Chapter 45: Disappointnt and Gift
Claude felt a little crestfallen. Even though he had spent the good part of the week translating that magic notebook, he didn’t find anything that he had hoped for inside, such as how to beco a magus, how to raise one’s level in magic, a basic prir on magic and so on.
Instead, the notebook was more of a collection of magical blueprints and designs. Based on the diagrams, it seed like a magical diagram designed to reduce the consumption of magical energy, or not use any at all, to produce the sa effects. The goal was to enable a normal person to use magic through the use of certain techniques, just like the diagrams of the upgraded guns.
However, those were only Claude’s guesses based on his weak understanding in magic. He could only understand basically what the diagrams were about using his translations of their descriptions, but he couldn’t get a clear idea of what their true functions were. As there were many unfamiliar magical symbols across the diagrams, Claude could only imagine what they ant.
Additionally, many alchemical terms were used in the notebook. That was the key to why Claude couldn’t understand most of it. Had it not been for the upgraded gun schematic he saw, Claude would have completely no idea what alchemy was. He only managed to figure sothing out by guessing based on the descriptions of that gun schematic.
In his past life, he had seen in a docuntary on hand making flintlock guns. They weren’t that different from matchlocks and was also considered an early firearm. However, it used a different firing chanism; a piece of flint instead of a slow match.
Most importantly, the two guns employed similar barrel designs. Without a good barrel, even the best firing chanisms were useless. The making of a barrel on the other hand was crucial to gunsmithing. A rifled barrel, for example, could be made through hamring the barrel over a mandrel with the reverse image of the rifling to create its rough shape before it would be shaped up and refined further. There was also a thod that connected three smaller barrel parts into one large composite one. There was an even more extre thod that made the rifling by drilling a hole through an iron rod to make the barrel while engraving the rifling at the sa ti. Naturally, these thods varied in terms of ti and ost.
When firearms were first invented, making enhancents to the barrel was one of the hardest parts. He had learned about the myriad ways a barrel could be machined. Most of them were based on modifying old thods to manufacture barrels in hopes of getting the best effect. So netizens even went out of their way to try to make early firearms with modern technology even quicker.
However, making gun barrels in this world didn’t seem to be a huge concern. It seed that all the magi had to do was to use alchemy. They only had to place the ingredients into the runic formations and heat them up with magical fla. After that, they could use magic to shape the molten mixture of ingredients to make long, alloyed gun barrels within their runic array.
Had it not been for the modified gun schematics, Claude never would’ve found out that shaping tals was such a simple feat. The reason for that was a large paragraph on the schematics that was dedicated to the making of a suitable gun barrel by a common blacksmith under circumstances when magic and alchemy wasn’t available so that they could be mass produced. It was then when Claude ca to understand that the true technological advancents of this world occured in the realm of alchemy.
While making one gun barrel was easy through the use of alchemy, and making tens or even hundreds of them was possible through hiring a magus qualified in alchemical arts through the use of money and connections, it was definitely impossible for thousands or tens of thousands of gun barrels to be produced on a mass scale. No magus would take that kind of job. Other things aside, the cost of setting up the runic formations and magical ingredients required for such an undertaking was astronomical. They would also need a magus, an alchemist to be precise, to carefully control the shaping of the tals for each and every gun barrel made.
Attempting to make so many gun barrels on that scale without aid from magi or alchemy was a huge industrial endeavor. On the back of the gun schematics, the ratio of tals used for the production of gun barrels was recorded. It was quite apparent that the ratio of tals required for the runic lting process was not suitable for normal slting. So, Landes suggested seven more mixtures of tals in his work and made a note that experintation was required to find out which mixture was ideal.
On the next page was a blueprint for a slting kiln Landes designed for an improved slting process to be used with the tal ingredient ratios he proposed. It had a tall chimney, a wide hearth and was described as being made of a super heat-resistant magic stone which had to be extracted from active volcanoes.
Having a suitable kiln was only the first step. What followed next was lting the tals and molding them into a rod shape to be hamr forged. To achieve the sa effect of a magus manipulating the molten tals into a fixed shape, a complicated, multi-step process was used. The next five pages of that notebook covered five machines designed by Landes to replace the acute function a magus perford during that step.
There were machines that relied on wind and hydropower made for repeated hamring, sawing, drilling and smoothening the inside of each barrel. So machines relied on complicated chanics that was powered through repeated stepping of a pedal. To ensure that the barrels were made to the utmost accuracy, Landes even designed the bits used for drilling and five accurate asuring devices. It was indeed a complicated manufacturing process that required extensive investnt.
While using alchemy to manufacture small numbers of barrels was more advantageous, this new manufacturing process was far superior when tens of thousands of them were required. There was no need for magi, no need for alchemical arrays, no need for lots of precious magic ingredients. Even the workers involved only had to pass simple training to be able to produce countless barrels according to a set standard.
