Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

Having paid for the repairs of the city walls, Malin felt the sting of financial pain for the first time.

Malin had no plans to deduct the salaries of the elves; after all, these fellows could already produce finished products. As long as he could control their incurable firearm syndrome in time, Malin and the three Great Craftsmen, including the elven ambassador, declared that no guns larger than 20 millimeters would be allowed—For Malin, it was feasible for these craftsmen to create small-caliber rapid-fire cannons to fill the gaps of 20 mm and 40 mm, but he could not allow them to waste time and energy on constructing 57 mm gun barrels.

This contraption was too big, and in terms of practicality, it was inferior to the grenade launchers and autocannons created by the Half-human and Dwarves teams.

Because the caliber of this thing was neither large nor small; using it to target small objects was like using a canon to kill mosquitoes, and it might not be lethal in one hit against large targets. It could only be fired while lying down, had no elevation or depression angles, and most importantly... the targets killed by this device could essentially be handled with one spell.

And those that couldn’t be killed by this device, could also be managed by one spell.

Thus, its positioning was very awkward; its massive size even prevented it from being mounted on the racks of armored soldiers.

After listening to Malin’s explanation, the three Great Craftsmen felt it made sense. The elven ambassador even thought that modifying it to a 75 caliber brought no advantage; it was better off using the 88 caliber design drawn on Malin’s earlier blueprint, both as a fixed artillery platform or mounted on the reinforced chassis of an armored soldier.

However, Malin thought it shouldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of these young craftsmen. He specifically asked the ambassador to monitor the progress of this group. As for the current gun, it could be considered to cut the excessively long barrel into half, then transform it into a magazine-fed rapid-fire cannon for testing on armored soldiers. If feasible, consider using chain feeding to significantly enhance the firepower delivery per unit of time.

"This is a good idea." The elven ambassador answered sincerely, "We have already built six armored soldiers; Unit 6 and Unit 5 can be used as platforms to carry these two kinds of weapons respectively."

The combat effectiveness of armored soldiers was proven in the last battle against the Rat-men. Though costly to build, every appearance of Unit 1 in subsequent combat against Chaos in the North greatly boosted the soldiers’ morale. When its weapons interrupted Chaos’s charge, almost all the soldiers felt a firm belief that victory was assured in this battle.

In the eyes of Sydney’s military, although these were costly, their presence inspired immense courage amongst the soldiers, and their weapons could deal incalculable damage to the morale and forces of Chaos soldiers. Even the Chaos Demons could not breakthrough the burning zone created by the sprayers of two armored soldiers – these Holy Fuels were blessed, igniting upon fire even demons that normally ignore regular flames.