Super Righteous Player
Chapter 947 - 5: The Gemstone Veins of the Winter Duchy

Chapter 947: Chapter 5: The Gemstone Veins of the Winter Duchy

Ann gave the players the address of "Salvatore’s Secret Shop" largely to take care of this big fool.

While Kafney was looking after him, at least he wouldn’t act too foolish...

Essentially, their relationship was similar to that of male college roommates—it could be said they were like father and son to each other.

They were all concerned about the big fool opposite them (as they saw themselves), trying to feed him something so he wouldn’t accidentally starve to death.

Not long after Ann returned to Winter, once Dmitry had finished fussing... he sent his older brother away without mercy to mine using the "Salvatore Faction Gemstone Detector."

If they found the gemstone vein, it would ease the economic situation of the Winter Duchy a lot.

Building infrastructure was important, of course.

But the way Winter was divided into small sections by barrier enchantments unique to each city made it difficult to build roads.

If a group were hired to start road construction, the situation might go something like this:

Ah, okay, let’s start building the road today.

Less than half a month into it, they’d hit the edge of a barrier enchantment.

What to do?

Might as well stop for now.

Wait for a few years, a decade, or several decades, and after the winter years have passed, let my son continue the work...

...what else could be done.

After all, without protection, workers simply couldn’t operate in a blizzard that limited even their visibility.

It wasn’t a matter of human rights, but whether one could even survive outside the barrier enchantments and make it back alive...

Only werewolves, tough-skinned and equipped with their own insulating fur, could survive in such an environment. With the clothing technology of this era, there simply weren’t any garments that could enable a person to work in a blizzard without succumbing to hypothermia.

Even Transcendents could freeze to death in those conditions.

On this matter, Ann felt that the players’ comments were very accurate—they referred to Winter’s large barrier as an "immune system-level fundamental logic."

How should one deal with the encroaching curse Mist from the outside?

—Why not whirl up an eternal and relentless blizzard to freeze and blow away the Mist? After all, this Mist was not some intangible and unstoppable thing but a materialized curse, akin to a special kind of smog that couldn’t be filtered.

It suspended in the air, could be blown away by the wind, and even blocked by walls. It wouldn’t even go below the sea surface.

Under the onslaught of the blizzard, the Mist would be dissolved, frozen, and then flung away.

Indeed, the outside Mist could not penetrate, but the people inside were nearly freezing to death. Even the creatures that froze to death could become Frost Beasts, roaming the plains like ghosts.

It’s roughly at the level of "Either today’s damn Mist goes, or you all do."

For this reason, the investment from Saul IV was unlikely to be used for road construction.

But if the gemstone vein was real, then Maria could set up a small barrier enchantment on site.

The so-called Winter barrier enchantments were essentially a constant temperature enchantment.

Such a constant temperature enchantment was not difficult to set up; even Salvatore had established one in the basement of Frostwater Harbor. In Noah’s Royal Capital, there was also a special agricultural department that used constant temperature enchantments to cultivate greenhouse crops for the royal family’s use.

The Winter-style constant temperature enchantment simply needed an external shell added to ensure the produced heat didn’t dissipate.

In principle, it wasn’t hard. All that was required was the setup of a semi-automatic device called a "Barrier Generator."

But just like the constant temperature enchantment that Salvatore had installed in the basement back then.

If one wanted to pervade the entire city with temperature, the center of the constant temperature barrier would definitely be extremely hot. Moreover, it would waste a massive amount of energy.

To prevent this situation, one needed to complicate the ritual.

Let the temperature be evenly distributed throughout the city.

On Earth, the solution would be heating pipelines.

But in Winter, the Storm Towers constructed a complex constant temperature system.

Annan named it the "Cloud Constant Temperature System."

One reason is that it truly resides amidst the clouds—the calculation and maintenance of this constant temperature barrier are performed by those floating Storm Towers.

Another reason is that different cities could directly "download" the ritual from the clouds.

All it took was a few wizards to install a hollow metal tower, similar to a broadcasting tower and only fifteen meters tall, and set up a "Barrier Generator" within.

Then, by using this iron tower, one could link its ritual system to the Storm Towers. Afterward, the Storm Towers could supply nearly perpetual energy for the constant temperature ritual that enveloped the entire city.

The Storm Tower, suspended at the very center of the grand barrier, would project the constancy spell formula onto the "barrier" casing. By setting up a super-large constant temperature barrier on the casing, it ensured that every corner of the city would feel roughly the same temperature—and naturally, all the energy was supplied by the Storm Towers, labeled "the most powerful wind turbines."

In other words, even if spies came to steal the art, they could not learn this magical, central air conditioning level of city heating.

The constant temperature barrier did not exist within the city at all, but rather on the outside.

That’s why no city contained a ritual tower that could sustain such a complex ritual.

As long as every city continuously supplied simple enchantment materials as fuel for the "Barrier Generator," they could maintain this normally energy-intensive "constant temperature barrier."

To conserve energy of the Storm Towers, it was not possible to spread such barriers across all of Winter. Though the Storm Towers had ample energy, it was not infinite... and they also needed to reserve a portion for containing various natural disasters.

What they could protect were the various residential areas.

However, if the existence of the gemstone vein was indeed confirmed, it was not out of the question to establish a "new city" directly.

Built around the vein and enclosing it with a new barrier. Starting from scratch to build a city could consume a great deal of labor, create many job opportunities, and the continuous output of gemstones would allow Winter to have a new specialty product.

In this world, ninety percent of gemstones were produced by Gemstone Island.

But that was just an island. How many gemstones could it produce?

The value of these items wouldn’t drop just because there were too many of them—devaluation was certain, but after all, they had their uses. Many rituals required natural gemstones that had been nurtured within ley lines for a long time.

Dmitry did not make Annan wait long.

Shortly after the Saint’s Day of May passed, and Annan remotely observed Kafney’s coronation ceremony through the eyes of his players.

Less than a week later, Dmitry returned hastily, bearing good news.

—The gemstone vein was real.

And it was a vast and rich vein of quartz monzonite, with quite superior quality to boot! Just the reserves detected so far would be enough for one hundred and fifty years of mining—at least. The reserves were even greater than those of Gemstone Island!

The byproduct sandstone was also a high-quality stone material with significant applications. Whether for export or for use in Winter’s infrastructure, it was perfectly viable.

It could even be used for building a city right there on the spot.

Annan could even imagine, if he announced the news right now, Winter might even witness a major tide of population returning.

In the year of Winter, not only would there be no loss of population, but a large number of Winter’s people would return—this would doubtlessly be a miracle!

Annan did not intend to let the Winter family swallow all the benefits.

That would be too greedy and might even encounter significant resistance.

—Annan prepared to name it the "Saul Vein" to commemorate the magical magic mirror provided by Salvatore.