FYI, I had already prepared lodging for them. I could have sworn daddy dearest was coming, so I’d readied a super nice room for him, but oh well; my brothers could stay there instead. They were in for the shock of their lives.
The group of us climbed to the top of the wall, where His Majesty looked down on the village. “Every time I come here, it is filled with new things. Knowing you, I am sure you are already readying your next plan.”
I turned my gaze to the road, prompting everyone with me to follow suit. Just below us, in front of the wall, was a moat with running water that traveled all the way to the lake behind the village and beyond. After a bit of a detour, it returned to the river from whence it came. I gazed upstream and traced my finger along the river.
“I have a few ideas, but right now I’m thinking about how to use this river to improve physical distribution. It’s not wide enough to use as a canal, so if we want to carry heavy goods, we’ll have to link a bunch of smaller boats together to carry the load. Also, since we have dwarves living here, it’d be nice if we could have them make stuff other than weapons: corrective glasses for people with bad eyesight, mirrors that better reflect people’s forms, that kind of thing. Oh, and musical instruments would be nice too. I love the idea of a town filled with music.”
Improvements to material distribution and lifestyle. More forms of entertainment. His Majesty seemed stunned by my current plans for the future of Seatoh Village. Did it sound impossible to him?
Nah, don’t worry about it, Van. Who cares if someone complains about you talking up your ideal future? There’ll be no complaints once you make it a reality.
Panamera smirked, pointing at one of our ballistae. “Will you not design more new weapons?”
I folded my arms and groaned a bit. “Hmm… I do have some ideas, but I don’t have enough materials. If I had my way, I’ll be able to create a weapon ten times more powerful than these ballistae.”
His Majesty widened his eyes at me, blinked a few times, then erupted into laughter. “Ha! Ha ha ha! You are something else!” he proclaimed happily, his shoulders shaking. “The diversity of your ideas is incredible!”
Elsewhere, the other nobles directed cautious looks at me; having judged that His Majesty was fond of me, they’d decided that I was someone to watch out for.
How could you be so scared of a cutie like me?
“Well,” Panamera said, “the weapons you make are terrifying, so I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to those, too. That said, we are in the process of invading Yelenetta. I would be grateful for any and all weapons you could share with us.”
His Majesty nodded and looked toward the Wolfsbrook Mountain Range. He narrowed his eyes and murmured, “Indeed. We must be quick. We may have the advantage right now, but our enemies have dragons and those cursed black balls. We must not let our guard down.” The other nobles glanced at me, looking concerned. “Baron Van, rumor has it that the enemy deployed a weapon even more powerful than the black balls. What is it exactly? We looked over the report, but it was difficult to envision.”
All eyes were on me. I was being asked, in essence, to describe the new cannons. Well, primitive as they were, they still had tremendous destructive power, enough to be a genuine threat. They had very low accuracy—it took numerous shots at the wall before they landed a single hit—but the loud noises they made and the way the earth itself shook on impact was more than enough to instill fear in people’s hearts. Horses’ hearts too. They were generally considered timid creatures.
Mages would certainly consider the cannons a threat. Depending on how they were used, we might find ourselves in a new world in which retaining mages was no longer a priority.
Before I could really think through all of this, I had to answer His Majesty. I gently shook my head and said, “It’s actually a bit like the weapon I plan to make, so I’ll start by explaining Yelenetta’s version.”
I used some trees to craft a model for His Majesty, making sure it was precisely the same type as Yelenetta’s cannons. I heard startled murmurs from the people behind His Majesty, shocked that I could produce a model so easily, but His Majesty was calm as he observed the wood block cannon. “Hmph,” he said. “It is not as big as I expected.”
I nodded and pointed at one of my ballistae. “For ballistae, the length of the bowstring and the materials it’s made from are really important. Likewise, catapults need to be big to give projectiles more time to accelerate. But this new weapon is completely different. You load the barrel here with a large number of black balls, then insert an iron ball or whatever projectile you wish to fire. Next, you detonate the black balls inside, launching the projectile out with terrifying speed and force. In other words, as long as it’s durable, the weapon itself can be rather small.”
His Majesty seemed fascinated, peeking down the barrel of the cannon. He nodded. “So it fires iron balls from here? That is quite a threat, but I still think your ballistae are far more devastating weapons.”
Hearing that he felt my ballistae were superior to the enemy’s new cannons delighted me. How could I not feel proud? Unfortunately, reality wasn’t so simple. “To be honest, while my ballistae are superior in every respect at the moment…there’s still plenty of room for this cannon to be improved. With the ballistae, the best I can do is increase the number or make them bigger.”
His Majesty glared at the cannon, looking grave. “You mean to say that this cannon can evolve further? You believe it will eventually surpass your ballistae?”
I was impressed by the speed with which His Majesty grasped the threat Yelenetta’s new weapon could become. He truly was on another level. Most people would be incapable of seeing ahead when presented with such a foreign, inscrutable weapon.
I nodded, and then tried building the superpowerful but highly impractical cannon I’d been tooling with in my mind so that I could set it beside the Yelenetta cannon. I only had wood to work with so it wouldn’t be usable, but if you thought of it like a clay model, it would still be pretty impressive.
Quickly morphing the timber into wood blocks, I made a foundation for the cannon, then produced a mechanism that would allow it to be rotated to the left and the right. Next, I made the gears that would enable adjusting its vertical angle, and finally the barrel of the cannon itself, over three meters long for maximum accuracy. I didn’t know if this was the right move, but I also designed the interior of the barrel as a spiral, so it would rotate projectiles on their way out.
Just like that, my superpowerful and highly impractical cannon was complete. My audience could do nothing but stare at it, wide-eyed.
“So I tried building the design I’ve had in my head, and depending on the quality of the gunpowder, I think it will fire much farther and more accurately than Yelenetta’s version. In other words, we’ll be capable of long-range attacks that not even mages could defend against.”