Summoning Total War - Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Slaughter! (Part 1)

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Spring had officially ended, and it was now the start of summer. The entire southern plains welcomed the week-long rainy season.

Time slowly trudged along, and after this period of accumulating precipitation, the wheat in the fields had started to germinate. The auxiliary system recognized this and counted the materials that could be used for trade, and gave a list of statistics. These goods had brought in a steady stream of income for the town, which attracted aboriginal people from other towns within the southern plains to visit and trade.

On the auxiliary system’s strategy map, there were four types of tradable resources marked within the territory, all of which Murphy had used up. These were wood resources, coal mining resources, slavery resources, and wine resources.

These four resources were the reason for the port’s immediate prosperity and why in just the short span of one month, more ships had started to come and go from the port.

However, after receiving the financial revenue from the trades, Murphy realized that the largest revenue wasn’t coming from the gnoll slave trade but from the trading of coal mining resources and wood! These two trades accounted for almost half of the town’s total revenue.

The lumberyard had already been expanded twice because it was in close proximity to the Karazan mountain range, where the wood of excellent quality! Also, in the past, the area had been a large trading base for timber in the southern plains. Open-air coal mining wasn’t exceptionally difficult, and because of the slave trade, there were Greek merchants in the town who decided to become slave merchants. Through other channels, they bought about 300 slaves for Murphy from the back of the southern plains. These gnoll slaves had already been domesticated by slave merchants.

These gnoll slaves were only about 1.2 meters tall and didn’t have much combat power, but they were cheap and hardworking, so using them for open-air coal mining was definitely a very cost-effective investment. In the town of Athens, the income from just open-air coal mining alone amounted to about 1,200 silver coins per month, which was the same as the income from three months’ worth of taxes in the previous territory!

The entire territory’s income came from three sources. One source was the tax on the townspeople, which was the most basic source of tax revenue. The second source of income was from agriculture, which wasn’t yet available. And the main source of income supporting the town still came from the fishery. The third source of income was trading, and trading produced the largest amount of money for the territory. It was an important source of funds for urban development, and it would also be key to Murphy’s big plans for the territory’s development in the future!

As of now, the town of Athens’s total monthly income was about 3,000 silver coins. In addition to maintaining the soldiers’ allowances and covering the costs of resources needed to build and upgrade buildings, this income would also allow Murphy to upgrade and replace their original equipment!

The construction of the blacksmith shop had also been completed, and further refinement of iron was currently in progress.

According to the helpful tips given by the current data in the auxiliary system, it would take about a week for the army in town to finish replacing the weapons.

A dozen newly-trained blacksmiths were smelting the older, imperfectly forged iron pieces from the past in the furnace, and they were starting to craft the first batch of half-body armor. Murphy’s elite half-body armor was modeled off the half-body armor that the dwarves had aided the human city-states with. Even though the steel wasn’t at the level that the dwarves made, they could roughly imitate it with their current materials without issue.

Murphy prepared these simplified versions of half-body armor in advance for the Greek infantry’s later training.

After all, the auxiliary system was no substitute for reality!

Murphy still had to plan ahead to have reserves of these materials.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Because there was a trading agreement for iron ores in the southern plains, and thanks to Lady Elizabeth’s connections with the nobles, this wasn’t an issue for the time being.

But as for the number of horses, there simply weren’t enough in the town that were ready!

The original number of horses in the town’s reserves was about 80. Murphy had first recruited this group of horses to become General Guards. Later, a group of these horses was used because of Hamilton’s promotion to General. After Hamilton’s death, Hamilton’s father had become the new general, and a new group of horses for the General Guards had been created once again!

Because of this, the horses originally stored in the town’s reserves were almost all used up.

This had led to Murphy finding out that there weren’t any more horses in town that could be used after the blacksmith shop opened to build the scythed chariots.

This was definitely a really big problem.

Fortunately, this problem wasn’t as bad as Murphy thought, because he had learned some good news from Lady Elizabeth. On the other side of the territory, which was the other side of the Nidoria River, there was a vast basin. On that piece of land, which was called the Sharma Basin, there were more than ten groups of Centaur tribes! Most of the horses in the southern plains had come from trading with these Centaur tribes!

The only difficulty was that these centaur tribes weren’t very friendly to humans!

And if humans wanted to reach a trade with them, they first had to pass through an area called the Barren Highlands. This was where a large number of gnome settlements were located.

Just like the gnolls in the southern plains, there was a large number of gnomes that were scattered across the barren highlands like wild dogs.

The number of these gnome groups ranged from 500 to 3,000, and they attacked all passing travelers who could fight. There was a period of time where gnome slaves had been traded, but because these creatures were simply too lazy, they weren’t as cost-effective as the gnolls. This, coupled with the fact that there was a large number of gnome ethnic groups, made the returns not high enough to justify the investment, which was why the slave trade was decisively abandoned by the black market traders.

In contrast, creatures like the gnolls naturally knew how to burrow, and they were more popular than the gnome creatures in a lot of industries that required slavery, such as mining and digging.

Market demand determines the value of a product!

Of course, gnomes were much smarter than kobolds!

Some scholars had already discovered that some smarter gnomes had learned to imitate some of the more simpler human languages! There were even some scholars that suggested that in the near future, such cunning creatures, who were rather smart, would be able to evolve into a new intelligent race!

Of course, all of this was merely conjecture on the part of the anthropologists.

But the slave traders would only snort at their hypothesis!

They only cared about the gold coins in their pockets, and with regard to slaves, they would rather they just be honest and obedient.

If they were just slaves, why did they need to be smart?

Was it to rebel?

Looking at the current state of things, the composition of slaves within the human city-states consisted of three major ethnic groups: gnolls, gnomes, and humans!

The last group was mostly comprised of prisoners, soldiers who had fled the battlefield, and the bandits who roamed the wilderness. Amongst them, soldiers who had fled the battlefield were the most common, because according to the law of the human city-state, a cowardly deserter had only two options, and that was either to be hanged or to become a lowly slave!

The only difference between the two was that after these soldiers became slaves, they’d still have a chance to prove their courage and win back respect.

Humans in this era had not yet become completely corrupt. The importance of survival had made them actively seek space for development on the mainland.

The law allowed soldiers who had fled to have a chance to prove their courage!

They could choose to enter the arena and become a gladiator!

They could once again prove in a single life and death battle that they had regained the courage they had initially lost!

In the ancient East, there was a saying: you know fear first before courage!

And those who had survived the arena would be the most elite warriors in the entire human city-state!

They were the fearless hands that slaughtered—Carmona Gladiators!

. . . . . . . . . . . .

It was currently noon.

The busy crowd was taking a break, and there were some women and children who had prepared a rich and delicious lunch for them.

The rainy weather for one week straight had made the road muddy, and under the orders of His Excellency, all the citizens in the town were repairing the roads and continuing to make them wider and longer than they were initially!

The town of Athen’s prosperity brought hope to the people, and they worked hard in hopes of a bright future ahead.

There was food, and there were also houses.

His Excellency had also promised before that as long as men participated in the war, they would be rewarded with land.

If they joined the army, then their entire family would be exempted from labor!

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Murphy stood on the sentry tower and watched his territory. There was a slight smile on his face that came from a sense of accomplishment deep down.

“His Excellency, General Rio Darley is back!” said the General Guard’s cavalier. who had come to his side. The cavalier was covered in mud, and he had obviously been running in the heavy rain for a long period of time.

“He’s back so soon?” Murphy asked. Happiness was written all over his face. He turned and jumped off the tower.

He had been waiting for news of Rio Darley for three days!