When the minor lord was finally released from a forceful trip through Yuolrt's many, many greenhouses and plantations, the druid had even made him take taste from fruits and vegetables, which sounded nonsensical as they were both skeletons, even if Ourlon had much dried, mummified skin and flesh still hanging onto him, he was not a ghoul.
But the druid knew what she was doing, although such things were not meant to be eaten by undeads, or at least, not all sorts of undeads, she had found ways to solve that issue somehow, not that Ourlon found any of it displeasing, pulling leaves out of his hair, fruit juice had gotten on the front of his attire.
He also paid visits to the other minor lords as well, he didn't have anything to ask from them, but it was always a good thing to stay updated on how they were doing, all of them were putting in work to fulfil Loimos's order, the forces of the minor lords were all elites, so seeing them exponentially increase in numbers was a great thing, this was especially true because Loimos had already found the ways to have undeads emulate them already, some of the castes of the vanguard displayed the unique abilities of the minor lords already.
Ourlon had been planning to return to looking over and training his new disciples after all of this, but Alkayne had advised for him to pay a visit to one of Loimos's lieutenants, of which there were more than he had actually expected, Ourlon would have loved to duel some of them, especially Ourlst and Horhir, but they were all rather busy, it was not yet time to test their skill.
The lieutenant he had been pointed to was not fighting, or even supposed to be playing a big role, he was testing new types of weaponry and troops that would be utilising them, Alkayne felt that Ourlon should keep an eye on this, following this advice, the minor lord made his way to the undead in question.
One striking thing was his clothing, severely different from any other styles the skeleton had ever seen before, it looked similar to how Loimos dressed from afar, but the black trench coat was rather reflective, almost looking like leather, this uniform really gave off the impression of someone high ranking, a sabre strapped to the side, garbed entirely in black, wearing no hat or anything above his neck, making for a stark contrast as the lieutenant's skin was bone white.
He was no skeleton however, although very much lean, he was a tall ghoul, his eye sockets were empty, the empty space would suggest that eyes had been there once, but no, the skin was present everywhere without marks indicating that it had grown over.
Entirely hairless, without any noses or ears, only a large maw filled with randomly, chaotically protruding fangs, each of them longer than a middle finger, but many times thinner than a pinky, somewhat similar to angler fishes.
"Lord Ourlon, a pleasure to see you" greeting the skeleton professionally, giving a stoic salute "What brings you here today?"
Indeed, one did not end up here by accident, the area granted to this lieutenant and his researches, his testings was rather expansive, indicating that his work was of importance, even if he himself may be considered obscure as an undead figure, all of Loimos's troops remained rather unknown to the mainlanders, not only that, but they were recent additions to the empire as well.
The champion had crafted a powerful legion in little time, as a leader and inspirational figure, Ourlon could not even compare to Loimos, he was standing alongside the gravelords, pontiff and king in this regard, that made no doubt.
The sharp, and loud sound of controlled explosions rang out constantly down there.
"Alkayne spoke me of your work here, he told me that I should consider adding your weapons to the roster of my ashigarus, he did not elaborate much though, that I should ask the expert directly" spoke Ourlon, already sensing that this underground held many, many containers of gunpowder as well as other similar substances.
"Ashigaru?" the lieutenant wondered, signing with his arm for Ourlon to walk alongside him.
"That's what I call my foot soldiers, not everyone can be expert warriors after all… The learning of arts is difficult slope to climb for most"
"Ah I see, and I agree completely, I suppose that your soldiers are only capable of simple, very rudimentary arts, right?"
"Well then, Lord Alkayne was right to point you here, I am Gharl by the way, appointed by Sir Loimos as leader of the gun forces!" Gharl extended his hand for a handshake, immediately seeming very enthusiastic.
"Gun… Is that what you call those things?" Ourlon was led at the firing range, to him, those things looked like wood and iron slapped together into a somewhat rectangular shape, reminding him of those compressed, huge crossbows that some rank and file carried around on their shoulders, those things packed one hell of a punch even in the hands of a regular undead without training.
The Tochian warrior saw constant training and refinement of one's strength very highly, but he knew that the lowest of soldiers were the ones who often won the wars, their skill level was thus rather low, and the usage of powerful weapons was thus very useful for them, the huge, rectangular crossbows didn't even require much strength as the reloading was done by multiple of them, shot with one knee on the ground, no arts, no mana, no enchanting or runes were even necessary, all was purely mechanical, he assumed those guns were similar to that.
"Indeed! The models were currently have are rather simple, lightweight and still powerful, behold-" Gharl picked one up, making a demonstration.
"As is, this gun can be used only to bash someone's head in, just like a bow or crossbow, it must first be loaded, you put gunpowder in- That's were we got the name for those by the way- and then the bullet, it looks pretty small and harmless, doesn't it?" the swordsman could clearly see that Gharl was very much proud of what he was showing.
"You push everything using this stick, a ramrod, and once that's done, the gun is ready to fire, for now, we are mainly using the regular blackpowder, it is the most common and bears no influence of mana and such, so it serves as our bottom line, if you will" the lieutenant took him, landing a shot right down the middle of the target ahead.
"Of course, more variations of design, powder and all are in the works as we speak, this is the most basic one we have, but it can hit a target from nearly five hundred meters away! But of course…" he put down the weapon.
"...We don't only develop the weapons, explosives and powders and other machineries or mechanisms here, we are trying to work to a specialised force, which includes the implementation of battle arts, as well as the system"
"I know that you are one that focuses on the arts however, so let's discuss these, I hold a small talent for battle arts myself, I hope that you will find my findings satisfactory enough to consider equipping your men with our guns! Or at least the cannons…"