Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 405 Has the cannon finally been built?
Hughes almost lost his composure on the spot.

He vaguely remembered rejecting a proposal not long ago, which was about internal combustion engine research. The idea of ​​an internal combustion engine using fuel was correct, but he rejected it because the fuel it burned was nitroglycerin.

Richard then told him that he could use this polluting fuel to make explosives.

Could nitroglycerin actually be added to an internal combustion engine as fuel?
Hughes suddenly wondered if he was being too reliant on his own path. Prejudice in people's hearts is a mountain. Perhaps nitroglycerin really could power the engine. After all, combustion in the cylinder is inherently detonation. Changing it to an explosion wouldn't be a big problem, right?
Oh no, I've been labeled a bad guy for suppressing scientific research and development.

Hughes made up his mind to go back and approve the project, etc. Who proposed this project again?

It looks like Nini.
Hughes gasped, a vague sense of unease creeping over him. He couldn't quite pinpoint the key issue, but he decided he absolutely had to move Nini's lab far away from the church.

Well, that should also make Nini write fewer reports. Those articles are a bit too outrageous; sometimes even Hughes can't help but glance at them.

"After I added live contaminants to nitroglycerin, I found that both of them became more reactive. This is normal, since contaminants have the characteristics of being alive and are naturally very active."

"So how did you solve it?"

Richard's expression turned serious: "This is all thanks to Monica's research, which gave me the idea."

Hughes: "."

Monica, your ideas alone could support most of Castells.

"Ms. Monica suppressed pollution by summoning machine spirits to attach to steam engines, and I wondered, could we summon machine spirits for cannons as well?"

"you made it?"

"Yes, these two hand cannons are the result."

Richard took the hand cannon that the Banshee was holding and skillfully opened the side hatch: "Pre-load the solid contaminant inside, then load the shells normally. When firing, the solid contaminant will mix with the explosives and rush out of the barrel, forming a jet that resembles a fire dragon."

Richard rotated one of the metal knobs on top.

"As you probably guessed, the ratio of this contaminant to gunpowder can be adjusted, but this requires the cooperation of the machine spirit, and for now only I can perform this operation."

Richard slipped the cannon barrel onto his hand and gently tapped the steel cannon shaft.

The echo was crisp and melodious, as if the machine spirit within the hand cannon was responding loudly.

Richard stood sideways, raising the heavy hand cannon—

boom!
A thick jet of fire shot out, and Richard, with his feet apart, lunged to withstand the recoil and swung his arm violently!
Centered on him, the fan-shaped area in front of him was instantly covered by the overflowing flames!

Like a dragon's breath spewing forth, it instantly transformed the area in front of them into a hellish landscape of scorching lava.

Hughes was truly stunned.

"I named this weapon the Dragon's Breath Cannon."

"This skill requires extremely skilled cooperation with the machine spirit to master. New recruits might even have difficulty shooting. Due to time constraints, my cooperation with the machine spirit has only reached this stage. I have a feeling that if we can take it a step further, we can make the Dragon Breath Cannon have a third form."

Three forms of the Dragon Breath Cannon. That's really too powerful.

After a brief moment of distraction, Hughes quickly became excited.

"Would there be any difficulties in mass-producing this kind of weapon?"

Dragon Breath Cannon may be good, but if it's handcrafted in a small workshop in the extraordinary world, it's a step backward for industry and has no practical use.

Richard smiled slightly: "It requires slightly more manpower than a Gatling gun, but that's not a problem at all for Castel's production capacity. The only limiting factor is actually the Machine Soul Summoning." Machine Soul Summoning was originally Monica's unique ability, brought about by the sea god's soul that possessed her.

However, after the entire Poseidon was stuffed into the furnace, this summoning ability underwent a subtle change.

Monica can summon them, and so can other banshees. Even the extraordinary beings of the Firemoth have successfully summoned them, though the success rate is low.

However, such summoning must be carried out in Castel, or more precisely, preferably in the cathedral, atop the stellar furnace.

Summoning a machine spirit on a furnace burning with the sea god's power has a strange, indescribable feeling.

In short, summoning machine spirits is no longer a difficult task.

"Great! That's wonderful! Such powerful weapons should be implemented in the Christian Guard immediately!"

Richard's confident smile suddenly froze.

"Ahem, my lord, this might be a little troublesome."

"What trouble? Don't worry, I'll prioritize production capacity for you. Even if the working hours are only a little more than for machine guns, or even several times more, we can still quickly equip them to the Christian Guard!"

Richard looked slightly embarrassed: "I think distributing it shouldn't be a problem, but its effectiveness in use might not be very good."

"Is it a communication problem with the Machine Soul? It's alright. As long as we figure out how to please the Machine Soul and distribute it in the Holy Scripture, the Guardians of the Faith will master it quickly. The difficulties in the extraordinary realm are not that hard to overcome."

"No, it's a physical difficulty."

Richard sighed and placed the hand cannon in front of Hughes: "You'll see once you try it."

Hughes examined the hand cannon; there was a handle inside where it was attached to the arm, and he reached in and gripped it.

The moment he touched the steel, the machine spirit cheered with joy. He instantly gained the machine spirit's approval—Hughes was numb and didn't know why, but the machine spirit was always extremely close to him.

So Hughes decided to pick it up and fire a shot to see what would happen.

He tried to lift it—but couldn't.

Hughes blinked, took a deep breath, and used all his strength, but he could only lift one side of the cannon a tiny bit, not even completely off the ground.

He then noticed that the hand cannon was extremely heavy and made entirely of steel.
"My lord, this hand cannon weighs about three hundred kilograms."

Richard is an extraordinary being; lifting this weight shouldn't be a problem for him.

Hughes was just an ordinary human being. Three hundred kilograms was not actually beyond the human deadlift limit. Many strongmen could lift that weight, but he held it in his hand to shoot.
And this is just the weight.

The Banshee had easily lifted her hand cannon, but when she fired it, the recoil still sent her flying backward a considerable distance.

If a banshee could be pushed with her weight and strength, wouldn't a normal person be thrown away?

"That's not impossible. Just add a gun mount and wheels, and transport it to the battlefield by horse-drawn cart."

Hughes propped himself up on his legs, panting heavily.

So what if the artillery is a little heavier? Self-propelled artillery on Earth weighs several tons, so a few hundred kilograms is nothing compared to that. Adding wheels will make it easy for soldiers to drag it onto the battlefield.

"This is the problem, my lord. This kind of hand cannon requires communication with the machine spirit to be used. In other words, it must be held in the hand to fire!"

(End of this chapter)