Chapter 458: Firearms vs Cultivators
The earliest examples of functional cannons in the other universe could launch a sizable projectile at roughly 250 metres per second over a distance of about 500 metres. Under typical battlefield conditions, this was far too fast for any ordinary human even at the edge of that range to react to, but your average Low-Rank Initiate who was paying close attention would be able to avoid getting hit by such a shot even as close as 200 metres out.
Such an Initiate could also close that 200 metres distance in under 10 seconds, far faster than even the best trained cannon crew could reload and fire again. Once in close, the cannon would become useless and the precious operations would easily be slaughtered.
Worse yet, if that Low-Rank Initiate happened to be an archer, forget 200 metres, even 800 metres would be well within such a master’s lethal range.
Put bluntly, simple firearms, like the ones originally invented in the Zilon Kingdom, were basically only good for fighting mortals.
Of course, since most armies in the South-Central Region were primarily composed of Mortal Realm soldiers, that wasn’t necessarily a reason to discard them, and over time, with more research and development, firearms could be improved greatly, increasing their muzzle velocity, accuracy, and range to the point where they could become deadly weapons from over 1,000 metres away. However, such research and development cost a lot of time, money, resources, and effort.
Most leaders, essentially all of whom were powerful Cultivators, typically thought that the resources expended on such pursuits would be better spent on training more Cultivators. This was the conventional wisdom of the world, and had worked for hundreds, if not thousands of years on Servist.
If you couldn’t see the weapon you were developing ever becoming capable of defeating your enemy, why work on developing it at all? Only those with too much time and too many resources would do something so foolish and wasteful.
That being said, after its initial founding, the Zilon Kingdom found itself as the smallest and weakest nation with the fewest powerful Spirit Realm Cultivators in the South-Central Region, so it was no surprise they were a bit desperate for any advantage they could get. They weren’t so daring as to completely break with the common sense of the Blue Sky Continent, but they did continue dedicating resources to firearms research.
It was a slow grind, with not many blacksmiths, alchemists, or other craftsmen taking much interest in the project, but a few dedicated, or perhaps eccentric individuals kept working on improving the Roaring Tiger Launchers and progress had indeed been made.
Celestina had actually visited the Zilon Kingdom a few decades ago together with Pauline, the two of them having gone there to negotiate an important trade deal with Queen Theresa Kardesh, an old acquaintance and even something of a mentor to the Balfour Marquess.
During that trip, the mother and daughter had a chance to witness the latest version of the Roaring Tiger Launchers in action, and it had been quite the shocking sight.
Able to fire 8 kg solid iron balls at roughly 400 metres per second with a decent degree of accuracy over 800 metres on relatively flat ground.
Such a weapon was a serious threat to anyone in the Initiate Realm who was caught off-guard.
What’s more, due to the rich mineral resources of the Zilon Kingdom, metals and other necessary materials for producing and firing cannons were fairly cheap, at least compared to purchasing things like Firestorm Arrows.
Of course, a Firestorm Arrow was capable of much more destruction than an ordinary cannonball, but it also required a Spirit Realm Cultivator to fire effectively in battle, and once it flew from the string, it was gone.
A cannon, on the other hand, could easily be operated by 4 or 5 Body Tempering Realm mortals, and as long as there was ’flash powder’ as the Zilon Kingdom called it, and iron balls, it could keep firing until it became too hot to handle.
Queen Theresa, always the pragmatist and always believing that the best offence was a solid defence, had already commissioned over 100 of these ’advanced’ cannons back then and had mounted most of them on her already impressive castle walls.
Although Celestina, and even Pauline didn’t fear being attacked by a single cannon, they had to admit that if 100 of these weapons were pointed at one of them, even they would feel threatened.
It was for this reason that when Lucas said he wanted to try developing firearms, Celestina hadn’t refused, especially after he told her a few stories from his inherited memories about the truly advanced version of firearms.
That being said, although the basic structure of a cannon was relatively simple, as was its firing mechanism, there was one problem with Lucas’ plan, he had absolutely no idea how to make black powder, much less the more advanced smokeless gunpowder.
Such weapons, from his inherited memories, were essentially considered antiques, relics of the distant past that only extreme hobbyists and historians would know the exact details about.
Without the requisite knowledge of this critical component, Lucas’ dreams of building firearms came to a screeching halt.
That is, until he met with Second Queen Natasha Summers and learned about a certain kind of Spirit Weapon that the Vast Ocean Trading Company sold.
When he learned about this type of weapon, or rather, the special materials it was made from and that material’s properties, Lucas rejoiced!
If everything worked out, he could skip right over an entire generation of firearms and build a much deadlier weapon than he originally intended to!
The boy knew there were dangers in skipping steps like this, leaving holes in the industrial chain which had ultimately led to the proper development of such technology, but he figured he could back-fill that knowledge later.
Right now, his priority was building something capable of enhancing his strength, and the strength of the Balfour Family, and the weapon he was imagining certainly qualified.
Without hesitation, Lucas had ordered a large amount of this special material, as well as all the knowledge which was available about working with it.
Thinking there might be other useful things he didn’t know about in the Vast Ocean Trading Company’s inventory, Lucas also ordered samples of every single raw material they sold, as well as the general information about each of them.
It was an extremely large and expensive purchase, but Lucas was willing to spend any price to increase his working knowledge base.