Amber Sword

Brand nodded and glanced in the direction of the forest. The sky was completely dark by now, and below the hills behind him, the Citadel Bunoan was burning fiercely—according to the officer cadets’ estimates, the Black Blade Legion had only just passed through that area.

However, there wasn’t much time left for them.

He made a gesture, and a few young men immediately carried over a blackened object. It was obviously part of some larger metal device; Antitina couldn’t help but frown at the sight of it. It was clear that this thing hadn’t been treated with the care it deserved when dismantled; she was almost certain these young men had simply smashed it down.

It was part of a Magic Furnace.

More specifically, the most crucial part: the furnace’s core Magic Transmission Device. This was precisely Antitina’s specialty, and she recognized at a glance that this thing was quite old, probably one of the earliest models from half a century ago, but she would need to examine it carefully to determine exactly which one.

In Antitina’s memory, these models of Magic Furnaces were introduced to Erune from the Cruz Empire, and many places had such ancient behemoths. The local lords typically used them to smelt steel, and the core components of these Magic Furnaces were once quite valuable decades ago, though they probably weren’t worth much now.

Of course, they were still much better than that old Tonygel furnace.

She couldn’t help but look up at Brand with curiosity, not understanding what the Lord was showing her such things for. The Staff Lady suddenly remembered that Char had mentioned before how her Lord had lived in poverty in his early years, with a knack for pilfering from the rich to help the poor. The auction of the Dark Shining Princess oil painting in Ambeser was one of his famous ’robin hood’ deeds from those days.

Antitina hadn’t believed it before, but now she was starting to. However, the current method of dismantling these things was improper, and almost all of them were destroyed. She couldn’t help but shake her head and sigh, wishing she had arrived earlier.

"Lord, it’s going to be very difficult to repair these items, and even if repaired, the cost would far exceed buying a new expensive one." She observed Brand’s expression, carefully choosing her words as she replied.

"Huh?"

Brand was taken aback and took a while to react, "No, no, you’ve misunderstood. Antitina, I’m not asking you to repair them; repairing them would be troublesome. It took me quite a while to figure out how to tear them down in the first place."

"Huh?" Antitina was also stunned, staring at Brand in disbelief: "Lord, you smashed... tore them down?"

"Exactly, not only that, but I need you to further dismantle them."

"Why?"

"As you can see, they’re too bulky, and there are dozens of them here—the nobles really do have money—but we can’t possibly haul all this stuff along on our journey, can we?" Brand replied as if it was the most logical thing.

"Ah..." The noble daughter suddenly caught on: "Lord, you want to."

"Precisely," Brand nodded, "There are quite a few core scraps of the Magic Transmission Devices here. Okay, I admit that I’m the one who turned them into ’scraps,’ but anyway, how many Dissolution Crystals can you make from them?"

As he answered, he looked up at his Staff Lady. And this was precisely the real reason he had insisted on attacking the Bu Nuon Region.

Antitina stared at her Lord with a strange expression, feeling like he wasn’t focusing on the right things at all.

...

(PS: Woke up late, so this Chapter is a bit delayed. Also, the promised end-of-the-month burst ends here. My health is a bit strained, so I’ll focus on maintaining stable updates moving forward. My status isn’t great, and I edited this Chapter a bit.) (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, please visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)