roccoschili Chapter 72 The slave rats are still too resilient to being exploited.
Chapter 72 The slave rats are still too resilient to being exploited.
Chapter 72 The slave rats are still too resilient to being exploited.
"In short, that's it, Commander. We ourselves don't understand how this ability came about. It's as if we suddenly acquired this ability."
The captain of the greatswordsman scratched his head, looking somewhat embarrassed.
I see.
Rock's eyes lit up; he had figured out what was going on.
According to the original Warhammer Fantasy lore, these Karonburg greatsword warriors certainly wouldn't have this ability. However, in Total War, for the sake of game balance, their combat power was further enhanced, so they gained this strange magical aura.
Since Rock summoned them from the Total War system, they naturally inherited this feature from the Total War game, which is quite commendable.
After the battle was over and the battlefield was cleared, Rock began to lead his men to clear the gold mine.
He had to admit that the gold mine was quite different from what he had imagined. In fact, Rock had never seen a gold mine before, so much so that he had thought there should be many small, glittering pieces of gold in it.
In reality, the vast majority of gold mines have very low gold content. It is almost impossible to find a nugget of gold with a single dig. Only a very small number of scattered pieces of gold will appear.
"So? Have you figured out approximately how much gold this mine can produce in a year, and how much silver that can be converted into?"
Looking back at one of the Queen's Dragon Riders behind him, Rock asked excitedly.
He couldn't quite understand the ledger, but the Empress's dragoons around him were all quite well-educated, especially since they followed Napoleon and usually received many rewards and properties, so they often needed to check the accounts.
With the help of the accountants, several of the best Queen Dragon Riders were able to figure out the ledgers, and in light of this, Rock did not intend to kill the accountants.
On the one hand, they demonstrated their value; on the other hand, Rock was also worried: what if these guys falsified accounts and lined their own pockets?
He would take a second look and, if the amount of gold didn't match the accounts, he would then confront these people and settle the score again!
The queen-rider was completely unaware that Rock was already considering the issue of falsifying the accounts. He simply saluted Rock and reported, "Reporting to the commander-in-chief, because this gold mine is not large, according to the output in the ledger, it can produce approximately 7000 to 8000 taels of gold per year!"
7000 to 8000 taels of gold?
Based on the conversion ratio between gold and silver during this period, this amount of gold was roughly equivalent to 14 to 16 taels of silver, or even more, since the price of silver had been declining in the late Qing Dynasty before the payment of large treaty indemnities.
You know what, there are quite a lot!
Rock raised an eyebrow. According to his original estimate, he thought that the gold mine could produce 2000 to 3000 taels of gold at most!
However, upon further reflection, he realized why the gold mine produced more gold than he had imagined—because the mine had previously been mined using undead!
These zombies not only don't slack off, but they also never tire like a perpetual motion machine. They can even venture into dangerous places to dig, and they don't even need to worry about landslides.
In this situation, it would be strange if the gold mine's output didn't more than double.
Unfortunately, those zombies had already been killed by Rock, so they naturally couldn't continue mining here.
But Rock wasn't interested in relying on these zombies to mine, since he didn't have anyone under his command who knew how to control them, and if he didn't go around kidnapping people and killing indiscriminately, he really wouldn't be able to replenish the zombies' losses.
After thinking for a moment, Rock turned to a rat-man grenadier beside him and asked, "Speaking of which, if I were to appoint you as the foreman to supervise a group of slave rats mining here, approximately how many slave rats do you think would be needed to replace the previous undead miners?"
Upon hearing the question, the Poison Wind Grenadier hesitated slightly, seemingly pondering how to answer. After a moment's thought, it said somewhat shyly to Rock, "Great evil warlord, my most revered master, if you are willing to treat the slave rats better—that is, to provide them with ample food—then I believe that approximately 500 slave rats would be sufficient to fill the workload previously borne by the zombie miners!"
"And if you are unwilling to treat them well and just use them as ordinary slave rats, giving them the most basic treatment, then it would take about 1000 slave rats to make up for the previous workload."
At this point, its eyes suddenly lit up, and it excitedly suggested to Rock, "But besides that, we have another option: completely disregard the loss of these slave rats and use them as pure consumables to fill this mine!"
