On the way Lucia took the ore to see His Royal Highness, the words of Nightingale were still ringing in her ears.
I have to say, she was shocked by the frank attitude shown by the other party.
Although I don't quite understand the relationship, the witch and the prince... can't be together at all, right? As a result, shouldn't it be better to hide your thoughts carefully in your heart and not let the other party know
Moreover, why does she feel embarrassed even as an audience member
Standing at the door of the office and taking a deep breath, Lucia pushed the door open.
"Your Highness, I brought the ore."
"Let me see," Roland yawned.
The ruler of Border Town looked the same as usual. His sleepy eyes should have just woken up from a nap. He leaned on the back of the chair, with a natural demeanor and an easy-going tone, completely unlike other nobles.
Lucia's inexplicable nervousness also relaxed a lot. She took out the ore particles found in the North Slope Mine from the skin and placed them on the desk one by one.
After the ability to decompose, these particles look similar, and the color is either silver or gray. Probably only the learned and talented His Royal Highness can distinguish what kind of ore it is.
I saw the prince frowned and looked at it for a long time, weighed each of them in the palm of his hand, and looked at the sunlight behind him carefully, and finally waved his hand and said, "Ahem, I will hand over these minerals to Mr. Strell to identify. , you continue to go to the North Slope backyard to practice your abilities, and if you don't understand anything, ask Anna for advice."
"..." Hey, don't you even know His Highness? Lucia hurriedly lowered her head and said, "Yes."
Just as she was about to leave the office, Roland stopped her again.
"By the way, your test scores were good this time, and you ranked ninth with a score of 68. It's not easy to have such a performance after studying with everyone for a month. You have to keep it up. And..." He paused. Dayton, "In the next test, I hope that Ling can also participate with everyone."
"Yes!" Lucia responded excitedly.
*****************
After watching the little girl bow happily, Roland sighed at the metal particles on the table.
He was still too naive. He thought that after decomposing it into simple substances, he might be able to figure out which veins were hidden in the north slope mine. However, the fact made him understand the huge gap between mechanical engineering and geology. These stones eventually Three to four kinds of metals will be differentiated, and the ore with the most remaining amount can be considered to be the ore of this type of metal, but they are almost the same in color and shape. For example, iron, aluminum, magnesium, and potassium are all in a high-purity state. Silver-white metal is too difficult to identify with the naked eye.
Let's leave this problem to the chief alchemist to solve it. After all, verifying the properties of materials through chemical reactions is much more reliable than guessing.
After finishing this matter, Roland took out a piece of paper and began to plan how to deal with this year's Demon Moon.
Seeing that summer is coming to an end soon, the three months of autumn are his last preparation time. In addition to defending against the evil beasts attacking from the west, he has to keep an eye on Tifeko and the church from the east. No less than the last year when he was struggling, the population and income under his rule have grown substantially, the output of iron smelting is also gradually increasing, and there are more than a dozen witches. .
According to the combat experience of the previous year, there is no doubt that the greatest threat to the city wall is the mixed species of evil beasts, especially when the enemy has a thick carapace, and the bullets are difficult to penetrate, either get close to use explosive packs, or send witches out of the city to fight, no matter what Any countermeasures will greatly increase the risk.
In addition, most of the enemies of the same kind he faced were mainly cavalry and infantry, and he had never seen the siege weapons of this era. If the opponent can set up a torque catapult, or a more advanced counterweight catapult, I am afraid that I will encounter a lot of trouble. After all, it is very inconvenient for the front-mounted artillery to shoot downwards. Also easy to roll out of the barrel.
It is imperative to develop a more powerful artillery.
Roland pondered and listed the indicators he needed on the paper one by one.
First of all, it should have enough range and power to penetrate the carapace of the hybrid demon beast at a distance of one thousand meters. Second, it must be rear-loading ammunition, which can freely adjust the pitch angle and have the ability to shoot quickly. Finally, in order to reduce the repetitive research and development time, it should be considered in the design that one cannon can be used for multiple purposes, that is, it can be used as a fixed turret to suppress the enemy, or it can be directly pulled onto the ship and used as the main weapon of the shallow-water heavy gunship in the future.
So it should be a large-caliber, long-barreled heavy artillery.
Roland first thought of those 15- or 6-inch behemoths on the battleship, with a range of tens of kilometers, and a single shot can dig a deep pit of several meters in the ground, but he quickly rejected this unrealistic idea. Although there is no problem in processing, but based on the current level of materials in Border Town, at least nine out of ten cannons will explode. Even if the wall of the tube is thickened to more than one meter, the resulting thing will be useless because it cannot be moved. value.
At most, he can only produce wrought iron with higher purity and steel with ordinary performance, and the plan is better to be conservative.
Roland finally settled on the sacred number of one hundred and fifty-two millimeters.
The gun adopts a vertical wedge-type breech block, which is similar to a door that can slide up and down. When it is lowered, the gun chamber is exposed, the shell is loaded, and after being reset upwards, the lock is realized, so that the gunpowder and gas are erupted forward. Compared with the screw-type breech block and the horizontal wedge-type breech block, it has the fastest firing speed, and the principle is also very simple, and its mechanical structure is already well known in his heart.
However, in order to achieve rapid firing, the artillery must be equipped with a recuperation mechanism, which is simply like two pumps, one filled with oil, and the other a recoil spring or gas. When the muzzle recoil is pulled, the two-barrel connecting rod is pulled, and the oil and the recoil machine are compressed at the same time. The oil is used to buffer the recoil, and the recoil spring is used to store the force, and after the shelling is completed, the barrel is pushed back to its original position.
Finally, the cannonballs.
Now that the Holy Religion cannon is used, he can no longer be satisfied with the clumsy solid iron balls and paper-packed shotguns. For the sake of safety, Roland decided to develop two fixed-loading cannonballs at the same time. One is an enlarged version of the bullet with a solid metal warhead. ; The other is an explosive warhead with a trigger fuze, which is a later-generation howitzer. After all, the latter has certain technical difficulties, which requires repeated testing of the reliability of the fuze, and it is impossible to guarantee that the troops will be assembled before the month of the demon, so it is very necessary to produce the former to solve the problem. Even solid warheads are easy to use against slow-moving thick-armored demon beasts and stationary siege weapons.
Of course, no matter what kind of shell, it needs to consume a lot of smokeless powder. Before the mass production of the two acids, the new artillery can only be used as a special weapon, and it is impossible to achieve a hearty artillery fire coverage.
Just then, the guard pushed the door and walked in.
"His Royal Highness, there is a secret letter from the capital."
Roland put down the quill and opened the envelope. The letter was unsigned from beginning to end, and the handwriting was very unfamiliar, but the content of just one sentence showed that the letter was undoubtedly sent by Thassa.
A team of about a thousand people left the capital today and headed towards the west. (., Your support is my biggest motivation.)