Extraordinary Voyage-Chapter 457 - 421: Iron-Ribbed Wooden Ship

"Storm Horn" Aiven’s exclusive laboratory.

The exquisite extraordinary weapon, the Golden Spear, confiscated from Oveg, quietly lay on the wooden stand of the experiment table, radiating brilliant extraordinary spiritual light under the soft glow of the Hanging Wind Chime.

Buzz—

While observing its structure through various detection witchcraft from the Vitalist School, a gold coin in Aiven’s hand flickered with electric light, slowly changing its shape.

First, the patterns and inscriptions on the obverse and reverse silently switched, then the whole melted into a mini golden lion, seagull, sailboat... 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Clearly, Oveg’s application of lightning during the gilding of the Golden Spear had given Aiven much inspiration.

To him, the long spear forged in pure gold has limited value in itself, but the technology contained within this extraordinary weapon is a valuable treasure for Aiven.

One could say it is a kind of miraculous technology independent of the general wizardry alchemy, not only transforming the form of gold but simultaneously altering its physical properties.

Although the abilities Aiven currently possesses already include various prerequisites for achieving such technology, he is still far from truly reaching that level.

But he is not overly modest; he has his advantages compared to Oveg.

For now.

Aiven has already utilized his thunder attribute ability, paired with activated spiritual light and precise data visualization, to fully achieve most of the precision machining capabilities of a "manual" machine tool.

As long as there are materials, crafting firearms, shipborne artillery, or even relatively complex mechanical parts that do not involve fundamental changes are a breeze.

After this task, heading to Far Sails Territory.

The key purposes are to deal with the Great Sea Shark Totem Pillar and to reshape the eight nearly-completed Two-Masted Slave Transport Ships.

Another point is to perform a revolutionary modification of the "Storm Horn," maximizing its approach to quasi-legendary battleship standards.

That will be the time when this precision machining ability truly shines!

Flap, flap—

The sound of wings suddenly interrupted Aiven’s thoughts.

A spiritualized Seagull Messenger suddenly appeared from the air in front of him, placing a letter delivered through a Spirit Realm beacon onto the table.

"Oh? Anthony, this guy’s efficiency is pretty good."

Aiven’s eyes instantly lit up, reaching out to gently unravel the letter he had been eagerly awaiting.

There are five pieces of valuable spiritual letter paper, but more precious are the tiny words and drawings densely covering them:

"Aiven, during this time, I’ve been running around with Delis and Alva until our legs felt like they’d fall off. When you get back, remember to properly compensate us.

However, the results are good; we’ve extracted all parts accessible within our authorization..."

This is a letter sent by Anthony, specializing in research on "Alchemy Tools and Enchantment Project."

Because Aiven was worried about the somewhat outdated knowledge in "Flesh Sacrifice," wasting this excellent raw material, he specifically asked his friends on the Kingdom Mainland to gather knowledge on making "Ship’s Figurehead" for his reference.

That’s right.

Aiven intends to turn this extremely rare extraordinary material into a powerful Ship’s Figurehead!

Initially, when fighting against the Grand Theater driven by the Box of Dead Souls, the distorted human head figurehead with a Tier 3 power gave him a profound impression.

With just that figurehead, a dilapidated galley that had long fallen behind the times could possess quasi-legendary battleship combat power, devastating their fleet completely.

One cannot but marvel at the wonders of such witchcraft creations!

And in terms of the art of witchcraft creations, evidently, hardly anyone in the Material World dares to boast surpassing the Alchemy School.

Moreover, their information-gathering scope not only limits to the Violet Eye’s library, members’ private collections, but also includes their family collections.

To Anthony and others, fetching some basic knowledge that doesn’t involve core secrets for the already transformed Aiven is no problem.

Even if this knowledge is worth its weight in gold outside.

Had the Vitalist School’s heritage not lacked specialized techniques for figureheads as witchcraft objects three or four hundred years ago, Aiven would not need to ask others for help.

"Not bad, not bad, when mailing ’Extraction Potion’ to the Crown Prince next time, I won’t forget you guys."

Reading it eagerly in one go, especially several ready-made crafting cases expanded Aiven’s mind greatly.

Gradually, an initial crafting plan, with the Vitalist School’s legacy as the backbone and the Alchemy School’s knowledge as the support, had already formed a rudimentary shape in his mind.

"The only thing I’m uncertain about now is the coexistence issue of external energy and Oveg’s residual power.

At least in the normal materials for figureheads, there’s no leftover source of power from a Totem God."

Taking out two large sapphires obtained during the plunder at Golden Post Road from the magic pocket, quietly pondering for a while, Aiven suddenly thought of someone.

Given her knowledge of gemstones as witchcraft materials, she should be able to provide him with quite a bit of insight, right?

