After everything was arranged, Lind, Lena, and Lauri began the final review.
“The range of the grenades is still too short. If we encounter a regular demon army, we might suffer losses.”
Lauri handed Lind a set of slightly damaged chainmail chest armor.
Lind weighed it in his hands, and indeed found noticeable scratches and damage on the armor. Even in a disadvantaged situation, those demons were still able to inflict harm on soldiers with superior equipment. Their physical qualities were indeed stronger than those of humans. No wonder the Lars Family found it so difficult to fight against the demon clan.
“Unless all our soldiers are like trained regular troops, fighting to the death without retreat, it will be hard to have the chance to throw grenades when the enemy gets close. If they are just militia who participate in daily training, they might end up throwing grenades as soon as the demon charges.”
Although they had achieved a great victory this time, Lind had to admit that luck played a significant role; the enemy had indeed underestimated them and provided Graywhite Territory with plenty of opportunities.
Lind acknowledged Lauri’s point and nodded, saying, “I never intended to use grenades as a key weapon. Remember the cannons developed in the laboratory? That should be the true power for the battlefield in the future.”
“If we can solve the mobility issue, that would be even better.”
Lauri shrugged, but he said it casually; regarding the power of cannons, he had become somewhat numb to it. Unfortunately, there were still some small issues. They’re fine for defense, but when taken out to attack, they became somewhat cumbersome.
At that moment, the cannon at the testing grounds fired as well, with the dark cannonball flying through the ranks of pure white knights in an elegant arc.
Of course, this wasn’t a real attack on the knights around Lena; Lind wanted to test how much damage the current territory’s cannons could inflict on the elite soldiers of this world.
The results from the test caused Lind some concern. Although according to the knights’ descriptions, even if they were well-prepared defensively, no one would dare to claim they could withstand a cannon fire directly. The specifics would depend on the skill differences among the knight professions.
However, when it came to the shockwaves from the explosion, it was hard to impact the knights’ charges.
Seeing the explosion power of the cannons for the first time was quite frightening, but after getting used to it, the knights even started dozing off in the explosion range.
This was also one of the drawbacks of cannons; they hit by chance. While they might be very effective against regular troops, once faced with elite professionals, they often didn’t have a significant effect after the initial killing.
Although Lena had told Lind that there were very few armies capable of charging while withstanding cannon fire, and that not every army had all elite professionals in luxurious gear, as long as they brought out the cannons, they could likely make over eighty percent of the nobles lose their bearings.
However, Lind’s fear of insufficient firepower struck again; the current level of cannonry simply did not provide Lind with a sense of security.
The only comforting thing was that the manufacturing and research of cannons was progressing quickly.
After all, unlike other predecessors who had crossed over, Lind didn’t need to smelt steel first to create cannons, nor did he have to figure out how to increase furnace temperatures. Even without using complex magic arrays, relying on the ordinary runic formations and the furnace temperature provided by brute force could allow Lind to work with wrought iron.
The main problem at present was a concerning yield rate, and there was still room for optimization in terms of weight, but it was ample for defense.
On the flip side, the development of firearms had hit a snag. Even though Lind provided basic ideas and had already come up with a workable firearm, the key to modern firearms lay in granular smokeless powder.
Although Lind had watched ancient videos on how to granulate gunpowder, he wasn’t particularly interested at that time, and the most crucial point was that he truly had no idea how to make smokeless powder. Of course, if he did know, this book would probably be banned.
The difference between hand-crafted gunpowder and modern gunpowder was still too great.
Unlike cannons, firearms couldn’t make use of brute force; if the gunpowder issue couldn’t be resolved, one could only continue to trial and error. In fact, the gunpowder issue also affected the development pace of cannons, leading to the current firearms being quite primitive—at least, that’s what Lind thought.
“Bang!”
Lena tried firing a firearm that the rune craftsmen had created based on Lind’s descriptions, somewhat resembling a 19th-century firing gun, skipping the flintlock stage, but it was currently not capable of mass production.
The bullet struck the chainmail, and judging from the straw behind the armor, the person who received that shot would likely not feel great, but it wasn’t fatal.
Lauri picked up the chunk of chainmail that Lena had shot, falling silent. It should be noted that the current chainmail in Graywhite Territory had undergone basic enchantments. Even enchanted armor couldn’t completely block the damage from firearms; this was no longer a matter of ordinary mechanics but rather the level of magical artifacts.
“Boss, are you planning a rebellion?”
Lauri crept up next to Lind, half-jokingly confirming with him.
“Not enough.”
Lind shook his head and simply said three words.
Lauri found himself at a loss for words. Was this power really not enough? Was their lord actually preparing to rebel? Lauri’s inner turmoil began.
Meanwhile, Lena continued to test-fire a few rounds and seemed to think of something as she started to disassemble the firearm on the spot to consider.
