"She can go ashore now..." Roland said with great interest. "I remember you once said that after she chose to live in the sea, she had no contact with human beings for a long time."
"Thanks to the help of Her Highness Tilly and Lady Camilla," Margaery replied with a sigh. "Without the ability to communicate directly through consciousness, I'm afraid she wouldn't have been able to adapt to a normal life. Besides, Joan has completely forgotten how to speak. Lord Thunder has found several scholars for her, but they haven't been very effective. Now she can only speak a few words and can't even have a complete conversation. "
Speaking of this, Carina paused for a moment as if she wanted to say something.
"What's wrong?" Roland could not help asking.
"I don't know if it's because of the long period of transformation, but some parts of her body have become different from a human's," Margaret bit her lip, "According to my understanding of witches, when they don't use their magic, they should be no different from ordinary people. But Joan can't completely return to her previous appearance. Her cheeks, neck, arms, and legs are covered with blue scales, just like those... sea ghosts. "
Roland immediately thought of Lorgar's long ears. "Well... the scaly skin seems to have a unique charm. Ahem, no, now is not the time to think about this. Even Princess Lorgar of the Wildflame clan's harmless ears are feared by the Sand Nation, so Joan's situation can only be worse."
"Did someone maliciously hurt her?"
"We tried our best to prevent it, but it's inevitable that someone will spread the news." Margaery sighed.
"If we want to teach her to adapt to human life, we can't avoid contact with others." Thunder's voice was also quite helpless. "Even in the Fjords, there are only a few people who can accept her appearance. Since she came to the mansion, three maids and two scholars have been scared away. There are even rumors that I raised a sea ghost in the mansion. Maybe the sea is more suitable for her. "
"If my friend hated life on land, I wouldn't force her to stay on the island," Carina said. "But from the process of Joan's contact with other people, I can see that she doesn't hate this change. Although she still spends several hours in the sea every week, she is happy to get along with the maids who accept her. Besides, compared to raw fish, she now prefers to eat roasted fish. "
However, this kind of environment was only limited to Thunder's mansion. Roland understood what Carina meant, but he could not think of a good solution at the moment. It was a long process to change people's minds, especially for Joan. In fact, her problems were even more serious than those of ordinary witches. For a long time in history, witches with beastification, deformities, or inhuman appearances had been the target of discrimination and exclusion.
"She'll get better," he could only comfort her. "Can I see her up close?"
If the problem was really serious, he had to make do with it first. For example, like Lorgar's ears, she would basically look like a normal person after wearing a hat.
'Of course, 'said Margaret, waving her hand in Joan's direction.' Come here, my dear. '
But Joan just poked her head out to take a look and then hid it again.
"Uh... Your Majesty, I'm sorry. She may not be used to so many people." Margaery bowed embarrassedly.
"It seems that you scared her," Nightingale said gloatingly.
Roland glared at the empty space beside him and coughed twice. "It's okay. She'll be in Neverwinter for a while anyway. She'll get used to it. Let's go to the dock first. "
...
In order to build the steel ship, Roland deliberately marked out an area of nearly 100 acres in the southwest corner of the Shallow Beach. He asked Lotus to raise earth walls around it to form a barrier to block people's sight. Not only were there sentry posts at the four corners, but the First Army was also stationed on the walls. Therefore, except for the workers involved in the construction, not many people knew what the ship looked like.
When they passed through the earth walls and walked down the Z-shaped stairs to the bottom of the dock, there was a burst of irrepressible exclamations.
Everyone's attention was drawn to the gigantic object in front of them.
It was definitely not an exaggeration.
When admiring the ship from below, the first thing they saw was the towering hull. Different from the round three-masted sailboat, the freeboard of the ship was almost perpendicular to the ground and the belly was extremely flat. There was no keel protruding from the hull at all. With the limited view, they felt as if they were standing under a towering steel wall. One could imagine the pressure.
"Three Gods... I'm not dreaming, am I?"
"How heavy can it be? I'm afraid it's more than 20,000 tons. "
"Even the largest three-masted sailboat probably can't withstand a collision from it!"
"Not to mention a sailboat, I think the deep-sea giant beast will be scared away at the sight of it!"
"Thunder... no, Lord Flying Bird, you didn't say that we were going to manipulate such a monster!"
The team immediately lost its order. The sailors ran to the side of the ship and started to touch and knock on the hull of the ship. Their excitement was evident on their faces.
They were all the most experienced ship operators in the Fjords. Even if they had not seen such a ship before, they could still recognize its extraordinary features.
At this moment, Thunder was no less shocked than the others. In fact, he was even more shocked.
This was because Roland had mentioned in his letter that the ship from top to bottom was made of steel. At that time, he thought it was an exaggeration. After all, even a conventional wooden ship would only use the best wood for the key parts. Therefore, when he was recruiting his men, he only described the ship as an ocean-going ship without sails with a steel frame that could withstand the huge waves of the Sealine.
But the facts in front of him told him that it was not so.
Although he knew that Neverwinter was quite good at shipbuilding, he did not expect it to be so exaggerated. Not to mention how to splice the hard steel together, just the raw materials used to make it was something that the Fjords Islands couldn't even hope to match.
How valuable was steel?
Among all kinds of goods, iron ore was not a luxury. A palm-sized ingot of pig iron could be sold for about 30 to 40 silver royals. But if it was forged into steel, the price would increase by 10 to 10 times, so the Knight often regarded their armor as a family heirloom and passed it down from generation to generation.
More importantly, the process was extremely time-consuming. A blacksmith could only forge seven or eight sets of qualified steel armor in his lifetime. In other words, even if all the blacksmiths in the Fjords were gathered together and spent decades, it was impossible to gather so much steel.
At first, he ordered a steam paddle steamer from Roland. According to the Fjords Chamber of Commerce, the price was about 3,000 to 4,000 Golden Dragon royals. Therefore, when Roland told him that he would only charge the cost of the ship, he did not care too much, because the value of a new route alone was far more than the cost of the ship itself. Since the King of Graycastle wanted to share information, he could not say that he was taking advantage of Roland.
He even planned to pay all the cost of the ship to Roland after the exploration of the Sealine, not for anything else but as a reward for taking care of his daughter. He only hoped that Lightning could live a better life in Neverwinter in the future.
But now, Thunder could not help but suspect that even if he only counted the cost of the materials, the price of the ship would probably be astonishing.
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