Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest
Chapter 213 - 18: Lower the Price

Chapter 213: Chapter 18: Lower the Price

Low prices, even if the items couldn’t be reforged, still caused a rush among merchants.

This gave Roman significant financial flexibility.

Because he was truly experiencing a scarcity of metal coins, in order to upgrade the "Angel Envoy" panel, he nearly bankrupted himself. He would have had to issue IOUs for compensation or offset it with physical goods otherwise.

It wasn’t just him experiencing scarcity.

The nobles were also very short on such metal resources.

Gold, silver, copper, iron.

These four metals held value because they could be directly exchanged for exceptional resources.

They could be magnificently transformed into—Fine Gold, Mithril, Mountain Copper, Magic Steel.

The value of precious metals would fluctuate only with resource mining and social development.

But if the metals themselves had strategic value, that too would affect their value.

Even Mountain Copper wouldn’t be much cheaper than gold.

A Conquest Knight with equipment forged from one pound of Fine Gold set against another with a hundred pounds of Mountain Copper.

The defeated might not be the latter.

This also involved the military unit of the Conquest Knights.

To this day, those most dreadful Conquest Knights had still not made a move.

A regular gold coin was about three grams of gold.

A silver coin, on the other hand, was a good six grams upwards, with a better composition.

And a copper coin was as much as ten grams, with hardly any impurities.

Magic Steel, however, was not mainstream.

Because, compared to the other three metals, the value of Magic Steel was the lowest, possessing only the attributes of hardness, sharpness, and durability.

However, in the operation of society, dynamic changes were inevitable.

There was an invisible hand adjusting the exchange rate between real gold and silver.

After all, once faced with a poverty-stricken ruler of the land, things turned grim.

Because a cash-strapped king would recall old currency and implement the casting of new currency.

A 3-gram gold coin, after being recast, contained only 2 grams of gold.

Then the king would tell you, the two were of equivalent value.

After all, the currency systems of other kingdoms were always changing, and the more society developed, the less gold they contained.

The metal coins from Black Iron Land, on the other hand, maintained a rather stable content.

The prestige of the Conquerors was too high, no Black Iron King dared replace the Conqueror’s portrait with their own.

...

Three days after the festival had passed.

Roman immediately rounded up all the labor.

There was now an abundance of labor.

After all, they had just captured five or six thousand people.

The matter of the household registry could wait.

Now, quickly go and cultivate the land for me!

The freshly harvested ten thousand acres of wheat fields, now covered with stubble, awaited the next round of tilling.

This round of cultivation, Roman still chose leguminous crops.

Soybeans, peas, broad beans...

They planted whatever was available.

A total of five thousand farmers.

They worked in groups, each group consisting of five hundred people, who cooperated and divided the labor, responsible for cultivating one thousand acres.

Roman, using lime lines, marked the areas of labor for each group.

Experienced farmers led the inexperienced ones.

Because collective farming and family farming were two entirely different modes, they had to be allowed to slowly adapt.

The heavy plow cut straight through, like a plow blade slicing through butter, exposing the moist dark brown soil.

Grassroots and insects would be turned over in this process and subsequently sun-dried to death by the sun.

Those following behind were responsible for weeding, picking up stones, and breaking up soil clods.

...

Two days later.

Roman stood at the edge of the field, shading his eyes with his hand.

The cultivation task was on the right track.

That morning, he rode to the military camp.

He first visited the wounded soldiers.

Their food and living conditions were naturally looked after by their comrades.

Due to the celebration, the soldiers who had just experienced a brutal battle didn’t need to train and rested for three days.

Thus, Roman had them take turns caring for the wounded soldiers.

The ones who worked the hardest were Roman’s non-commissioned officers, the squad leaders and squadron leaders.

Non-commissioned officers had to deal with numerous trivial matters, and the demands on their qualities were extremely high.

How high?

A squad consisted of 11 people, and non-commissioned officers led them in training, managing eating, drinking, and sleeping together.

If a soldier had an issue, the responsibility was first questioned on the non-commissioned officer; anyhow, it was imperative to nurture a spirit of mutual assistance within the team.

The task was most tedious for the squad leaders.

But the most intense training tasks fell on the squadron leaders.

Roman’s requirements for squadron leaders were the combat abilities of Conquest Knights—they sometimes charged even before the squad leaders.

When necessary, they acted as the spearhead; each squadron leader usually managed 55 soldiers and 5 non-commissioned officers, at the very least ensuring all of them recognized him and his voice.

Once the troops scattered, the living squadron leaders needed to stabilize morale and use their ranks to reassemble the routed soldiers.

The responsibility was heavy but inevitable.

Of course, non-commissioned officers also received more.

The monthly salary of a squad leader was four times that of a soldier, and the bereavement payment was five times.

The monthly salary of a squadron leader was five times that of a soldier, and the bereavement payment was even ten times—if they died in battle, their families could receive two gold coins every year.

Squad leaders at this level were generally treated like Conquest Knights; once they died in battle, Roman personally inquired after their descendants.

There were temporarily no higher ranks.

...

The recognition ceremony began.

Roman had already planned the soldiers to be recognized, and everything was handled according to the last orderly process.

Those who were to be promoted were promoted, and those who were to be awarded were awarded.

This time, Roman planned to increase the number of soldiers to three thousand.

For this, he needed over two hundred squad-level non-commissioned officers, fifty to sixty squadron leaders, while squad leader positions remained vacant for now, to be slowly selected later.

Because training was extremely difficult.

Not to mention, at the very least, a non-commissioned officer’s awareness had to be higher than that of an ordinary soldier, right?

Non-commissioned officers were not noble lords nor knight lords, but people soldiers could entrust with their lives.

Those who send others to die when facing danger, and those who turn and run—such actions were severely punished!

If they didn’t understand the responsibilities and burdens of a non-commissioned officer, how could they bear this duty?

It was a long-term educational process.

In comparison, an experienced veteran soldier would not panic in the face of war like ordinary soldiers and would often make the right decisions.

After the recognition ceremony.

All production tasks were being urgently handled.

Sige Town now faced a shortage of houses again.

Roman had added five hundred people to the construction team during the summer harvest.

One thousand people were intensely involved in building infrastructure.

Now, forty brick houses were completed daily, striving for everyone to live in brick houses within the year.

Production was not difficult, and manpower was directly linked to output.

In the last war, Roman had captured about two thousand wounded and defeated soldiers.

Some were conscripted soldiers from Earl Kant, some were from his distant relatives, and others were from the Vilechka family and the Gailande family, along with dozens of beast warriors captured by heavily equipped soldiers.

In any case, they were all in their prime working years.

Roman wouldn’t just let them go, nor would he keep them without purpose.

Those who could be absorbed were trained to become soldiers.

Those who couldn’t be absorbed were sent to do heavy labor.

Coincidentally, the salt mine also needed a large increase in labor—Roman wanted to increase the output and completely outcompete all other salt mine owners.

The coke refining and iron refining sectors also needed to increase their output.

He sent these people to Coal Iron Town to mine for him.

There was no need to worry about them rebelling.

This place was isolated from the world, too difficult to escape from.

Roman wouldn’t mistreat them; they were well-fed at every meal, possibly just restrained by shackles on their hands, and the food was plentiful to ensure they had the energy to work.

Under these circumstances, there was no reason for them to seek death.

Roman was not short on weapons; he was now fully producing hammers and sickles to be sold!

Give them two punches!

Bring the prices down!

Without iron agricultural tools in the farmers’ hands or salt in their mouths, how could there be production efficiency!