On the way to the prince with the ore, Lucia still heard the nightingale's words in her ears. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

I have to say that she was shocked by the calm attitude shown by the other party.

Although I don't quite understand the matter of feelings, the witch and the prince ...... It's impossible to be together at all, right? In this case, shouldn't you carefully hide your thoughts in the bottom of your heart and not let the other party know?

Moreover, why does she, even as a listener, feel red and embarrassed?

Standing in the office doorway and taking a deep breath, Lucia pushed the door in.

"Your Highness, I have brought the ore. ”

"Let me see," Roland yawned.

The ruler of the frontier town looked just as usual, sleepy-eyed as if he had just woken up from a nap, he leaned back in his chair, his demeanor was natural, and his tone was easy-going, not at all as sharp as the other nobles.

Lucia's inexplicable nervousness eased a lot, and she took out the ore particles found in the mines on the North Slope from her skin and placed them on her desk one by one.

After being decomposed by the ability, these particles all look similar, and the color is either silver or gray, and probably only the erudite Prince can tell what kind of ore it is.

I saw the prince frowning and looking at it for a long time, put them in the palm of his hand one by one, and carefully looked at the sunlight behind him, and finally waved his hand and said, "Ahem, I will hand over these ores to Mr. Schull to identify, you continue to go to the backyard of the north slope to practice your ability, if you don't understand, ask Anna for advice." ”

...... "Hey, don't you even know Your Highness?" Lucia hurriedly bowed her head and said, "Yes." ”

Just as she was about to leave the office, Roland stopped her again.

"By the way, you did well on this test, ranking ninth with a score of 68. It's not easy to have such a performance after learning from everyone for a month, and you have to keep it up. And ......," he paused, "and I hope Suzu will be with you in the next test." ”

"Yes!" Lucia replied excitedly.

After watching the little girl bow happily, Roland sighed as he looked at the metal particles on the table.

He was still too naïve to think that after decomposing into elemental matter, he might be able to find out what veins were contained in the North Slope Mine, but the fact made him understand the huge gap between mechanical engineering and geology - these stones will eventually divide into three or four metals, and the one with the largest amount of remains can be considered the ore of this type of metal, but they are almost the same in color and shape, such as iron, aluminum, magnesium, and potassium are all silvery-white metals in a high-purity state, and it is too difficult to distinguish them by the naked eye.

It is better to leave this problem to the chief alchemist to solve, after all, it is much more reliable to verify the properties of materials through chemical reactions than to guess by yourself.

With this out of the way, Roland pulled out a piece of paper and began to plan how to deal with this year's Demon Month.

Seeing that the summer is coming to an end, the three months of autumn are his final preparations, and in addition to fending off the invading beasts from the west, he must also keep an eye on Tefeco and the church in the east. Compared to the previous year, when he was overstretched, the population and income under his rule have increased significantly, the production of iron-making is gradually increasing, and there are more than a dozen witches, and he is completely sure that the western frontier will become an impenetrable copper wall.

Based on the experience of the previous year, the greatest threat to the city walls is undoubtedly the hybrid beast, especially when the enemy has a heavy carapace and the bullets are difficult to penetrate, either approaching and using explosives packs, or sending witches out of the city to fight, either the countermeasures will greatly increase the danger.

In addition, most of the enemies he faced were cavalry and infantry, and he had not yet seen the siege weapons of this era. If the opponent can set up a torsion trebuchet, or a more advanced counterweight trebuchet, he may run into a lot of trouble - after all, it is very inconvenient for the front-loading gun to shoot downward, and the muzzle needs to be raised again every time it is loaded, and the shells are easy to roll out of the breech.

It was imperative to develop a more powerful artillery.

Roland pondered, and listed the indicators he needed on a piece of paper.

First, it should have enough range and power to penetrate the carapace of a hybrid beast from a distance of a thousand meters, and secondly, it must be rear-loading ammunition that can freely adjust the pitch angle and have the ability to fire quickly. Finally, in order to reduce the repetitive development time, the design should consider the multi-purpose of one gun, that is, it can be used as a fixed battery to suppress the enemy, or it can be directly pulled to the ship and used as the main weapon of shallow water heavy gunboats in the future.

So it should be a large-caliber, long-barreled heavy artillery.

Roland's first thought was of the fifteen or sixteen-inch behemoths on the battleship, with a range of tens of kilometers, which could dig several meters deep in the ground with a single shot, but he quickly rejected this unrealistic idea. Although there is no problem in terms of processing, with the current level of materials in the border town, at least nine out of ten cannons will explode, and even if the pipe wall is thickened to more than one meter, the created things will lose their practical value because they cannot be moved.

At most, he can only produce wrought iron with high purity and steel with ordinary performance, and the plan is better to be conservative.

Roland finally set the caliber at the sacred number of one hundred and fifty-two millimeters.

The gun uses a vertical wedge bolt, similar to a door that can slide up and down, and when lowered, the barrel is exposed, the shell is loaded, and the lock is realized after the upward reset, so that the gunpowder gas erupts forward. Compared with the screw bolt and the wedge bolt, it has the fastest firing speed, and the principle is very simple, and its mechanical structure has long been familiar to him.

However, in order to achieve a rapid fire, the gun must also be equipped with a stationing and retreating mechanism, which is simply like two pumps, one filled with oil and one with a reentry spring or gas. The muzzle recoil is used to cushion the recoil, and the recoiling spring is used to complete the accumulation of force, pushing the barrel back into place after the shelling.

And finally, the shells.

Now that the Holy Cult Cannon was used, it was natural that he could no longer be satisfied with the clumsy shooting of solid iron balls and paper-wrapped shotguns - out of prudence, Roland decided to develop two fixed shells at the same time, one was an enlarged version of the bullet with a solid metal warhead, and the other was an explosive warhead with a trigger fuse, that is, a howitzer of later generations. After all, the latter has a certain technical difficulty, and the reliability of the fuse needs to be tested repeatedly, and there is no guarantee that the troops will be assembled before the Demon Moon, so it is necessary to produce the former first to solve the problem. Even solid warheads can be easily used against slow-moving thick-armored beasts and stationary siege equipment.

Of course, no matter what kind of shells, a lot of smokeless gunpowder is consumed. Before the large-scale production of the two acids, the new artillery could only be used as a special weapon, and it was impossible to achieve a hearty artillery cover.

Just then, the guard pushed the door open and walked in.

"Your Highness, there is a secret letter from the royal capital. ”

Roland put down the quill and opened the envelope. The letter was unsigned from beginning to end, and the handwriting was unfamiliar, but the content of a single sentence indicated that the letter was undoubtedly sent by Tasa.

A contingent of about 1,000 men left the royal capital today and headed west. (To be continued.) )