Claude recalled that a hidden diary entry in the cookbook stated that Baron Regius Au Syr had requested Landes to modify the manufacturing process of guns five years prior to the ti of writing. He wanted even the common folk to be able to make standardized guns without relying on magi and alchemy. It seed like the notebook Claude had now contained the designs made according to Regius Au Syr’s request.
It was only when the baron had this new manufacturing process that he was able to raise his brotherhood in a war against the magi. They finally had a weapon which they could use to fight them: the matchlock gun. More importantly, the manufacture of those weapons didn’t need magi involvent. Even the magi weren’t able to stop the proliferation of that weapon and that was how the baron was allowed to form his own firearms unit with more than eight thousand n.
A huge investnt it may be, it was without a question worth it for Regius Au Syr, the largest magic stone supplier on Freia. Additionally, he could use the excuse of recruiting more miners to recruit more mbers to his cause, train them and start new gun workshops without attracting the attention of the magi one bit. In so sense, his success was no product of luck. It was destiny.
Claude put the notebook down and breathed a long sigh.
If he were a magus that knew sothing about alchemy, then the notebook would be a priceless treasure to him. There were many designs inside the notebook that could reduce the consumption of magic power after all. It was too bad that Claude wasn’t a magus, but a normal middle schooler with so talent for magic.
Of the 38 pages made of skin filled with runic inscriptions, Claude only understood the ones concerning the improved guns. After all, they were drafted with the intent on letting even common smiths manufacture the weapons to a standard. The rest of the diagrams were far more difficult for him to decipher, such as the input of magic power, layout of the runic alchemy diagrams, the magic crystals and ingredients required for those processes and so on. They were nothing to him but gobbledy goop.
He was like a middle school student who had gotten his hands on a university textbook. While he could recognize the words in them, he didn’t understand what they ant collectively. That was especially the case when he looked at the calculations and alchemical runes that were littered all over the diagrams as well as the units they used in the calculations. Without having gone through rigorous training in the field, there’d be no way he could understand them.
If only I had a beginner’s guide to magic or sothing… I might be able to beco at least a low-ranked magus through self study that way, thought Claude. But even he knew that this was nothing but fantasy. The various nations on Freia saw the magi as evil incarnates and banned everything that had anything to do with them. Even the word ‘magic’ itself was sowhat a taboo. How could there be books with magical knowledge just lying around sowhere?
The only good thing that ca up from it was that Claude had gotten a better grasp of ancient Hez after wracking his brains for the whole week to translate the notebook. After all, the Hebrai language was descended from ancient Hez and there were many similarities between the two. Currently, Claude would be able to understand roughly a book written in ancient Hez even without the help of a dictionary.
“Claude, it’s ti for dinner,” called Angelina from outside his room.
Claude snapped out of his thoughts. He had forgotten the ti during his deep focus and didn’t even hear his sister’s footsteps from outside.
“Alright, I’ll go downstairs imdiately.” He got up from his chair and stretched himself as he heard his sister go downstairs.
After cleaning up his desk, Claude went downstairs as well.
Morssen was seated at the dinner table. The mont he saw Claude, he instructed, “Claude, go to the carriage outside and bring the wooden chest in the back here for .”
The Ferds had no horse nor carriage. It wasn’t that they didn’t have any place to park one, Morssen just wasn’t willing to shell out that amount of money to build a stable and hire a coachman. Morssen had once made so calculations and found that the cost of feeding two horses for a year was higher than how much a horse cost to buy. The fact that he would need a coachman to take care of his horses made it even less worth it to have his own carriage.
Morssen believed that he wouldn’t need a carriage anyway, given that he didn’t leave Whitestag often. Buying and maintaining a carriage was also no small feat. The elents would weather the carriage quickly and new coats of paint would have to be applied. Hiring people to paint cost money and he found it too troubleso to paint it himself.
The town hall also had many carriages and Morssen was allowed to use them given his position as chief secretary. He could tolerate how worn down the carriages of the town hall looked. Additionally, Morssen also liked to steer the carriage ho himself. He thought that it made him look more down-to-earth and he could greet the townsfolk while he was at it. Claude on the other hand thought that the sole reason Morssen liked to drive himself ho was because he was too stingy to pay the coachman a fee.
The carriage parked outside their house belonged to the town hall. During the night, a coachman hired by the town hall would co to drive it back and co to pick Morssen up during the next morning as usual. Claude opened the rear cabin of the carriage and saw a long, wooden chest that stood taller than Claude himself. However, it was rather thin and it didn’t weigh too much.
He brought the chest into the dining hall and asked, “What’s inside?”
Morssen said, “Open it and see. It’s a gift for you.”
A gift? Claude hurriedly opened the chest and within it was a long, black matchlock on top of the straw cushioning.
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