Struggle in the Steam Age

There was no ceremony when the eight boats were launched, but were put into use directly. In addition to these eight small boats, the Enterprise and the four temporarily rented sailboats were also moving together. According to the plan, these ships will carry a force of 800 people to launch the cleanup of Mangrove Beach and complete the corresponding occupation work.

Of course, these 800 people are definitely not professional soldiers. After all, there are only more than 800,000 people on the entire island. Even Lawrence's direct and indirect manpower can only add up to 600,000 at most. According to the conventional ratio of 2/1000 soldiers, the number of regular troops on the island is about 100,000. It can be a little more than this amount.

In fact, except for 200 of these people who are regular soldiers, the rest are all armed immigrants. According to the plan, the regular army can evacuate after they have cleaned up the formed goblins in the Mangrove Beach area. All subsequent work, such as building fortifications and cleaning up the remaining goblins, will be done by these armed immigrants.

The mangrove stand is one of the two landing sites that Lawrence and the others planned when they first came to this island. The entire plain covers an area of ​​about 25 square kilometers. big land. Because this piece of land is surrounded by small hills that continue from the central mountain range of the island, and the land itself is also somewhat salinized.

Because of this, the vegetation on this land is not very lush, and there are very few goblins active here. According to Lawrence's observations using paper figurines, there are only three small goblin tribes in this land, and even if you add scattered goblins, the number will not exceed 1,700. Moreover, because of the sparse local vegetation, these goblins couldn't hide and seek with Lawrence's small army, and fully armed humans could easily kill goblins several times their own in a face-to-face battle.

The ensuing battle seemed a little lackluster. According to the plan, Safiel and Nora led more than 300 people and 12 mortars from the edge of the flat land to the rear of the tribes. . Immediately, all the firepower broke out at the goblin tribes.

In an instant, several flowers mixed with steel and flame exploded in the goblin tribe. Then puffs of white smoke and flames spread from the landing point of the shells to the surroundings. Since Lawrence used an incendiary explosive bomb with white phosphorus stuffed inside it this time, the rapid fire of the mortar caused a large number of ignition points that were difficult to extinguish in the goblin tribe, and the poisonous smoke produced by the white phosphorus being ignited made them lack discipline. Sexual goblins are completely fried.

Since there was not enough vegetation in this area to use as cover, the goblins quickly spotted Safir and his troops coming up from behind them from the gaps in the messy bushes. At the beginning, I felt that Safir and his small number of goblins wanted to break through this seemingly thin line of defense and break out into the jungle inside the island. But soon they were blocked by a large number of shells falling from the sky.

Then Safir took advantage of the time when the group of goblins were forced to disperse due to shelling and bullet shooting, he summoned the phantom horse and rushed out together with Nora, and then successfully killed the goblin chief and witch doctor in the chaos, leaving These goblins have completely lost the last part of their command power.

Although this method of taking the head of an admiral among thousands of armies sounds difficult, it is not that difficult when facing goblins now. For the goblins huddled together from the cannon and the bullets, and the goblin leaders were easily recognizable, with feathers on their heads and robes of some kind woven of bark and rattan.

Although those feathers are not very bright, and the size is also small. The robes were rough and rough. But compared to the ordinary goblins around them who only had a little textile around their waists or nothing at all, their attire was as obvious as standing out from the crowd, even if there was smoke around them, they could be easily recognized.

More importantly, because the number of these goblin tribes is too small. Therefore, the strongest of these tribes are not as good as Safir in terms of extraordinary level. Not to mention that these wild creatures are basically wild roads, and they are no match for the professionally trained Safir in this chaos.

After losing all their leaders, the group of goblins all respected their instincts and ran away from the artillery and bullets. As a result, they washed up on the beach in a mess. When most of the goblins came to the beach and were blocked by the sea, they didn't notice the boats floating on the sea.

But at this time, it was too late for them to escape. Under Lawrence's order, all ships poured their firepower onto the beach. And on this unobstructed, black gravel beach, the lethality of those artillery fires was greatly enhanced, and a large number of goblins who had nowhere to hide were hit by the blasted stones.

Later, when Lawrence and the others cleaned up the battlefield, they found that most of the goblins on the plain had been cleaned up in this battle. In the end, no more than 100 goblins can escape. And this also means that basically no monsters will appear on this land in the next period of time.

"After moving my hands and feet today, I feel much better. To be honest, this is much better than squatting in the office all day." At this time, Safir brought her part of the troops to join Lawrence. This force has been intercepting those goblins who escaped scatteredly, and because of their efforts, the number of fleeing rugs has dropped from three digits to double digits.

"Okay, okay." Hearing what Safir said, Lawrence immediately understood what his fiancee wanted to express, "I assure you, I will never arrange so many things for you in the future. Still Yes, if there is a chance, I will try to take you to participate in this type of operation."

"That's good." Safiel smiled after hearing Lawrence patted his chest, and then he and Lawrence inspected the land under their feet. Because Lawrence had previously handled various administrative matters on the island, she It didn't take long to discover the most serious problem with the land.

"It seems that the salinization of this land is quite serious." Safiel picked up a handful of soil from the ground and looked at it carefully. Visible point. At least now, Lawrence can see some white salt-alkali particles in the soil in Safir's hand.

Considering that the local precipitation is not too small, it is very clear that various particles can be seen on the ground. Therefore, under such circumstances, he involuntarily frowned and began to think, with a worried look on his face. But soon, a priest of the Agricultural Church who came with the team discovered this situation.

"Your Excellency, you don't need to worry too much." The priest happened to return here after a brief inspection of the surroundings, just in time to meet Lawrence and Safiel looking at these soil samples with worried faces, so he stepped forward and explained , "It only takes a year at most, and this land can be turned into land suitable for farming."

"Really? How did you do that?" Safiel said with some incomprehension, "I think the degree of salinization here should be very high, and it doesn't seem like it can be improved in a short period of time."

"What you said has some truth, but the situation here is not entirely the case." Speaking of his professional scope, the priest of the Agricultural Church immediately showed a rather proud expression on his face. "The salinization of this area is mainly due to the low-lying area as a whole, and the intrusion of seawater from several grooves on the coastline. The difficulty of improving this secondary saline-alkali land is relatively simple. kind."