After sorting out the items in the storehouse for three days, Rahman sent someone to ask Larne to come over.
Larne could see that the pile was cleaned up halfway and expected that the sorting process could be completed within 3 more days. The equipment that Rahman deemed still usable piled up rather high.
Seeing Larne inspect the items, Rahman said a little reservedly, "Milord, this pile contains the things that seems usable after the first sorting. I think that after going through it again, only about a third of this will actually be useful. The reason I asked milord to come over today was because we discovered a few ballistas within the pile that's still in perfect condition. I really don't know why it had been put in here. I wonder if we can take this along with us as it will no doubt be incredibly useful during the journey."
It was only after being told that Larne noticed the 12 ballistas arranged neatly in a row at a corner. Other than lacking a bowstring, the rest of the parts were in good condition, especially the bowstave, which was made of some unknown type of wood coated with a glossy shine. This type of weapon was usually installed on war chariots for ranged support. It was weird how they were left in the storehouse for broken equipment.
Larne asked for Supervisor Kassim and after looking at the ballistas for a few moments, he flipped the beastskin book in his hand and said, "Ah, it's here."
According to him, these 12 ballistas were designed and constructed by a crafting professor and his students for the use of the city garrison. However, even though they were of good quality, they required too many people to operate. Each one needed one man for aiming and firing, one for driving the chariot and another to load the ballista. That was why they were left in the storehouse with the other retired equipment.
Kassim said, "You can take them if you want. There's even a label on the ballistas that says 'defunct'. Though, you'll have to string them up yourself."
Both Larne and Rahman were extremely delighted. With the 12 ballistas, the armed convoy would have yet another method at their disposal.
Larne regretted spending 1400 gold Kans to purchase the 300 plus weapons and sets or armor from the market. After buying the old equipment off the Orca Academy, he had Evans go check out if any other academies had some old equipment up for sale as well. Unsurprisingly, after bribing a supervisor of a couple of swordsmanship academies with 100 or so gold coins, he managed to get up to 120 sets of used plate and scale armor as well as near a thousand spears for only 500 gold Kans.
Larne also told Evans that this was a great opportunity for profit and encouraged him to get to know these armory supervisors better so that he would be able to purchase the used equipment for a low price regularly. "Look," said Larne as he held up one of the plate armors, "It may look a little old, but if you have it polished and maintained, it would look and function almost as if it's brand new. If you do that and sell them in bulk at a reasonable price, there's no doubt that it'll be super popular with the mercenaries."
Spending money as if it were water, Larne noticed that the 3000 gold coins he had was about to be completely used up. However, he still couldn't bear to let the old equipment of the other academies go unpurchased and wasted. Now that he had already spent quite a bit to bribe those supervisors, there's no way that he would leave those equipment alone, would he?
After giving it some thought, Larne decided to go with it and auctioned off some of his belongings. They were mirrors handmade by Larne himself. Back in the day when Larne was still designing clothes for his friends, he spent ten-odd gold coins to obtain a number of transparent crystal slabs. Some were left over and he intended to use them to try to make a telescope, but gave up after failing for a few times.
When Alice and Aswan Kebab were getting married, Larne thought hard about how to present them with a unique gift. That's when he used the crystal slabs to make 9 mirrors. Having been a Scientist in his previous life, it wasn't worth the hassle for him to make those mirrors. He gave one of them to Alice and another to Aliyah just a few days before and was left with seven of them.
The process of making the mirrors were not hard and the materials were easy to obtain as well. Worried that the mirrors would cause quite a stir on the market and garner unwanted attention for him, he didn't let anyone know that he made them. Now that he lacked the funds, he decided to sell a couple of them and asked Randy to call Evans over.
Larne decided to offer 4 of them up for sale. When Evans saw the mirrors on the table, he let out a surprised gasp. "Oh, so that mirror Alice had was your present..."
"How did you know about her mirror?" asked Larne.