Lind gestured to Lena’s knight, Susan, to serve as a target for him. Lind wanted to see how firearms would perform against the elite troops of this era.
Susan was somewhat reluctant at first, but finally put on her helmet and stood not far away.
Bang bang bang!
Lind didn’t have the shooting talent that Lena possessed. It took him a while to get accustomed to the feel before he managed to hit the enchanted armor of Susan. However, Susan showed little reaction.
As she herself put it: it felt like a pebble had been tossed.
In reality, firearms had already transcended the whole era. Against chainmail and plate armor, they were certainly formidable, but perhaps due to the unique enchanting mechanism of this world, the power of the bullets was greatly reduced.
Originally, these enchantments were intended to prevent knights from being easily staggered by armor-breaking weapons such as hammers and flails during close combat. Therefore, the enchantments were primarily specialized in dissipating impact force. However, unexpectedly, they ended up defending against firearms that hadn’t even been questioned.
The higher the enchantment, the less damage the firearm could inflict. In this world where high-level knights were all hardy fighters, conventional kinetic weapons had limited effectiveness against fully armed knights. It was difficult for firearms that hadn’t even reached modern weapon standards to break through the front ranks of knights, although they could still serve as special attacks against fragile mages.
After all, mages were commonly known to have high offense but low defense; magical defenses primarily existed to actually protect against magic. Gunpowder, lacking magical responses, could easily evade the detection of mages. If aimed closely, there was a chance it could truly take down a fragile mage in one shot.
However, these were all things Lind had heard from Lena. The Lars Family was most famous for producing knights and looked down on spellcasters, sometimes even despising them.
If Lauri nearby knew what Lind was thinking, he would definitely think Lind had lost his mind. Elite professionals were not as easy to bypass as cabbages, were they?
But it was still too early to say these things. After all, the current firearms were essentially crafted through alchemy, involving complex and time-consuming steps, and could only serve as experimental prototypes.
The technological level in the territory could only be described as existing in a “sky attic”.
The normal order for research and development should be to first create a magical steam engine or magical capacitor, then make industrial lathes, and only afterward develop weapons for mass production. But Graywhite Territory still didn’t have lathes.
Although Lind had the awareness of standardization—like being able to directly replace the damaged parts of chainmail—there was truly no way to handle a more complex firearm. He could only rely on skilled craftsmen to handcraft it. Lind could only provide the dimensions and let the craftsmen do their best.
Lind was aware that lathes were industrial machines, but he had only seen CNC machines, so he could only start researching the most primitive pedal lathes in the territory.
Why pedal? Because Lind had no clue about how to make a magical array serve as a stable power source or which magical array could be used as a power source. Lind wasn’t originally trained in engineering and had no idea how to modify a steam engine to be magically powered or to produce a magical engine directly in one go. It was simply scratching his head.
Fortunately, he understood the principles. Perhaps in the future, similar things could be manufactured in the territory, but currently, there was a shortage of manpower, so Lind could only focus all his energy on weapon production.
Meanwhile, Lena, without Lind knowing when, had dismantled most of the firing gun and, with her emerald eyes sparkling, asked Lind, “Brother, do you think we could use this device to launch magic?”
Everyone present fell silent, and Lind suddenly felt enlightened. Yes, he seemed to have been bound by experience before, considering any difficulties through the lens of prior experiences. Compared to that, Lena’s out-of-the-box thinking seemed more like that of a transmigrator.
“Yes! If we could install the magic trigger onto the firearm to activate the magical arrays inside it, wouldn’t that be a magical version of a firearm? Lena, are you a genius?”
Ordinary firearms and magical firearms could even be interchanged. Magic could be directly applied against tough knights, while ordinary firearms could be used against mages who liked to use magical shields. Ordinary firearms could also cooperate with magic for firepower suppression.
Lind complimented Lena without reserve, making her feel a bit shy as she scratched the back of her head, while also awkwardly saying, “But brother, doing that would require simplifying the magical arrays to the utmost. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that alone. Moreover, the angle and force of the spell’s launch would need to be readjusted significantly.”
These few things could be seen as needing to invent a spell.
Lind nodded, adding, “Not only that, but charging is also a problem. This is a weapon; it can’t operate like those production lines where one adjusts while using it.”
In summary, while this project had great prospects, it required significant investment, especially from professionals who had genuinely studied the magical system.
Lena’s knights were somewhat unreliable in this regard, as most of them, like Lena, practiced ancient-style casting—relying entirely on instinct.
Compared to Lena, they had undergone less systematic learning; most of them learned through combat experience and were unfamiliar with spells outside knight magic, lacking computational capacity.
Lind thought for a moment, wondering if there were any other professionals in the territory who could be recruited as laborers; it would be best if they were from an academic background.
