Chapter 246: Pioneering Elemental Magic Research
Richard discovered through experiments that if six points of mental power were invested, iron metal would be generated, twelve points of mental power would be generated, copper metal would be generated, and eighteen points of mental power would be generated, silver metal would be generated. Once the mental power invested exceeded twenty-four points, about one kilogram of gold metal would be generated.
Gold is a very precious metal. Even if its value is not as high as that of gold coins of the same quality, one kilogram of gold is worth about thirteen gold coins and four silver coins.
According to Richard's estimation, his mental power conversion rate is higher than that of ordinary people. A normal magician who wants to use the creation technique to create gold needs to invest about thirty points of mental power.
In order to verify his conjecture, Richard let Sophia and Wendy learn the creation technique and invest all their mental power to release this spell.
Wendy's mental power is still slightly insufficient, so she can only wear the Starlight Necklace to release the powerful creation technique.
Through continuous research and testing of mental power strength, Richard found that Sophia needs to consume about 27 points of mental power to make gold, and Wendy needs to consume 29 points of mental power.
Why do different metals get created when different magic powers are invested?
Why do different people need to invest different mental power to create different metals?
Why is the magic structure of the creation so special?
Richard's strong desire for knowledge makes him want to figure out the principle behind it.
In the knowledge that Richard learned in his previous life, elements are the general term for the same type of atoms with the same number of protons.
Atoms are composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, and atomic nuclei are composed of protons and neutrons.
Endless matter is a different combination of two basic substances, namely nucleons and electrons.
Among them, positively charged nucleons are protons, uncharged nucleons are neutrons; electrons are negatively charged.
The reason why protons and neutrons in the nucleus are kept together is cohesion.
But the inside of the nucleus is still unstable, because half of its nucleons are positively charged protons, which makes two opposite forces exist in the nucleus: one is the surface tension that binds each nucleon together, and the other is the repulsion between the charged parts in the nucleus that tends to split the atom into several pieces.
If the surface tension is dominant, the nucleus will not split by itself. When two such nuclei come into contact with each other, they will tend to fuse together;
If the repulsive electric force is dominant, the nucleus will tend to split by itself into two or more pieces that fly away at high speed. This splitting process is called fission.
However, both fusion and fission require extremely strong influence to be realized.
Assuming that the microscopic physics of the Dawn Plane is also an atomic structure, it is just that among protons, neutrons and electrons, there is another basic particle, the magic energy particle.
The magic energy particles show various spell effects through special operation rules.
Although the conditions are not yet mature for studying the operation rules of magic energy particles.
But we can study the spell structure of the creation technique and create new spells.
From the knowledge learned in the previous life, Richard knew that the outermost electrons of the atoms of metal elements are relatively few, generally less than four; while the outermost electrons of the atoms of non-metal elements are relatively large, generally greater than four.
Why can the creation technique create metals? This may be the key factor.
In addition, there is a magic water-making spell, which can also create things out of thin air, and produce hydrogen and oxygen elements.
With doubts in his mind, Richard set up a research team and organized the most thoughtful magicians in the territory to calm down and study the structure of these two spells.
By splitting the two spell structures, Sofia keenly found the key points and discovered the most critical basic structure of spells, which can gather different elements. Using this most basic spell structure, Sofia creatively added a new spell structure and developed a four-ring spell, gold manufacturing.
After releasing this magic, consuming ten points of mental power, about 500 grams of gold can be produced.
An ordinary four-ring magician, with a mental power of about sixteen points, can release a four-ring magic gold manufacturing spell, which can produce gold worth about six gold coins and eight silver coins.
If the mental power consumption is too large, without using potions to restore mental power, ordinary magicians will recover in about three or four days.
A four-ring magician uses the gold manufacturing spell once every three days, and can produce about 800 gold coins worth of gold in a year.
The Dawn Plane is a gold-magic crystal joint standard system. Both magic crystals and gold are extremely scarce resources. Due to the lack of gold-magic crystals, almost all regions are in deflation.
