn into powder and mixed it with magic medicine. He added rubber materials and used a magic array to make them into different parts of the armor. These magic beast shells were even tougher after refining. Saleen tried to split it again using the steel knife. He used the strength of a high level swordsmen. He did not manage to split the armor.

Among the spoils of war, the inner leather armor was in decent quality. Accompanied with the outer layer that Saleen refined, the defence power was one-hundred times better all of a sudden. Of course, the armor had no defence power against heavy weapons. If it was slashed with a battle axe, the armor leaves that were tied together with leather rope would not have any cushioning effect. The soldiers would definitely be severely injured.

It would be impossible for Saleen to make high level magic armor for all the soldiers. The defence power of the most basic creature armor was close to pure steel armor and it could easily be supported by magic. It could be considered as a terrific invention.

That was the initial intention behind why Saleen made such armor. Lex had sufficient low level mages, but when mages cast magic on the soldiers, they were afraid that the soldiers were wearing metal armor. Most of the metal did not possess element affinity to support soldiers with magic, the expense of a mage’s magic chords were a huge test.

It was not a rule that a metal armor could not receive magic. The problem was, if a soldier wore a full set of steel armor and Saleen cast an ice plate shield on the soldier, it would freeze the steel armor and the soldier would not be able to move an inch.

The armor that Saleen designed was different. The shell of magic beasts possessed element affinity, even a low level mage could easily support the soldier with magic in such armor. Now that Saleen retrieved the magic chariots, mages casting magic in the chariot would save them a lot of magic chords.

The armor that Saleen designed required a large number of magic beast shells. If it was someone else, even if they had such an idea, it would be difficult to realize it. Saleen hunted a large number of grade-4 magic beasts. The red phosphorous prawn at the Oceanic Ice Block came in handy. Normally, magic armor would be metal armor carved with magic patterns and filled with expensive magic material that possesses element affinity. The cost of it would be expensive. Saleen’s cost of making the armor was not low either, but the repair would be easy.

After making a set, Saleen left the matter of making armor to the mages and he started designing the weapon.

With the spoils as reference, Saleen’s mind was opened up. He first designed the most important main weapon for the Barbarians, the battle axes. Battle axes were trendy in other countries and they were one of the strong men’s favorite weapons. There were sharp spikes at the front and it had a longer blade, normally it would be heavier than sixty pounds.

Such heavy weapon did a lot of damage, unless the enemy was wearing a fully enclosed heavy armor from the ancient times to disperse the attack power. Once hit, even if the armor did not crack, the human bones and nerves would break apart. If a heavy cavalryman was holding a battle axe, there was almost no armor that could not be broken open by it. The long spikes at the front would be able to pierce through the thickest part of that armor.

Considering the fact that the Barbarians did not like long weapons, Saleen made the battle axes shorter while lengthening the blade to maintain the weight. He designed and made the other side of the blade into a mini crescent moon shape. The battle axes looked like abnormal double edged axes, but its ability to breakthrough armor was much stronger than a double edged axe.

Saleen had his intentions with such weapon design. On the battlefield, the power of normal soldiers was not small and the power of the Barbarian was strong. It would not be a problem for them to launch a siege at a high level swordsmaster. The sword aura of a swordsmaster could not withstand such heavy weapons. War was not any private fight, there would be attacks from every direction. The skill of a swordsmaster would grow weaker consequently. With attack by more than three Barbarians, the ending of a swordsmaster would be tragic.

When Saleen was a low level mage, he had calculated that it only required a little over twenty soldiers to kill him in a suitable situation. By that, he meant an environment where a mage could not make use of the landforms. A wide expanse of flat land and a bunch of soldiers surging forward like a swarm of bees, any low level mage would not be able to withstand that.

If Saleen did not have the mysterious calabash and he could not frequently use the magic of current cutter, he would not be able to fight against a siege of twenty high level swordsmasters. Most importantly, Saleen could fly. No matter how strong a mage was, if one could not fly, they must not fight against too many enemies at a time.

Saleen could fly on his own, but the mages under him could not. Saleen would not allow his mages to fight against the enemy directly, but instead support his soldiers with magic in order to heighten their fighting power. That was the function of a mage in a war.

Even then, Saleen was not sure about the fighting power of each country’s army on the mainland. When he saw a swordsmen’s camp in Lex’s hands, he thought it was how an army was suppose to look. Later on, when he saw the Qin Empire’s army in west town at Holy Rock city, he had an even stronger impression. In actual fact, how often did an army have soldiers that had the capability of swordsmen?

Saleen tried the intensity of the armor himself. His body had achieved the standard of a high level swordsman and he was holding a sharp stainless steel blade. He cut perpendicular to the armor and it was on top of a rock platform. Unless it was an equipment that was cast with magic, even an iron armor would be cut open with that one slash.

Due to the misunderstanding, Saleen built a scary army by accident. It was not like any army had never been seen in mainland history. Every soldier had a highly sophisticated weapon. That would at least be a few thousand years back that there had been such a thing. Before the fourth dynasty collapse, royal swordsmen camp would be at such standard deployment that every soldier was wearing low level magic armor.

Mages played a decisive role in the war, but to win against the enemy, soldiers were indispensable. Saleen had to arm every soldiers to the teeth. In his army, even an auxiliary soldier must be able to withstand a strong attack, that was his thought. It might be unrealistic, but Saleen was doing it one by one.

For the past few months, through some tactic, Saleen had taken over the army from the two nobles that came to seek refuge. These private soldiers’ fighting power was decent. Saleen could not fit them into his own army as of then, but he let them go through private trainings separately. Comparatively, pirates wanted to follow Saleen wholeheartedly and that made Saleen changed his mind about pirates.

Who did not want to be a cut above the rest? The pirates were not stupid, they found a good opportunity there with Saleen so they were practicing with an all out effort. Saleen was not clear, but the pirates were well aware that no one would invest as much as Saleen had invested on them. Now, the pirates had two alchemy weapon each and everyday they could consume meat for their daily meal. Even fish and prawn were carefully taken care of with expensive seasoning. These seasoning were normally used by nobles. Lex left quite a bit for Saleen, but did not know how to appreciate them so he gave them to the pirates.

The four magic beast swordsmen had achieved the standard of a beginner grand swordsmaster level and their capability was good. They had been teaching the pirates fighting skills. Now that the pirates were holding a jambiya each, the inner arc was a sharp sawtooth. Such weapons could only maintain their sharpness via alchemy skill, otherwise, they would be ruined after a few uses.

The most important task that Saleen did was to provide the the soldiers sharp arrows.

All the soldiers had to practice archery. Other armies did not need to, but he wanted to set up an independent archery team. It was different with Saleen. At the very beginning, Saleen formed an army for defence purposes and crossbows became very important. To defend the city wall, one would shoot the crossbows downwards with their typographical advantage. Even when Saleen did not have enough people, he would be able to defend the city.

At the same time, Saleen had another advantage. That was that all Caucasus people and Barbarians were specialized in archery or talented in archery. Now that Saleen retrieved a large amount of crossbows from the sunken ships, he could provide a crossbow casket for every soldier.

Dozens of mages under Saleen made more than twenty sets of low level magic armor everyday. These amors could not store much magic, but they could easily support magic cast on it. A month’s time passed by in the blink of the eye. It was already March but the weather did not grow any warmer. Saleen had to send people to usher Lex.

The troops that were taken over from the two nobles were taking over the patrolling task temporarily. They were in charge of monitoring outside of the city. Five hundred people were gathered at the square before the temple waiting for Saleen’s order.