novelraw Chapter 403 : Jeremiah’s Painting
Chapter 403 : Jeremiah’s Painting
Chapter 403: Jeremiah’s Painting
A grinning pirate captain, a grand and imposing pirate ship, slightly decayed planks, sabers and flintlocks—all fixed onto the Banshee’s canvas together with the evening breeze and the splashing waves of the pier.
Feniel painted extremely fast. Each of her six hands held several brushes, and the speed of her painting rivaled that of a printer.
Very quickly, she removed the wooden frame stretched with canvas, raised it before her eyes to take a look, nodded in satisfaction, and then handed it to Jeremiah.
“Take a look, how is it?”
Jeremiah stretched his neck, grinning so wide his mouth nearly couldn’t close. “Good, good, it’s damn good, really good.”
“If you want to keep a record next time, you can go to Nini. I heard she’s researching a device called an image-retaining machine. It can fix an entire scene in just an instant.”
“Is that true?” Jeremiah carefully held the painting board. “But I don’t think I’ll make any more changes to the Black Pearl. This time I only added a few steam engines. She’s already perfect—she doesn’t need more embellishments.”
Feniel chuckled softly without replying.
“Lads, let’s get to work!” Jeremiah turned and shouted to the workers. “Tonight it’s on me! We can drink while gathering together to read the Holy Text!”
“Ohhh!”
“Great!”
The workers cheered, then enthusiastically picked up their tools and marched toward the pirate ship.
On the other side, Hughes led people toward Richard’s testing ground.
Castel originally was not particularly short on researchers, but the number of projects under way was indeed a bit too many at the moment.
Because of this, Hughes couldn’t find a suitable candidate for artillery research, so he eventually handed it over to Richard.
This Moth Chasing Fire who used to be a doctor was now actually in charge of artillery development.
But this was not without precedent—after all, the Gatling gun was said to have been invented by a doctor. So letting Richard work on artillery seemed quite reasonable.
And truth be told, he was rather motivated.
Hughes found him in the laboratory.
“My Lord, you came at just the right time. The cannon I’ve been working on is going to be test-fired today!”
“What a coincidence? The moment I arrive it’s already ready?” Hughes scratched his head with a strange expression.
“Not exactly. We’ve already made several prototypes of cannons, but because of weight and size issues, it’s been really difficult to deploy them on the battlefield. The one we’re testing today is a miniaturized version.”
“That’s fine. Large versions can be mounted on ships anyway. Out there, size doesn’t really matter.”
“Really?” Richard was a bit surprised. “But our cannons have huge recoil. We tested them on Mr. Jeremiah’s ship before, and even on a calm sea the firing caused violent shaking. The new ships from the shipyard would need to be big enough.”
Worried the ship wouldn’t be large enough?
Hughes twitched at the corner of his eye.
“When you fired last time, the island didn’t shake, did it?”
“Huh? No, it didn’t.”
“Then it’s fine. Mount it on their ship and give it a try. Their ships move around almost like the island anyway.”
Richard took off his hat, scratching the thinning hair on his head, unsure if that was supposed to be a joke.
He did know Tata, his former colleague in the Moths Chasing Fire. With him leading the shipyard, there was almost no design they couldn’t bring out.
“Well then, let’s head to the testing ground first. I’ve made some modifications to this cannon according to my research direction. It’ll surprise you.”
Hughes nodded and followed along. He didn’t think much of Richard’s words at the time, until later he remembered—Richard’s research field was human modification.
When they arrived at the testing ground, the two of them put on earmuffs. Hughes was rather surprised to see several Banshees standing in the waiting area, giggling together.
“My Lord.”
They all saluted at once.
“What are you doing here?”
“Mr. Richard’s cannon—we’re here to carry out the test firing.”
A cannon that required Banshees to test?
Richard quickly stepped forward to explain. “It’s like this—those Gatling heavy machine guns you provided before, soldiers could only drag them to the battlefield and fix them to the ground for shooting. But the Banshees could actually hold them and fire directly.”
“So I thought, why not do the same with cannons? The heavy artillery pieces that soldiers usually have to drag around, the Banshee troops could wield by hand.”
Handheld cannons? That sounded strange, but somehow made sense.
“If there’s no problem, let’s begin the test, my Lord.”
Hughes nodded and began looking around—where was the cannon? This was a testing ground, wasn’t it? Where was the artillery?
At the command, two Banshees raised their arms and pointed toward the target.
Only then did Hughes notice the thick black tubes covering their hands. These tubes were a few sizes larger than their arms, looking quite heavy, yet the Banshees wielded them effortlessly.
“What the hell is this? Hand-cannons? How—”
BOOM!!!
The blast erupted like a waterfall of fire surging forward. The blazing crimson flames momentarily outshone the sun. The two Banshees slid back several steps under the recoil, smoke slowly wafting from the hand-cannons hanging by their sides.
A dragon of flame streaked across the ground in an instant, striking the target and reducing it to ash, leaving behind a long shallow trench.
Black-red, magma-like material slowly flowed within the trench.
Hughes stood to the side, utterly dumbfounded.
“How is it, my Lord?”
“This is a cannon? This is supposed to be a cannon?”
Richard scratched at his sparse hair, somewhat bewildered. “This was per your request—a heavy weapon that fires like a firearm, capable of destroying fortifications that machine guns cannot breach, and also effective against large-bodied monsters.”
Hughes was speechless.
This thing in no way resembled the cannons in his memory—at least cannons didn’t have such exaggerated effects!
Still, he had to admit—it looked pretty damn impressive.
After a moment, Hughes realized something was off. “What on earth did you change in the formula? No matter how you tinker with nitroglycerin, it wouldn’t produce this effect. What did you add? White phosphorus? Magnesium powder?”
Richard adjusted his monocle. “I added pollution.”
“Huh?”
“It was Gaia who first discovered it. The storage of nitroglycerin has always been a problem. No matter how it’s handled, it’s difficult to stop it from being unstable and explosive. We tried developing a few safer explosives before, but none of them stayed stable for long—they would become highly volatile again over time.”
That was exactly why, until now, Castel could only make dynamite packs, never solving the problem of proper shell explosives.
To be honest, Hughes had long suspected this was the result of a technological lock, but he hadn’t found a good solution and could only let the researchers experiment.
And sure enough, what they came up with was indeed useful, albeit unexpected.
“In the end it was Monica who gave us the inspiration. Since she could put pollution into the furnace and burn it… then using it to blow things up shouldn’t be a problem either, right?”