What's wrong with building a steel torrent in a dungeon?

Spectators from other forces were either expecting or waiting with suspicion for this force that could head-on withstand an enemy force several times its size, turn the tide, and save the entire continent of Calradia.

Soon, the army of the Vienna Alliance finally appeared in everyone's sight.

However, when they saw this army for the first time, everyone was disappointed.

This was not at all the brave and powerful army they had imagined.

The elves and dwarves curled their lips in disdain.

From a distance, the army's clothes were covered in stains and blood, just like the defeated army that had just come down from the battlefield. The appearance of these soldiers was even more unbearable, some of them were missing arms, some were supported by crutches, and some had lost an eye.

This is not a victorious army, this is clearly a defeated army!

For a moment, everyone turned their eyes in Fran's direction.

They had seen the warriors of Orila City before. They had strict military discipline, neat steps, and exquisite weapons and clothes! They were completely different from the troops before them.

What does Fran want to do?

Just because you know that Danbi's appearance cannot compete with the elves and dwarves, you just give up and mess it up?

But no matter what, the military parade symbolizes the image of the country! Even if they can't beat the elves and dwarves, at least they can't be worse than forces like the Mad Sand Empire and the Northerners.

The audience kept thinking about Fran's intention, and at this time, Vienna's troops finally arrived at the audience seats.

The first square raised the red flag high in its hands, and the leading soldier shouted

"In the battle of Frost Cloud Valley, the 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 2nd Legion of Orila City, 400 men and 12 men defeated 1,500 Demon Death Knights! 247 men died. Now 165 men are left!"

Hearing this shout, all the officers in the audience were moved.

They all knew about the Battle of Hanyun Valley. The demon cavalry attempted to enter the eastern suburbs of Vienna through Hanyun Valley to burn, kill and loot. In an emergency, the Fourth Cavalry Regiment of Orila City quickly rushed to Hanyun Valley, and despite being outnumbered, they repelled the Death Knights many times and saved a large number of innocent civilians in the rear.

After hearing the news, the civilians brought food and drink and spontaneously moved supplies and ammunition to Hanyun Valley. As a result, the Fourth Cavalry Regiment repelled the attacks of the demon troops many times and did not lose the position until the end of the war.

Thinking that the soldiers before them were the troops guarding Hanyun Valley, the officers in the audience all looked at them with respect.

However, at this moment, the sound of the phalanx behind came.

"The Fifth Artillery Regiment of the First Legion of Orila City, fighting on the south bank of the Soul-Guiding River, defending Brusque Village, and defending Orila Gele. Seven hundred and fifty-two people were supposed to be there. Five hundred and fifty-four are left!"

"The Second Legion of the Orila City Infantry Regiment behind enemy lines attacked New Gundolin, conquered Minsk, and captured Arthas alive. There were 942 people who were supposed to arrive, and now there are 713 people left!"

......

...

Every time a phalanx came to the audience seats, the leading warrior would loudly shout out the battles they had experienced, the number of casualties, and the number of remaining soldiers.

Every unit here was a heroic unit. They had almost all experienced defeating a larger force with a smaller one, and even completed their mission despite a desperate numerical difference. Of course, they also paid a terrible price. When hearing about the casualty ratio of some units, everyone present was surprised.

Those who could stand in the audience were basically dignitaries from various forces, including active military officers. They knew very well that if it were their troops, they would not be able to withstand such a horrific casualty ratio and would have collapsed on the battlefield long ago. However, these troops in front of them not only did not collapse, but actually completed the combat mission.

At this time, Huang Shang in the audience stood up and shouted: "All members of the Vienna Alliance salute the heroes!!"

As soon as he finished speaking, all the officers belonging to the Vienna Alliance stood up and saluted the soldiers below.

The soldiers below held their heads high. The stains on their clothes and the defects on their bodies were not signs of embarrassment, but glory! The glory of military exploits.

Every wound foreshadows the courage they burst out on the battlefield! Every stain of blood is a hymn to their courage.

Such filth made the clean and slicked-back elf guard pale in comparison. Compared with the city of Aurora, they were not warriors at all, but just etiquette masters playing house.

As if inspired by this courage, the audience in the auditorium stood up spontaneously one by one and cast admiring glances towards him.

The worship and praise of heroes are the same for every race. Gradually, even the officers of the elves and dwarves stood up and expressed their most sincere praises to the troops below in a way unique to their own race.

Soon, the troops of the Vienna Alliance arrived at the rear of the team.

Unlike other troops, this one only had one person, holding the flag alone, with nothing behind him.

However, he was not intimidated by being alone, and he still shouted as he walked across the audience.

"Olilagler City Defense Force, 16th City Defense Battalion. There should be 500 people, but only one is left!"

