my armed maid

Chapter 135 132: Border Blockade

"Actually, there's no need to rush... let's just take it slow at our own pace—"

Perhaps after hearing these words, after that night, Yuna in the maid form never took the initiative to launch an "attack" again.

So after the relationship became closer, the two people's life rhythm returned to a calm daily routine.

In this regard, although Nolen would occasionally miss the scene of Yuna wearing a short skirt and sexy underwear late one night, he did not regret his original decision.

As a somewhat perfectionist person, he wanted to complete this ceremony in a gentler and more romantic way, at least without making her cry anymore.

I believe that this is what Yuna is looking forward to.

As for how the relationship between the two will develop in the future, it's good to just let nature take its own course.

As long as two hearts are together, they will never get lost.

Next, let time find the best way to get along with each other.

Just a few days ago, Flamel planned to transport a trial tank to Linfeng City for Nolen to conduct final inspections and improvements.

These equipment and devices have greatly improved the screening efficiency. Now there is no need for Nolen and Yuna to personally supervise the screening and assessment of Sky Knights.

This made Nolen a little uneasy while doing things all day long.

This standard is quite strict. Among the more than a thousand people currently registered in Linfeng's army, only about a hundred people have been shortlisted.

Therefore, he was very curious about what score Flamel could hand in in the end, and maybe he could get some unexpected inspiration from it.

For the Sky Knight, personal extraordinary abilities are secondary, and the talent of flying and controlling equipment is the most important.

The military had just concluded the first batch of auditions for the Sky Knights two days ago. Nolen personally reviewed the results after getting the rankings and set a minimum standard for the assessment results.

There is a reason for such a strict limit on the number of people.

Afterwards, the military department will add up the scores of these rounds of tests and sort them by the total score.

Once it is scaled up from individual weapons to medium and large strategic weapons, its manufacturing difficulty will become exponentially higher.

Still not feeling dizzy? Then get your hands on flying equipment and experience it in practice to see if your flying talent is really that strong!

Every detail of the tank's load, space layout, power output and even suspension system will affect the performance of the tank and the driver's control experience.

As long as Nolen has no other guidance, Flamel will immediately set up an assembly line and start mass production of the first-generation tanks!
"Counting the dates, today is the day when the trial tank will arrive, right?"

Nolen plans to let them undergo a month of flight training, and then conduct an assessment again, and select the top 20% of those who take the assessment based on their performance to be awarded the title of "Knights in the Sky."

From morning to noon, and then from noon to afternoon, the City Lord's Mansion still received no news of the arrival of the Flamel transport team.

When he was designing the sky boat some time ago, he encountered various and detailed problems.

Thanks to this, the productivity of the alchemy factory also greatly increased, and the training equipment and flying devices of the Sky Knights began to be mass-produced.

After all, as long as he has the physical fitness of a third-level knight, the driver can theoretically control the Sky Knight's flight backpack and other alchemical weapons as desired.

Now, these one hundred people have joined the reserve team of the Sky Knights.

This ranking can roughly indicate the level of each person's flying talent.

Want to become a Sky Knight? First go for a spin on a 300-meter-high hot air balloon, and then sit on the spiral staircase and roller for a few minutes.

At the same time, while Linfeng City was vigorously developing its "air force", good news came from Flamel on the other side of the Linfeng Mountains.

Not only has the prototype of the "tank" been manufactured, it has even passed a series of tests.

In order to contact Flamel's transportation team in time, he specially made time for today's itinerary, but unexpectedly something unexpected happened.

With the support of Flamel's powerful alchemy technology and profound resource base, in just half a month.

On this day, Nolen was doing some calculations in the office, and he couldn't help but feel a little hopeful.

Because of the improvement in screening efficiency, Nolen finally decided to grant the assessment qualifications to all knights in Linfeng's army who were above level three.

Lured by the heavy reward, more than half of the total number of free alchemists formally signed contracts with the alchemy factory in just half a month, which was considered to have exceeded the target.

That's what he planned.

The Sky Knights will give full power to Nolen's command, and he does not have the energy to take care of more people now, so for the time being, he will only select some elites to train first.

