Chapter 129: The Course Reopening
Translator:Transn
Editor:Meh
The wounded soldiers were quickly healed by Nana, and her ability to rejoin fractures was put to good use. Roland sent the First Army back to the camp, and the only ones that remained at the scene were the chief knight, the witches, and several guards.
He walked to the corpse with a gloomy face and commanded Carter to cut the back of the corpse open on where it was hit by the bullet.
The hole was about a finger and a half deep, where the bullet was found broken and the level of injury was basically the same as a normal human.
"What's your opinion on that?" Roland asked Carter.
Carter also seemed a little upset, for he probably did not expect to have someone who never received a sword training to use such a move. "It was simply empty strength and speed, if it was not for our observation, I would have cut his head off on my first attack."
"What if he were a knight?"
"This..." Carter contemplated. "If he were a knight under the duke, I probably could still barely cope with it, but if it was the Frostwind Knight and the Steelheart Knight from the king's city's knightage, I probably couldn't measure up."
Roland declined to comment as they would be relying on sword techniques and skills, and perhaps what Carter said was true, but with the armors, the situation would be worse. Assuming the prisoner was wearing heavy armor, with a helmet and a two-handed sword, Carter absolutely could not win so easily.
The power enhancement was multifaceted. They could carry more heavy armor and weapons, and enhance the speed as well as being able to last longer in combat. Roland thought that he had to correct the idea he had before in Longsong Stronghold. "Adrenaline? No, this is much worse than adrenaline, for hormones could only stimulate the potential of the human body. However, the red pill apparently had made the prisoner break through his limitation. He was almost comparable to the heavily-armed cavalry, especially the speed and momentum he showed when he was running."
The effect of the black pill was equally amazing. He was almost cut in half across his ribs, and even after being shot at close range, they could not stop him. If it were the ordinary people, he should have lost combat effectiveness due to the pain.
A civilian who had no fear of pain had become so powerful. What if it were a group of well-trained soldiers? Thinking of the words of the high priest, Roland could not help but frown.
"Your Highness," Nightingale said, "Look at his skin."
After the initial red color on the skin of prisoner's hand faded, it became pale and crumpled, like a molting snake. Roland poked it with a knife handle and noticed that there was no solid muscle under the skin and it felt empty. After cutting it open, he noticed that the subcutaneous fat had turned into mucus and the muscles had also shrunk.
"The effect is the same as after swallowing the God's Stone of Retaliation," she looked at Prince Roland and said, "The pills indeed contain the ingredients of the stone.
"Simply swallowing the stone would not produce the effect of power enhancement," Roland said while thinking, "How did they come out with such unscientific stuff?"
The pills seemed to have a strong side effect, and it was not clear whether it was permanent or it could be restored. Roland thought it was more inclined to the former. If it were the latter, the drug similar to an enhancer of mixed morphine and adrenaline would completely be considered as the magical war potion, as long as it was distributed according to the recovery time, it would not be a surprise for the church to use it to dominate the world.
Even if it were for a short duration and there were side effects, but it was also enough for Roland to be vigilant, Roland thought. If the church turned to support Timothy or Garcia, he would have to face an army of drug addicts.
It was even more disturbing for Roland that the church was willing to sell such thing without considering that the new king would attack them using the pill after the Graycastle reunification. Graycastle could easily recruit cannon fodders on the battlefield quickly as compared to both the old and new Holy City. If they joined forces, the Judgement Army would only be slowly exhausted.
Unless... they had a stronger card in hand and did not care about anything like this.
Roland sighed, he had intended to attack Longsong Stronghold to solve the problem of population and the lack of funding before focusing on the education, production, and agriculture in order to extend Border Town into a city within a short period. He thought he would be able to put aside weapons research for the time being. However, now it seemed that the army construction could not be set aside, the First Army would have to continue to expand and the production of flintlock guns would have to be continued as well. The new weapons research would also have to be listed on the agenda as soon as possible. They needed to work on breechloaders and fixed charge cartridges.
The mechanical principle of the breechloaders was not difficult, for it could be installed with paper-made bullets and it could also be made with several copper stampings.
Roland still had no clue regarding the ignition cartridge that was used to set the bullet. He only knew that it was called mercury fulminate. It literally meant that the raw materials must consist of nitric acid and mercury. He could not recall whether it needed to mix with anything else at the moment. And, he had the impression that there were certain requirements of humidity and temperature during the production, and the risk seemed to be rather high that it would be easy to blow fingers off accidentally. After some contemplation, he decided to spend more money to recruit a group of alchemists and build a laboratory in a corner of the town so that they could ponder it over themselves.
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After dinner, Roland summoned both Anna and Scroll into the office.
Now the financials of Border Town had improved, and he would soon put half of the assets into compulsory education.
Industrial society needed workers with basic cultural quality, rather than the empty brute force of the illiterate. If universal education was not in place, the demographic dividend would only become a burden for the population.
With such a view, he intended to spend some time out at the school teaching, every night from this night onwards. Until Scroll mastered the basic knowledge of "Theoretical Foundations of Natural Science", the town should have almost completed the first batch of literacy tasks.
Scroll would be the future education pioneer and all-around teacher, so Roland wanted to pass all his knowledge to her. And, he asked Anna to come along as a favor.
Anna did not have an extra retentive memory, but her desire for knowledge and active learning was the most intense among the witches. He could often find her rummaging for books in the bookcases, and she had probably seen all the books for the past six months. In addition, her acceptance of new things and logical way of thinking was also rare in this era.
After getting the elementary mathematics and physics textbooks that Scroll created with her magic, he began to talk about today's teaching content.
Anna's understanding ability was significantly better than Scroll's from the beginning of the adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing to the more complex equations. When it came to physics, Scroll was still memorizing Roland's words and slowly assessing it while Anna could already ask a few questions from time to time.
Such as what the basic particles looked like and why the basic particles formed into various shapes and so on.
There were some questions that Roland could answer, but some of them he could not answer either.
Such as what magic power really was.
He could only share what he previously thought, saying that the magic power might be a kind of energy, similar to the electricity and heat, however, only the witches could use it currently. Ordinary people did not have the capability to store and use the magic power.
Anna revealed a thoughtful look.
The time always flew by quickly when teaching the women, especially the outstanding women. The candle had been changed twice without Roland knowing and the new one was already at its end.
Suddenly, Roland heard a soft snoring noise. Nightingale who was lying on the sofa had fallen asleep unknowingly. Perhaps the course was like a lullaby for her. The Mist had lifted the coverage, her totally inelegant sleeping position exposed to the eyes of three of them.
Roland shook his head helplessly and decided to end today's class here. He took off his coat and gently covered her, blew out the candle and closed the door behind him, while Anna and Scroll were trying to hold back from laughing.