Blacksmith Shop (Part 1)
The centaur's longbow was about 1.5 meters long. The body of the bow was smooth, and there were grooves carved into it to make it easier to grip the bow.
Murphy tried to test it out, but after shooting it, he found that he simply couldn't do it at all. His current archery skills were basically what he had subconsciously picked up from movies in his previous life.
However, it seemed that he still had a little bit of talent in this area, as the arrow he shot didn't hit too far off its target.
In order to more accurately test the actual lethality of the centaur's longbow, Murphy gave the centaur longbow to the best archer in town and ordered him to test it.
It took the archer half a day to test the longbow.
And the data from this test was calculated and noted down by Murphy, who took out a pen and paper.
The maximum range of the centaur longbow was about 400 yards (about 360 meters), and the effective range was about 200 meters. The range for the maximum attack power was 100 meters. If shot within this distance, the arrow had maximum penetration ability!
The arrow used with the centaur's longbow was cone-shaped. It was a strong penetrating arrow with armor-piercing properties.
Even at a distance of 200 meters, this kind of arrow could easily penetrate ordinary half-body armor. This terrifying lethality already made it a considerably wicked weapon in this rather primitive era!
But this weapon's shortcoming was also very obvious. It took a very strong arm to draw the longbow!
Ordinary citizens in the town and ordinary soldiers wouldn't be able to use this kind of longbow. If they wanted to use this longbow, they needed to have strong arm strength, which would require the archer to go through a period of training and be supplemented with sufficient nutrition.
Murphy had no way to come to an accurate number on the actual force required to draw the centaur's longbow, but based on a rough estimate, it required roughly 120 to 140 pounds, which was about 60 kilograms of force! Ordinary people couldn't pull a longbow with such a massive draw weight. It would require specially trained archers, as their arm strength would be much stronger than the average person's!
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If Murphy remembered correctly, the longbow had only appeared around 1,230 years into the Earth Age.
That was to say that this variant of the bow and arrow predated the Roman Era by a thousand years!
Regarding this type of weapon, Murphy had heard about it, but he had no clue about the specifics of its production. But what he didn't expect was that this time, the goddess of luck was actually standing on his side!
He could actually gain access to this weapon through the people in this world!
Although these weapons were used by the centaurs, a group of strong humans could use them too.
And from a structural point of view, the production of these centaurs' longbows wasn't very complicated, although the requirements for the wood were relatively high. However, Murphy's territory was near the Karazan Mountains, and there was a vast forest nearby.
So if they merely needed to look for trees that produced good quality wood, it wouldn't be a problem.
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In fact, after testing the killing power of the centaurs' longbow, Murphy's hands trembled slightly.
Whether or not he would be able to reach a trade agreement with the centaurs wasn't something Murphy cared about. What he was worried about was that with their current forging skils, the townspeople wouldn't be able to imitate the centaur's longbow!
Even if they couldn't meet its standard for lethality, as long as it came within 80-90% of it, it would be good enough.
If they could train 1,000 longbow archers within the territory, then all the gnolls would be scum and wouldn't be any sort of threat at all!
To deal with creatures that didn't wear armor, like the gnolls, the archers would definitely deal them a crushing defeat!
Although the lethality of the javelin throwers wasn't insignificant, their effective range was short.
Without the advantage of distanced attacks, the role of the javelin thrower was greatly reduced!
In the previous test, as long as the required strength was attained, the amount of ammunition that could be fired by the centaur's longbow was roughly five to seven arrows per minute. This attack speed could be improved with training. Based on Murphy's estimations, a skilled archer should be able to shoot ten arrows in a minute, which was about one arrow every six seconds!
With a thousand long-ranged archers, a thousand long-ranged archers shooting ten arrows per minute would amount to 10,000 arrows shot!
It was scary to think about such a number!
Try to imagine it, that within just one minute of confronting each other on the battlefield, a full 10,000 arrows had been shot toward your position.
Thinking about this made his head spin!
If it had just been this fact alone, it wouldn't have been enough to make Murphy so excited.
What was the Greek phalanx's greatest advantage?
It was their defensive ability!
It was their invulnerability when directly facing the enemy!
But the Greek phalanx's flaws were also very obvious. There was a lack of maneuverability, and if you took advantage of their aversion to face-to-face confrontation, there were countless ways you could eventually break the phalanx formation.
Now, with the long-ranged arrows, this would no longer be a problem!
In future confrontations with the enemy, as long as the enemy couldn't pass the Greek phalanx's defensive line, then all their enemies would be the live targets of the longbow archers!
Waiting to be killed one by one!
It could be shamelessly said that if the Greek army endowed Murphy with the best self-defense and defensive abilities this world offered, then the appearance of this centaur's longbow meant that Murphy now also had the strongest offensive abilities as well!
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"Well done, Pulith. Well done!" Murphy said, looking at the strongly built middle-aged trader in front of him. He couldn't help but say a few good words to him. As a military enthusiast, Murphy knew exactly what this longbow was worth. He patted Pulith heavily on the shoulder and said in a deep voice: "There is a piece of fertile land of about 1,000 acres 20 kilometers north of the town. When things are settled, that will be your territory. You can arrange for your own men to reclaim it!"
"But of course, we have to deal with those gnolls first!"
Pulith's hands were shaking, and he felt like his legs had turned to jelly.
A thousand acres!
That was a thousand acres of land!
This had turned out to be a really profitable investment after all!
In fact, it wouldn't be an easy task to get the longbows from the centaurs. If it was, he wouldn't just have one of such a bow in his possession. As a smart merchant, he had always kept this bow well-hidden, because he knew that this thing could only benefit him the most if he took it out at the right time!
This situation had proven that he was right.
Murphy's generous reward was almost equal to the efforts of two generations of the aboriginals of this world!
This time, he had not only received the title of a noble, but he even managed to gain the land of a noble.
The only thing left was that Murphy would have to issue a decree to officially appoint him as a noble!
In fact, people's hearts are often simple.
At least at that moment, Pulith felt like he had encountered the Lord! On the Earth, there's a saying that if you learn martial arts, it would be for the imperial family. Wasn't it the same in this world too?