The injured soldiers were quickly healed by Nana Wak, and setting fractured bones was a piece of cake for her. After Roland sent the First Army back to camp, only the Chief Knight, the witches, and a few guards remained on the scene.
With a gloomy face, he walked to the corpse and ordered Carter to cut open the bullet wound on the back.
The blood hole was about half a finger deep. After cutting it open, they found that the lead bullet had shattered, and the trauma was basically the same as that of an ordinary person.
“What do you think?” he asked Carter.
Carter also looked a little frustrated, probably because he didn't expect to be tricked by someone who had never received swordsmanship training. “It's just power and speed. If I didn't want to see what he could do, I would have cut off his head with the first blow.”
“What if the opponent is a knight?”
“This…” Carter thought for a while, “If it's the kind of knight under the Duke, I might be able to barely cope, but if it's the Raging Wind Knight or the Steel Heart Knight of the Royal Capital Knights, I won't be able to parry it.”
Roland remained noncommittal. Everyone was dueling with skills and swordsmanship, and what Carter said might be right, but with equipment, the situation would change drastically. Assuming the prisoner was wearing heavy armor and an iron helmet, and wielding a two-handed greatsword during the test, he would definitely not be able to win easily.
The improvement brought by powerful strength is multifaceted—you can carry heavier armor and weapons, you can explode with faster speed, and you can carry out more sustained combat. Roland felt that he had to correct his previous thoughts at Longsong Stronghold. Adrenaline? No, this thing is much more terrifying than adrenaline. Hormones at most stimulate the potential of the human body, while the red pill has obviously made the prisoner break through his limits. Especially the speed and impact he showed when running were almost comparable to heavy cavalry.
The black pill was also surprisingly effective. A horizontal slash that almost cut off his ribs and a close-range gunshot could not stop him from acting. If it were an ordinary person, he would have lost his combat power due to pain long ago.
A fearless, powerful commoner was already so powerful, what about a group of well-trained soldiers? Thinking of what the High Priest said, Roland couldn't help but frown.
“Your Highness,” Nightingale said, “look at his skin.”
After the epidermis of the prisoner's hand faded from the initial red, it turned gray-white, and a large number of wrinkles appeared, like a snake shedding its skin. Roland poked it with the handle of his knife and found that there was no longer solid muscle under the skin, but an empty touch. After cutting it open, they found that the subcutaneous fat had all turned into mucus, and the muscles had also atrophied.
“This phenomenon is the same as after swallowing the God's Stone of Retaliation,” she looked at the prince, “the pill does contain stone components.”
“But just swallowing the stone won't produce the effect of increasing strength,” Roland thought, “how on earth did they make such an unscientific thing?”
The pill seemed to have strong side effects, and it was not yet clear whether it was permanent or could be recovered. Roland preferred the former. If it were the latter, this drug, which was similar to a mixed and enhanced version of mafei and adrenaline, could be completely called a war divine drug. As long as it was taken in batches according to the recovery time, it would not be surprising if the Church used it to unify the world.
Even if it lasts for a short time and has side effects, it is worth being vigilant, Roland thought. If the Church turned to support Tyfico or Garcia, he might have to face a kèyào army.
What worried him even more was that the Church was willing to sell this kind of thing. Hadn't they considered that after the unification of Graycastle, the new king would use the pills to bite them back? Graycastle could conscript more cannon fodder to the battlefield than the new and old Holy Cities. If they competed in consumption, the Judgment Army would only be consumed little by little.
Unless… they have stronger cards in their hands and don't care about such things happening at all.
Roland sighed when he thought of this. He originally planned to solve the problem of insufficient population and funds in the town by attacking Longsong Stronghold, and then focus on education, production, and agriculture, striving to expand Border Town into a city in a short period of time, and temporarily put aside weapon research. But now it seems that the construction of the army cannot be put down either. The First Army needs to expand its numbers, flintlocks still need to be produced, and new weapon research must be put on the agenda as soon as possible—such as breech-loading rifles and fixed cartridges, these two magical weapons.
The mechanical principle of breech-loading rifles is not difficult, and fixed cartridges can
be made of paper or repeatedly stamped copper sheets.
Only the primer used for fixed cartridges, Roland still had no clue. He only knew that the thing was called mercury fulminate. According to the literal meaning, the raw materials must include nitric acid and mercury. As for whether other things need to be added, he couldn't remember for a while. Moreover, he remembered that the production of this thing required humidity and temperature, and it was highly dangerous. If he was not careful, he would blow his fingers to the sky. After thinking about it, he decided to spend a lot of money to recruit a group of alchemists to build a laboratory in a corner of the town and let them figure it out themselves.
*******************
After dinner, Roland called Anna and Scroll into the office.
Now that Border Town's financial coffers were bulging, he would soon invest half of his assets in the big pit of compulsory education, which cost a lot of money and had slow returns.
Industrial society needs high-quality workers with basic cultural literacy, not illiterate people with brute force. If the popularization of education is not in place, the demographic dividend will only become a demographic burden.
In view of this, he planned to take some time out every night to give lectures starting today. When Scroll masters the basic knowledge of natural science, the town will be able to complete the first batch of literacy tasks.
As the future pioneer of education and all-round teacher, Roland naturally wanted to impart all his knowledge to Scroll. And calling Anna together was out of his preference.
Anna does not have the ability to remember everything she sees, but her desire for knowledge and her will to learn actively are the strongest among all the witches. He often saw her rummaging through the books in his cabinet. In half a year, he was afraid that the few books had been read by her. In addition, her acceptance speed of new things and her logical thinking methods are also rare in this era.
Taking the elementary textbooks of mathematics and physics conjured by Scroll, he began to explain today's teaching content.
From the most basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, to slightly more complicated equation calculations, Anna's understanding ability was obviously much better than Scroll's. When it came to physics, Scroll almost memorized what Roland said verbatim, and then slowly understood it. And Anna could also ask a few questions from time to time.
For example, what do elementary particles look like, why are the shapes of all things composed of elementary particles different, etc.…
Roland could answer some of them, and he couldn't answer some of them himself.
For example, what exactly is magic power.
He had to take out the guesses he had thought of before and explained them again, saying that magic power might be a kind of energy, similar to electrical energy and thermal energy, and only witches can use it at present. It is not ruled out that other ordinary people will be able to store and use magic power in some way in the future.
Anna showed a thoughtful expression.
When teaching women, especially outstanding women, time always flies by quickly. Unconsciously, the candle had been changed twice, and the new one was about to run out.
Suddenly, Roland heard a faint snoring sound. Nightingale was lying on the sofa chair and had fallen asleep unconsciously—perhaps such a course was like a lullaby to her. The mist was lifted, and her completely inelegant sleeping posture was exposed in front of the three people.
The prince shook his head with a wry smile and decided to end today's class here. He took off his coat and gently covered her, blew out the candle, and left with Anna and Scroll, who were trying to hold back their laughter. (。)