Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest-Chapter 239 - 8: Gold Production

The construction of the camp was very rapid.

Roman had left over a thousand laborers here.

Another two thousand people were responsible for bridge building and road paving, transporting various materials.

Once the initial construction was stable, they could begin to withdraw personnel.

However, feeding three thousand people was no small number; they consumed over ten thousand pounds of food a day.

The vehicles transporting materials had to stop halfway, and the rest had to be carried on people’s backs.

And because the logistics line was very long, it required permanent personnel to transport back and forth.

Cookware and wooden basins also had to be moved there.

Since they were gold panning in the river during winter, the gold panners could not do without hot water; every night, they had to soak their hands and feet in hot water, otherwise their bodies would have problems.

Once everything was ready, the yield was also very gratifying.

In early February of winter,

during the first three days of gold panning, Roman had gathered nearly sixty pounds of placer gold.

This was all the wealth precipitated by nature and time!

Unfortunately, this batch of placer gold had a low gold content, about 5%.

Sixty pounds of placer gold equaled three pounds of gold.

This indicated that the quality of the gold mine Roman had found was not very good; one ton of gold ore could only extract about 2-3 grams of pure gold.

Nevertheless, Roman was still very satisfied.

An average of one pound of gold a day, that equated to an income of over a hundred Gold Coins.

He had guarded here for ten days, and the amount of placer gold he obtained was increasing.

The most surprising was the discovery of a piece of nugget gold weighing about half a pound in the river sand.

Nugget gold was a natural agglomeration of placer gold over hundreds of years, so it had a very high gold content.

Roman directly designated this land as forbidden territory.

He specifically dispatched fifty scouts from the camp to guard this place.

The group of gold panners would not leave for the time being.

But when the time came to leave, Roman preemptively warned them not to secretly keep placer gold, and he ordered a full body search.

It was fine if they voluntarily handed it over.

However, if someone was found secretly keeping placer gold exceeding one ounce, Roman would hang the offender and send their family to the mines, where they would be treated the same as prisoners of war.

Only sufficiently cruel punishment could deter people’s greed.

Roman never trusted humans.

...

He took two hundred pounds of placer gold to the Casting Department.

He first had Ruto process it into Fine Gold, learning that Fine Gold and Magic Steel were different; the former required a hundred times more Magic Stones than the latter.

But it still needed to be smelted.

In the Five-dimensional Attributes, Fine Gold corresponded to the Attack Attribute.

The Five-dimensional Attributes influenced each other.

Suppose Roman upgraded an Angel Envoy from a Constitution of E to D-; then the originally same E grade Attack Attribute would likely also improve to E+.

Increasing the attack meant that the Angel Envoy’s muscles would become tougher and the bones harder, thus the Constitution would also rise accordingly.

The improvement in Constitution would also lead to an increase in Energy, though it decreased significantly.

This was the result of their mutual influence.

"Right, forge me a Fine Gold Short Sword and incorporate half a pound of Fine Gold into it."

Ruto opened his mouth, troubled, "My lord, my forging skills are limited. Processing gold into Fine Gold is already the limit; I can’t manufacture weapons made of Fine Gold material."

"No?"

"Really can’t!" Ruto nodded,

"I can use the technique for forging Magic Steel to forge Fine Gold, but that would be wasteful and wouldn’t bring out its potential."

Roman understood the technical difficulties Ruto was talking about.

Such as fold-forging steel, which could create dazzlingly beautiful patterns on the blade and greatly enhance its strength and sharpness over ordinary swords.

What blacksmiths pursued was using the least material to achieve the highest performance.

Ruto’s meaning was straightforward.

The Magic Steel Swords he forged were made purely of Magic Steel.

But could Fine Gold Swords still be made purely of gold?

Of course, a pure Fine Gold Sword that hadn’t been forged also possessed tremendous power; even an ordinary person could cleave rocks and slice through iron like mud with it.

But it was too expensive.

Who has that much gold to waste?

Fine Gold was much denser than steel; a Fine Gold Short Sword weighed at least five jin.

A forging master could use one jin of gold, mixed with other materials, and adjust the different metal components, to forge a Fine Gold weapon whose power far surpassed that of the pure gold material.

And it would be sufficiently light, sharp, and sturdy.

But he couldn’t do it.

Ruto stated truthfully, "If you want to use half a jin of Fine Gold to forge a Fine Gold weapon, I can either make you a nail clipper, or you would have to seek the legendary Dwarves."

"Well then," Roman had no choice but to give up on the idea.

Thus, Ruto couldn’t forge the Secret Silver Armor either; he was merely a novice blacksmith.

Only certain powerful factions with deep heritage possessed advanced forging techniques.

But that wasn’t Ruto’s fault.

The most gold he had touched in his whole life was probably the two hundred jin of gold sand Roman had just handed over to him.

With gold and silver resources monopolized, where would poor people get the capital to learn advanced forging skills?

After toiling for half a lifetime, he had saved up one hundred Gold Coins; even melted, they hardly made up a jin of gold. Dare he risk making a mistake?

The cost was too high.

The craftsmen of the Duke Domain, however, possessed higher skills and could hammer Secret Silver and mountain copper to bring out their properties.

Roman rode back to Origin Manor.

His thoughts were myriad as the manor’s servants came to greet him.

"Is Galin here?" asked Roman.

"Master, Lord Galin has just left; there is a pregnant woman with a difficult labor..."

Roman inquired the servants about the general situation and, without entering the manor, turned to seek Galin.

The stone paths through the fields crisscrossed very regularly, making the roads smooth.

It didn’t take long for Roman to arrive; he spotted from afar a few people gathered around a brick house—probably the right place.

He dismounted, and the people who were peering into the house heard the sound of his horse hooves and saw him dismount, all flustered.

"Oh! Lord, what brings you here?"

Roman ignored them, barely hearing the cries of pain just outside the door, and pushed his way in, whereupon the cries abruptly became clearer.

On the brink of life and death, in agonizing groans, barely breathing.

Entering the bedroom, Roman indeed found a dirty doctor comforting the pregnant woman.

A brazier burned in the room raising the temperature, but the bed was covered in blood. freёnovelkiss.com

Ten Galins wouldn’t have been useful; their Divine Arts could certainly heal wounds, but that was a different matter from difficult labor.

"Lady Galin, what should we do?" Several older women, their hands covered in blood, asked urgently.

The pregnant woman was sweating profusely, her face sallow, her demeanour dreadful, her eyes lifeless, emitting moans driven solely by instinct, nearly at death’s door.

The room was crammed. Roman pushed an old woman aside to see the situation clearly, his frown deepening.

"Perform a cesarean section!" he immediately shouted.

"Ah! Lord..." the old women exclaimed, thinking they had misrecognized him.

"Move aside!" Roman ignored their exclaims, hurriedly urging them to clear space, then with a clang, drew a Short Sword from his waist and placed it in the brazier.

He flipped open a small case hidden by his belt, which contained green stone powder.

Life System Gemstones had miraculous effects on injuries.

He tossed the powder to Galin, who, upon hearing Roman’s intention, knew what he was about to do.

Since ancient times, people have faced the dilemma of choosing between saving the mother or the child.

A cesarean section was extremely dangerous. Although the mortality rate wasn’t one hundred percent, it was close to a death wish.

Now, with the gemstone and his Divine Arts, perhaps there was a slim chance of survival.

Roman pulled out the sterilized Short Sword, examined it thoroughly, and found the precise spot.

His heart pounded, nervous to death, his face betraying nothing, he approached with the sword in hand.