Fire and run!

Robert gave his usual advice for the guy who was going to fire the cannon. Robert genuinely cared for the lives of these men and if possible, he wanted to avoid any casualties in this dangerous mission they were undertaking.

The young man nodded and went to the cannon. This time the cannon was the same as ever, but Robert had made changes in the cannonballs. He hollowed out a cannonball and filled it up with black powder. He was trying to recreate the cannonballs that he usually saw in movies, the ones that exploded when it landed.

But soon he realized that it was not that easy, just adding gunpowder and an extra fuse was the method he came up with. But the problem lied on the timing of the explosion of the cannonball. Sometimes the cannonball exploded after landing, sometimes mid-air, there was also an occasion where it exploded inside the barrel, gladly Robert’s  "fire and run!" The method made sure that no one got hurt.

Nenand was still testing out people to find some with good aim, he had already picked three, Robert’s instruction was to get as many as he can. Being the perfectionist that he was, Nenand only wanted the best men to go into this elite sharpshooters unit that Lord Robert was creating. Nenand had tried his hands on the aim test too, but he was just above average in the sharpshooting skills. He was better with swords and hoped that Robert will invent something for him to use too. Although he was average with guns, having an athletic body, he was chosen by Robert to be a “Grenadier.” Nenand was still not sure what that meant and what they did. But he was happy that he was not sidelined by someone else.

Robert had his own reasons for keeping Nenand in command. He wanted someone who was a familiar face and already commanding these men to do that role in this mission. And Nenand was the perfect candidate. He had the valor and courage, the leadership quality and he thought before giving a command.

Robert had arranged men to clean the guns regularly as the black powder left behind dirt, jamming the mechanisms and might cause a backfire. The field was filled with explosions and there was a thick smokescreen that reduced the visibility very much as the black powder created a lot of grey smoke.

Robert still needed something that he could use against the experts they were facing,  he had two ideas, one a machine gun and the second, a hwacha!

He had the general idea to create a Gatling gun, there were six barrels spun by a cranking mechanism, there was a trigger mechanism that fired when a barrel reached a certain position. But the problem was the bullet loading mechanism, he would have to design either a magazine or a chain mechanism for loading the bullets into the gun. He was not sure if he even makes one of those guns within the two weeks, and thus decided to go with the Hwacha, an artillery weapon from the history of Korea.

It was basically a cart loaded with a number of projectiles that was used as a long-range weapon in ancient times, but what Robert wanted was a barrage of explosives in short range.

And Robert was happy as he was entering one of his area of expertise! He had built many model rockets and was confident in this one area.

Taking a metal tube and melting one end shut, he put in a stick in the middle and filled it with black powder. Thickly packing the grains in he used a piece of clay to create a nozzle for the gases to get pressurized on.

He used another larger metal tube to hold the rocket and fired it using a fuse. With a whistling sound, the rocket flew up into the air, leaving a trail of smoke and fire behind.

All that was left now was to add explosives into the end of the rocket. Adding a thickly packed gunpowder into the end of the tube with a metal divider and fire hole was enough for creating an explosion. He used a thin wrap for the explosives as he was not planning to hurt anyone now.

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The rocket flew up with a whistling noise and exploded into a ball of flame in the sky.

Seeing this Robert was grinning foolishly.

He then tweaked the amount of gunpowder to make it so that the rocket exploded at about 20-meter range and increased the number of explosives. He was really enjoying the explosions, that he was afraid that he was turning into a psychopath.

After experimenting with many rockets, Robert drew a picture and passed it to the blacksmiths for forging. This was a wooden board that had 100 holes in a 10x10 matrix in it, each of the holes was fixed with a metal tube for loading rockets.

The next design was a rail mechanism that held the wooden board, this was for making it so that there can be more than one of the hwacha in a single cart. Robert had confirmed that carts were being allowed into the city unchecked before making this hwacha. He ordered to have a horse cart repurposed a to hold five of these boards, effectively giving 500 rockets.

He taught the apprentices of the store on how to make rockets, but all of them were supervised by a person whom Sophy trusted.

The store had been working on full steam for days now. Making guns, cannons, rifles, bombs and now the addition of hwacha made sure that there was nobody had any free time. Even Darrel was busy researching a new rune to create a small fireball to be used in guns.

Robert decided to practice some magic as that was the only way he could increase his personal power.

Getting in his room and taking a bath, Robert sat in meditation to experiment with the spells. He had planned a lot of spells but didn’t have time for testing any of those. Now that he had the time he immediately tested out an earth spell. He successfully created a stone ball and threw it just like the fireball.

The next one was the experimental part, he wanted to test two things, drawing a fire glyph followed by an earth glyph, a circle and finally a trajectory. He successfully summoned a rock, its surface filled with cracks, with flames coming through it.

“As expected!” Robert exclaimed.

He tossed the rock into a bucket of water, the ball cooled down giving off a hiss of steam from within.

The next spell was the inverse of what he had just done, by covering the earth glyph with the fire glyph, he created a flaming rock. Just like the one he had created when he was fighting with the thugs in Goldfair.

The difference was that this time the casting of the spell required only a fraction of the time that he required earlier and he felt that he could still make ten of those things and still have leftover energy!

He tried various combinations of earth and fire symbols to make the spells better in many ways. The defense skills of the earth-chain combined with the offense of fire chain was a great improvement in the base spell’s power.

Robert was about to go into another spell when he heard a knock on the door. With a pushing action, he used earth magic to hide the bucket that had been filled with the summoned earthen stuff into another room and got up to open the door.

Robert opened the door to see a very happy Darell. He had a piece of paper which had a smaller pyramid-like structure in it.

“See this, see this.” Darrell took a spirit stone from his pocket and placed it in a line that originated from the base of the pyramid, and the moment it touched, the pyramid lit up like a candle.

Seeing this Robert became even happier than Darell. This was huge! He could use this technology to trigger the guns and that would allow for the creation of better weapons. He could already envision his militia running rampage with a bunch of assault rifles.