So he took out the leaf from the windflower and gently wrote on it:

"Miss Moonstone, hello! Please forgive my intrusion..."

...

Sailing with favorable winds all the way from the bay near Kabushir.

Even with the dual support of the "Monsoon Goddess" and the "Ocean Current Horn," it took the "Storm Horn" eight days.

During this time.

Merchant ships sent from the colony directly transported the women and children of the Araucan clan to Tortuga Island in the north of the Golden Sea.

Aiven had already contacted the Arawak Clan, with whom he had a good relationship, in advance. They would join the clan to balance the extremely unhealthy gender ratio problem.

And the Arawak Clan would pay an equivalent price.

Even when Zinaro, who had successfully assumed the position of "Life Tree Totem Warrior," returned to the tribe, the tribal chieftain had already begun to consider worshiping the "Life Tree" as their new totem.

Though Aiven didn’t know what changes would occur when the mysterious source of the school was worshiped as a god, at least it shouldn’t be anything bad.

In Atrean, the status of women is not high, and after years of inter-tribal warfare, according to tradition, they mostly kill all the male members of the opposing side and then integrate the women and young children into the new tribe.

And there were already quite a few women in the Araucan clan, who were taken from other tribes they conquered, and they didn’t show much resistance when being accepted by other tribes now.

Everyone was happy!

Three days after the "Storm Horn" docked.

In the vicinity of Far Sail City, the largest dock which originally belonged to the Aimoer family’s private property, now renamed Mercury Shipyard, also serves as the temporary office for the Mercury United Trading Company.

Dock number one has become the exclusive working area for Aiven and a group of auxiliary craftsmen.

Swish——

As the "Activated Spiritual Light" slowly dissipated, the reshaping of the last slave transport ship was finally completed.

"Phew——"

Having finally finished the transformation of eight new-style privateer ships, Aiven let out a long sigh of relief.

At this point, he no longer needed to personally get involved in the later stages. He just needed to hand it over to the craftsmen for re-rigging.

Watching the masterpieces born in his hands in the dock, Aiven nodded in satisfaction.

The long protruding stem and stern columns increased the effective length of the deck. The keel tended to dip towards the stern to gain a larger draught at the rear, improving the ship’s longitudinal stability and speed.

The hull was slender, with a V-shaped cross-section at the center by sacrificing keel strength to increase the length-to-width ratio, now about 5:1.

However, as a supplement, Aiven also added longitudinal reinforcing ribs to them, not much different from the original.

The design used a flush deck, with no superstructures on the ship. This helped reduce resistance, facilitated sailing, and increased speed by allowing easier wind-catching.

The rebuilt "Bregentine-type Two-Masted Mixed Sail Ship."

The displacement was 210 tons, equipped with a 24-pounder and eight 6-pounders, which was already strong enough firepower for a small privateer ship.

The foremast carried square sails while the mainmast had fore-and-aft sails, with a maximum speed easily breaking eleven knots.

Moreover, sailing it was more convenient than ordinary square-rigged ships, the number and expertise of the sailors required were greatly reduced, needing only six people to operate normally without gunner tasks.

Meanwhile, the new blueprint has already been handed over to the company’s ship engineers and carpenters, and the first prototype ship has begun trial manufacturing.

"It’s not easy, the surplus pirates can finally start working for me."

The main body of the privateer fleet has only truly taken shape today.

"General, there are some documents here that require your review."

Hawkins, in a school officer’s uniform beside him, handed Aiven a stack of documents now that he had finally finished his work. Though he had full authority as an agent, some matters still required Aiven’s signature and approval.

Previously, after Hawkins became Aiven’s attendant officer, he had come directly here to work since he was not required for combat tasks, and he had been doing an excellent job.

"Sir, the headquarters building for the trading company has begun construction, and the recruitment process has simultaneously started. The Marquis’s influence is still quite impressive...

In fact, members belonging to the smuggling team of the Far Sails Territory have already completed their first transaction with the Hilus Secret Dragon Colony, with profits...

Moreover, before coming to the dock, the Marquis asked me to request that you come to Orange Leaf Castle for a visit, saying he misses you very much..."

Aiven waved his hand to sign all the places that needed his signature, confirming that the company’s operations had no issues, and casually agreed:

"Alright, I got it.

Reply to the Marquis that I will visit him after completing the refit of the ’Storm Horn’ here."

Having just gone through a major battle, apart from Milan and the essential remaining personnel,

Aiven had sent most of the crew out to relax in Far Sail City, one of the few flourishing places in the New Continent.

Meanwhile, he and Milan had an important task to do before making the ship’s figurehead.

That task was to replace the "Storm Horn’s" skeleton with iron on the existing foundation, greatly enhancing the structural strength of this Level 3 battleship.

In other words, converting this wooden sailing ship into an iron-ribbed wooden ship, second only to ironclads!