The other expanded into a ball, and then turned into its human form, “Maggie, you actually wanted to eat a bird!” the woman complained.
“I have already eaten a lot of them from before.” Lightning just shrugged her shoulder in response instead. She reached out her hand to pull Maggie up. All of a sudden, a bead rolled out from within Maggie’s bosom, bouncing on to the ground twice, only to fall into a small pit. When Lightning quickly went over to pick up the bead, wanting to hand it back to Maggie, but found that the glass-like red bead with some strange letters engraved on it, seeming very familiar to her.
After frowning for a moment, she grasped a string around her neck, and slowly pulled a dark red pendant from her chest. Placing both of it into her hands to compare them, she discovered that the pattern on them was exactly the same.
“What?” Shocking Maggie who was looking over her shoulder from the back. “Why do you have a trace?”
“A trace … What’s that?”
“You don’t know what it is? This thing can respond to a magic stone, allowing the holder of the stone to locate your position.” Maggie suddenly stopped, “No, why should I even tell this to you? Just now, you wanted to eat me!”
“Do you have such a magic stone?”
“There are,” Maggie nodded her head.
“So, can you find my position?” Lightning asked curiously.
“No, it must match the magic stone to be able to locate the corresponding mark.” She replied very agilely this time, “and only us witches can use this. If you don’t know this already, how were you even able to get one?”
“It was my dad who gave it to me,” Lightning returned the bead to Maggie. “What about you?
“I won’t tell you,” Maggie answered grudgingly, but then she stared curiously at the other girl. “You belong to the Witch Cooperation Association, and Ashes said, that you do not want to leave Border Town.”
“You belong to her side?” Lightning curled up her lips in disdain, “And I thought you were a new witch who was attracted by the rumor. Us witches here have a good life, why should we leave?”
“Because of the danger ah, the church may come here at any time, bringing their Army over with them.”
“An explorer will never shrink away from something because it is too dangerous,” When Lightning spoke out aloud, her face turned slightly red, well… the Stone Tower doesn’t count. It is only a matter of time before I visit the ruin again, and by then I must be the first to enter the basement.
“Furthermore, His Highness Roland Wimbledon has a lot of incredible invention, as long as you have seen them once, you will immediately become attracted to them. One can turn a fist-sized ball into a weapon, and when someone is hit by it, they are torn into pieces.”
“Really? Can you take me to see them?” Maggie exclaimed in admiration.
“That won’t do, unless you join the Witch Alliance, and become one of us.”
“But I have to go back with Ashes…” Maggie hesitated.
“Then you can come back later, ah,” Lightning continued her coaxing. “Here you can have a lot of fun. We have machines which move on their own using heated water, there are also weapons which are able to attack over a distance of a thousand meter, uh… are you asking yourself how far a thousand meters is? All in all, it is very far, if you look at people from one kilometer away, they will seem to be about the size of a tree branch.”
Making many gestures with her hands and feet, “and there are even many more possibilities to go play within the Concealing Forest. Things like poking honeycombs, gathering so many mushrooms that you couldn’t even count all of it, and hunting birds and the wild boars are all so very interesting. Peeling off their fur and roasting them over the campfire. You only have to sprinkle a little salt and pepper on them, and you can relish and eat as much tasty meat as you would ever want.”
“Really?” Maggie couldn’t help but start licking her lips.
“Why should I lie to you,” Lightning hooked her arm around Maggie’s shoulder, “On the other hand, we might even go hunt a bird and roast it, right now!”
Chapter 166 On the eve of the decisive battle
On the fifth day after their agreement, Roland had finally readied all the raw material he needed for the production of the gun-cotton.
He had made some serious mistakes in the beginning with the electrolysis of the salt water, he wanted to take advantage of the left-over copper strips from Anna’s bullet production and use them as electrodes, but the final result was that the electrodes had dissolved in the water, giving birth to the possibility of forming chlorine during the electrolysis. With this the whole basin of saltwater was wasted.
The electrolyte was generally saturated salt water, but the problem was that the salt in this era was not as cheap as the price of cabbage. Therefore, when the water was drained and Roland detected that the copper ions had mixed into the brine, turning it also into waste. Roland felt as if he was throwing away gold royals instead of just salt. In the end, he was able to solve this problem by replacing the electrodes with carbon.
By adding caustic soda to the boiling water to dislodge the oil, he obtained an absorbent cotton gauze. He then later brought over the leftover caustic soda back to the chemistry lab.
The esterification of the gun-cotton was the most important step in the production process, but he didn’t exactly know how he could achieve this. Roland only knew that he would have to soak the gauze in the mixed acid and when the nitrification process was complete, he could then take it out.
Whether it was the solution ratio or the duration of the reaction, he didn’t know anything about this. So with this in mind, Roland ordered Kyle to form groups and run some experiments. Using hourglasses to observe the time, the pieces of cotton gauze were repeatedly dipped into the mixed acid and rinsed with water. At the last step they were soaked in a sodium hydroxide solution to remove the excess liquid acid. Afterward, the still wet products were then shipped back to the castle, where they got air-dried by Wendy.
The result was that the best esterification process would be achieved by using the highly concentrated fuming acid, and with it, most of the trial product could also be quickly ignited. In the end to achieve the best effect with the gun-cotton would be to use the ratio of one part nitric acid and two parts sulfuric acid.
When the rough formula was finally calculated, the laboratory would then start with the mass production and immediately after the soaking and washing process was completed would it be brought away by the First Army. In the end, even the Chief Instructor did not know what exactly it was that they had actually produced.
The dry gauze was cut into tiny fingernail sized pieces by the maidservants and afterward were stored in separate boxes, they were then sent to the North Slope Mountain, there in the backyard they would complete the final loading phase.
In the absence of machines, the process could only be done by using basic manpower. A bunch of guards would have to sit down, dip the gun-cotton in the adhesive and gently push it into the bottom of each cartridge, this way sealing the ignition hole. They then carefully poured in the gunpowder with a funnel, compacting it as far as possible and making sure that each cartridge received and equal share of the propellant.
The final step was to place the warhead on top of the cartridge. The warheads and cartridges were made by Anna who had to ensure that they would fit together so perfectly, that only a few gentle taps with a hammer were required to seal them.
The efficiency of production was very low, in one day they weren’t even able to produce more than 100 bullets. Then on the sixth day, Carter could finally start using the new weapon. Since the Chief Knights body fulfilled every qualification that was required to be an excellent marksman, his hit rate had been greatly improved after repeated practice over the last few days. Compared to the performance he had shown right after Roland introducing the weapon to him, it was like the difference between heaven and earth.