"Oh, that strange looking plate. Alice treasures the mirror so much that she wouldn't let anyone see it. But I, the stealthy Evans, have been playing around with it for quite a while. Just two days ago, I used it to shave my face! It's definitely much better than looking into my reflection on a silver plate. Of course, I placed it back in place so well that Alice wouldn't suspect a thing," boasted Evans shamelessly.
Larne told him that he hoped that he could arrange for someone to have the mirrors auctioned and instructed Evans to say that the mirrors were found within some ruins and that they might have been magical mirrors that have lost their powers and have been in the collection of a rich family until they decided to sell them off recently to bring the family back from its dire financial state.
The mirror's design and idea, Larne made all had their own unique characteristics.
After agreeing to Larne's request, Evans kept the mirrors for himself and admired them for about half a day before he was willing to put them to auction.
Ten days later, all four of them had been sold without any incident and generated a revenue of 13000 gold Kans. After deducting the auctioneer fee, Larne was left with more than 10000 gold Kans.
When Evans delivered the money to Larne, he told him that the four mirrors had caused quite an uproar in Nornak City especially with regards to the weird engravings found on them. Some experts truly believed that they used to be magical mirrors that have lost their powers and the words found on the them could very well be what the magicians used to activate their mystical powers. When the auction for each of them started, the price increased exponentially. Evans even said that he made quite a number of bids intentionally to raise the price.
Larne was extremely happy with the outcome of the auction. However, that ploy would only work once and he rejected Evans's proposition to make a few more.
With the money in hand, Larne purchased almost all of the used equipment from the other academies. By the time Uriel returned with 353 war horses, they had enough weapons and equipment for a whole army.
There was an estimated number of 50000 spears, 2000 sharpened training swords as well as a little less than 1000 two-handed greatswords and shortswords. As for the shields used for training, there were roughly 600 while there were 800 other shields of various designs. Additionally, they had 700 crossbows, 2000 plus cavalry lances, 1500 javelins, 71 sets of full body knight armor, 583 sets of plate armor used by heavy swordsmen, near a thousand sets of chain mail and scale armor, 2000 and more sets of leather armor as well as 12 ballistas mounted on chariots.
All these equipment have already been maintained and fitted for battle, the process of which consumed materials up to 2000 gold Kans' worth. The shields and armors also have the Ruslan Family's insignia engraved upon them. Larne paid the four academy equipment maintainers 10 gold Kans each and the other students from the academy 5 gold Kans each. They were eternally grateful for getting so much from only working for a month.
At times, Larne would daydream about the 10000 more gold coins of profit he would get by selling the refurbished equipment off, but he dismissed that notion almost instantly. Pella's letter had returned and it stated that he and Krarft had successfully acquired 700 strong, young slaves and 2800 others who were their family members and were currently on the way to the Alomo Duchy's Amurdan Harbor and is awaiting Larne and the rest's arrival. The only weird part of the message was that Pella asked Larne to not forget to bring the spinning chair and the hollow rotor along.
What is Pella thinking about? Larne was completely clueless about it as when Pella had tried out the spinning chair for the first time, he started crying for his parents nonstop after getting off it. No matter how Larne tried to convince him that training with the spinning chair would help him develop assertive vision and give his swordsmanship a huge boost, Pella said that he refused to do that even one more time, even if doing so would give him the ability to fly. What would he do with that now? Don't tell me he's going to train with that on the way to the Northlands... We'll never make it in time if that's the case. Sigh, I guess I'll find out sooner or later since bringing those along would only require one more carriage.
Now that Pitt had recovered, he had developed the initial stage of the Assertive vision ability. However, even though he would be able to react better when compared to normal fighters, it was still quite far off from Larne's natural born ability. Every time Pitt was reminded of his experience on the spinning chair, he would shiver in fear due to being tormented countless times by Randy over the course of the training.
I guess it's about time we made a move. Larne went to visit Madam President Madison once again and rented three large ships through the Madison Merchant Guild which he would use to transport the equipment, personnel, horses as well as the thousands of sets of clothing Pella had ordered before he left. While the amount of clothing was no small number, it cost the least when compared to the rest of the things they bought at only 700 gold coins. Rahman has been put in charge of having somebody pack the clothes up for the past few days before they depart.
