Graycastle, Neverwinter City.
Since the announcement of the coronation ceremony, Roland had entrusted all preparations to Barov, who had shown exceptional care, working diligently every day and even inviting Ms. Blanche, the etiquette officer from the old royal capital, to Neverwinter, clearly unwilling to allow even the slightest oversight.
As for himself, apart from occasionally checking the progress of the Shadow Film production, he dedicated the rest of his time to finalizing the internal combustion engine.
Due to discrepancies in the measurement systems between the two worlds, all prototypes needed to undergo stability testing. Coupled with the inconsistent quality of the distilled oil, design redundancy was also a necessary consideration. Lacking realistic calculation methods, he could only rely on physical adjustments.
Manufacture—experiment—scrap—improve—repeat. Roland felt as if he had returned to his campus days, shuttling between the castle and the North Slope mountainside, living a busy and fulfilling research life. The knowledge he hadn't touched in a long time became vivid again during these past two weeks.
Of course, Anna wasn't there back then to accompany him.
What was even more wonderful was that her enthusiasm for new things was no less than his own.
Whenever he saw her focused on assembling those precision parts, and the way she casually wiped away the sweat from her nose, leaving a streak of grease, Roland couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration—her desire for creation and knowledge seemed innate, as hot and pure as her flames.
This inner spirit transcended the realm of what mere appearance could describe, and he never grew tired of looking at it.
Whenever a decisive breakthrough was achieved, Anna's smile could almost be described as the blooming of all things—he even felt that the joy derived from creation far exceeded the desire to become queen.
She had never hidden her thoughts—as long as they could be together, she didn't care too much about that empty title.
Of course, Roland also knew that sometimes titles weren't meant to be shown to the other person, but rather to the public.
As long as humans remained social animals, this couldn't be avoided.
After marking a series of revised dimensions on the blueprint, he put down the quill pen and rubbed his sore neck.
If all went well, these design drawings in front of him were likely to become the final version—after all, a batch of prototypes had been running stably for several days, and the cumulative working time could already meet current usage needs.
As a second-generation power source, the principle of the internal combustion engine was not complicated; it could be considered an evolution of the steam engine. The first-generation power source used steam to drive the piston, and no matter how cleverly it was designed, energy loss during steam transmission was unavoidable. Therefore, people naturally thought of putting this force directly into the cylinder, which would greatly improve work efficiency, and thus the internal combustion engine was born.
Mixing oil and air and injecting it into the cylinder, causing it to burn violently, the expanded airflow would drive the piston to rotate, while simultaneously drawing new fuel into the cylinder—it sounded simple, but realizing it was a huge project. For example, steam engines had low sealing requirements; early products even had gaps between the piston and cylinder that could fit a finger, and felt and linen could be used to fill the gaps, but this was obviously not feasible for internal combustion engines.
Unlike steam engines that were powered externally, each cycle of the piston needed to be completed on its own. Therefore, poor sealing would cause the cylinder to misfire and stall.
In other words, only when material quality and processing technology reached a certain level could this simple principle be turned into reality. It was precisely because of this that the birth of the first internal combustion engine in history actually occurred decades later than the electric motor.
Roland designed two directions for the first-generation internal combustion engine: one was an inline cylinder, and the other was a radial cylinder. The former was crude and robust, made of cast iron, aiming for stability and mass production in factories. The latter, also known as a star engine, had a shorter crankshaft and a compact structure, making it very small and suitable for spacecraft use. It was much more refined than the former overall, made of aluminum alloy, and could only be processed by Anna for the time being.
The reason Roland dared to develop two sets of products during the research and development stage was simply because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. For these two time-tested works, the Dream World could find a lot of information, which was a much higher starting point than the fourth-generation steam engine.
In addition, the information revealed by the high-ranking demons forced him to speed up his pace.
Relying solely on ground defense, it was difficult to achieve complete protection against a large number of threats from the sky, as the recent expedition had already proven.
If the plan could be realized, humans would have the qualifications to compete with the enemy in the sky for the first time.
"Your Majesty, don't move."
Nightingale suddenly spoke.
Roland stopped immediately, while his eyes glanced backward.
Could there be... enemies?
Then he saw Nightingale come closer, reaching out to smooth the top of his head, followed by a slight pain, she held a strand of hair in front of him.
"Uh, is this a white hair?" Roland couldn't help but laugh.
Although gray hair was already light in color, these strands of hair were indeed noticeably white, having lost their luster from the roots.
"There's more," Nightingale groped for a while, "Have you been resting too little lately?"
"Have I?"
"You used to sleep in a lot in winter, but recently you've been getting up earlier than me, and you still enter the Dream World at night, which can't be considered real sleep, right?" she said incessantly, "Yawning from time to time is proof of fatigue. You're not even thirty yet, and you're getting white hair. This can't go on."
Looking at her earnest and admonishing appearance, Roland's heart couldn't help but lighten a lot, and even the fatigue from work faded a little. She really hadn't been affected too much. It seemed that the agreement had indeed played a crucial role.
"Don't worry, this is far from my limit. I've experienced this before."
"..." Nightingale looked skeptical, but she could obviously tell that it wasn't a lie.
Because he really wasn't lying, "Generally speaking, there will first be a long period of palpitations, as if there's a special emptiness in my chest; then I'll feel like I can't muster any strength in my whole body. That's when I need to be careful. If the reaction is strong, I'll cough non-stop, even cough up blood until—cough cough cough cough—"
Halfway through his sentence, he suddenly coughed violently.
"Hey, are you okay?" Nightingale immediately showed a nervous expression, patting his back, "Should I go call Nana Wawa?"
Roland took a deep breath, "No... I'm fine. I just choked on my saliva."
"Really?"
"Don't worry, I—"
He turned his head and couldn't help but freeze—the distance between them was so close that they were almost touching. As their eyes met, both of them involuntarily held their breath.
"Your Majesty," at this moment, the office door was pushed open, and Wendy walked in, "I have something I need to... um? What are you doing?"
"Me?" Roland blinked, only to realize that the person in front of him was already gone. He was holding a half-leaning posture, and even without saying it, he knew he must look quite strange.
"His Majesty is practicing gymnastics," Nightingale was now lying horizontally next to the coffee table, chewing on dried fish in a very leisurely manner, "Sitting for too long makes your whole body ache easily. He's just trying out the effects himself."
"I see," Wendy said thoughtfully, "Is this the gymnastics you mentioned before, which you're planning to promote in the academy? But... is it really effective to pose like this?"
"Uh, it's okay," Roland awkwardly recovered his posture. For some reason, he felt that the innocent-looking Nightingale was trying hard to hold back a laugh, "By the way, what did you want to say?"
"It's like this, Your Majesty," Wendy opened the record book in her hand, "According to the one-year record, today should be Lightning's coming-of-age day."