The gathering of men for the militia was progressing smoothly. The reward Sophy had declared for the men joining the resistance was quite appealing. Recruited hunters and gatherers have been training hard in the fields with the guns.

The production of guns was also proceeding at a good pace. The workshops were able to produce about fifty guns a day. Gunpowder production which required more secrecy was not able to keep up with the demand that was sky high due to the need for practice.

The target wall for practice has been riddled with holes. The accuracy of these men was increasing with each round. The reloading was a series of actions that was easy to follow and these men who only had basic literacy was happy for the easiness of the operation.

Robert had requested for a map of Goldfair city as he was still unsure of its complete view. He had only said to Naoki to hide the cannons in houses that were within the range of cannons.

He took the map and marked the distances and angles of all the cannons. He still hadn't calculated the elevation of the barrels.

He had taken readings from the cannon and what’s left to do was to use the equations of projectile motion to calculate the range at each angle.

Robert took a paper and derived the equations of projectile motion. Being a physicist he could do this simple equation even blindfolded. All that was left now was to find the constant of gravity and the initial velocity. He was unsure if the gravity of this planet was the same as that of Earth. Even if it was the same, he didn’t have a scale to measure that value on.

Borrowing the pocket chronograph from Darrell, Robert went off to find the gravitational acceleration of this planet. Climbing into the top of the tallest tower, he dropped a brick to the ground and calculated the time it took to fall.

All the men who walked by were amused by this sight, someone was taking up heavy stones just to throw it down. Are they crazy?

After measuring the height of the building he calculated the gravitational acceleration to put in his projectile equations. With the equations in his hand, Robert went straight to the firing range, and that’s when he realized that he didn’t have a protractor.

Measuring angles required protractor and Robert had no idea on how to make one. He could take a paper and fold it a few times to get some angles, but they would not be enough for the artillery that required precision.

He thought about it for a while before coming up with a way to create a protractor. He took a long but thin rod and marked 72 half inch parts. Then bend it into a circle, he had created a protractor that had 5 degrees least count.

“This would do for now,” Robert said to himself. He wanted to create one that had 360 degrees like on Earth. But as the cannons that he had created itself were not perfect and there was no reason for having a smaller least count. Fitting in the protractor in the cannon, with the help of two men, he angled the barrel to be at 45 degrees to find the maximum range of it and calculate the initial velocity he required.

The men that were helping Robert do this had taken a peek into the papers Robert had. Seeing the glyphs and weird writing methods they had never seen before, deduced that it must be the spells that powered the cannon.

Happy with the results, Robert redesigned the cannons to have two protractors. Equipping them for long distance artillery use.

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The plan that Robert had made to take back the Goldfair city was inspired by the Trojan Horse that the Greeks had used to sneak in forces into the city of Troy to win the war. What was different now was that there was no need for any wooden horses. Goldfair city didn’t stop anyone from coming in, the restriction was only on those who were going out.

The only problem that Robert now faced was the absence of a stealth factor in this attack. Once a gun is fired, their position will be compromised and will have to enter into a head-on war with the forces of Snake skulls and the experts.

The intel from Goldfair city said that these men were stationed at the city hall and Yugimi’s castle. Robert thought of an idea, but it required something that he hasn’t yet made. Rifles, sniper rifles to be exact. He had the lenses that were required to make scopes and it was no problem fitting them in the currently manufactured guns. But the problem with these smoothbore guns was the low accuracy, especially at long ranges. What Robert wanted was to take out the experts from a distance. He didn’t want to have a range of a kilometer or anything, having a good accuracy at a 100-meter range was already good enough for this battle.

Robert had an idea with the metal that was used for the firing pins. The high melting point of this metal and the existence of fire magus should solve his problem with rifling. Gathering three blacksmiths, he explained what was needed to be done. They created a bulged rod with a small twist. With much effort, they passed this rod, twisting it as it entered the barrel.

This made Robert realize that he needed to create something like a lathe for making it easier to build things.

Robert had created the rounds to have an aerodynamic shape like those from Earth instead of the metal balls that was loaded into the guns. He had already instructed a blacksmith to create a mold to create these shells and it was making a good amount of bullets already.

Fitting the gun in a stand and shooting it into a target at a distance, Robert was astonished by the results. At fifty meters, the bullet had found its target without any hitch. Repeating the experimental firing the deviation of the bullet from target was really small. The gun, as expected had an increased accuracy, Robert was amazed by how a little spin added this much accuracy to the gun.

Next up was to find a few snipers. He was not sure what training the snipers went through or anything, all he knew was that they held their breath when they fired. Robert was not sure if he could cook up a training regime based on that, and thus wanted to find if anyone around here was a natural sharpshooter.

After sending off the blacksmiths to make some more rifles, Robert called up Nenand, he was the sub-head of town guards of Grayston. After explaining the breathing technique, he wanted Nenand to make every one of the town’s men to shoot three rounds. Then to select the best ten persons to become the elite snipers.

He still had many things to prepare for the D-day. Making some big bombs and canister shells for the cannons were the two most important things that were yet to be done. He had an idea on how to make things go boom as he had already done that. But making the most effective bomb still required experiments.