“That’s what I wanted to hear. Although there are nearly six hundred feet between the Redwater River and the foot of the Northern Mountain Slope, we could lure them to attack a specific area which we prepared beforehand.”
“You mean by using traps?” asked Iron Axe.
“Yes we could use traps, but not the kind commonly used by hunters. Common traps are used to capture prey by camouflage, but I intend to do the opposite. We will set up roadblocks in the direction away from the city walls, such as fences, slopes, and ditches, forcing these mindless demonic beasts to walk around them. Continuous barriers will guide the prey to a designated place, at which we will place our main defense.” when Roland came to this point he directly looked at Iron Axe,” As for how to lure these monsters, I think nobody knows more about it than you. “
After a short moment, Iron Axe answered, “It’s no problem to guide them, the wolves have hydrophobia, the wild boars have photophobia, and the other demonic beasts also have their own fears. But Your Highness, this way we would need to face all the evil beasts at one small point, will that not be too dangerous? “
“If we only rely on pikes and bows, that would be true.” Roland took a deep breath and said confidently, “But now we have a new weapon!”
When it was time for the prince’s departure, he once again came to Van’er, “Your observations were very good, what’s your name?”
“Va-Van’er, Your Highness.”
“I will propose for you to be a vice captain for one of the teams to my chief knight, Mr. Van’er, I’m very satisfied, good work.”
Next to the house for the production of cement, Roland built a new house. It was for the production of snow powder — or more precisely, gunpowder.
It only had one big room which had an area of three hundred square meters and only one entrance. He also implemented the most stringent security regime. Two knights were always guarding the door, and anyone who wanted to enter were required to register first and go through body search, looking for something which could light a fire. Indoors. any source of fire was prohibited, so it was only possible to work during the day. In order to even prevent Nightingale from sneaking into the room, he hung up a cotton curtain above the door.
“This is what you called the new weapon?” Carter was summoned to take a look at the new invention, he took the powder in his hand and took a sniff, “This is not snow powder, right?”
Perhaps Iron Axe didn’t know what snow powder looked like, but Carter had often participated in royal ceremonies, so he naturally knew how snow powder looked. It was the alchemical workshop’s finest creation. The recipe was a secret to outsiders, but if the prince desired to know it, he would certainly be able to get it.
“It’s snow powder, but not entirely,” said Roland, “It’s the alchemic workshop’s last product improvement, I call it gunpowder.”
Gunpowder can be described as a product that was perfect for mass production. It didn’t need any exotic materials. As long as you had charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter and mixed them at a ratio of 1:1:7.5 it could be produced without any technical barriers.
In this time period, snow powder was mixed into a ratio of 3:1:1 and it also sometimes contained some strange materials (such as mercury, butter, honey, etc.) which were sometimes mixed into it at a 2 % ratio, but with the result of slower combustion and less gas release this held no advantage for the gunpowder. However, Roland knew that the alchemist would constantly test other ratios, and he predicted that they would only need 30 years until a recipe close to the original gunpowder’s recipe would appear.
In the history of Roland’s former world, gunpowder was invented a long time before the production of the first cold weapon. The reason for this was because the recipe and the corresponding weapon manufacturing process didn’t work in unison.
However, what many people ignored was the fact that one did not need to rely on guns, the gunpowder itself was a very formidable weapon.
Chapter 34 Trial explosion
At the beginning, when Roland started to build the cement creation house, he had already created a follow-up plan for future building projects. They were mostly centered on the northern mining area so that they could be easily guarded together — the construction of the brick cottage with a wooden ceiling was very fast, and didn’t affect the building of the city wall.
The vast amount of purchased saltpeter from Willow Town was transported to a nearby warehouse storage, and only helpers for grinding or weighing the saltpeter were allowed to enter the warehouse. The same procedure was implemented for the charcoal and sulfur as well, and the entire handling process for each of the materials was done by an entirely different group so that the risk of leaks was as minimized as possible.
Roland weighed out twenty pounds of already produced gunpowder and slowly poured it into a good cut-out bag of sheepskin.
This gunpowder had to go through a strict processing plan. It had to be compacted, air dried, broken down with a hammer, screened, and filtered. If all of the powder was a uniform granular size, only then was it guaranteed to have an outstanding combustion performance. To prevent accidents produced by static, the entire production process was done without any metal products. Instead, they used ceramic and wood products.
After pouring all of the gunpowder into the sheepskin, Roland stacked three more layers of sheepskin on top of the bag and then tied them together with a rope..
“That’s all?” asked Carter. Can this packet in front of him be called a weapon? Although it’s a modified snow powder product, with sound alone, you can only scare someone, right? A peasant who has never been on a battlefield can affect a battle too, even if only a little. However, any trained soldier or mercenary would never look at them or respect them. But… the chief knight carefully reconsidered once more, the recent doings of His Highness seemingly had no reason at all, but the effects were always very alarming. If the demonic beasts have similar intelligence to that of an average animal, maybe this stuff can be unexpectedly useful? For example, I heard that a loud explosion could frighten animals which would then flee, thereby reducing the pressure on the defender’s side.
Roland gave the wrapped-up gunpowder to Carter, and then he took a pouch with tools to burn the powder, “All right, we have to go outside of the city wall. Iron Axe should already be waiting for us.”
To the west, about two miles from the city walls and located between the forest and the mountains was their designated testing area.
Iron Axe and several other hunters had been waiting here for a long time. In addition to Iron Axe himself, the others were the best local archers. When they had heard that the tasks given to them were from His Royal Highness, they couldn’t wait and immediately followed Iron Axe.
At present, everyone knew that the new lord of Border Town was never stingy regarding the remuneration of his employees.
According to Roland’s orders, they built a fence out of wooden poles and ropes, which were surrounded the whole testing area so that no one would trespass it. In the direction of the city wall, he had arranged his knights to prevent anyone from accidentally approaching.
Roland checked all the preparations once more and then asked, “Have you brought the prey with you?”
“Your Highness, it is here,” Iron Axe dragged a cage with him and stepped forward. Carter, seeing the cage, noted that it was filled with a few pheasants and rabbits.
“Good, put a tied-up animal every five steps away from the center, until you reach thirty steps from the center “
Carter unnoticedly shook his head and tried to propose an improvement, “Your Highness, I am afraid that you chose the wrong animals. You can’t test the effect with them, they are very timid and only a little sound needed before will flee. So if you can scare them, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be able to scare the demonic beasts.”