With the newly added people the strength of insurgents increased to nearly 300. Now Ethan had 3 new problems to face.
First was money. He needed to pay nearly 300 people. The bandits had family of their own and needed the money to support their lives. The money issue would remain until he was able to find a steady source of income for the long term.
Second was accommodation. He could not have all his people live in forest like they previously did. He needed to train them and sometimes send then on missions. It would not be convenient is they lived far away from each other. They could not live in the town because it would make it obvious to anyone that something was fishy if 300 families came to the town out of nowhere.
And the last problem was weapons. He knew how to make almost any weapon till the 21st century but he needed money to get the required materials. It was also not possible to have all his people use crossbow as they take a lot of time to load. He could not make any advanced weapons without creating the machinery required for it.
He had enough money to be sufficient for his people for a year. So he would need to find a way to earn money later to be able to pay his people in the future. He needed a steady income source or it would be very hard to maintain the army. Unlike the nobles Ethan had to earn every bit of money he could manage to get his hands on.
After adding the newly added members he got to know about a village near the town which was abandoned due to the fear of bandits. Many villages left their homes to go to towns and cities because they could not get protection in the villages.
Ethan decided to use the abandoned village as the base for his army. He could also use the fields to directly produce food required for his army.
As for the last problem of weapons Ethan contemplated for a lot of time and decided to make compound bows. They were the best possible weapons he could make with the current technology of the planet. The problem was that the materials needed were not something you could make in this world without technology.
He needed aluminium for the bows. But it was hard to extract aluminium. He needed to do electrolysis to extract aluminium from the bauxite ore. So he needed to produce electricity atleast in a small segment to extract the ore.
But with the lack of technology Ethan had very limited options. He decided to make a thermo galvanic cell. It was a method used to generate electricity with the help of heat.
In this cell the electricity is made by generating the heat on one cell. The heat causes a potential difference with the other cell. To overcome this potential difference the Chemical reaction causes the movement of electrons. This is used to form electricity.
It was not an efficient method to form electricity as it was very hard to be used in any of the modern methods efficiently. But with the limited options Ethan had it was the best method he could use.
Bauxite ore needed to be passed through electrolysis to extract the aluminium ore. The electricity generated from the thermo galvanic cell would help him in the process of electrolysis.
Bauxite is a material which is commonly found in tropical areas. Maepis Kingdom belonged to the continent of Aria. Which was present near the equator. So Ethan sent his people to collect as much bauxite as they possibly could.
After they brought the rocks which looked just like any other useless Rocks to them, Ethan produced electricity from the thermo galvanic cell and used it to perform electrolysis of bauxite. He prepared a steel tank and finding a carbon anode is not a tough problem. As it was abundant on the planet.
After the process was done aluminium oxide was produced. Ethan continued this process took all the bauxite he had was converted into the aluminium oxide.
Ethan had done this project in the abandoned base of the bandits he recruited. He needed to do this process in secret because the people in this era didn't know about technology. If they saw what Ethan was doing they would think he was using black magic.
Ethan didn't want to get unnecessary attention even from his own people. He needed to do things secretly until he educated his people enough for them to understand how the technology worked.
Once all the aluminium ore was extracted from the bauxite Ethan heated them to convert them into aluminium metal.
Later he used that aluminium to make compound bows. As this was all made without using any machinery the bows were not as good looking as the modern bow but when compared to a regular bow they could be considered as magical.
Ethan made 300 bows and stored the remaining aluminum for later. He didn't need more than 300 bows as not everyone could use the composite bows. Because unlike the crossbows a person needed to have skill to matter the use of compound bows.