I guess I'll have to wait for another two days... Due to Uriel having to order the saddles and other items the horses needed, it cost Larne another 1000-odd gold coins, thus making him feel that raising an army was extremely costly. Within but a few days, he had invested over 40000 gold Kans and was left with less than 2000 for himself. He still haven't paid the cost for renting the ships either.
The day before they left, Larne visited Instructor Watkins, who had just recently become a Blademaster and handed his book collection to him for safekeeping. Larne only took 100 of the ones he thought was most important on the journey and left the rest to Watkins so that he could one day send it to the Northlands when there was an opportunity. Both he and his wife accepted the request happily.
Finally, it was the day of the departure. All three boats of the Madison Merchant Guild slowly left the Greater Bay. Raising their sails, the ships sailed northward.
Looking towards the Greater Bay and the shrinking image of Nornak City, Larne felt a torrent of different emotions that were hard to express with words. I'm finally leaving the city I consider my second home. I wonder how long would it be until I make my way back here once again, thought Larne as he let out a sigh. Given the uncertain nature of his future, he was worried about whether he would do well with his companions when they arrive at the Northlands.
At this moment, Sophia's clear laughter could be heard nearby. That girl thought that the journey was all fun and games and jumped around on the deck playfully, anticipating reuniting with her father after days of not seeing him.
Seeing Larne a little downcast, Harrison asked, "Teacher, what's going on? You don't seem too happy..."
Larne smiled and replied, "It's not that. I just feel a little sad because your Uncle Evans didn't come send us off today."
After he said that, Larne heard a familiar voice ring out by his ear. "Milord, your knight, Aswan Evander is here reporting for duty."
A silhouette suddenly jumped down from the ship's mast and landed on one knee, kneeling in front of Larne. "I, Aswan Evander, am willing to take Ruslan Larne as my lord and liege and become a knight of the Ruslan Family. I shall struggle and fight to my very last breath under the banner of the Roaring Lion."
Larne was surprised and delighted. "Evans, why have you come?"
Not saying anything, Evans merely pointed towards his shoulders, indicating for Larne to complete the knighting ceremony.
Larne took out his sword and tapped on each shoulder twice and tossed the sword aside before lifting Evans up and giving him a big hug, "I welcome your participation, my knight and brother."
After that, Evans started feeling Larne up and said, "Badge. Where's my knight badge?"
Larne pushed Evans away and said, "Ajeh, why would I have a badge on me? Don't touch me all over like that. Don't tell me you swing that way?"
"You're the one that swings that way! I was only trying to see if you have the badge on your person. Stop ruining my reputation," said Evans exasperatedly.
"Alright, alright. Sheams, go get a knight badge and give it to Knight Evans," instructed Larne.
"So, tell me why you're here. Was Old Kebab willing to let you come?" asked Larne.
"He doesn't know, I snuck out secretly. I've left him a letter though and have made arrangements for Jarsaid to take over as the syndicate boss in my absence. The old man won't have time to bother with me anyway as he'll be busy staying home taking care of his newborn children soon enough. And Jindoz is quite a capable guy. I believe the syndicate will prosper even further under his management. I personally feel that coming to the Northlands with you to venture around is the best choice for a person like me," said Evans as he looked towards the cabin, secretly complaining about how long Sheams was taking.
After a few moments, Sheams came back and presented the badge to Evans. As he was putting it on, he asked Larne, "Why didn't I see Rahman and Uriel around here?"
Larne pointed towards the other two boats and said, "They're on each of the boats respectively and are tasked with transporting the equipment and horses. You'll be able to see them when we reach Amudarn Harbor. I'm sure they'll be damned shocked to see you here."
Having put his badge on, Evans looked down at his chest with much satisfaction. "I don't really care about their reactions. What I'm interested in is the look on Pella's face. Let's see who's the 'Honorable Knight' now."
A/N
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