"If that's the case, I believe we'll only need around 400 slave rats, but the cost might be that you'll need to replace the slaves every two months!"
Goodness, Skaven truly lives up to his reputation, treating slave rats as mere consumables.
But it must be said that Rock was actually quite tempted by the final proposal. After all, he was a human, not a ratman. Even the ratmen themselves had no sympathy for slave rats and were used to exploiting them. So why should Rock show kindness to these big rats?
For him, alien races that are not even remotely humanoid are basically just consumables; all he needs to consider is whether it's worthwhile.
But after thinking about it, he realized that doing so didn't seem to be very worthwhile.
After all, these slave rats weren't cheap enough for Rock to be that cheap; if he wanted to recruit these rats, he would have to spend money from the system.
Even at the maximum cost, he would have to recruit two teams of slave rats at a time, which would cost 1,600 taels of silver each time. It would take two months to consume all 1,600 taels of silver, which was really not worth it!
To put it bluntly, this huge cost is almost equivalent to the cost of recruiting miners from outside!
After some thought, Rock sighed and said to the rat-man grenadier, "In that case, I'll give you three teams, or 480 slave rats, and provide them with relatively good treatment so they can both survive and have enough enthusiasm for their work!"
"I expect them to demonstrate labor value commensurate with their worth and not let me down!"
The ratman grenadier nodded, inwardly lamenting that his warlord was still not evil enough, ultimately too kind.
If it were up to it, it would definitely choose the last option. After all, in its mind, there are as many slave rats as there are, and it wouldn't care if thousands or even die.
He had no idea that the reason Rock made the more lenient choice was because the two had different perceptions of the value of slave rats. To Rock, these things were not as cheap as he had imagined.
"It's a pity that we don't have any female ratmen that we can recruit individually, so even if we wanted these rats to reproduce on their own, we couldn't."
Rock shook his head, slightly disappointed.
In Skaven society, all the fighting and working Skaven are male, while the females are selectively bred and modified, eventually becoming extremely bloated, purely reproductive tools, similar to queen ants.
Of course, there are also some powerful ratman warlords or council members who have enough status to choose to breed normal female ratmen for themselves and use them as their partners and bodyguards, but this is only a very small minority.
The vast majority of female ratmen are eventually transformed into something resembling a demon's womb.
But then Rock thought again and suddenly realized that not being able to recruit female ratmen wasn't such a bad thing, because it would fundamentally prevent the rats from reproducing and thus avoid them getting out of control.
Otherwise, the ratmen's reproductive capacity is too strong. These guys can quickly spread in a very short time, and then burrow underground to build their own underground cities, making them difficult to clean up in the end.
Just imagining the scene of the Skaven digging through the entire Earth in Warhammer Fantastic Beasts sends chills down Rock's spine. If, when he looks back, these creatures have really multiplied to such an extent that there isn't even enough food to go around, the scene would be terrifying!
After recruiting three whole squads of slave rats, before Rock could even take a look at these big rats, the Poison Wind Grenadier, who had just been promoted to overseer, immediately started baring his teeth and claws. He produced a small whip from somewhere and began urging the slave rats to hurry up and get to work.
From the very beginning, the slave rats were driven to work unwillingly, even though they had long been accustomed to this life of enslavement, they still harbored resistance to working.
However, when the Poison Wind Grenadier arrogantly told them that their commander was merciful and announced the rats' next treatment, the slave rats cheered and were filled with gratitude, all rushing off to mine.
Judging by how hard they work, you'd think they'd won a share in a gold mine!
When Rock heard about these terms and conditions, he almost couldn't keep his composure.
"Uh, are you sure these terms and conditions are enough to constitute preferential treatment?"
"Yes, Commander, this is absolutely preferential treatment. I can guarantee that no other rat-man clan would offer such generous treatment when raising slave rats!"
Well, although Rock already knew how resilient these rats were, he suddenly realized that he was still too kind after all.
In his view, the food that the Poison Wind Grenadiers had promised to give to these slave rats was basically no different from pig feed. If there was any difference, it was probably that the grain content was even lower than that of pig feed.
Even so, the slave rats were all incredibly excited, and many of them even knelt down on the ground with tears in their eyes.
This made Rock sigh in admiration; the Slave Rat unit was truly useful, far more useful than he had imagined!
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