After the first phase of Sky Knights can take on their own role, the next two and three phases of members recruited will be handed over to these seniors for training, so that a perfect cycle can be achieved——

They will become the first official members of the Sky Knights.

Linfeng City provided Flamel with all the defensive and offensive weapons, but it was impossible to build a qualified tank with weapons alone.

In this way, the fulfilling and busy days passed day by day, and half a month passed before I knew it.

Half a month can be said to fly by in peacetime, but during the civil war when all parties are nervous and every second counts, this length of time is enough to change many situations.

As a result, almost all the alchemists in the city were invited by the city lord's palace thanks to the visits of the society's publicity and recruitment personnel.

Take Linfeng City as an example. After more than half a month of development, many projects have begun to bear fruit.

In addition to cultivating the Sky Knights, manufacturing has also begun, including the "Sky Boat", the Sky Knights' future flying base, and the "Air Supply Depot" that can provide support during wartime, and is expected to be completed within a week at the earliest.

Was the departure delayed?

Linfeng's Alchemy Society is indeed determined to fully support the City Lord's Mansion. President Fast even shared the list of alchemists in his hand with Nolen.

The rapid development of research is jaw-dropping, and one can’t help but sigh that Flamel is worthy of its name as a city of alchemy.

Or is there something unexpected going on over there?
Just as he was making all kinds of guesses in his mind, the military headquarters suddenly received an urgent message from the border of Linfeng City——

"Report to the City Lord: An armed force has blocked the transportation route in the Linfeng Mountains. It has been confirmed that Flamel's convoy was intercepted by this armed force.

"The armed forces are not bandits, but hold the military flag of 'Alto City', so the border troops reported the information to the city government and waited for further instructions from the military department.

"Linfeng City, Linfeng Mountain Range Patrol Scout Team is staying."

Flamel's convoy was intercepted?

Seeing the news, Nolen stood up suddenly and solemnly ordered the attendants on the side: "Go and call the Lord of the City and the Lord of the Regiment. I'll wait for them in the military conference room."

Heading to the military conference room, Nolen looked at the empire map hanging on the wall.

Alto City is also a city surrounding the Linfeng Mountains, but it is closer to Broken Star City and presumably also belongs to the Second Prince's camp.

"I see, are you sending Alto City to trip me up this time?" Nolen's eyes were solemn. As predicted before, the past half month in Lafeng City has been uneventful, but this does not mean that it has really stayed away from this civil war.

Although he did not formally declare war on Linfeng City, Roderick still sent troops from Alto City to block traffic in the Linfeng Mountains and intercepted the transportation channel between Linfeng City and Flamel.

But this is too hasty, which is equivalent to offending both Linfeng City and Flamel forces at once.

And these two parties are not completely aligned with the great prince. Is it really appropriate to offend two "neutral" forces first?

At this moment, Evelin and Ryan also entered the conference room one after another.

They also received this information on the way here, so Nolen did not need to repeat it. The three of them directly exchanged opinions on the border blockade.

"According to this situation, Roderick seems to be ready to offend us."

Nolen looked at the two of them, "The troops from Alto City have blocked our access to the Linfeng Mountains. Do you have any information to share?"

As the city lord, Evelin is exposed to and handles more political matters. She heard this and said in a deep voice:
“Rather than saying that Roderick blocked the passage to Linfeng City, it would be better to say that he was blocking Flamel’s passage.

"I just received news last night that a coalition army led by Broken Star City was discovered around Flamel. Looking at this trend, Roderick may start a war against Flamel first."

"He actually started a war with Flamel first." Nolen's eyes moved, as if he remembered something, "Could it be that..."

“Yeah.” Evelin nodded, “It’s the ‘tank’ project that we recently cooperated with to develop, and Flamel seems to have made a breakthrough.

"Furthermore, City Lord Bach had a secret meeting with Fred, the palace alchemist of the imperial capital, a few days ago, but this secret meeting was found out by the second prince's camp...

"I'm afraid it was because he was worried about Flamel mass-producing tanks for the imperial army that Roderick decided to go to war with it."

