The weather grew colder day by day, and Roland woke up later and later.
As a member of the ruling class, he certainly had the right to sleep in. Especially with the large bed padded with three layers of velvet blankets, lying down felt like sinking into a soft embrace, further encouraging him to stay in bed.
By the time Roland finished washing up and walked into the office, Nightingale was already there waiting for him.
"Here's your breakfast. I ate half of it while it was hot, but now it's cold," she gestured with her chin at the plate of half-eaten bread on the desk, acting like she was the owner of the place.
"Has no one taught you to maintain humility in front of a prince?" Roland reached out and pushed the plate aside, sitting back down at his desk. "I remember you being quite courteous at the beginning."
He sighed inwardly. He really hadn't expected this person to be so familiar. If she wasn't with Anna, she'd be wandering around his office. Before, she would at least hide her presence, but now, as long as there were no outsiders, she would stroll around the office openly, not even wearing her hood.
"Like this?" She jumped off the desk, bowing in a flawless noble curtsy. "You've been getting up later and later recently. I thought the breakfast was just sitting there, so I helped you finish some of it. Your Highness," she moved closer to Roland, "you don't mind, right? Besides, you don't like those tedious formalities. I can tell."
Does this person have clairvoyance? Roland grumbled inwardly. She can even see that?
He sighed. "Do as you please, but next time you eat the breakfast, finish it all. I'll order another serving if I want to eat."
"Yes, Your Highness!" She giggled, picked up the plate, and skipped to the side.
Roland spread out a blank piece of parchment, preparing to complete the design drawing he had started yesterday.
If he wanted to defend Border Town, the battle after winter came couldn't be a pyrrhic victory. Although an army that hadn't seen blood wasn't a qualified army, Roland worried that if there were significant losses, this group of people trained in the short term wouldn't have the courage to stand on the city walls.
He needed epoch-making weapons to gain an absolute advantage over the demon beasts.
Without a doubt, that was the musket.
In fact, this era already had all the conditions necessary for the appearance of muskets. Alchemists often concocted something called snow powder, which was used for ceremonial salutes in the royal court. This stuff was just a huoyào with the wrong formula. It burned slowly, and when put into a copper tube, it mostly just made a bang.
In about a hundred years, the prototype of the musket—the matchlock gun—would appear. Because this firearm was cumbersome to operate, requiring two people to work together to complete the loading and firing, it was generally only used as a single-shot weapon. And its rate of fire and power were not even as good as those of a trained archer.
Roland certainly had no interest in re-enacting history. Like the steam engine, he could completely use the witches' abilities to create muskets with practical combat value.
"I looked at the orders on the table before you came," Nightingale said, swallowing the last piece of bread and asking casually, "Why are you planning to buy so much ice mang? It's winter now. If you want to drink chilled wheat beer, you can just leave it outside overnight, right?"
The upper nobility liked to use ice mang—that is, saltpeter—to make ice in the summer, and then cool milk, wine, or juice to enjoy. Thanks to the season, the price of saltpeter was very low right now.
"To make ice cheese. The temperature isn't low enough now. It needs to freeze," Roland bluffed.
Although the woman in front of him wasn't an enemy, she wasn't as familiar as Anna. Unlike the steam engine, the musket didn't have many technological barriers. Once it spread, it would obviously be detrimental to his farming plan. Before he understood her background, it was better to keep some things hidden. Thinking of this, he tentatively asked, "Besides searching for the Holy Mountain, does the Witch Cooperation Association also train assassins?"
"No, they're just a group of pitiful people gathered together for a dream," Nightingale waved her hand. "I only joined the Cooperation recently two niandeshi."
"In other words, you were working for someone else before?" Her excellent throwing skills couldn't be achieved without guidance and years of hard practice, Roland was very sure of that. "Besides me, are there others willing to take in witches?"
"Take in?" Nightingale's expression became a little strange. "How could that be... If he knew I would become a witch, he wouldn't even let me in the door. As for later, if I wasn't still useful to him, I'm afraid I would have been secretly executed long ago."
"Oh? Can you tell me about it?"
Nightingale smiled and shook her head, but this time the smile had some ambiguous emotions in it. "Your Highness, I'll tell you when the time is right. I know what you're worried about. Don't worry, I've been ziyou for five years and no longer need to work for anyone."
Negotiation check failed. It seems my charm attribute points aren't high enough... But her answer also confirmed his idea from the side—at least five years ago, she had done some shady things for someone. Fortunately, his use of Nightingale seemed to be only a matter of chance, unlike him, who planned to recruit witches on a large scale.
Roland didn't ask any further questions and continued to draw his drawings.
To his surprise, Nightingale, who usually liked to get close, became quiet at this moment, and only the sound of the burning fire in the fireplace remained in the room. By the time Roland looked up to stretch his sore neck, she was no longer in the office.
"She didn't even say goodbye before leaving," he muttered, folded the parchment in his hand, and put it in his close-fitting pocket.
After working for a few days, plus this drawing, the design—or rather, the replication—of the weapon was complete.
What he was planning to make was the famous flintlock musket. This weapon had been tested by history. The manufacturing difficulty was similar to that of the matchlock gun. It was loaded with huoyào at the rear and lead bullets at the front. Its rate of fire could be close to three rounds per minute, which was more than enough to deal with mutated beasts that had no intelligence.
Most animals can't climb walls, so the firing distance was approximately equal to the height from the top of the city wall to the ground, which was twelve feet. Even if you aimed with your feet at this distance, you wouldn't miss the target, and the initial velocity of the bullet would hardly decrease. As long as the demon beasts hadn't evolved a skin harder than steel, they could basically be killed with one shot.
The disadvantage of the flintlock musket was the manufacturing time. In the beginning, like the matchlock gun, it was hammered out by craftsmen, one hammer blow at a time. From the barrel to the trigger, the entire gun took about three months to make. The barrel was the biggest part, which had to be hammered from iron sheets into a round tube, sealed with iron powder, and then bored and rifled. Although no sophisticated instruments were needed, the craftsmen had to be skilled to make a qualified barrel.
This was why Roland wanted to build a steam engine first.
With a steam engine, he could use a steel drill bit to directly drill the barrel out of a solid iron bar. This would greatly increase the production speed and would not require skilled craftsmen to operate. All that was needed was a workbench that could fix the iron bar.