The remaining soldier's voice was still sonorous and powerful, as if there was a full 500-man brigade behind him, marching with him. As he walked, tears could not be controlled and flowed from the corners of his eyes. But even so, his steps were still firm.

At this moment, everyone in the audience stood up.

No one would compare the troops of the elves and dwarves with the Viennese army at that time.

No matter how good the equipment or how sophisticated the weapons are, everything pales in comparison to the real military achievements gained from mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

There was only one protagonist in today's military parade, and all other troops became supporting roles.

The lone warrior slowly left everyone's sight, but no one present sat down. They watched him leave, and then fell into silence.

They only knew that the League of Vienna turned the tide and defeated Arthas, but they didn't know the details.

However, when the courage and persistence involved are unfolded in this way, everyone realizes how many separations of life and death, and how many worlds of yin and yang, are involved.

Chapter 215 New Battlefield

The military parade is over.

However, the slight shock that the Alliance of Vienna brought to various forces continued into the subsequent negotiations.

Afterwards, Fran proposed to emulate the Port of Biesund and establish a free trade zone near Gondolin, with all its economic preferential policies aligned with those of the Port of Biesund.

To this end, Fran is willing to set aside Gondolin and the surrounding ports as free trade zone land, free for everyone to use.

This means that Gondolin and the surrounding ports will no longer be fortified, nor will there be any checkpoints or customs barriers. This sincerity can be said to be enormous.

The various forces in northern Calradia naturally support such a free trade zone! Now Fran's products are in short supply, not only of high quality, but also of low price. A piece of woolen clothing costs only one-third of the original price.

Whether it is the North, the Lombardy or the Mad Sand Empire, they do not have a well-developed textile industry in their countries, and they do not care about this kind of products destroying their handicraft industry.

But in comparison, the elves and dwarves were not so happy.

Because these two countries not only have strong military power, they are also major textile producers.

The textile industry of the elves mainly uses plant fibers, and relies on the magic produced by the Tree of Life to spin and weave. It can produce both highly artistic fabrics and clothes for civilians. Before Fran, the fabrics of the elves could be said to be items of the Calradia continent, and the elves made a lot of money from it.

The dwarves' route is similar to that of the elves, except that they use mechanical cores to drive looms and mass-produce cloth. There are many plantations on the Volsas continent, and the South Seas provide labor, raw materials and manpower, which gives them a better advantage than the elves in the development of the textile industry.

If the mechanical cores were not too expensive, the dwarves would not dare to invest all of them in the textile industry, otherwise there would be no Fran in the future.

The struggle between the two forces first started in the textile industry, and then expanded to all walks of life, and even launched proxy wars against each other, so that people forgot their original purpose.

And although both elves and dwarves can produce textiles in large quantities, they ultimately rely on the involvement of divine magic.

Divine magic is a rare skill! This means that to expand production, you have to invest more divine magicians (elves) or more steam cores (dwarves). However, both divine magicians and steam cores are luxury goods.

With the involvement of these things, it becomes very difficult to expand production again, and the price has not come down. So even though the dwarves and elves have a high output of cloth, they can never completely occupy the world. For the lower-class civilians in various countries, they still have to weave their own cloth and wear it themselves.

To use a fashionable phrase, the cloth of elves and dwarves cannot reach the lower-end market.

But the broad masses of people are the foundation of this world.

But Fran's textiles are another matter.

The price is low and the quality is high. As long as there are enough raw materials and machines, she can even expand the reproduction endlessly without being restricted by any factors. This makes the textiles produced in Orila City like a flood and a beast, constantly conquering cities.

If it weren't for the impact of the war, Fran's textiles would have completely occupied the mainland market and even pried open the door to these two traditional forces.

Now that the war on the continent of Calradia has come to a temporary end, the war over textiles will naturally reignite.

However, for the countries in Calradia, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. For example, the Winter people have a huge demand for textiles. In the past, they had to go to the port of Biesund to import them. Now that the market is at their doorstep, they naturally support it with all their heart.

In this situation, even if the elves and dwarves objected, it was useless, and they had no choice but to acquiesce to Fran's occupation of the Calradia continent's market, and secretly prepared to compete with Fran.

However, they obviously did not know how Fran's textile factory operated. Those nobles who did not understand production always believed that Orila's textile industry was built by manpower, so the elves and dwarves also put in their best efforts and wanted to invest more divine arts to compete with Fran.

Are you kidding me? How can our noble magic be compared with the hands of you common people? We don't need a price war to defeat you!

A textile war once again spread over the continent of Calradia.

However, what they didn't know was that in addition to textiles, the goods sold by Fulan in the free trade zone also included various metal industrial products and leather products. Although the market for these things was not as large as that of textiles, they were more abundant, cheaper, and covered all aspects of labor production.

Hoe, oil lamp, crowbar, buttons, beautiful girl, black silk stockings, home dance...