In an economy under deflation, asset prices are falling and market demand is sluggish, which is very unfavorable to economic development.
Hundreds of years ago, the Holy Spirit Glorious Empire wanted to break the status quo and issued parchment currency based on national credit.
However, first, the surrounding countries did not recognize it, second, the anti-counterfeiting problem could not be solved, and third, the rulers of the Holy Spirit Glorious Empire did not cherish the national credit and issued paper money indiscriminately, destroying the most important circulation basis of parchment currency.
Various reasons led to the failure of the issuance of parchment currency.
Although the weights of gold coins in major kingdoms are different now, they are still mainly made of gold smelting waste magic crystal powder.
Normally, an ordinary fourth-ring magician can hardly earn 800 gold coins a year.
If a magician of this level is not proficient in side jobs such as potions, enchantments, and alchemy, and is placed in the main legion, the normal salary is about 120 gold coins.
But a fourth-ring magician is considered a big shot in a region. By protecting some merchants, his annual income is between three and four hundred gold coins.
Before William became a hereditary noble, his annual income was only three hundred gold coins, including the shares offered by his brother-in-law Rand. In addition to the business run by Mrs. Ola and Powell, and Bernie's military pay, the annual income of the Harland family, which was not separated at the time, was about eight hundred to one thousand gold coins.
Now, an ordinary fourth-ring magician can double his income immediately as long as he learns this new spell.
The gold created by the magician is equivalent to increasing the amount of gold put into the market, which is also very beneficial to alleviate deflation.
However, compared with gold manufacturing, iron, copper and even silver are metals with relatively large reserves. Using these three magics does not have such great economic benefits. But in special environments, the creation of things out of thin air can play a very important role.
Because the impact of gold manufacturing on the economy is very significant, Richard has no plans to make it public for the time being.
When the Harland Territory has developed to a certain extent, there will be a large number of fourth-level magicians in the territory, and the family will have the royal seal in hand to prevent magicians from leaking secrets. Only then will Richard spread this spell with restrictions to make gold and increase some income for the Harland Territory.
After Sophia created the gold manufacturing technique, Richard, Wendy and others also followed suit to create steel manufacturing techniques, brass manufacturing techniques, and silver manufacturing techniques.
After mastering the element convergence structure, magicians can study different elements and create different magic structures to make different elements.
If the research is more in-depth, you can also refer to the water making technique to create different element compounds. This research must be very promising in the magic world.
After inventing new magic, Sophia's meditation speed immediately increased by about ten times. This rapid progress, like a meditation like initiation, lasted for about two months.
Because the feedback from meditation is particularly good, in just two or three months, the effect of meditation is equivalent to two or three years. However, she has not broken through the sixth ring magician for a long time, and it will take some time to accumulate before the meditation method is advanced. According to the normal meditation speed, it will take about four or five years. Unless new magic can be created again and new magic theories can be studied, the speed of advancement can be accelerated.
After entering October, Richard began to patrol the territory, contact the most basic free people and contract servants, break the information cocoon set up by the bureaucrats for him, redress the grievances of the people, and deal with the bureaucrats who are corrupt and oppress the people.
By the end of this year, according to statistics from the civil affairs department, the population of Harland Territory has reached 258,000, an increase of about 28,000 people compared with last year, of which 10,000 are contract servants purchased by Richard and Duke of Guise.
Among the other 18,000 people, more than 1,000 are private slaves purchased by merchants in Harland Territory, and more than 1,000 are foreign populations who migrated to the territory.
Last year, there were about 15,000 newborns in the territory.
The fertility rate of Harland Territory is about 5%.
Because of the good food and warm clothing, the high fertility rate of the territory has been maintained for ten years. The number of children under the age of twelve adds up to more than 60,000 people, accounting for about 23% of the total population.
Whether it is private slaves purchased by merchants or migrants, they can only settle in agricultural planting areas such as Vick Castle and Malte Castle to prevent the leakage of core secrets of the territory. Only a small number of foreign populations can pass the review of the territory intelligence department and enter the core castles such as William Castle and Sophia Castle, and they must be strictly supervised and can only move in specific places and cannot walk around at will.
