357 – Not a Finished Product

Disclaimer:

I don’t guarantee a 100% perfect translation. Feel free to correct me in the comments.

After going to the doctor today, since i was still feeling bad, i got prescribed some pills and now i feel way better. It was a pretty contrasting change from being unable to focus on doing pretty much anyting to feeling motivated again.

I hope i can pick up the pace now.

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The second time it opened fire, Agatha covered her ears ahead of time.

She saw an inconceivable scene.

She did not expect that under the heavy load of power, the seemingly huge metal pipe still showed a completely inconsistent lightness. Every time it shot the earth shook, but the base of the weapon remained motionless, as if the two were not connected. The long tube just recoiled and went back to its original position in a quick and accurate manner. All these procedures didn’t even require the work of all four operators, only three of them were busy and the fourth one, called Iron Axe, was merely standing at a side issuing orders.

Open the back metal cover, remove the copper shell, insert the new projectile, and open fire… Then repeat again. Agatha could feel the thunderous, earth-shaking roar almost every ten breaths. And at this close range she could even witness the rising pillars of snow and dirt, so the prince did not deceive her, the weapon indeed shot the projectile. Also, the speed was too fast to catch it with the naked eye, judging by the time from the explosion to the rising of the snow pillar, even a Transcendent could not evade this attack!

Agatha stared at this silvery-white long tube weapon, thinking of it as outrageous.

If… If Taqila had such a powerful weapon, we might’ve been able to stop all the feared Devils under the city wall. We could’ve avoided the destruction of the city walls, and without falling into a battle of attrition, the war could have moved in a different way, not ending so badly.

“Is this a weapon made by a witch?” After some time, she swallowed saliva and asked in a low voice. Judging by its shiny and polished appearance, this was obviously not the work of ordinary people with their hands and hammers.

But the reply of the prince surprised her.

“A masterpiece of the work of mortals and witches,” he smiled, “from the smelting to the casting of the stronghold-type artillery cannon’s pieces, it all was the work of witches. But the credit for the shell used for firing goes the alchemists. By the way, in addition to Anna, the rest of the witches participating in the manufacturing process are your so-called support witches.”

Agatha suddenly felt a crack spreading in her previous mindset. She always thought she was tolerant enough in the way she treated ordinary people, to the point she received scorn from the Exploration Society. But looking back to it now, did she really do enough?

Were the ways of the Federation wrong the whole time? What the Prince said was right… Mortals can defeat the Devils.

But if the cooperation of witches and ordinary people can give birth to something this powerful, why did the first War of Divine Will ended up with a crushing defeat?

This question remained in her mind, making Agatha feel extremely confused.

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As the artillery cannon continued to spew flames, Tilly felt similarly shocked.

Although she had seen the scene of the city wall cannons firing at the demonic beasts, the flaws of those weapons were very obvious from the beginning. At long range it was very hard to hit a target, and if the enemy approached, the cannon was unable to attack downwards. Only at a medium range, the weapon could exert its best power. However, the loading speed was low so when dealing with agile demonic beasts, the cannon would probably haven’t fired when the enemy already arrived at the foot of the wall.

In addition, in order to quickly reload it, the artillery group needed from five to ten people to operate. And if one person failed, it would affect the whole process. Also, the ignition of the cannon required for someone to look after a fire, so if rain came, the field artillery might perhaps not play any role.

But Roland’s newly-developed stronghold-type artillery no longer had any of those shortcomings.

Making it reload from the back end allowed the muzzle to be lowered below the cannon’s tail, considerable increasing its short range. The firing rate increased more than double, but the personnel instead decreased to three operators. Without the need for an open flame to ignite the firing mechanism, it could be used in bad weather, plus the range was far greater than trebuchets. It was fully worthy of the words “Era-changing weapon” that Roland said.

Even though it required the ability of witches to produce, Tilly believed this was only a temporary issue. The reports from Sylvie could be used as proof: Once, only the chief knight was equipped with a revolver rifle, but now it was handed over to every soldier. Anna only needed to create a batch of equipment specialized in producing this weapon, then the casting and assembling could be made by the workers themselves.

Seeing the expressions in Ashes’ and Andrea’s faces, the stronghold artillery was similarly an unimaginable thing for them.

It’s a good thing to have such a reliable ally, but as a brother it feels like he’s becoming more distant.

She even felt like Roland had gone way far ahead of herself.

This made Tilly feel slightly at a loss.

If only he could be more honest.

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Roland saw the shells he made with great pains being consumed in the blink of an eye, filling his heart with pain. Even so, he had to maintain a poker-face, concealing his feelings, keeping any of them from showing.

This was not the real firing test of the new artillery cannon in the truest sense.

In order to smoothly achieve a good demonstration effect, he had Iron Axe pick out a team from the cannon teams to form an elite artillery team, and had them perform dry shooting exercises for several days. During this period, they also carried out two rounds of live ammunition practice. But this time, it was specially done to display its power to the witches observing.

The shooting process went very well. The result was ideal, and at least from Agatha’s shocked face, the artillery performed beyond her imagination.

But for Roland, the shooting performance of the stronghold artillery cannon was far from counting as acceptable.

Apart from being 152 mm like the sacred caliber, the other parts were far from the real 152. With Anna’s precision processing ability, matching the element purification of Lucia, and finally having Sylvie detect any flaws; in theory, he could make a modern piece of artillery in the truest sense, instead of a 7-8km range imitation.

The key was in the small details.

At the moment, the barrel chamber was set too small.

Considering the problem of fixing the projectile’s weight, Roland intentionally narrowed the volume of the barrel chamber, causing the powder charge to be insufficient. Although it had a slender tube of 40 times its diameter in length, the firing distance was still not quite ideal.

Another point was the propellant.

Because nitroglycerin was still in the trial phase, the shells were completely filled with nitrocellulose, which also was the cause of Roland’s distress since it was enough to fill thousands of bullet rounds. In addition, these smoke-less propellants had not been treated by the gelling processing, which in return, further reduced the range.

The final shell itself was just an enlarged version of a bullet. The warhead was not loaded, the lethality entirely depended on the kinetic force, so missing the target meant zero damage. At this stage, it could only be used to attack slow moving targets.

In short, if he wanted to do a covering barrage and have the artillery wash over the battlefield, he still had a long way to go.

However, Roland felt that the time might not be as abundant as he first expected.

Since discovering the magic stones were unexpectedly made by the Devils, a sound of warning inside him grew more and more intense.

If the Devils also have their own science and technology, can they show a similar technological progress, increased by leaps and bounds?

 

 

 

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