Of course, the technology to produce these products is not something that has suddenly emerged recently.

In order to arm Olilagler in the shortest possible time, the academy spared no expense in designing and implementing a large number of machines to produce a variety of parts. After the war, researchers were surprised to find that these machines could also be used to produce civilian products.

Although only a portion of these machines can be put into production, it is enough for today's world where goods are scarce.

With these machines and designs as the foundation, various practices and applied technologies have rapidly emerged in the following period, and various inventions and projects have emerged one after another.

In terms of military, Fran does not dare to say that it can compete with the two empires, but in terms of economic production, Fran can definitely compete with the two empires of elves and dwarves.

This is true.

In the first two months of the opening of the Free Trade Zone, Gondolin attracted a large number of chambers of commerce to settle in. The envoys of these chambers of commerce were also shocked by the dazzling array of goods provided by Fran, and then began a shopping spree like a carnival.

Each chamber of commerce returned to its own country loaded with a variety of goods, and even signed a large number of orders, waiting for the next pick-up.

Such a hot trend is naturally not only in the Fruman Free Trade Zone, but also in the Port of Biesund.

The booming production naturally corresponds to the booming purchase of raw materials, and the port of Biesund is the largest raw material trading market in the continent of Calradia. Every day there are countless ports queuing outside to load goods. Fran has to expand the port many times, and even has to rent a new port from Margaret.

A large number of people who had lost their land and means of production and could no longer make a living in their own countries moved their families to the inner city of Vienna, hoping to find a job under Fran! The city of Orila and Vienna became population siphons for the entire Holy Roll Empire and even the entire Calradia continent.

As a result, the housing prices in Vienna soared, almost causing another speculation storm. The chambers of commerce smelled the business opportunity and began to build large-scale projects. Fran took the opportunity to sell them cement, steel bars and other building materials at high prices, making a lot of money.

The city of Orila seems to have entered a fast lane of development again.

However, not all forces are happy to see the rapid development of Orila City.

On this day, when Fran was in Orila City planning how to practice the charm technique with her sister, Catherine came over in a hurry.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"There's a dispatch from Bieson Harbor," Catherine said, handing an envelope marked "urgent" to Fran.

Fran opened the letter and began to read.

There isn’t a lot in it, but fewer words mean bigger things.

"What happened?" Catherine asked curiously.

"Three things. First, our merchant ship encountered a surprise inspection by the Dwarf Empire. They accused us of smuggling mechanical cores and forcibly detained us for inspection. Second, the Elf Empire openly burned our textiles in its own port and banned any goods produced in Orila City from entering the city."

"How can this be!" Catherine's eyes widened when she heard this, and then she said, "The elves have been calling for the abolition of tariffs to promote common prosperity and so on! And the dwarves have been promoting freedom of navigation. How can they do this!?"

"Compared to these two things, the third thing is the most deadly."

"What is it?"

"The Northern Alliance and the Chinese Alliance have introduced their own trade rules. In other words, they are trying to exclude us from the trade system. They don't even allow our ships to enter their waters." Fran put down the letter in her hand solemnly.

"How could this be?" Catherine asked in disbelief.

"When the rules are in their favor, they will make you obey the rules. When the rules are not in their favor, they will modify the rules. These are the two beacons of world civilization!"

"This is too overbearing!" Catherine said, "Then what should we do?"

"We can negotiate if we can, but if we can't, we can only use artillery to knock down their door!" Fran smiled and tapped the table, then said, "We have been building our navy for so long, it's time to do something."

The construction of the navy was not slowed down even during the war! It even received greater attention. After all, if Orilagler was really defeated, Fran would have to move her family to other continents. At this time, a strong navy would be very necessary.

As the war gave rise to a large number of civilian and military inventions, the development speed of the navy also reached a new level.

The steam engines they produced now were enough to propel warships covered in thin iron armor, and in terms of tonnage, they were several times that of ordinary wooden warships. The sides of the warships were hung with various cannons, comparable to a small fortress.

Fran really wanted to know which was stronger on the ocean: the elves' tree ships, the dwarves' mechanical core ships, or his battleships.

............

The Queen of Arms

Next Volume: Raging Sea

Chapter 216 Shame

"The elves and dwarves are really going too far!!"

In the port of Biesund, Harald sat on the deck with a somewhat unhappy look on his face.

Harald was originally from Venice.

After assassinating and hanging the greedy Doge of Venice, he fled to Orilla City with his four sons, but was later tricked by Huang Silang into becoming a slave miner and lived a dark life. Fortunately, Fran rescued him later.

In the early days of Fran's ocean-going fleet, Harald volunteered to use his connections to help Fran build the naval framework. Because of his rich ocean-going experience, he was appointed as the commander-in-chief of the fleet by Fran, responsible for trading with the orcs.