Valon: Even a supporting character can change his fate.

As the saying goes, good wine makes people famous, and gold stirs the heart of Tao.

These blacksmiths work diligently every day, not only making farm tools for the villagers, but also making weapons and equipment for the city lord's mansion and mercenaries.

But even so, the money they can earn is very meager. Now that there is so much money in front of them, how can they not be tempted.

In order to allow them to focus on making equipment for themselves, Bai not only promised them high wages every month, but also guaranteed that when they wanted to leave, they would be allowed to leave safely with the money they earned.

As for the working environment and treatment, they are all excellent. Not only can you eat meat every meal, but you can also choose your own housing. Except for the city lord's mansion, you can live in any house in the town.

Under multiple temptations, the blacksmiths willingly forged weapons for Bai and his undead army.

Moreover, under the temptation of high rewards, these blacksmiths have demonstrated a high degree of subjective initiative. They not only forge conventional weapons and equipment, but also forge iron claws for ghouls and extra-large metal hammers for blood abominations.

In addition to stabilizing the blacksmiths and thus obtaining a steady supply of weapons and equipment, Bai also led a group of undead to repair the city defenses, raise the city walls, widen the moat, build defensive facilities outside the city, and have skeleton warriors and skeleton archers patrol continuously.

But Bai knew very well that blindly increasing defenses would lead to no solution. Once the official forces discovered this place and sent a large army to encircle and suppress it, they would be alone and powerless.

To this end, in addition to daily upgrades to the town's defense facilities, Bai also asked the lich to take the ghouls and skeletons out hunting, explore the map, and expand the military force.

Bai was in the City Lord's Mansion with a map on the table, thinking about which direction to go next.

Going north from here and passing through a forest, you will reach the bitter cold land, which is covered with ice and snow all year round, and the heavy snow never stops. This is where many kingdoms exile criminals.

There lived a group of barbarians who ate raw meat and drank blood. As it was far away from the Central Plains, supplies were scarce, and the icy environment made it difficult to grow crops, so they could only hunt.

When it was difficult to get enough food, there was even less energy for research and development. This led to the Central Plains and other regions entering the Iron Age, but they were still in a very primitive and backward state.

Even an iron weapon or armor could be enshrined as an heirloom.

Of course, it is precisely because of this harsh living environment that their physical fitness has become stronger and tougher with each generation. The tough and martial folk customs have made them, even women, excellent fighters.

These individually powerful barbarians are excellent sources of soldiers in Bai's eyes.

If we develop towards the north, we can indeed obtain high-quality soldiers, but the problem is what about weapons and equipment?

It's not like here where you can get things through plundering. Most of the weapons used by those barbarians are made of animal bones, which are on the same level as iron tools.

Some people may say, since the north is not feasible, why not develop in other directions?

Bai had naturally thought about this, but look at what's happening in other directions.

There is no need to talk about the southern region. Since the climate in the south is more suitable, the royal capital is in the south. If we dare to develop towards the south, we will be confronting the regular army of the kingdom head-on.

As for the west, it's not that we haven't considered it, but the problem is that there are endless plains over there, and the people living there are mainly nomadic, and they are all good at fighting on horseback, so their mobility is superb. With the current number of troops, I'm afraid that after a set of kite tactics, there will be nothing left.

Not to mention, in addition to nomadic humans who are good at horse riding on the grassland, there are also several Centaur tribes. These Centaur tribes would have some friction with local humans from time to time. It can be said that there would be a small fight every three days and a big fight every five days.

In terms of military strength, it can be said that the people on the grassland are no worse than those in the bitter cold north.

As for the east, unfortunately, the east is the sea, and there are many merfolk and half-merfolk living in the coastal areas. They may have too few resources to use, and Bai does not have the ability to sail on the sea.

Just when Bai was feeling depressed about this, the office door opened and the person who came in was the Lich.

"You went hunting, didn't you? Why are you back so soon?"

The lich went out hunting under Bai's orders. No matter whether they were humans or other animals, as long as they were living things, the lich would not let any of them go and would kill them all. The flesh and blood would be left behind and transported back to the town as food for the blood abominations, while the bones would be transformed into skeleton soldiers using undead magic.

Some people may ask, with the Lich's high-efficiency large-scale sweep, are there still living people outside the town?

There are indeed no such animals in the village, but you can still encounter caravans passing by.

These caravans would originally stop in towns to restock supplies and sell some goods, but now the towns have been occupied by the undead.

Since the few remaining survivors were still working as ironworkers for the Undead, the news naturally did not spread. The caravans still came here according to their original experience, and ended up running into the liches who were out hunting. Not only did they lose their lives, but all the goods they carried were also transported back to the city.

Just today, the lich who was out hunting encountered a caravan again.

As a caravan traveling in the wild, there are naturally guards following them. The undead do not have a high demand for the goods transported by the caravan. Instead, the weapons and equipment of the guards are more attractive to them.

Compared with the caravans we encountered before, the guards of this caravan were obviously more sophisticated.

Not only were there four fully-armed infantrymen and two archers on each of the six carriages, but the entire caravan was also followed by four armored knights.

You know, in this era, a knight is not only a symbol of strength, but also a symbol of status. That kind of equipment is not something that ordinary people can have. The heavy armor is simply a torture for those people who can't even get enough food. Let alone fighting, it would be difficult for them to even move after putting it on.

This caravan was not only followed by knights, but also by four knights at a time.

If it weren't for the existence of the Lich, these cannon fodder skeleton soldiers might not be enough to defeat the four knights.

Faced with the sudden appearance of large numbers of undead, the guards demonstrated excellent fighting skills, and the four knights gathered together, ready to charge at any time.

Perhaps wanting to undermine the enemy's morale by showing its own cruelty, the lich said that they had slaughtered all the people in the town and occupied it.

As expected, everyone in the caravan was extremely shocked after hearing this. Seeing that his goal had been achieved, the lich prepared to release ice magic to cause a wave of damage to the four knights first, preferably killing one or two of them.

But at this moment, a voice suddenly sounded.

"and many more."