For example, private slaves purchased by merchants in William Castle must not appear in the city lord's mansion, riverside primary school, research institutes, laboratories and other confidential places. If something goes wrong, many people will be held accountable by law.
There are soldiers on guard and patrol in confidential departments such as William Castle, Sophia, and Swamp Basin.
After so many years of education and bloody lessons, both free people and contract servants have developed the habit of staying away from confidential departments. In order to avoid being thrown into the mine cave because of excessive curiosity and breaking taboos, and becoming food for orcs.
The area of Harland's territory is not small, with more than 18,000 square kilometers of land, more than a hundred villages of all sizes, and various factories and mines. It takes about two months to go around each village.
After Richard finished inspecting the territory and returned to William Castle, it was already mid-December, not far from the Goddess' Birthday.
Before the Goddess Festival, Richard first summarized this year's income and expenditure. He summoned the bureaucrats of the territory to the City Lord's Mansion to count this year's income and make a budget for next year.
The first person to report was still Gibson, who was William's butler and a distant member of the Harland family. According to seniority, he was William's cousin.
Because Richard and William did not separate, William's territory had always been managed by Richard. Although Gibson had no position in the Harland territory, his status was very high, second only to Richard's brother-in-law Roger, and was considered the second person in the civil service system.
"This year, Black River Castle's business is very good, with a net profit of 2,400 gold coins, but this year, Mrs. Ola spent 5,000 gold coins to buy a manor, which has about 1,300 acres of farmland and 160 slaves. The manor is close to the river and has a waterwheel to irrigate the farmland. It is a very high-quality property. If the owner of the manor had not planned to live in the capital, we would never have been able to purchase this asset. After purchasing the manor, there is not much liquidity in the Black River Castle treasury, and Mrs. Ola still owes a short-term debt of 1,000 gold coins."
Gibson talked freely and introduced the various businesses of Black River Castle clearly.
After William became a hereditary baron, the Harland family's business in Black River Castle developed rapidly. Mrs. Ola not only had a large number of properties for rent, but also inns, chain taverns, woolen garment stores, grain stores, shoe stores, and leatherwork shops. There were also farms, waterwheel mills, four-wheeled carriage transport teams outside the city, and a large number of mercenaries dedicated to serving Mrs. Ola.
Mrs. Ola would intervene in almost any business that made money.
In the past few years, the territory has been unable to make ends meet, and cash has to be drawn from Mrs. Ola every year. This made Mrs. Ola dare not speak out. As soon as she had money, she immediately borrowed money for investment, fearing that Richard would borrow it and throw the meat bun away.
Mrs. Ola's property was intended to be left to her children, and Richard knew this. Of course, he would not object to his younger brothers and sisters inheriting this property. As long as they did not compete with Richard for the inheritance of William Territory, Richard would try his best to meet some of the property requirements.
After Gibson, it was Richard's cousin Tang En who reported.
Tang En was responsible for the agricultural work of Harland Territory.
Agricultural income is the biggest part of a territory. The same is true for Harland Territory. It's just that Richard takes out agricultural income every year to buy slaves, which shows in cash flow as if there is no agricultural income.
In fact, the Harland Territory has developed to its current level thanks to the accumulation of agriculture to buy contract slaves, the population dragged by the war, and the compensation population by Baron Cisse.
"After deducting this year's reserve grain, we sold 26,000 tons of grain in exchange for about 10,000 indentured servants. There is no cash income from grain trade this year."
"The growth momentum of textile trade is very good this year. Wool textiles brought a net profit of 26,000 gold coins, and the profit of cotton textiles is about 4,000 gold coins. The net profit of wool spinning and cotton spinning adds up to 30,000 gold coins, which is already the largest income of the territory. The most important point is that the income of textiles depends half on the internal market of the territory and half on the outside."
The head of the textile department is Scott, who invented a new textile machine, which increased the efficiency of textiles by more than eight times.
Because of his outstanding contribution, he was promoted by Richard to be in charge of the textile business.