Er Mu - Release that Witch

The workers of the second plant were the artisans belonging to the Crescent Moon Bay Caravan. Just during this one month, they had already grasped a roughly understanding of the machine tool’s usage, even though their yield was still quite bad, but compared with the blacksmith of the first plant, the first-month performance of these craftsmen was obviously better. According to the previously signed contract, all of their produced steam engines were owned by Roland. With those two factories Border Town could now manufacture almost eight to ten steam engines per month, which was also the town’s primary means of income.

As for the bullets factory, after its establishment, it had been directly handed over to the First Army, who not only placed a lookout post at its entrance, but also arranged for patrols all around the factory, and even the production was the responsibility of the soldiers. After a week of trial operation, nowadays, they had already begun the mass production of a new generation of bullets.

Roland plan for the assembly line couldn’t achieve full mechanical production, no matter if it were the primer, gunpowder or warheads, they all needed manpower for the filling compaction. The main processing tools were the two mechanical stamping machines. The one could press the thin copper pieces previously cut by Anna into the shape of the cartridge case, while the second was used to push the primer towards the bottom.

The soldiers only needed to place the mercury fulminate evenly between two thin pieces of paper, glue the edges of the two papers together, press the primer towards the lower part of the cartridge then finally place the cartridge with the primer’s end at the bottom into the ring-shaped ammunition case, before the entire process was complete. As for the process of loading and compacting the black powder and putting on the projectile, it was still done in exactly the same way as the previous practice.

There were only a small number of people working in the factory around forty people, which could still almost produce more than 500 bullets every day. For the future, Roland intended on turning these forty people into his full-time processing personnel to maintain the standard operation of the bullet production factory.

The next step on Roland’s to-do list was to open a soap factory, and a perfume factory — the former would play a very important part in the military industry, while the later might be able to open up a new income channel for the town. As for the bicycle factory, its opening could still be delayed, it would be opened early enough as long as it went into full production by the time the Kingdom Avenue was finished.

“Your Highness,” Nightingale said, pushing open the doorway, “Maggie and Lightning are here.”

Both girls run over from Nightingale’s side, and after stopping in front of the desk, they pointedly asked. “Were you looking for us?”

“Tomorrow is the start of the final month of summer,” Roland pulled his formerly written reply to Tilly out of the drawer and placed it in front of Maggie, “When you return to the Fjord, remember to help me hand this over to Tilly.”

“Ah…” For a moment Maggie froze, only able to look at the message with blinking eyes, before she took the envelope and carefully placed it into her personal bag, “No problem, goo!”

Seeing an expression of sudden understanding from the other side, Roland feared that she had already forgotten the important matter of her monthly reports. Restraining the smile within his heart, he thought of the town’s charm which seemed to be really powerful.

“I have entirely forgotten that tomorrow is the beginning of a new month,” Lightning tapped against her forehead. “Does it mean that we will be unable to see each other for a long time?”

“Tilly’s plan to sweep the Fjords clean of the Church had delayed my plan to come back last time, this time I will be back as soon as possible,” Maggie shook her white hair that was about to reach the ground, “Wait for me to come back to explore the eagle nest together… Goo!”

“I got it,” the other little girl said, curling her lips, “It’s a promise.”

“You have your own mission,” Roland spread out a map of the region south of the town. “This is the map you had previously drawn, do you still remember the location of the shoal near the mountains?”

“I remember,” Lightning pointed at a place on the map, “Probably around this area.”

“Well, you will fly back to it again, and this time you will take Maggie along. Then you will place flags on both sides of the shallow beach and the junction of the mountains, and also mark them on the map,” Roland ordered, then looked towards Maggie, “If Tilly agrees to send the witches, you will lead the sailboat to this shoal, and I will welcome you at the top of the mountain.

“Send witches?” Lightning asked curiously, “Could it be that there will be new sisters coming to Border Town?”

“I do not know yet,” Roland said, a smile on his face. “It all depends on Tilly’s answer… but I have a feeling that she will agree to it.”

On the second day after Maggie’s departure, Roland, with the witches assistance, began assembling and installing a new generation of hot air balloons out in the courtyard.

As a result of the expansion of the back garden and the witch dormitory, Leaves had already moved her plants to the front courtyard. With all of the vines covering the walls and the wooden frames along the corridors, it gave quite a prehistoric forest-type of feeling. And because of this, it naturally also offered an excellent shield against the sun, allowing the sunshine to only fall through the small gaps in the dense leaf canopy above, only leaving scattered light spots behind on the ground.

Roland gave the witches a stack of white paper, and let them spread it out into a large painting paper, then asked Soraya to draw the lightest of sky-blue coating on top of it. Compared to the first hot air balloon, which used a combination of bovine intestinal membrane and canvas, the new generation which purely relied on the coating method was much lighter. Furthermore, it also offered excellent toughness and had no suture lines, so that they didn’t need to fear that it would break apart in mid-air.

“I’ve heard from Lightning, that there might be some witches coming from the Fjords?” Wendy asked in curiousity.

“That might be so, if everything goes well,” Roland once more explained about the content of his reply to the 5th Princess, “But to know the actual situation we still have to wait for Tilly Wimbledon’s answer.”

