Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 565 Talent Introduction
"Even if you were just trying to intimidate me... you shouldn't have shot yourself in front of so many people on the street, right?"

Harvey took off the protective mask covering his head, turned around and said helplessly.

The Legendary Chief shrugged and walked over to a long metal table against the wall of the laboratory. He admired the exquisite magical artifacts displayed on the tabletops and said something else. "What do you mean by showing off? It's just a harmless joke... Mr. Agent, your officers told me that Spark City's magical weapons have been updated and upgraded several times, but why is the Annihilation Spear they sold us still the original, old model?"

Harvey was stunned for a moment, then spread his hands. "That's not my fault. The Exploration Society was responsible for assembling the finished product, and the weapon's rune core forging technology was handed over to them without reservation... The ammunition supply has never been interrupted. If you have any complaints, you should seek justice from Mr. Mirror Man and his men."

"You know full well their alchemy technology can't even compare to the level of your lab!" Dawson snorted. "And yet you shared your soul refining technology with them through the forum. Now the Quinn brothers are completely focused on this. How can they have the energy to improve weapons for the Federation?"

The old man grew angrier and angrier as he thought about it, but he couldn't lash out at Harvey, so he could only angrily change the subject, "What's the situation with the aliens now? You've fought them many times already?"

Harvey nodded, activated all the magic stone images recorded from several battles, and showed them to Dawson one by one.

As the video recording played rapidly, the chief's expression gradually changed from calm to solemn, and finally he frowned and fell into deep thought.

"So...they might possess the ability to [evolve and imitate]?" Dawson still found it hard to believe. "Why do you think they must have evolved? Perhaps they're deliberately hiding their strength and plotting something in secret."

"I wish that were the case..." Harvey shook his head helplessly. "But the facts have proven that, from the very first encounters my exploration team had with them to the frequent small-scale skirmishes that have broken out recently, the enemy always quickly reveals new combat units and countermeasures after suffering setbacks."

This cannot be explained by hiding one's strength.

Harvey then opened the massive specimen jar leaning against the wall, revealing the crudely stitched-together corpse of a Winged Demon Lizardman. "Look... this is a brand new combat individual from their recent battle. It can manipulate black water, emit red light, and grow flesh-like wings. It's a perfect combat creature."

Dawson subconsciously rubbed his red nose, leaned in to observe for a moment, and exclaimed in amazement: "A sutured body of a black lizardman and a red lizardman? I've never seen such a thing in their fragmented thoughts. This is definitely not a creation born in the birthplace of their tribe!"

Those demon lizardmen born from the giant cocoons in the deep-sea craters all have slender limbs with twisted joints, and are a unified individual like humanoid spiders. None of them has wings growing on their backs since birth.

"They underwent fusion transformation in the floating island fortress!" Harvey asserted with narrowed eyes.

As someone who grew up immersed in modern technological warfare, the importance of air superiority is undeniable. Whether it's pre-battle reconnaissance or mobile reinforcements... the side with air superiority always holds the initiative. This is the source of Harvey's confidence in winning this clan war. With a fully-organized fleet of airships, coupled with the firepower of ground forces, he is fully confident that he can establish defensive positions along the enemy's main invasion route and confront the demon lizardmen head-on.

But the premise of all this is that the air superiority must always be in our own hands... The monopoly must not be broken by these winged demon lizardmen who appeared out of nowhere!
"So... you want to recruit high-level battle mages with flying abilities from the Federation?" Dawson immediately looked troubled at this thought. "I'm afraid that won't be easy. Gallagher won't agree..."

In the entire Southern Territory Spellcasters Federation, there are only a few hundred high-level members with combat talents. Half of them serve in the Demonic Battlefield of the Evil Moon Mountains all year round, and the rest are mostly stationed at the Federation headquarters in Alaye. No one can withdraw personnel at will, otherwise the security and defense gaps will easily attract desperate raids from the Holy See's Divine Punishment Faction, or harassment from other underground spellcasting organizations that oppose the Federation.

Blackrock City cannot be short of people at any time...Now with Harvey's advance warning, Gallagher has sent out multiple exploration teams in succession and has discovered the abnormal deployment of demon troops. An enemy that caught them off guard and was difficult to resist must have appeared in the north, which is why they chose to actively shrink their defense line and return to support the tribe's base camp north of the Divine Spine Mountains.

Seeing that Chief Dawson had clearly misunderstood, Harvey quickly explained, "No, I'm not planning on borrowing high-level battle mages from the Federation. In fact... these individually powerful spellcasters don't really fit in with our overall strategic deployment."

The situation of the Federation in Blackrock City is a ready-made example - the high-level spellcasters who are at the top of the status quo, most of the time, will not act as strictly according to combat orders as the mid- and low-level mages. Their different backgrounds and factional forces make it difficult for them to truly unite and face the outside world in a unified manner regardless of gains and losses.

Harvey has no interest in these guys who are good at fighting alone.

"I'm looking to recruit mid- to low-level mages, regardless of their background as a combat or research spellcaster. The remuneration will be generous... I don't think any of them would refuse high-quality magic stones and rare spellcasting materials as rewards, right?"

As soon as these words came out, Chief Dawson was completely stunned.

"Low- to mid-level mages? Research-based spellcasters? They haven't even mastered the art of flight. How are you going to deal with those Winged Ones?"

"We have airships that can replace individual flight spells. What we lack now is an air combat mage who can control the airship and also take charge of aerial combat..."

Harvey had actually been secretly preparing for the formation of the Northern Territory's "Magical Air Force" a long time ago... The Spark City Spellcaster Academy and the Academy of Magical Sciences had already sent mid- and low-level mages to participate in several joint exercises. However, both departments were newly established mage institutions in the North, and the number of people was far from the scale Harvey had envisioned.
Just for the recent rescue operation of the Ice Sea Sentinel soldiers, more than one hundred airships and less than three hundred air combat mages were almost all they could dispatch.

(End of this chapter)