Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 418: The Journey North

After inspecting the saline-alkali mines and sugar tree forests in the eastern basin, Harvey led everyone back to Spark City by airship. It was almost midnight when they arrived at the castle.

After a simple dinner, he went into the study and couldn't wait to get a pen and paper and began to think about the resource development plan for the eastern basin.

At present, Xinghuo City's external expansion plan will not be launched until the end of summer. In addition to meeting the military factory's step-by-step strategic material reserve production, the energy department can fully allocate surplus energy supply to the Dongtuo base.

The first thing to be satisfied is the energy supply of magic-powered machines and alchemy beasts. Whether it is mining, transportation, pumping and irrigation, magic-powered machines are always much more efficient than pure manpower. After the spring farming task of the Dongtuo base is completed, the first thing to do is to build a large-scale salt and sugar factory on the original site to get these two people's livelihood industry projects up and running first.

In addition, in a few days, the exploration team composed of Duncan and others will set off. In order to ensure that everything is safe and reduce the risk factor of the exploration team's long journey, Harvey has put in a lot of effort and considered almost every aspect for them.

……

"If it weren't for the airship's limited load, I'd actually rather you take my puppet body with you so I can personally fly with you to the depths of the wasteland and see what the legendary [Center of the Continent] is like..."

While watching Chris and others making final preparations for the exploration team's departure, Harvey sighed to Duncan.

Asdalen and the others finally managed to dispel his adventurous urges and quickly changed the subject, saying, "Sir, while the Soul Puppet only takes up the weight of one person, the mobile box required to amplify the spiritual power connection is quite heavy. Sir Duncan and his team's first stop is to search for the Land of Eternal Night, where I was born. Compared to you... I'd rather return to my homeland."

Even Harvey couldn't go, so Asdalen had even less chance - after all, his alchemical body made of pure metal weighed three or four hundred pounds. With this carrying space, it would be better to equip the exploration team with more fuel cylinders and liquid magic power, or even more magic weapons and food supplies.

After repeated tests on the fuel consumption of the airship's airbags, and relying on Asdalen's long-lost memories, the Alchemy Laboratory, which was fully responsible for the logistics of this exploration operation, conducted rigorous calculations and finally estimated the approximate distance of the first stage of the journey - maintaining a constant speed with the lowest energy consumption, the airship would need to travel at a speed of about 300 miles per day, flying day and descending night, taking nearly a month to cross thousands of miles to reach the Kingdom of Eternal Night deep in the ice field.

Once they reach the depths of the ice field, regardless of whether they find the remains of the ancient wizard kingdom that has long disappeared in the long river of history, they must find a safe area to establish an exploration outpost before the fuel runs out, and use the supplies they carry with them to build a temporary magic network teleportation array to ensure that subsequent fuel and supplies far away in Spark City can be delivered to them continuously through instant transmission.

This is also what Harvey has always been worried about - such a long transmission distance is comparable to the distance that the members of the Elf Forum in the Eastern Golden Forest in the Spellcaster Forum had to travel to send a piece of trading materials to the Evil Moon Mountains west of the southern border.

This kind of ultra-long-distance magic network transmission had already been personally verified by Harvey and many forum members... Due to the abnormal fluctuations in the magic network's energy, the "express delivery loss rate" is really high. It is better to transfer once in the central southern border to be safe and secure.

However, there was no way to set up any transit station for the exploration team in the wasteland, and the teleportation array materials they carried were only enough to build a temporary array once. If any omissions or mistakes occurred in the middle, if they wanted to return to Spark City smoothly and safely... they would have to walk across the vast wasteland and risk crossing the evil orc tribe.

"It's a pity that our alchemy school's research on space magic is still too superficial." Chris was also worried, "If we can make a magic storage ring with a larger storage capacity... why bother to be here and calculate the airship's load and material ratio." But space magic has always been an unpopular research direction that only alchemists can get involved in. No matter whether it is a necromancer like Harvey who focuses on soul and flesh, or an elemental mage who is good at manipulating the four basic elements, or an arcane mage who focuses on the use of pure magic power, they rarely come into contact with this "remote field" involving the expression of magic runes and the depiction of space rules.

Most wealthy high-level spellcasters like the Eye of Illusion would spend a large sum of money to customize a storage ring from an alchemist, but its function was only to hide and safely store rare spellcasting materials and magic tools. Even if a chief alchemist like Mr. "Man in the Mirror" was personally in charge of the creation, the top-level magic ring could only create a storage space equivalent to a briefcase.

In Chris's words, "It can only hold fifty cans of food... not even enough for their food needs for a month."

However, even though it was so useless, Harvey still spent a lot of money and used his connections to buy several storage rings from the Alchemy Exploration Society and the Federation, and distributed them to the other members of the exploration team who did not have storage rings - Blake, White and Michelle, except Duncan, Eye of Illusion and Astrologer.

The three necromancers, who had always lived in harsh conditions and scarce resources, naturally regarded it as a treasure and regarded it as an early reward from Harvey for their active participation in this adventure.

Benoit, who also lost the opportunity to explore with his teacher and classmates, took the alchemy apprentice to check and adjust the airship inside and out, striving to ensure that this new flying vehicle would not have any problems during the long journey.

"Spare air bags, fuel tanks, camouflage coatings, magical weapons..." He kept muttering to himself as he flipped through the list of supplies, "Think again... think again if there's anything I've missed."

Even the alchemist apprentice couldn't help but whisper in consolation, "Master, we've double-checked the equipment and supplies list you and Mr. Chris drew up. Even the canned food we provide as rations has been tailored to your daily tastes...there's absolutely no room for error."

Harvey chuckled, patted the alchemist's shoulder, and teased, "Two Magic Brain Instruments! These are crucial supplies you absolutely must bring. The exploration team must send a communication signal to Spark City every day within the agreed timeframe, reporting the day's exploration progress and intelligence gains. This also serves to indicate your current safety."

Spark City will also arrange special personnel to stand guard in front of the one-way communication magic brain instrument day and night. Once an emergency distress signal is received, the second airship will immediately take off and carry out rescue operations all the way north according to the specific coordinates returned by the instrument.

After all, those on board this airship are all "high-tech" magical talents in Harvey's eyes. Whether it is their spirit of exploration or their own abilities, they will never be allowed to be easily abandoned.

Even if the exploration team is temporarily trapped deep in the wilderness due to some accident and cannot return, or the magic network teleportation array is unable to transmit fuel and supplies due to the long distance, Harvey has a way to use ground troops to advance quickly and use manpower and alchemical vehicles to bring them back home.

The usually taciturn astrologer smiled and said, "Don't worry too much, my lord. Leave the mapping and surveying of the star regions along the way to me! When we return safely, I will present you with a complete exploration map."

(End of this chapter)