I see. Nolen suddenly realized that everything made sense now.

Flamel has always remained neutral on the surface and does not exclude the arrival of guests from any party, which makes it unable to take strict control measures on the city's floating population.

Thanks to this, Roderick's intelligence network has probably completely penetrated Flamel, and he knows everything about the development progress of the tank and who Bach is meeting.

But at the juncture when the civil war was about to break out and the tank was about to be developed, Flamel secretly contacted the imperial capital——

This information undoubtedly became the last weight that forced Rodrick to make a decision.

Do you want to bet they didn't collude? Roderick didn’t dare to gamble anyway.

Slok is the most powerful alchemist under his command, but at that results conference, his proud Transformation Knight and his full-body plate armor "Praetorian Armor Type II" were defeated by the new alchemy weapons. power.

And now, the tank codenamed "Tank" will be equipped with the same alchemical weapon and become his enemy.

Once this happens, what method should we use to stop the tank attack, and what price should we pay to destroy these torrents of steel?
Therefore, it was not Roderick who wanted to attack Flamel.

Instead, he had to take action against Flamel.

Compared with Linfeng City, which is remote and has backward productivity, Flamel is closer to the center of the empire, and its explosive capability is also more powerful.

Even if it is destroyed, it must not be allowed to become an arsenal for the Great Prince's camp - this should be Rodrick's truest thought at this time.

Linfeng City was working closely with Flamel. While it was surrounded, it naturally had an impact on Linfeng City.

"No matter what, we cannot allow our traffic arteries to be blocked."

Nolen said solemnly, "A considerable part of the alchemy team sent by Flamel remains in Linfeng City to communicate with us technically.

“At the same time, we have to temporarily rely on Flamel to import other alchemy items, including magic crystals.

"So, we can't lose contact with Flamel, at least not for the time being... or so I think."

The conference room fell silent, both of them were seriously considering Nolen's suggestion, and soon Evelin also expressed her opinion:

“However, once war is declared against Alto City’s army, Linfeng City may not be able to escape from the war.

“Isn’t what we need most now is precious development time?

"As for the magic crystal, our veins can now be mined. Although other alchemy tools are important, they are not necessary.

"Nolen, you once told me that as long as the Sky Knights can develop, Linfeng City will definitely have its own place in the empire in the future...

"If this statement is true, I think even losing Flamel's tanks and support will not prevent us from becoming stronger, right?"

"That's true." Nolen nodded, then changed his tone.

"——Having said that, if we can dominate by air and land, why should we voluntarily give up land?"

"But, the risks involved..." Evelin hesitated.

Nolen thought for a while and said from another perspective: "Many times, whether we want to fight a war or not is not decided by us, but by the other side.

"It was Alto City's army that took the initiative to block our roads and intercept our transportation team, but what authority do they have to do this?

“There is no doubt that they knew they were doing this to annoy us, but they did it anyway.

"Isn't this a temptation from them? If we don't retaliate, but acquiesce in this incident, it can be expected that they will become even more aggressive on us in the future, until one day they will completely crush us.

“And, since Flamel is their main target, they will definitely not deploy too many troops on the border of Linfeng City now.

"I think we can try to contact Alto City to scare them away. If not...

"I think we have a good chance of beating them."

Evelin was also the main combatant in the prairie war, so she could naturally understand what Nolen meant. She thought for a moment, then turned to look at Ryan:

"What do you think our chances of winning against Alto City's troops are?"

Ryan is the eldest marshal among the three and the best at fighting. His attitude on this matter is still very important.

"Nolen, your Sky Knights haven't developed yet, have they?"

Ryan looked at Nolen, and after receiving the reply that he was temporarily unable to participate in the battle, he replied.

"If your opponent is Broken Star City, I would advise you to be patient for the time being. The descendants of the Wind War God are not that easy to deal with.

"But Alto City is just a small city. Because it is adjacent to Broken Star City, during the long-term development process, it has almost become a vassal of Broken Star City.

"Besides, we still have the home field advantage, so in terms of this battle alone, if it is determined that there is no intervention from other forces -

"I think we have a good chance of winning."

(End of this chapter)