Roland sat at his desk, watching the chief knight who had come to report on the First Army's recent situation with great interest.
Compared to his meticulous appearance a few months ago, Carter's iceberg face now had a different kind of emotion. The sense of calmness had faded a lot, and it was replaced by expectation and impatience.
It's probably related to the Star of the West, he thought.
Roland had also heard a little about Carter getting closer to May recently. After all, as one of the high-ranking members of the First Army and his representative in the army, his every move was noticed, especially when he was accompanied by such an eye-catching woman as May.
When they first appeared side by side on the streets of the town, the news had already reached his ears through the royal guards.
Roland didn't care about this kind of thing. Carter was probably two or three years older than him. It was strange that he wasn't married yet. It would be nice if he could find a partner in the Western Territory, as long as it didn't affect his work.
According to the chief knight's report, the First Army now had about two hundred revolverbuchiang in service, with about ten new ones being added every day—in fact, if the raw materials were sufficient, Anna's production capacity could be multiplied several times, but she had to be responsible for both pig iron steelmaking and steam engine manufacturing, which slowed down the speed.
But this speed was acceptable, after all, the First Army only had six hundred people, and they would all be re-equipped in a month and a half. And before the new population expansion wave arrived, the army's scale could not be further expanded for the time being.
Another point was the establishment of the Second Army.
For the convenience of training and the need for confidentiality, the civilians recruited from Longsong Stronghold were all incorporated into the Second Army after being reviewed by Roland. They were currently undergoing discipline training, which was the standard military training. In the evening, there were ideological education classes, striving to make these people believe that they were the guardians of the Western Territory and that the safety of their relatives needed to be protected by them as soon as possible.
"The training progress of the Second Army is currently good. It is expected that they will be transferred to shooting training in another week. By then, there will be enough discarded flintlocks for each person," Carter concluded.
This was also the advantage of firearms. It took at least a year to train a cold weapon warrior, and it took five or six years to cultivate a knight, while a musketeer could become an army in just one month. The longer a battle lasted, the more advantageous the musketeers were—after all, pulling the trigger was much less strenuous than swinging a sword.
"When practicing live ammunition shooting, be sure to manage the qiangzhi well. However many are issued, that many must be recovered. The huoyao is the same. Distribute it on the spot during practice, and arrange for veterans of the First Army to supervise."
"Yes," he nodded in response.
"Very good," Roland waved his hand, "In that case, go and be busy."
"Uh, Your Highness..." Carter hesitated and said, "You said last time that the perfume mixed into the soap was made from sugarcane, is that true?"
"Yes," the prince leaned back in his chair, "What's wrong?"
"Is that sugarcane expensive?"
"No... it's just an ordinary crop."
"I heard someone say that a bottle of perfume the size of a thumb in the royal capital can sell for five gold dragons," Carter scratched his head, "If that's the case, wouldn't making perfume with sugarcane bring a lot of income to the town?"
"Five gold dragons?" Roland was stunned. He hadn't considered this. Back when he was in the palace, the Fourth Prince never cared about the price of a daily necessities, let alone something he rarely came into contact with like perfume—only women preferred these things that could make them fragrant.
His initial motivation for making perfume was just to get soap. Otherwise, with just running water, a bathroom without soap would always feel like something was missing. It was the romance of the bathroom to have bubbles all over your body.
If a small bottle of perfume could also be sold for several gold dragons, then it was indeed a good business. Unlike coated mirrors, the raw materials for sugarcane and flowers were much cheaper than crystal glass.
Thinking of this, Roland smiled, "That's a good idea, I'll consider it."
"Your Highness, then... can I take a sugarcane out of the castle?" the chief knight asked full
of expectation.
"It doesn't matter," hearing this tone, he guessed what the other party wanted to do—after all, the Western Territory was not like Clearwater Port. Plants from the fjord were quite rare here, and it was a good choice to use it as a gift to please a lady, "It's on the wall in the backyard, go and pick it yourself."
"Thank you, Your Highness!" Carter saluted and took his leave.
Then Roland called Barov—it was no longer appropriate to call him a Minister's Assistant. As the number one figure in the City Hall, he could be regarded as the administrative director of Border Town.
After Barov was seated, Roland roughly explained the matter of perfume, "What do you think of this business, can it earn a lot of gold dragons?"
He didn't answer immediately, but widened his eyes and asked, "Your Highness, are you really sure that perfume is made from that sweet crop?"
"Didn't I give you soap to use? The reason why it's fragrant is because perfume is mixed in it," Roland spread his hands, "Its raw materials are indeed these worthless things. I'm just not sure if the perfume in the royal capital is as expensive as Carter said."
"Far more than that, Your Highness!" Barov said excitedly, "Perfume is a top-secret product of the Royal Capital Alchemist Association. There are only about a thousand bottles each year, and only a small portion of them are sold in the Royal Capital. Reselling them to other cities in Graycastle can increase the price by 20% to 30%. If they are sold to the Fjords and other kingdoms, the price can almost double. In order to prevent merchants from making price differences, the Association not only tightly controls the perfume prices in other places, but even the merchants must be personally designated by them. If you can produce perfume, even if you only sell it to Redwater City and Fallen Dragon Ridge, you can get a rich return."
"I see." He deserved to be the assistant who had served as Minister of Finance for twenty years, Roland thought. Barov was indeed very good at the price of goods and trade trends. With this information, he had formed a preliminary plan in his mind.
There were many ways to make perfume. The simplest was to crush the petals or herbs with a unique fragrance and soak them in alcohol, so that the alcohol dissolved the aromatic oils in the plants. Finally, filter out the residue and add water to dilute it for use.
Alcohol comes from sugarcane juice fermentation; the raw materials for aromatic oils can be roses, or more common rosemary and sweetgrass. However, in order to achieve mass production, it was best to let the leaves cultivate a batch of magic-modified plants that could directly secrete aromatic oils.
In addition to perfume, this industry could also produce white sugar and white wine at the same time, which were also consumables with high demand. Although the profits were not as good as perfume, it would be a great improvement for people's livelihood if they could be sold to the townspeople at a low price to enrich their recipes.
The reason why Roland had been slow to develop light industry was that small-scale production of daily necessities was difficult to earn high profits with insufficient manpower. It was the most cost-effective approach to invest the limited population in heavy industry production.
Since there was profit to be made in producing perfume, maybe he could take this opportunity to make up for this missing link. (。)