“It seems that Ashes has succeeded,” Wendy mused, “They were actually able to gather so many witches on Sleeping Island.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid that Tilly had already started to plan the migration more than one or two years ago,” Roland said and spread out his hands. “She had already sent people to secretly contact the witches long ago and not just within Graycastle, but also from all of the other three kingdoms. Your Witch Cooperation Association should also have received an invitation. I guess that’s also the reason why even after we spread the rumor of a safe haven for such a long time, no witches have come knocking at our door — we were just a step slower than Tilly.”

“Cara has never mentioned this to us,” Wendy rubbed her shoulders.

“If she had told you about Tilly’s invitation, you might have never wanted to keep on looking for the Holy Mountain, isn’t that right?”

“That is possible, but only by doing it that way, were we able to meet in Border Town,” she shook her head while smiling, “Therefore, that she didn’t mention it… wasn’t bad.”

“I also think that it was pretty good,” Lightning raised her hand.

“Tsk, we can’t say for sure that going to the Fjords wouldn’t have been better,” Lily curled her lips, “After all, there are only witches there, so they don’t need to pay special attention when stepping out of the house, like here in Border Town.”

“It has already become much better than before,” Anna said earnestly, “In the past I didn’t even dare to go out at all.”

“Yes, some people are simply like this. Last time, Ashes clearly wanted to flatly reject our invitation, but she still put on an act.” Mystery Moon then mumbled to herself, “Also saying that she wasn’t a traitor!”

“You…” Lily opened her eyes wide, “Fool!”

“Traitor!”

The other witches couldn’t help themselves from laughing.

“I also think the same,” Roland’s heart was suddenly filled with a sense of accomplishment. Even though the 5th Princess was smarter and more quick-witted than he was, and he might also not be as powerful or resolute as Timothy and Garcia were, he could at least provide these witches with a free-spirited and comfortable living environment, and at the same time give his people a better life.

“This hot air balloon… I fear it might become several times larger than the previous one,” Nightingale interrupted while looking at the size Soraya had already managed to coat. “Are you intending to use it to transport the witches?”

Roland nodded, “The only way to avoid the usage of any harbor city, is by directly traveling across the sea to the south of Border Town. Moreover, apart from greeting and sending off our new visitors, it can also be considered as a new attempt at flight.”

After the coating had been applied on both sides, it became a double-layered material, with a width and length of nearly six meters. If it had been made out of plain canvas or linen, it would be difficult to single-handedly drag it over, but since it was only made out of the light coating, its weight managed to only equal the weight of a stack of papers. By combining more than a dozen of pieces like these together, and by protecting the seams with an additional protective layer, it became a staggeringly giant airbag.

Roland also wanted to test the soldering capability of Soraya’s coating. The “thick tree bark” painting she had drawn on the table when she had used her new ability for the first time still remained fresh within his mind. They had both been so firmly bonded together, that when they tried to grab the tree bark and pull it upwards, the whole square table had also been lifted up.

So in the end what he really wanted to find out was whether it was possible for the coating to glue the pieces of paper together into an inseparable whole. And if it could do that, it would then be able to maintain the massive airbag shape and also keep its airtight properties.

At present, instead of imitating a hydrogen balloon, which could be controlled by anyone he still needed to rely on Anna to inflate the hot air balloon. But since he already had a DC motor, and could also produce hydrogen by electrolyzing water, the time until the arrival of the historically famous airship, “Zeppelin”, wouldn’t be too far into the future. As long as he found a suitable light material to make the skeleton with, creating this kind of huge monster which could fly at a height of two to three thousand meters and had almost no natural enemies would have a lot less technical difficulties than other aircrafts did.

Although the hit rate at which bombs were thrown from a high altitude was very low, they still weren’t something that the enemy would be able to withstand. Leaving them with no other choice than to take a beating, with not even the slightest possibility of hitting back — so, as long as they circled over the enemy’s territory each day, Roland thought that there would not be any opponent who would not collapse under the Zeppelin’s might.

Imagining the picture of their future battle against the Holy City of the Church, he saw four or five of these aircrafts hovering side-by-side in the air, dropping bombs on them like rain, heavy gunship bombardments coming from the river channels towards the enemy city’s gate and stronghold, and added to this were all of the infantry, armed with firearms, fighting from the rear. Having the three armed services, the Army, Navy, and Air Force fight together as one, even just imagining this already made him become somewhat excited.

“Your Highness, what are you laughing so foolishly for?” Anna sighed and reached out with her hand to cover the corner of her mouth which she was unable to keep from jerking into a smile.

“I presume he is being delusional, thinking about the new witches,” Lily rolled her eyes, “Men…”

After the lower part of the airbag was connected using hemp ropes, towards a large vine gondola, the founding of the new generation of Hot Air Balloon was successfully completed. Compared with the first generation, its volume was close to four times as large, and the number of people it could accommodate had also expanded to more than ten. Furthermore, the basket also came with an awning which would shield the passengers from the sunlight. Of course, to provide Anna with a place to add heat to the balloon they had also left a hole within the awning.