Chapter 357: Unfinished-work
Translator: Meh/TransN Editor: - -
The second time it fired, Agatha covered her ears up in advance.
Then she saw an incredible scene.
There was no endless charging work that she expected. Gigantic as the long metal pipe seemed, it was actually not as heavy as it looked like. Every shot seemed to shake the earth up. However, its base remained absolutely still, as if the pipe and the base were not related at all. The long tube was quick and accurate each time in terms of backing and resetting, and this process did not even require human control—only three of the four operators were busy working, while the commander Iron Axe was just standing aside issuing orders.
Withdrew the metal stopper, slid off the copper shell, stuffed the new bolt, and then fired... and repeated the process. Agatha could feel the ground-shaking anger of the earth almost every ten breaths. At the same time, she also witnessed the soil and the snow columns kicked up one after another by the flat fire at a close distance—the prince did not lie that this weapon truly shot the bolt out at a speed that was impossible to capture with naked eyes. Judging from the interval between the firing time and the time when the snow columns were kicked up, it could be concluded that even a Transcendent would absolutely have no way to avoid the attack!
Agatha looked at this silver white long tube weapon and could not help being amazed.
If ... if Taquila was guarded by such a powerful weapon at that time, we should have been able to keep all the frightful demons below the city walls, and thereby prevented falling into the dilemma of attrition after the walls were destroyed. The war would perhaps not have gone that bad either.
"Was this weapon created by witches?" After quite a while, she swallowed a mouthful of saliva and asked quietly. From its bright and shiny appearance, this could absolutely not be handcrafted by mortals with iron hammers.
However, the prince's reply greatly surprised her.
"This is a masterpiece jointly created by witches and mortals," he smiled and said, "Witches took care of everything from smelting to casting the Longsong Cannon, whereas alchemists were responsible for shells that were used to fire. By the way, the witches who have been engaged in manufacturing are all what you call assistant witches except Anna."
Agatha felt that her long-standing idea was suddenly shaken. She thought she had been kind and generous enough to mortals, and for this she had been even marginalized by the Quest Society. However, it now appeared that what she had done was far from enough?
Is that true that the Union had been wrong all the way from the beginning? Did it mean that what the prince said, namely "Mortals can defeat demons" was actually right? ...
Yet if the cooperation between witches and mortals can generate such powerful strength, then why did the first Battle of Divine Will end up with a disastrous defeat?"
With questions continuously coming to her mind, Agatha started to feel very confused.
...
When the Longsong Cannons jetted out flames in succession, Tilly was greatly shocked as well.
Although she once stood on the top of the city wall and saw shells being fired at demonic beasts, the drawbacks of those firearms were also quite evident—It was hard to target at a long distance, and it could not shoot downwards if enemies drew close. It was only at somewhere in the middle that they were able to exert the optimum power. However, as the loading was sort of slow, it was very likely that swift hybrid demonic beasts may have already arrived at the foot of the city walls before they had time to ignite them.
Furthermore, in order to quickly load and shoot, five to ten people were required to run a mortar team. The weapon operation would be affected even a single step went wrong. Besides, it required someone to specially keep an eye on the combustion source upon ignition. When there was heavy rain, field artilleries probably would not be useless.
Nevertheless, the Longsong Cannon newly developed by Roland did not have the aforesaid deficiencies.
Charging from the rear of the cannon enabled the muzzle to stay lower than the breech, and thereby largely increased the efficiency of close range shooting. The firing rate was also multiplied several times, yet the staff was reduced to three people. Meanwhile, the cannon did not need to be lit by open fire, which meant that they could operate even in harsh weather. As its attacking scope was far greater than that of mangonels, it totally deserved what Roland referred to as "an epochal weapon".
Although they currently relied on witches' abilities to manufacture such weapons, Tilly believed that this was only temporary—Sylvie's observation could verify this: In the past, only Chief Knight was equipped with automatic weapons, but now each soldier had one in their hand. Anna only needed to create the facilities and equipment for the manufacturing of such weapons. Specific casting and assembling work could be independently completed by laborers.
From Ashes' and Anderlia's looks, one could tell that the Longsong Cannon was something that they could not possibly imagine.
It was nice to have such an ally, but as a brother, she felt he was even more distant.
She even had a feeling that Roland had gone far ahead of her.
This made Tilly a little frustrated.
If only he could be more frank.
...
Seeing the shells that were produced with great difficulty exhaust in a blink, Roland felt his heart was aching. In spite of this, he still had to put on an inscrutable look to cover up his unwillingness.
This was not a new cannon testing in a real sense.
In order to achieve a brilliant demo effect, he asked Iron Axe to borrow a group of elite artillery from the artillery battalion and had them start on simulative shooting practice a few days beforehand, during which they also carried out two rounds of ball firing practice. This was nothing but a force demonstration specially prepared for the witches.
The shooting went on well, and the result was also excellent—at least from Agatha's shocked look, one could tell that the performance of the cannons had blown her mind.
Nonetheless, to Roland, the firing performance of this Longsong Cannon was far from ideal.
Except for the sacred caliber of 152 mm, the rest of it was not even close to that of the real 152. With Anna's ability in precision machining, Lucia's in element purification and Sylvie's in crack detection, theoretically, he could manufacture modern cannons in a real sense, rather than a replica that only had a shooting range of seven to eight kilometers.
The key lay in details.
For now, it appeared that the setting of its chamber was too small.
In consideration of the weight of fixed ammunition, Roland decreased the volume of the chamber on purpose, which resulted in insufficiency in powder charge. Although it had a long barrel of 40 caliber, its shooting range was still unsatisfactory.
Another thing was propellant.
Since nitroglycerin was still in the process of testing, all that was loaded to the cannons was nitrocotton. This was also a reason why Roland felt it was a pity that the nitrocotton consumed by a few shells was enough to load thousands of bullets. In addition, these smokeless propellants had not been gelatinized, which further decreased the powder charge.
Finally, the shell itself was after all a larger version of the bullet. If the bullet had not been charged, it all relied on kinetic energy to create lethality. Missing the target meant zero harm. At this stage it could only be used to attack some slow enemies.
Overall, there was still a long way to go before they were able to barrage and cover every inch of the earth with cannon shells.
However, Roland felt he probably did not have as much time as he initially expected.
Ever since he knew that the transformation of the Magic Stone was originated from demons, he felt increasingly alert deep down inside.
"If demons also had their own scientific technologies, would they enjoy an advance by leaps and bounds in these technologies at some point?"